"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

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Event 1.7: The Portal and its Implications

As The Event has progressed on NBC, some viewers have contended that the aliens - the ones who caused the plane on the verge of crashing into the President to disappear and materialize elsewhere, the ones who don't age - are really not aliens or extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs) but human beings from our own future.   Although episode 1.7 tonight had the reporter repeat her assertion that they're EBEs (not different from aliens, just a better name for them), we also saw a conversation between Sophia and Thomas (revealed as her son - nice touch!) in which they talk about building a "portal" to get back "home".

So suddenly the humans-from-the-future hypothesis has a bit more traction.   At very least, the presumed EBEs are not trying to build a star ship to get them home.  They're working a portal.  Of course, a portal can be used for jumps across space, or jumps across time, or jumps across both at the same time.

Here's a brief primer:  Space ships and star ships travel mostly across space (though they can also go through time via worm holes or some other wild encounter out there).   Time machines are the old-fashioned vehicle of choice for the time traveler - as in H. G. Wells - but portals have been responsible for some pretty significant temporal journeys too (Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever" is a great example, and probably my favorite Star Trek episode from the original series).   But portals are also the vehicle for jumps across the universe in Star Gate.

So where does that leave us regarding the portal and its significance in The Event?  Although Sophia and Thomas's people could still be aliens or EBEs - and I still think they very likely are - the portal does open the possibility, at least a crack, that these folks are humans from our future (or, for that matter, a past in which a branch of our ancestors were technologically highly sophisticated).   We do seem to know for a fact that their DNA is different from ours - Simon (who survives the blast) escapes detection tonight when an EBE agent swaps out Simon's DNA for a human's.   Different DNA points towards alien or EBE, but could also be the case for humans from our distant future or past.

Meanwhile, we also had a pretty good Blake back story - his wife was a Russian spy - which although seen before in Alias, had a very different resolution in The Event.  And we meet Hal Holbrook, who plays a very old, very bad guy, who at very least is responsible for killing Leila's mother, kidnapping her sister, and who knows what else.   He's presumably human, because he's obviously aged, but for all we know he could be another kind of EBE, maybe a rival group - though, on a third hand, he doesn't seem to be commanding the kind of EBE power we've seen.

Will be fun to see how these portals progress in the weeks and months ahead ...

See also The Event Debuts on NBC ... The Event 1.2: Aliens! ... The Event 1.4: 24 Back in Action! ... The Event 1.6: Not Only Aliens, Immortals!



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3 comments:

M.P. Andonee said...

interesting dynamics proposed today.

Now they have me hooked, just as I was loosing interest.

Nick Leshi said...

Great analysis. Hope the eventual revelations don't disappoint, especially regarding what specifically the "event" really is.

TheLooper said...

Hey Paul, long time no talk! I like the ancient astronauts theory or future time travelers (I'm not biased about that premise at all) and perhaps they have found a way for life extension in the future that let's people live for thousands of years now. Of course, if they were from the past too, that could still be a possibility because of the interpretations in the Bible of people leaving hundreds, if not thousands of years as well. Great premises all around.

I figured from the beginning "The Event" would be more than what occurred in the first episode and I'm very curious to see where it goes. Although I think we got some very curious insight about Hal Holbrooks character last night, especially at the end.

Can't wait to see your analysis of that one.

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