"Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Helix 2.1: Improved and Intriguing Scenario

Hey, I just saw Helix 2.1.  Last season had some good moments, but was by and large a mixed of bag of missed opportunities and implausible gambits.   Still, the first season of Helix had something, which is why I watched the beginning of the second.  And that first episode was excellent indeed, in many ways a whole new and much better science fiction series.

Harkening back to the first season, we finally get to see Peter Farragut in an hour of his own as a team leader.   Alan is barely on hand, except at the end, in a nicely unexpected reveal.

Which gets to the best part of this second season of Helix so far.  We're treated to not only one story, but two, in the same place, literally, but 30 years apart in time.   We first find this out in a great little scene in which a rabbit carcass turns into a dusty skeleton right before our eyes.

The Arctic environment of the first season has mercifully given way to a lush environment on the fictional island of St. Germaine off the West Coast, not too far from Seattle.  This island is apparently the source of a deadly new pathogen - not the NARVIK - which has at very least killed a shipload of people, and maybe/likely many more on the island, if the massive number of human skeletons found in the woods is any indication.   Peter - with Julia and a wise-cracking (which is to say, welcome) new addition, Dr. Kyle Sommer - get to the island to investigate.

The island has a cult - the really only trite part of this otherwise strong episode (a little too close to Lost) - but it's led by Brother Michael, played by Steven Weber, another fine addition to the cast. Julia's on hand - but thirty years in the future, and, in another significant twist, apparently no longer immortal - and the viral-hunting game, across a 30-year tableau, is on.

The second season of Helix is off to a creative, promising start, and I'm looking forward to more.



all kinds of epidemics in this trilogy

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