Cult-TV Blogging: Star Maidens (1976): "Nemesis"

The second episode of the 1970s war-of-the-sexes space opera Star Maidens opens with the thought: "space holds no fury like a female planet scorned."

The question regarding such a comment, of course, is intent. Is this series poking fun at such anti-woman proverbs? Or does Star Maidens take such commentary seriously, and reflect it in its space-age premise of a female dominated planet?

Given the other humorous aspects of the episode, I would suggest the former interpretation. At some, hopefully intentional level, Star Maidens seems to recognize the humor in applying broad, sexist language to a “futuristic” science fiction epic.  The premise finds a rigidly, unthinking patriarchy (Earth) confronting a rigidly, unthinking matriarchy (Medusa).

Our silly conceits about sex are, ultimately, reflected by Medusa’s silly conceits about them. Can’t we all just get along?

This second episode of the 1976 series involves the Medusan pursuit ship Nemesis following Adam and Shem to Earth.

The two escaped "domestics" have fled their space-age parachute (a giant bubble of sorts) and head across the English countryside looking for food. The men are happy to be "free at last," (they actually speak those famous words) and walking around on a world where no woman can "command them." 

They soon encounter a cow pasture and see cows grazing...so decide to eat the grass too. This doesn't speak well of their intelligence, but further enhances the idea that Star Maidens is something of a comedy, with a strong fish-out-of-water component.

Later, Adam and Shem happen across a farm and find apples to eat, but not before a little Earth girl chases them off the grounds. They flee the property by jumping over a tall brick wall in a single bound, pointing to the fact that Medusa and Earth have different gravity, and idea later repeated on Galactica: 1980. This scene is actually quite funny, as it involves, again, Shem’s ingrained fear regarding women. He is terrified when the young human threatens to tell her mother that the stranger has stolen an apple. Shem veritable cowers in fear at the thought, and one can’t help but laugh at his terror.

The women from Medusa -- Fulvia (Judy Geeson) and Octavia (Christiane Kruger) -- land on Earth and meet with Liz (Lisa Harrow) and Professor Evans (Derek Farr). The Medusan women demand the return of Adam and Shem, and bark orders at the local police chief. When he tries to explain what is happening, Octavia curtly tells him to "be quiet."

In the same sequence, Octavia utilizes superior Medusan weaponry to immobilize another police officer. Their weaponry is a kind of "paralysis" or "freeze ray," which is the equivalent of turning a person to stone and thus the perfect weapon for a citizen of a world called Medusa (after the character in Greek myth).

More genuinely humorous is the device that Fulvia uses to track down Adam. It's called a "man finder,” and it hunts down a man by his "scent." The theory being that each man possesses his own specific scent. Apparently, men wander off quite a bit on Medusa, and their overlords need to wrangle them…

The episode culminates with Adam and Shem riding around dirt roads in a computer-controlled police car, and sending the earthbound police on a merry chase. It all happens to the tune of a groovy seventies musical score. It's like Doctor Who meets Smokey and the Bandit.

It's pretty clear from this second installment of the series that Star Maidens has descended fully into tongue-in-cheek humor in record time. I could mention again the moment wherein the none-too-bright man-folk from Medusa sample grass along with generous cows. Or the moment wherein the Nemesis ship lands in a wide-open field, two gorgeous alien women disembark and none of the gathered earth people bat an eye, gasp, or react with surprise or shock. 

Nope. A conversation immediately begins about the Medusans wanting their men back. It's like a conversation officials from two countries might have over the subject of extradition. But officials from two planets?

And the scene in which the caped, futuristic women from Medusa enter a police station and start issuing orders...it's more of the same. It plays as comedy.

Still, since (according to Fulvia in this episode...) "most of outer space is very boring," I guess I can be grateful that Star Maidens is as entertaining as it is. However, “Nemesis” does not set one foot on advanced Medusa, and that means the earthbound action is, almost by default, less interesting than it might be otherwise.

Next week: "Nightmare Cannon."

From the Archive: The Unforgettable Doomed Space Missions of Cult-TV

“In the vast immensities of cosmic space, bold adventurers streak their way to join battle with strange enemies on strange worlds: the alien, the unknown, perhaps even the invisible, armed only with Man's earthbound knowledge...”

-          The Control Voice narration to “The Invisible Enemy” on The Outer Limits (1964).

           

One of my a favorite sci-fi and horror sub-genres (due to be explored this summer in Alien: Covenant [2017]) is the failed outer space expedition.   

In stories of this type, courageous astronauts brave the dangers of the void in their rockets and spaceships, and discover not wonders of nature…but the very horrors of Hell itself.

Films have visited this trope in such efforts as Alien (1979), and Europa Report (2013), but this list focuses on TV instead, a realm where the failed space expedition trope has seen many iterations.  

Many cult-television series are actually predicated on the concept of a “failed” space expedition, from Lost in Space (1965 – 1968) and The Starlost (1973 – 1974), to Planet of the Apes (1974 – 1975), Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (1979 – 1981) and Farscape (1999 – 2003). 

Not all those series, however, tread in the terrain of pure terror: the unexpected conjunction of amazing high technology with Gothic “monsters” in an arena that should be reasonable, scientific, and wondrous…but determinedly isn’t.  Highly-trained and resourceful astronauts in these episodes suddenly find themselves confronting things that shouldn't exist at all; things like ghosts, dragons, and vampires.

Other TV series (not featured below) offer variations on the formula, but don’t necessarily focus on spaceships: Doctor Who’s “The Waters of Mars,” for instance, concerns a base on Mars that falls to an implacable alien horror called “The Flood.”  

In terms of categorization, a good “failed space expedition” story not only terrifies, it sets up a high level of danger for those who discover the expedition's aftermath, and must tread (warily…) in its footsteps.

So without further introduction, here are my selections for the five most horrific failed space expeditions in cult-television history. 

To be included on my list, the mission must end in abject failure, and with lots and lots of death and destruction.  

These are my choices, but no doubts others will choose other episodes.

5.The final journey of the U.S.S. Essex (“Power Play,” Star Trek: The Next Generation [1992]):   

Nearly 200 years before the days of NCC-1701-D, a Daedalus class starship called U.S.S. Essex, encounters terror on Mab-Bu IV and is never heard from again. 

When the Enterprise answers its distress call two centuries later, the captain of the Essex and his top crew are reportedly alive, albeit in a strange form.  They “survive” as disembodied “ghosts” inside a planet-wide storm.  

The truth is much more bizarre, however.  The planet is actually a penal colony containing the Ux-Mal’s most monstrous (but non-corporeal) criminals.  The Essex captain and his ship died generations ago, when the prisoners seized the ship, and it failed to escape the planet’s gravity well.

This is one of my all-time favorite Next Generation episodes because it boasts no preachy messages, and the Enterprise crew spends the hour trying to figure out exactly whom it is dealing with when Troi, Data, and O’Brien are apparently possessed by the Essex’s command crew.  

But in terms of the failed space mission premise, I love “Power Play” because it points out the danger of space travel in early Starfleet history.  Here, a starship “boldly went where non had gone” and encountered new life forms of a most malicious variety.  Star Trek isn't a universe where one expects to find "ghosts," but that's a good term for the merciless aliens Picard combats here.  This episode also offers one of the few instances in the series when it is possible to resolve a situation by peaceful diplomacy, and talking to an enemy.

4.The ill-fated mission of the M-1 (“The Invisible Enemy” The Outer Limits [1964]):

In the year 2021, the M-1 rocket lands successfully on Mars.  But this giant step for space exploration ends in terror, when the first astronaut on the Martian surface screams in terror, and then disappears without a trace.  The second astronaut heads out to the surface, and meets the same mysterious fate. 

Six years later, the crew of the M-2 discovers the grisly disposition of those unlucky men.  They encountered dragon-like shark creatures that “swim” the sandy terrain of the red planet.  Now, the four-man crew of the M2 is similarly imperiled by the over-sized, carnivorous beasts. 

This episode of the classic anthology series plays adeptly on the fear that something might exist beneath our very feet, something that could pull us down into the very ground itself, and destroy us.  And the episode’s final revelation -- of a whole school of the sand-sharks laying in wait -- is unforgettable in terms of its imagery.

Here there be dragons...

3. The bizarre fate of the E-89 (“Death Ship,” The Twilight Zone [1961])

This mysterious and unsettling story from the late Richard Matheson occurs in the year 1997, as three astronauts -- Captain Ross (Jack Klugman), Lt. Mason (Ross Martin), and Lt. Carter (Frederic Beir) -- visit a distant planet and are afforded an unwelcome glimpse of their own future.  

On the surface of the planet is a wreckage of a spaceship…their spaceship.  Captain Ross believes that they have somehow "circumnavigated" time and arrived on the planet in their own near future, perhaps as the result of a time warp.  

Now the question remains, how does the ship’s crew avoid a future in which it is fated to die?

Unlike the other stories on this list, “Death Ship” involves no overt “monster.”  There are no sand sharks, ghosts, vampires or other creatures to contend with.  Instead the crew’s nemesis is time itself, and perhaps that is an even scarier enemy.  As I wrote in my review of the episode, "Death Ship" is a great story because it arrives at its shocking ending side-ways.

The episode features all the trappings of futuristic science fiction drama, with discussions of time travel and alien life, but as is so often the case on The Twilight Zone (and in the work of Richard Matheson) the resolution of the enigma involves the very nature of man; the metaphysical not the technological. 

In crafting a tale of a protagonist and captain who sees what he wants to see, and the men who follow him in that (tunnel) vision, Matheson's "Death Ship" takes the mysteries of outer space and links them right back to the essential nature of humanity, right here on Earth. For a time it looks like the story is about "fear -- the "death fear" as one character describes it -- but the tale actually involves the acceptance of the unacceptable in our lives...and in our deaths.

This is one of the darker corners of The Twilight Zone, no doubt.

2. The last voyage of the I.S. Demeter (“Space Vampire” Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century [1980])

An unknown presence -- believed to be the “Denebian virus” or “EL7” -- begins to kill the passengers and crew of the I.S. Demeter in “Space Vampire.”   

Although the last survivors hold out hope that they can reach their destination alive, it is not to be.  All hands have perished by the time the vessel passes through Stargate Nine and reaches Theta Station.   Their murderer is a strange vampiric entity called a Vorvon, known in legends for “draining the souls” of the living. 

On Theta Station, Buck (Gil Gerard) watches the Demeter’s captain’s log, and realizes the horror that now lurks on the station. 

The Demeter is named after the ship that transports the un-dead count to England in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and serves much the same purpose in this entry of the 1979-1981 series: setting the stage for the next appearance (and escalation) of a terrifying entity.

Where most episodes of Buck Rogers are light-hearted and breezy (and quite enjoyble so...), an atmosphere of  absolute gloom and dread hangs over "Space Vampire," especially the sections involving the Demeter.  There is an air of ghastly inevitably here as the captain reports death after death, until the Vorvon finally comes for her...

1.The horror of the Ultra Probe (“Dragon’s Domain,” Space:1999 [1975])

It is impossible for me to measure how deeply or profoundly this episode of Space:1999 impacted my psyche when I first saw it as a young lad (at the tender age of five).  I suspect, in fact, that “Dragon’s Domain” is the very production that catalyzed my life-long love of horror and science fiction.

“Dragon’s Domain,” by Christopher Penfold, depicts the tragedy of the ill-fated Ultra Probe, which began its weeks-long voyage to the newly-discovered planet, Ultra, in the year 1996. 

In orbit of the planet, however, the astronaut crew discovers a mysterious “parking lot” of alien spaceships. When docking with one such mystery ship, however, something...alien...gets inside the Ultra Probe (commanded by Tony Cellini), something horrible.

That horrible thing is a tentacled, slimy nightmare that can hypnotize the living, and...then devour them.  But even that isn’t the end of the terror.  After eating the crew, this monster spits out the corpses’ steaming bones from its orange-hot maw.  

The resulting image: a smoldering skeleton on a high-tech spaceship deck, is one that has remained with me my whole life, and captures perfectly the magic of the “failed space expedition story.”

You look at that image (below..) and wonder, how in the cosmos can this happen?  How can mankind achieve his highest aspiration -- the stars themselves – and end up like this? Merely charred food for something unimaginably horrific, unimaginably monstrous?

In the course of “Dragon’s Domain,” Tony Cellini gets a second chance to face his monster, and even when fully seen for a second bout, the creature loses none of his ghastly power.  The creature squirms, wriggles, shoots out fluid (ick…) before consuming its final victim.  In the end, the truth is that the parking lot of spaceships was a spider's web, and that this monster was the spider itself.

The story ends with a final, frightful thought to carry with you into your nightly slumber.  If the astronauts never determined, via their advanced scientific instruments, that the creature was alive... how could anyone be sure that it was really dead?

Alas, fans of failed space expeditions never got the TV sequel to "Dragon's Domain" that this chilling ending so perfectly set-up.

Other contenders for this list include "The Satan Pit," a Doctor Who story in which a team of space miners (again operating from a base, not a ship) excavate a "Beast" that is, in fact, the Devil, and "Planet of Evil," another Doctor Who story set at the edge of the known universe, and featuring an anti-matter universe.

Cult-TV Review: Penny Dreadful, Season One (2014)

Penny Dreadful, Season One, is all about the most terrifying monsters ever to challenge humanity. 

But if you believe that by that description I refer to Dracula, Dorian Gray, or The Frankenstein Monster, you are mistaken.  

Although the Showtime TV series, created by John Logan, involves those beings, all the series’ real monsters stem directly from human nature, from human psychology.

For instance, spiritualist Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) contends with shame over a past indiscretion and betrayal (“Closer than Sisters”). This shame literally possesses her at points, or paves the way, perhaps, for her spiritual possession (“Possession.”)

Similarly, Egyptologist Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton) deals continually with his own guilt and vanity (“Séance”), arising from the death of his son, and the abduction of his daughter, Mina, by a vampire.

Meanwhile, young Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway) deals with irresponsibility regarding his own creation or child (“Resurrection,” “Demimonde.”)

Even Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) -- a gung ho American gunslinger -- grapples, at least after a fashion, with his own flaws.  In this case, the primary foible may be cowardice, since Ethan ran away from his life of wealth and privilege in America (“Night Work.”)

In Victorian England of the Pax Britannia -- the unusual but remarkable historical span that gave us both Jack the Ripper and the works of Charles Darwin -- these conflicted characters serve as our heroes while they battle the monsters imagined by Stoker, Shelley, and Wilde. 

These monsters move in and out of human society, occupying its fringes, but Ives, Murray, Frankenstein and Chandler are grounded or anchored in that society of 1891; as consumed by their personal foibles as they are by their supernatural quarry.

I am just now catching up with the final episodes of the first season as I write this review, though the second season is currently airing on Showtime. But at this stage, I can state that I admire Penny Dreadful’s dedication to character, and its central leitmotif of psychological monsters vs. literal ones. 

At first glance, one might mistakenly believe that this horror-themed series is some League of Extraordinary Gentleman-type pastiche of Victorian literary figures -- a superhero movie, essentially -- when in fact, it is the very opposite. The monsters may be mythic, but the people all possess feet of clay.

Indeed, Penny Dreadful's excavation (or perhaps I should write “exhumation”) of the central protagonists, so flawed and self-destructive, takes narrative precedence over the depiction of the famous monsters, and it is a fascinating idea.  The Frankenstein Monster (Rory Kinnear) and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney) represent -- much as they do historically -- “othered” horror figures, derided outsiders dwelling beyond the concept of normality. In other words, their physicality or exterior qualities make them “different” and outside of the norm. They are easily pinpointed by others, and derided for their dreaded differences.

But Murray, Ives, Chandler, and Frankenstein, in contrast, showcase the societal norm as sick and faulty.  They may be beautiful to gaze upon (quite unlike Caliban, or Proteus…), but they represent an Establishment and society that is corrupt and decadent to its core, destroying itself with lust and avarice and ambition. 

The nature of the series’ protagonists creates an unusual kind of suspense or tension in the individual stories.  

In the pitched battles with the undead, for example, whether aboard plague ships or beneath opium dens, one is never quite certain if the “heroes” will succeed, or even if they will all be fighting on the same side at the same time. They are each so tortured and obsessed with their own history, we sometimes wonder if they can trust themselves and one another enough to engage the enemy.  Only one character among the protagonists seems dependable, though he remains inscrutable: Sembene (Danny Sapani).

One episode, “Possession,” deals beautifully with this very concept. Murray, Frankenstein and Chandler attempt a multi-week cure/exorcism of the possessed Vanessa Ives, and are committed to their cause. But before those weeks are over, questions of motive and secret agendas are raised. 

The result? Trust among the characters is diminished, not enhanced.  So a story that begins with the openly acknowledged need for “trust” ends instead with a retreat to separate, individual corners because of the acute recognition that at least one of the monster fighters may not be acting out of the purest or most honest motives.  

Trust gives way to bitter accusations and frissons.

And meanwhile, out in the world, the bloody carnage -- possibly a result of the vampire master, possibly a result of the human Ripper -- spreads.

The first season of Penny Dreadful consists of just nine episodes, but there are at least three obvious stand-out segments: the aforementioned “Possession,” “Resurrection,” and “Closer than Sisters.”  

“Possession,” the calm before the storm of the season finale, promises group unity, and then shatters it, delivering more personal chaos. 

“Resurrection” is a story faithful in spirit and execution to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, recounting the birth and life of the monster, here called Caliban. Much of the episode’s action occurs at the Grand Guignol Theater, and involves the Monster finding a place where he calls home, a place where he can find belonging.  

And “Closer than Sisters” is an absolutely haunting hour that reveals Vanessa’s back story. We watch her childhood and friendship with Mina develop, as well as Vanessa’s eventual betrayal, and the cost of that betrayal on her soul.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Penny Dreadful is also remarkably cast. Timothy Dalton is a commanding, sometimes heroic, sometimes monstrous, presence. Treadaway is perfect as Victor Frankenstein: fastidious, “bloodless” and at absolutely the right age to play Shelley’s protagonist (unlike, say, Kenneth Branagh in the 1994 film).  

Hartnett is also strong as the brash American gunslinger, yet the character and the actor both evidence surprising, buried depths, particularly in Chandler's interaction with an Irish prostitute (Billie Piper) and the seductive Dorian Gray. 

But all these characters, to one degree or another, seem to pivot off of Vanessa Ives, and Eva Green delivers a fearless, nuanced, sometimes bat-shit crazy set of performances here.  I write “fearless” because Green is, obviously, a beautiful woman, and yet she enthusiastically takes her character to some ugly places, both physically and emotionally in the first season catalog. She delivers performances of astonishing rawness in “Séance,” “Closer than Sisters” and “Possession,” in particular.  In the wrong hands, "Possession" could come off like a knock-off of The Exorcist (1973), but Green makes the story personal and individual to her character, Ives, in a way that makes it feel simultaneously fresh and terrifying.

I’ve encountered some folks online who watched Penny Dreadful and dismissed it as slow or somehow campy, though I believe both of those criticisms are off the mark.  

On the contrary, Penny Dreadful takes its time to establish the psychological “monsters” inside its monster-hunter team, and the series doesn’t so much go over-the-top as it does attempt to embody the inherent contradictions of the Victorian Age.  

Like that epoch in history, the series zooms from Reason and Enlightenment ideas (even in terms, actually, of sex) to the heights of wild Romanticism. Murray is a perfect embodiment of this conflict, himself: a man of science and reason now countenancing an exotic world of monsters and irrationality, and not quite knowing where he stands in it, or even, what he really is.  Is he a hero, or a loathsome, vain monster? 

Ives battles the same surging tides and contradictions. On the surface, she is a chaste, proper lady.  But in “Séance,” “Closer than Sisters” and “Possession” a repressed side literally bursts forth from her, longing for expression and release.

I absolutely love The Walking Dead (2010 - ) and its very contemporary zombie apocalypse, yet I must say that it is a delight to go back to the classic literary monsters and the conflicts of the Victorian Era.  

There’s a place still in the genre, today, for Frankenstein, Dracula, and the other characters of that Age;  characters that embodied, at its beginning, the inescapable contradictions of modernity.  

Penny Dreadful, a Gothic entertainment, returns us to that framework, and does so with remarkable style and complexity.

I’m looking forward to the second season…

At Flashbak: Have a Merry Scary Christmas: 5 Cult-TV Christmas Episodes to Terrorize Your Holiday

My newest article at Flashbak looks at Christmas episodes of horror TV series.

Here's a snippet (and the url:http://flashbak.com/have-a-merry-scary-christmas-5-cult-tv-episodes-to-terrorize-your-holiday-28170/ )

"If you’re looking for a little terror in your holidays -- a brand that even a visit from the in-laws can’t provide -- you may want to consider viewing these memorable episodes from horror TV history.

There are many great Christmas themed tales in horror-TV history, from The Twilight Zone’s (1959 – 1964) “Night of the Meek” to Night Gallery’s (1969 – 1973) “The Messiah on Mott Street.”  In fact, the best Christmas-themed story of all might very well be Millennium’s (1996 – 1999) “Midnight of the Century.”

But the subject here isn’t a heart-warming tale of the season, but pure holiday terror.  With that thought in mind, here are five creepy-as-hell Christmas stories.

Happy Holidays!"

At Flashbak: The Five Greatest Teachers in Sci-Fi TV History

My latest article at Flashbak remembers the greatest teachers of sci-fi TV!

Here's the snippet and url: (http://flashbak.com/the-5-greatest-teachers-in-sci-fi-tv-history-25973/)

"In real life, we have all sat in classrooms with teachers we love and admire, and also teachers that we can’t stand.  In science fiction television history, there have been many ideal or role-model teachers depicted; individuals who are worthy of respect but also, through their very personalities, reveal to students good character and life lessons.

Here is a list of the five sci-fi TV teachers you hope you meet in the classroom..."

Cult-TV Review: Chris Carter's The After (2014)

In the 1990s, writer/producer Chris Carter had his fingers on the pulse of the modern science fiction and horror genres -- and of the national Zeitgeist itself -- when he created The X-Files (1993 – 2013).

That classic series dealt not only with the then-hot topic of alien abduction, but also with the more grounded issues of conspiracy, domestic terrorism, and the new-found place of genetic science (and DNA) in the law-enforcement/forensic process.

Carter’s second dramatic series, Millennium (1996 – 1999) was similarly trail-blazing. The Lance Henriksen series cast a critical eye on, among other things, affluent American suburbia at the turn of the century, and the secrets roiling beneath the gated, but otherwise seemingly placid surface.  What was found there? Apathy, insanity, religious zealotry and facile delusions about “home security,” to name a few.

Having watched and admired Carter’s TV programs for many years now, I often describe the feeling underlying both The X-Files and Millennium as anticipatory anxiety. 

At the time the programs aired on network television, the economy was booming, the middle class was thriving, and America was building, per President Bill Clinton, a “bridge” to the 21^st century.

And yet, despite these undeniably positive augurs, both Carter series expressed a kind of swelling uneasiness about how things were going, the inescapable feeling that a storm was approaching, and that, furthermore, the signs of that storm were all around us…if only we had the insight to recognize them.  . 

Today, Carter’s latest production, the pilot for a series called The After, is available for your review at Amazon.com, and it’s plain once more that this artist’s greatest gift -- beyond his penchant for crisp, revealing De Palma-esque camera moves -- is his capacity to step back and cannily observe the prevailing winds impacting the culture. 

Then, after noting these things, Carter reflects these qualities back at us in a science fiction or horror milieu.  Essentially, he is a modern day Serling or Roddenberry, an artist who uses what many still consider “fringe” interests (like horror and sci-fi) to reveal aspects of human nature.

Coming now, long after the “storm” that overcame America last decade with the War on Terror, the appropriately-named The After is the book-end artistic work to The X-Files and Millennium.

It is a meditation not about an oncoming apocalypse, but, instead, its arrival. With the anticipatory anxiety background of The X-Files and Millennium perhaps in mind, The After suggests that the “storm’s” arrival was never a matter of “if,” only of “when.”

In other words, today is doomsday.

The world has changed tremendously since the 1990s, and there’s a lot more noise today, for one thing.

It’s noise from the net, social networks, iPhones and tablets, and other technological advances. There’s also a lot more partisan noise, rancor between and among Americans who view the world very, very differently. 

On first blush, and after just one episode, The After seems to concern the ways that modern American life erects barriers that block cooperation and trust.

Again and again throughout the pilot story, technology acts as a barrier that slows down the (crucial) learning process during the onset of the crisis.

In brilliant, frightening and wholly unexpected fashion, The After also reveals the first chapter of a mystery about the force that may be behind this worldwide apocalypse.  The nature of that force is uncertain.  It could be spiritual, alien, or hallucinatory, but from the first chapter alone, we know it is terrifying.

“Something terrible is happening.”

The After follows Gigi Genereau (Louise Monot), an aspiring actress, as she auditions in Los Angeles for a role in an upcoming film.  She doesn’t get the role, and doesn’t want the role that is eventually offered to her.  She returns to her hotel feeling defeated, and plans to return home to her husband and daughter in New York.

But then things start to go wrong. 

Along with a police woman, a clown (Jamie Kennedy), and a few others, Gigi becomes trapped inside the hotel elevator when the power unexpectedly goes down.  She manages to escape with the others, only to end up locked in the hotel garage with a lawyer (Adrian Pasdar), and an escaped convict, Deed (Aldis Hodge).

Another escape is managed, and once outside Gigi learns that the whole world is undergoing some kind of catastrophic crisis.

This unspecified crisis has already overwhelmed government and local authorities. With phones and the Internet down, Gigi and the group of diverse survivors, attempt to find safe haven at a nearby mansion. 

But dangers lurk outside, both from roving gangs, and from a “dark shadow” in the woods.

It’s not a matter of if, but when…”

I wrote above a little about the subtext underlying this pilot episode. Many times throughout the fifty-five minute production, technology acts as a barrier, trapping and snarling groups of survivors.  The elevator breaks down. The hotel parking garage is sealed. The phones and Internet are down. Water faucets aren’t working.  Food is spoiling in the refrigerator, from lack of power.

This is the total collapse of our entire modern infrastructure, and it vexes the characters because they have become totally dependent on modern conveniences, and on the safety (apparently) afforded by law enforcement, government, social media, and so forth.  But the world has changed instantly, and for the most part, the characters can’t cope.

The pilot episode does an especially good job of expressing the idea of technology acting as a barrier, from frequent close-ups of Gigi’s phone, to imagery of characters trapped behind gates, or half-opened elevator doors.  These shots visually symbolize the shock and panic associated with a catastrophic meltdown of Order.  One spectacular and feature film quality shot featured in the pilot episode pulls back from Gigi to reveal thousands of people milling up, aimless and afraid, in a city square.  The pull-back just keeps going, as the breadth of the chaos becomes apparent.

The characters in the drama are a diverse group, a group that reflects 21^st century America. There are people of color, people of alternate sexual orientation, wealthy people, a “foreigner” and people from different regions (such as the Deep South) represented in the mix. All are viewed here by the other characters – at least initially – in terms of stereotypes. 

In other words, what these characters know of their fellow countrymen seems to originate, largely from media stories about them. Again, the underlying notion is that in modern America, our sense of community is fractured or even imperiled by the technological barriers we erect; from the screens we perpetually gaze at.  We don’t even know who are neighbors are, or what they are about.

What happens when those tablet or iPhone screens go dark, permanently?

When we face each other -- really face each other for the first time in a long while -- what do we see?  How do we understand one other?

The After begins to explore this notion, and I’d like to see a series that follows up on the premise.

Since Carter is of the early initiators of long-form or serialized television arcs (along with JMS and a few others), it is intriguing to note the bread crumbs that The After drops in its pilot.

I don’t want to reveal them, for fear of ruining the surprise. But some mysteries concern, broadly-speaking, the reasons why these particular individuals should end up together, the idea of missing time (a policeman indicates that the apocalypse started a day ago, but this isn’t reflected in Gigi’s experience…), and the appearance of…well, something.

Along the way towards developing the enigma, we also get canny references to The Book of Revelation, and creepy high-angle shots that suggest the group of survivors is under the microscope of an all-seeing, malevolent eye.  An earlier moment seems to presage this realization, as one character observes a helpless bee in a swimming pool, and sympathizes with its plight.  We are no different, she suggests.

At this point, as I noted in my introduction, the dark force haunting The After could be alien, or religious, or simply supernatural.  One thing is for certain, however: the shape that the force takes – or at least “reflects” back at the characters -- is a nice little shout-out to Millennium.  But clearly, if The After goes to series, I’m going to have to indulge in some refresher studies on Scripture and study of religious iconography.

How all these pieces fit together is something I’d very much like to explore, and so I hope The After goes to series. The pilot is easily one of the best I’ve seen in years, since Lost in 2004, or Veronica Mars the same year, actually.

If you want to explore the questions of The After, visit Amazon.com and give it a go. In closing, I will simply state this: the pilot episode made me feel tense and clutched for the first forty-five minutes or so, and then, during the climax, that anxiety was supplanted by shock, and then the stirrings of real fear.

The monsters are here.