This
week’s episode of The Starlost, “Children of Methuselah” is one that seems very familiar
in terms of sci-fi TV tropes.
The
idea of a society of wayward children -- with
no adults present to temper them -- likely goes back to the William Golding
novel Lord of the Flies (1954) and has been featured on Star
Trek (1966 – 1969) in “Miri” and on The Fantastic Journey’s (1977)
“Children of the Gods” to name only two examples. The notion underlying the
trope is that, without the aid of parents and mature adults, societies of
exclusively young folk lack critical qualities like experience, wisdom and even
empathy. Usually, when this trope is featured
on TV, outsiders arrive and provide leadership by example for the children.
In
“Children of Methuselah,” Devon (Ker Dullea), Rachel (Gay Rowan) and Garth (Robin
Ward) discover a chamber they at first presume to be the Ark’s back-up bridge,
which they have been seeking since “The Goddess Calabra.” The bridge, however, is guarded by a group of
apparently immortal children.
Hundreds
of years earlier, these children were deliberately injected with a serum that
instantly regenerates their cells. They also
possess a serum to restore “natural aging” once the ship’s crew returns. Meanwhile the children, led by Captain One (David
Tyrell) have been training on the bridge’s controls for hundreds of years.
When
Devon insists that the Earth Ship Ark is on a collision course with a star, Captain
One is able to demonstrate, via the bridge’s equipment, that he is wrong. These controls register course corrections,
enable trajectory plotting, and warn of impending collisions. Because Devon has passed false information, to
bridge officers, Captain One tries him for lying in court, and orders both
Devon and Garth executed, while Rachel is made a “ward of the dome.”
As
Rachel soon learns, all of the children seem to be suffering from a lack of
play and freedom in their lives. They no
neither “innocence” nor “joy,” and Rachel attempts to rectify
this by giving the children real names, not numbers, and by teaching them how
to play Blind Man’s Bluff. At first, the
children are resistant to this new information, but soon two children, Sarah
and David, come to trust Rachel.
With
Rachel’s help, Devon escapes from custody and proves to Captain One that his
culture of children is built on an error.
Their dome is not the back-up bridge at all, but a training center, and all the controls are simulations used
for instruction. The trio from Cypress
Corners has found, essentially, the Ark’s school, only with the students left
in charge…for centuries.
In
“Children of Methuselah,” the wayward children are gifted with incredible
telepathic powers and can “think pain,”
a skill which makes them formidable foes.
And a central portion of the episode concerns a court-room trial of
Devon and his friends, but it is the very definition of a kangaroo court. In both cases, the threat doesn’t seem
particularly overt, and yet the story is an interesting one, seeing how it
involves, primarily, perception and assumption.
The
finest aspects of “Children of Methuselah” involve Rachel, who is rapidly
becoming the most likable and human of the series’ main characters. After Rachel becomes a ward of the dome, she
is sent to a play center, where relaxing children experience visual
hallucinations through a head-set that very much resembles 1990s virtual
reality machines. In these sequences,
and in the naming of the children, Rachel proves a likable and sympathetic
person. Where Devon has become a very
single-focus character, understandably, Rachel is able to show a softer, more
human side.
Not
so successful, perhaps, is the through-line here involving One and his attempts
to hold power over the society of children.
It’s not clear why he is so resistant to Devon’s pleas to check and
confirm his story of a collision course, and so One’s resistance seems the product
of stubborn pride more than anything else.
This
may be intentional -- a commentary on the fact that children are not so
different from adults -- but it plays as a cheap plot mechanism nonetheless. Captain One isn’t evil or misguided; he’s
just doing what he believes he must do to survive. But there would be no conflict (and no fifty minute
episode…) if he allowed himself to test Devon’s theory, I suppose, and so he
resists, right through the last minute, independent verification.
I
don’t know if The Starlost is breaking down my resistance an episode at a
time, or what, but I found “Children of Methuselah” to be a pretty decent
outing for this Canadian science fiction series. It certainly moves faster than next week’s
installment, “And Only Man is Vile,” which I’ve started to watch three times…and
fallen asleep during, three times.
Next
week: “And Only Man is Vile.”
John, good review of Starlost "Children of Methuselah" episode.
ReplyDeleteSGB
It's been well documented that the writers basically ignored Harlan Ellison's original concept and went in their own directions, but I found it particularly disappointing that they didn't even try to establish any internal logic of their own. In the case of this episode, if the people who built the ark had a serum that could keep people immortal (for a long period of time anyway), why didn't they give that to the crew who would actually pilot the ship? Maybe I'm experiencing the same drowsy effects you are, but I can't get a handle on the working structure their forefathers laid out. In an earlier episode, we see people stored in cryogenic chambers, which I assumed were people put on deep freeze until they reach their destination, but they only revive one guy and he has a fatal disease. Then we find out that there were people who flew missions to acquire supplies, but they clearly know nothing of an immortality serum. It's pretty obvious that they were making up new stuff as they went along, and that would've been fine if Devon and the gang only traveled to the bio-domes where each society would have its own internal logic. Instead, they spend most of their time dealing with the inner workings of the ark, but nothing adds up. I won't get ahead of your reviews by mentioning future episodes, but this inconsistency continues.
ReplyDeleteThere's many examples of child society, from the ones you've mentioned to, aguably, the feral children in the movie version of Logan's Run. It would be interesting to see you expand on this by perhaps reviewing series like 'The Tribe', or 'The Odyssey'.
ReplyDelete