Fresh Sci-Fi Television For The Holidays

For a while sci-fi was in a rut (or to pun, lost in space) but recent times have seen an influx of thought-provoking scripted television shows. If you’re hungry for more—in an, alien intelligence that feeds on storylines infused with topical social commentary, kind of way—check out the pilot episode reviews below.

Some of the shows are released in a seasonal block, others aren’t screening in the US for another month, so in the interest of fairness I’ve stuck to one episode per series.

Of course, don’t forget shows that might have slipped under your radar. 12 Monkeys, The Expanse, Continuum, W: Two Worlds, and Les Revenantes are my top five in the last few years.

(A lot of people would probably include Black Mirror, Orphan Black, Sense8, Stranger Things, and The 100 in the mix, but a favorites list comes down to personal preferences/tastes.)

One thing most TV sci-fi writers appear to agree on is that the future is not a great place: dystopian storytelling is definitely “in”. The human psyche seems to have an uneasy relationship with scientific advances, a deep-seated worry about the lack of empathy the majority of humanity exhibits and how this will manifest in the future, as well as a fatalistic view of the human race's long-term chances of survival.

And after that chipper intro, here are the newbies. Please note my reviews contain spoilers. Frankly, I figured this is okay since the trailers contain more!

3%

This series is the first Netflix show to be shot in Brazil. Set in a future where a select few live in a version of Utopia, the title refers to the percentage of the masses that pass the selection process.

A very talented cast—notably the younger actors who play the desperate contenders—help ratchet up the tension; a number of the eliminated commit suicide to avoid going back to the slums, so the air of desperation is intense.

Naturally a rebel group not excited about the rich/poor dichotomy—aptly called The Cause—is shaking things up. They're trying to sneak in a spy, and the testing team is trying to pinpoint that spy. Meanwhile, internal politics among the rich community (Offshore) mean Ezequiel, the man who created and controls the testing process, is at risk of losing his power.

Want your kids to have a great future?
Think jenga, tetris, and a rubiks cube.

My first issue is with the testing process: one that seems so incredibly flawed it should be easy to dethrone the man behind it. There is a vagueness to the way the tests unfold that made them quite disappointing, rather than awe-inspiring. Personally I would have been more impressed if people were eliminated each round for reasons hard to define/pinpoint, until they were explained/revealed.

Ezequiel is also copping flak for a murder in paradise, meaning a killer made it through his trial. (Having seen the hodge-podge testing process this could not come as less of a surprise.)

The plot feels simplified in the way dystopian sci-fi sometimes can—almost like an abstract tale. If the core of the story is emotional and psychological, I want that aspect of the script to be other-level GOOD, and this is where the series runs into problems.

I like that physical disability
doesn't rule out a character.

The opening credits are great, some of the best this year. In terms of cinematography, a lot of experimental shots, and I guess you could say indulgent editing? Certain scenes feel longer than they need to be, i.e. rather than helping build tension, interesting angles of the same scene become distracting.

Overall I didn’t feel deeply engaged by the 3% pilot, just vaguely interested. Not bad, definitely entertaining, and I could see what they were trying for, but not a standout.

Note: The show is in Portuguese. (I have no issues with subs, just mentioning because I have a few dyslexic friends and for them it can be problematic.)

Incorporated

Executive produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, this series is set in 2074, and corporations have taken over the globe. If you work for them you’re in the green zone, if not, the slums of the red zone (yes, another dichotomous future).

We see two men in suits chatting in the elevator at work. Normal enough, till the doors open and security is waiting with a man in handcuffs and a hood over his head. Apparently corporations are crueler to traitors than now-defunct governments…

The story jumps back 3 days to a good-looking guy getting ready for work. (A gratuitous bare-chested shower scene, for anyone who didn’t notice actor Sean Teale is really, really ridiculously good-looking.)

Constant bits of tech and funny references remind us the setting, while familiar, is a future extrapolated from today’s corporate society. (The news story about illegal immigrants from the US living in Canada was hilarious. Considering this was made prior to the election it’s even more cutting.)

I want one.

I liked the tech on the streets, talk of genetically engineered crops, and the “food porn”. Not so much the brainwave pattern reader, designed to show what people are thinking in their sleep and translate to images i.e. gun, person, turtle.

Considering how complex and personal dreams are, this seems ridiculously oversimplified. A snake, to one person, may be a beloved pet, to another a phobia. In this way they could also merely be visual metaphors for emotions evoked by a situation that have no relation to a snake. To another it might represent a person, to another a place or a memory. In summary, this technology won’t “reveal” anything.

Tangent aside, our good-looking, charismatic, suited brunette male lead Ben (really Affleck?) is up to something. Sure, he’s charming, but he’s a con man, in that his identity is fabricated and he’s using his position to search for a missing woman I’m guessing is the ex.

On that subject, women don’t do too well here. The three notable female roles are his duped PTSD wife, the damsel in distress ex (?), and the mother-in-law, played by Julia Ormond, a bigwig at the corporation who is therefore heartless and evil. (She has a Vincent Van Gogh in her office, bought from an impoverished Smithsonian.)

Talk about blocking out reality.

The pilot shows us Ben’s goal is to get promoted to the 40^th floor so he can have the power to rescue his OTP, all while staying out of The Quiet Room, the place traitors to the corporation are tortured.

The glossy, moneyed zone of the future has a corporate crossed with Stepford Wives vibe. Kidnapping is rife, and everybody seems messed up, giving the writers a lot to play with. Also worth mentioning is that Dennis Haysbert is in the cast (love him). 

Visually, the set design of the green zone sits somewhere between the lower budget of Continuum and the highly stylized Gattaca. Subplots take place in the slums, a much messier/grittier environment, where we follow the missing girl’s brother in his new career as a cage fighter.

So far, I like Ben. He’s basically taking on The Man, so his character is in a state of paranoia. He also has conflicting feelings about the ruthless path he’s committed to, including using his rich wife, who he obviously cares for, and framing a co-worker for corporate espionage. The premise has an underlying tension that is engaging.

Westworld

Westworld is HBO’s much-lauded sci-fi offering. Despite the hype, I didn’t rush to watch because I grew up disliking cowboy movies. Basically if it’s a Western, my interest leaves the premises.

But this is a sci-fi-infused Western with a lot of philosophically heavy reviews online, so I figured I could handle cowboy hats for at least one episode.

“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?”

We get a VO from a pretty blonde lady who starts out being interviewed naked in a chair before waking up in her frontier homestead. (Yes the show meets HBO’s unspoken nakedness-as-soon-as-possible criteria.)

Basically the story is set in a future Wild West theme park populated by robots and (tip of the hat to Asimov) they cannot hurt the humans who visit. They can be reprogrammed constantly, so for many paying customers hurting them is part of the fun. (Am i the only one having holodeck flashbacks?)

For me the show has shades of Whedon’s Dollhouse, what with the mind wipes and programming of personalities to suit the client’s narrative needs, as well as the show Real Humans (Sweden) and the remake Humans (Britain) that looked at the treatment of robots after they hit the market in the near future. It’s a common theme in science fiction: is it mistreatment if the person is not human?

A bit Romeo and Juliet. If they were older. And robots.

A look at man’s desire to rape, pillage and kill is threaded through a lot of HBO’s programs. Here the premise is ripe with subtext. What defines humanity? Will the creations become more or less than the creator? Is it ever really okay to give in to the darkest urges, whatever the rationalization? Sure, no humans are damaged, but can torturing and mutilating a creation that looks human and appears to suffer, really not impact an individual?

We’re introduced to some of the gentlest of the robot characters, and see them repeating their narrative. Oddly, I felt sorry for them at first, but then, seeing their looped existence with no awareness of prior events, my sympathy was dulled. Usually I empathies with the robot characters because they often exhibit a type of cultural innocence, but here they really do seem mechanized—at first.

I like these two. Although I guess I'm
appreciating computer configurations.

Only when the robots malfunction following an upgrade does the story begin its journey into fascinating territory. Sentience, and the definition of such, will doubtless be an oft-visited topic over the next century. (At this point the humans are the creepiest things in the show: they seem the most soulless. The corporate workplace scenes at the park confirm empathy wasn’t high on the employee requirement list.)

The subconscious is one of the most interesting things about humanity, so if wiping the robot’s memories is akin to human repression, the experiences are not really gone. How those memories will manifest on the surface is what makes this show worth watching. More importantly, to borrow from a master: do androids dream of electronic sheep?

The romanticization of the Wild West is pretty much a misogynist’s paradise, with women’s roles falling in either the traditional virgin or whore dichotomy (with a few exceptions). And I'm still not sure why the makeup of the saloon girls was more seventies porn star than anything else, but hey.

I found it interesting families visited the theme park, considering the violence taking place at the same time. Is a family holiday really fun if over yonder hills some guy’s getting his jollies off shooting Native American representations and raping local (albeit robot) women?

About twenty minutes in Anthony Hopkins appears as the Park owner. The man is a treasure: such an incredible performance. He’s responsible for the upgrades, and therefore the malfunctions, but Dr. Ford has his own agenda.

The cast is quite impeccable. James Marsden and Thandie Newton: love them both onscreen.  Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, and the list goes on. The storytelling feels very sophisticated, and the show is beautifully filmed, with a great score (but the production values of HBO usually border on impeccable.). 

Toward the end of the pilot is a massacre soundtracked with an orchestral version of Paint It Black—to say this is a new kind of take on the Western genre would be an understatement.

Travelers

Screening in the US in December (but ahead in Canada), I really enjoyed the pilot of this time travel series. My appreciation is probably due to a mix of careful pacing, interesting premise, and the way in which exposition is offered to the audience.

On a side note: The first episode includes a scene with someone fighting in a cage, something I’d just seen in Incorporated, making me wonder what exactly appeals to the American psyche… Also, Ian Tracey appears in the pilot for this series, and Incorporated. He’s becoming a cult show regular. Seriously, The Outer Limits, Dark Angel, Smallville, The 4400, Flashpoint, Sanctuary, Supernatural, The 100, Wayward Pines, Bates Motel, Continuum… The list goes on!

Back to the story: people in the present day are introduced right before their time of death (text appears onscreen telling us this), and then obviously a form of consciousness transfer occurs. Each gets up a changed person, and heads off with obvious goals.

I like this style of storytelling; rather than straight exposition the plot is allowed to unfold. The audience is along for the ride, but not pandered to, which is my preferred form of science fiction television.

The travelers are keeping their mission details on the down low but they’re seriousness and determination adds extra gravitas. They’re not here for fun (not even a quick bout of casual sex), and they won’t interfere with predetermined deaths.

I like the leads.

The travelers are well trained in hand-to-hand combat. Not so much in childcare, and a few faux pas reveal that the information they memorized in regards to the lives of the bodies they now inhabit can prove a tad inaccurate (especially for the guy who transported into a junkie).

Hopefully a plot reveal in the future will explain why the blonde woman feels comfortable naked all the time while everyone else appears fine with keeping their clothes on... Overall the travelers seem bemused by their new everyday lives.

FBI agent Grant MacLaren, played by Eric McCormack, is on the trail of the group thanks to obtuse online messages that he assumes are left by gamers. The closing scene offers a twist that shifts the dynamic among the leads—and possibly audience assumptions.

Slower paced and sprinkled with mystery sci-fi, containing less sex and violence, is a harder sell. Hopefully people will tune in because already there is a stylistic feel to this show that I find interesting. Shot-wise, a documentary-like approach, in terms of camera work, is interspersed with more traditionally static frames, a juxtaposition that suits the series.

Now I'm getting a Stargate vibe.

Travelers is created/written by Brad Wright, who co-created Stargate SG-1, and created Stargate: Atlantis, and SGU. The Stargate programs were always very good with emotional elements of the plot, so this “fish out of water” scenario, combined with high stakes (saving humanity in the future) should unfold in an interesting way.

Obviously much of the show’s success will depend on the nature of the missions, since at this point the audience has no idea what they will entail, and how the series chooses to deal with the time travel aspects, which have tripped up many a program in the past. 

Personally, I think how successfully viewers engage with the personalities projected into the past will matter the most. Already the travelers seem stressed, lonely, and somewhat naïve when it comes to dealing with “modern” life, and the issues attached to the lives of the body’s they’ve possessed (for want of a better word). Maintaining their facades, and the required emotional detachment needed to complete their tasks, won't be easy—but hopefully, will be fascinating to watch.