Amazing Stories (2020)1.3: "Dynoman and the Volt!": Sweet Superpowers

Just watched Amazing Stories (2020) 1.3 on Apple TV+, and I realized something: there's a real sweetness running through at least the first episodes that I've seen, making this incarnation of Amazing Stories a lot different than The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits.  It's consistent with Spielberg's masterpiece Close Encounters, and the literally wide-eyed sense of wonder it so abundantly projects.

And this third episode has something else, something very special, with a capital "S" in the stars.  It is Robert Forster's very last appearance on screen, made before his untimely death at age 78 in October 2019.   I've loved Forster's work ever since his great appearance in Medium Cool in 1969 -- the cinema verite story of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago -- and he made a memorable contribution to the TV series Heroes.

I mention Heroes because it has the same general theme as "Dynoman," the main difference being that the heroes in Heroes had natural superpowers, in contrast to Grandpa Joe Harris in "Dynoman and the Volt," who acquires his superpowers from a special ring, delivered to him just when he most needed it.  That ring results not only in a big adventure, but the psychological reunification of Grandpa Joe with his grandson and son, who also get superpowers from the ring.

In the end, we get a heartwarming story which is more about real family than comic-book heroes, and that was a good thing to see.  Thank you, Robert Forster, for bringing the world so many good hours of your great performances.   I'm sad that you left us, but happy that you went out on such a profound and nurturing note.

See also Amazing Stories (2020) 1.1: "The Cellar": The Tops ... Amazing Stories (2020) 1.2: "The Heat": Life After Life ... Amazing Stories (2020) 1.4: "Signs of Life": Happy Revivals ...  Amazing Stories (2020) 1.5: "The Rift": Time Travel and a Candy Bar

 

Code 8: Superhero Action with an Ethical Conundrum

Just caught Code 8 on Netflix.  It's at once a story of people with superpowers, robot cops, human cops, and criminals.  The people with superpowers are feared by normal humans, with the result that most of the superpowered have become criminals.   None of this is particularly original, but Code 8 is lifted by a real humanity that infuses the narrative.

The humanity in the people with superpowers - different superpowers - is propelled by Mary Reed, whose superpower is freezing, and her adult son Connor, whose superpower is electrical.  Again, we've seen all of that before, in Heroes on television, and in countless movies.  But what starts to separate Code 8 from the pack is Mary is also suffering from a brain tumor, which is killing her by scrambling her control of her freezing power to the extent that she's freezing herself to death.  Connor of course is determined to save her, first by making enough money through crime to pay for Mary's operation, and then by getting Nia, whose superpower is healing, to cure his mother.  The problem, though, is that Mia heals by taking unto herself the ill that she's curing.  And that's where Code 8 shows its mettle, in the form of real heart.

Most of the movie are sequences of good shoot-em ups, displays of superpowers, and members of the superpower gang double-crossing each other as members of gangs with no superpowers are prone to do.  All of that is fun to see, but nothing close to memorable,  In contrast, the ending, where we find out just how far Connor is willing to go to save his mother, is an excellent treatment of the classic philosophic conundrum of if you see two people drowning, and can only save one, which one do you save?   Is the answer, save the one you love, by sacrificing someone you may care about, and is certainly innocent?

See Code 8 and decide what you think.   And if you enjoy this action movie charged by a fundamental ethical question, thank Jeff Chan, who wrote and directed the 2019 feature-length film, based on the 2016 short version of the movie, which Chan also directed and wrote (Chris Pare shared in the writing in both versions), which I didn't see.

The Rook 1.5: The Home Secretary

The Home Secretary came into focus in The Rook 1.5 last night.  No figure head, she, but a crucial player, who's been having an affair with Conrad, and wants to be Prime Minister.  And she's well played by Gina McKee, whom I first noticed in The Borgias.

But the big news is Farrier, who's not only fired by the Home Secretary, but displays some powerful super powers of her own.  Unless I haven't been paying attention, this is the first time we've seen them.   As this series progresses, it's apparent that there are more EVAs than first met the eye.

I've said the show reminds me of Heroes.  It also has threads of Sense8.  The Gestalts, indeed, are closely related Sense8 clusters - born on the same day, in powerful telepathic connection, the only difference being the Sense8 cluster members are not physical twins.  But the cluster members come from all around the world, and the back story of Nazim brings home the global distribution of EVAs.

The resonances of The Rook with other series - in reviewing it in the past weeks, I've mentioned Heroes, Counterpart, and Sense8 - is actually its great strength.   Because although it bears resemblances to these and other shows, there's something about The Rook that's all its own.  Something in the pacing, or the characters, or both.  Take the Home Secretary, for instance.

She's having an affair with Conrad, and the rules say they either now must break it off or go public with it.   Jennifer (that's her name) breaks it off, because she thinks the Prime Minister is vulnerable and thus open to Jennifer becoming the PM.  So, I'm wondering - is she also an EVA of some sort, and if she becomes PM, wouldn't that be a provocative development?  (Hey, the current Prime Minister in our real world is ... well, let's not go there.)

See also:  The Rook 1.1: Dickian Pastiche ... The Rook 1.2: Live Details ... The Rook 1.3: Gestalts ... The Rook 1.4: The Bristol Stomp


They're coming out into the open, for the first time in centuries ....

The Rook: Dickian Pastiche

The Rook on Starz starts off with a bunch of familiar premises - someone (in this case, a young woman) wakes up in a dangerous situation with no knowledge of who she is.  She gradually learns about her past and situation from a series of helpful messages from her younger self, who knows she's in danger of having her memory wiped.  We and she learn that she (Myfanwy is her name) is part of an MI6-type British secret service group.  And soon another very different, but also very familiar, trope is revealed:  Myfanwy has some kind of super powers - the ability to inflict physical damage on people via her mind - and the MI6 group (Checguy) is somehow all about this.

Now, I'm a sucker for all of that stuff - I stayed with Heroes until the very end, including its sequel - so I'm open to seeing another rendition of it.  And I liked what I saw in the first episode, which, for a variety of reasons including the pacing and cinematography, actually reminded me more of the late, departed, superb Counterpart, also on Starz, than anything else.

The ambience and story-line is of course also very much in the Philip K. Dick mode, which is also always welcome.  Dick was a master of exploring people not knowing who they are, and the voyage of discovery uncovering all kinds of wrinkles and black holes, figurative and literal, in the universe.  The Rook looks to be more down-to-Earth, and that's ok, too.

There's also, apropos Heroes, an almost Japanese flavor to this narrative.   Although the locale is London, lots of the scenes felt like they were somewhere in Tokyo.  But this also loops back to Dick and the Bladerunner movies.

All in all, then, The Rook is intriguing, colorful, and I'll stick around at least a little while to see how it plays out.


"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction,
The Silk Code delivers on its promises." - The New York Times Book Review

Sense8: Vibrant, Profound, and Dangerous

I binged the first season of Sense8 from 2015 the past few nights.  I started watching the December 2016 special, but seeing as how the first season is a remarkable narrative in itself, I thought I'd review it now, and come back with a review of the 2nd season Christmas special in a few days (and here it is).

Remarkable - and welcome - Sense8 was.   Telepathic connections used to be a big theme in science fiction through the 1950s, but for some reason hasn't made much of an appearance in the past 50 years.   Sense8 does a great job of this, and presents a story that not only needed to be told on screen rather than page, but over 12 episodes rather than a few-hour movie.

The story - of eight people around the world, in their 20s (all born at the same instant), who suddenly discover they are telepathically connected, and then find that elements of the rest of humanity are hunting and trying to exterminate them - has roots in the late lamented Heroes.   But that series had many heroes with many different powers, and, given the limitations of traditional network television (NBC), we saw very little of the world on those screens.

Netflix has liberated all kinds of storytelling, and the world panorama it affords Sense8 provides a literally vivid and pulsating environment for the story, which takes place not only in the United States, but Iceland, India, Africa, South Korea, London, and Germany.  And not only do we get a vibrantly rainbow mix of nationalities and cultures in Sense8, but a portrayal of just about every mutually consenting sexual activity, presented with sensitivity, style, and humor.

The different talents of the eight sense8s become the basis of the action sequences, with each of the eight characters being available to contribute her or his talents - martial arts, medical knowledge, computer savvy, etc - via telepathic input when another is in danger or dire need.   These rescuing visitations, even though we come to expect them, remain surprising and satisfying through the ending.   And there's much more than fight scenes in Sense8 - one of the most memorable, indeed in all of television, is a scene in which one of the sense8s is singing, and the others are hearing and joining in in their own ways around the world.   To describe this almost seems corny; to see it is beautiful and breathtaking.

The deeper metaphysics or science fictional premises of the story are plausible and well handled well. We are correctly told, at a crucial point in the story, that just as only a fraction of our DNA separates humans from chimps, so a fraction could engender the difference between sense8s and the rest of us humans.

Sense8 is a creation of  J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis (Lana and Lilly), and their best work in years.  Highly recommended for a different, bright and colorful and profound and dangerous, kind of science fiction.

See also Sense8 2.1-2: The Mental, the Digital, and the Palpable ... Sense8 Season 2: Sense8tional


another kind of human species

12 Monkeys 2.4: Saving Time

A stunningly good 12 Monkeys 12.4 tonight, that touched all kinds of bases, and closed and opened all sorts of loops, just as a superior time-travel story should.

The action began with a bang, as Ramse, sent back in time to stop Cole and Cassandra from becoming untethered in time as we saw last week, gets hit in the road by a car just as he materializes in 1944.  This not only sets up the plausibly ensuing drama, but was satisfying if traumatic to see in itself in a time-travel tale.  I mean, there's no way that sooner or later that wouldn't happen to travelers who just materialize in the past out of thin air, in contrast to those who use a time machine that travels with them, as per FBI agent Gale's invocation of H. G. Wells, or, for that matter, in The Plot to Save Socrates by a much younger writer.

But Ramse being hit by the car is just the start of this outstanding episode, which also brings a paradoxically circular explanation for the emergence of the Pallid Man at the end, and Gale doing his bit to grease the wheels of time travel ala Cole and Cassandra to save the world.

Though, actually, in some ways the biggest reveal is that it's not the world that is the object of our heroes' saving in this story.  No, this is no save the cheerleader, save the world as in Heroes,  not even change the past to get the desired future as in Outlander, either.  This televised 12 Monkeys series, which now has exceeded and palpably transformed the 12 Monkeys movie, turns out to be about changing the past to save ... time itself.

That's a pretty daring proposition, and one not expected in a time-travel story, where the usual calamity to be prevented is anything from the end of a particularly important person to, as in the 12 Monkeys movie and the television series up until now, the world.

And if the end of the world seems almost a bit trivial compared to the end of time, that's because it is. The series now has some pretty steep philosophic terrain ahead.   But if the further revelation tonight that Jim Morrison was a primary, with psychedelics in the tradition of Timothy Leary having some insight into this, I'd say this series is on a pretty provocative and enjoyable track.

See also 12 Monkeys 2.1: Whatever Will Be, Will Be ... 12 Monkeys 2.2: The Serum ... 12 Monkeys 2.3: Primaries and Paradoxes

And see also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"

And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3:  Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel ... 12 Monkey 1.10: The Last Jump ... 12 Monkeys 1.11: What-Ifs ... 12 Monkeys 1.2: The Plunge ... 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale: "Time Travel to Create Time Travel"

podcast review of Predestination and 12 Monkeys



 three time travel novels: the Sierra Waters trilogy



What if the Soviet Union survived into the 21st century,
and Eddie and the Cruisers were a real band?


The Chronology Protection Case movie 

~~~ +++ ~~~

#SFWApro

Heroes Reborn Finale: I'm Ready Already for Another Immersion

Heroes Reborn ended is first season this week on NBC.  It's likely to be its final season - at least on NBC, which has not renewed for a second second.  But I'd bet it's not the last we'll see of Tim Kring's unique and still appealing creation.

As I've said throughout this season, it's been uneven, but that includes times and ways in which I liked this season even better than a lot of the original, hallowed Heroes.   The pace was often fast to the point of being frenetic - which is a plus in my book - and the integration of virtual and real with the Katana Girl story was excellent.

So was the integration of surviving characters from the original series.  That includes, most prominently, HRG Mr. Bennett, Claire's father and grandfather of her twin children.  He left in a noble way, in a sequence that plumbed the possibilities of time travel in a satisfying way.

Time travel, as many of you may know, is one of my passions - as a viewer, reader, and author of science fiction.   I find it irritating and unacceptable when it's not done right - meaning, usually, that lip service is paid to the paradoxes that time travel engenders, rather than seriously working the sometimes almost unimaginable complexities into the story.

The original Heroes did a pretty good job at this.  Heroes Reborn did it even better.   At the end, Nathan is about as adept as you can be in pulling the strings of timelines in motion, and navigating them to achieve the desired result.   This includes the daring move of working with a slightly earlier or later version of yourself - depending upon whose point of view you take - rather than worrying or claiming that running into yourself will blow-up all reality.

The special effects were great, which gets us back again to the virtual reality part of this story.  When Katana tells Ren, intra-virtual-world, that she has a feeling they'll meet again, I was glad to hear this. The ending in our world, with pointer to Nathan and Malina's father, calls out for a continuing story.

Heroes Unbound may not be everyone's cup of tea.  But's it's certainly mine, and I'll be ready in any time for another another sip and another immersion.

See also Heroes Reborn: Good to Be Back ... Heroes Reborn 1.3: Carly Fiorina meets Steve Jobs ... Heroes Reborn 1.4: GPS RIP ... Heroes Reborn 1.6: Space, Time, Videogame ... Heroes Reborn 1.7: Time Travel and Twins ... Heroes Reborn 1.8: Answers and Questions ... Heroes Reborn 1.9: The Memory Man ... Heroes Reborn 1.12: Penultimate

And see also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

And see also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

#SFWApro



                     time travel on a train

Heroes Reborn 1.12: Penultimate

Well, the news has come that Heroes Reborn won't be back for a second season on NBC - ratings are low, most critics don't like it, blah blah blah.  Although the series was slow to start, it's gotten better with every episode, and this week's penultimate hour was, I thought, outstanding in many ways.

We finally get the back story of Erica, and it was thoroughly satisfying, including bringing in the memory erasing man - for some reason, one of my favorites of the Reborn line-up - to explain what happened with Erica's daughter.  On the subject of mind-manipulation, Parkman gets his just deserts, which provides a nice dessert for his part of the story.

And speaking of justice, Joanne finally gets what's due her, appropriately by Luke, just after a really cool saving of Malina from Joanne's bullets by invisible Farah getting in front of Malina at just the right moment.   This kind of action has been happening throughout the series, and is one of the reasons I like Heroes Reborn - in many ways certainly better than the end of the original Heroes (that's right).   It's a different kind of story telling.

But Heroes Reborn has actually done an excellent job integrating characters from Heroes, with Micah - older, of course, and played by an older Noah Gray-Cabey - playing a pivotally heroic communications role in the story.   We even get a picture of Claire - her first appearance in the reborn series - and my biggest regret about Heroes Reborn is that we couldn't also have seen a few minutes of her on the screen.

It all ends - possibly for good, though I hope not - with the series finale next week.  I predict, that as time passes, Heroes Reborn will be recognized for the gem that it is - a little flawed, yeah, maybe very flawed in places, but a unique of kind of complex fast-paced mosaic narrative seen nowhere else on any size screen.

See also Heroes Reborn: Good to Be Back ... Heroes Reborn 1.3: Carly Fiorina meets Steve Jobs ... Heroes Reborn 1.4: GPS RIP ... Heroes Reborn 1.6: Space, Time, Videogame ... Heroes Reborn 1.7: Time Travel and Twins ... Heroes Reborn 1.8: Answers and Questions ... Heroes Reborn 1.9: The Memory Man

And see also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

And see also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

#SFWApro



                     time travel on a train

Heroes Reborn: Good To Be Back

Heroes had an iconic trajectory beginning nearly a decade ago on NBC.  Punching through the sky not only with someone who could fly, but people endowed with all kinds of intriguing and amazing powers, the series in its first season provided a much needed smash hit for NBC, and pushed Lost of its place as must-see television for those who love science fiction (and that included me).  And then the series faltered. Creator Tim Kring famously apologized to fans of Heroes for a season that "sucked".  He promised to do better, but the series although it had some excellent moments by and large got worse.  And ... well, the last thing we need is another autopsy on what went wrong in Heroes.

But as of last night, it turns out that any autopsy would be premature.  Heroes lives - it's been "reborn".   Will it reach the heights of that fabled first season?

That would be a very difficult task, maybe even requiring someone with truly science fictional heroic powers.   The innocence of that first season, of the characters and the audience alike first discovering the challenges and mysteries and joys and dangers and pain of heroic powers can never be recaptured. But, that said, Heroes Reborn has a freshness which I don't recall in the last few seasons of the original series.

There's an excellent stand-alone (at this point) story in Tokyo, featuring Miko and Ren.   Miko has some connection to Hiro, in many ways the most important character in the original series - at very least, she has the sword that we last saw in Hiro's possession.   Back in the USA, Noah Bennett, at this point the only character from the original series with a leading role in the sequel, is literally thrown into action by an explosion that nearly kills him and apparently (but likely not really) kills Claire, just as the father and daughter were about the reunite after years of separation.  This is a piece of the central plot of Heroes Reborn (so far), the attempt by nefarious non-heroic forces (though some of them have superhuman powers) to kill everyone with heroic powers - a continuation of much of what was going on in the concluding seasons of the original series.

But Heroes Reborn is bringing some new heroes onto the stage and into the action.   The most appealing, so far, is Tommy, who has a crush on Emily - my favorite of the new characters, because they recapture a lot of the wistful innocence which was so winning in that first, remarkable season of Heroes. Molly -  a child in the original series, with the capacity to know where everyone is, a sort of a global GPS in the brain - is back as a young woman (played by a different actress), and promises some good story lines.  There's a heavy, bald guy who makes people forget, after saying "a penny for your thoughts" (nice touch) - wait, wasn't that guy also in the original series? - I forget.

Lots of attractive pieces on the table in the two-hour debut of this mini-series last night.  I'm glad it's back, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Heroes Season 4 Premiere: Metaphysics, University, Carnival ...Heroes Meets The L Word in 4.5 ... Heroes 4 Mid-Season Finale  ... Heroes Season 4 Resumes ... Heroes 4.15: The Chess Game Continues ... 4.16: The Trial of Hiro ... 4.18: Penultimate  ... Heroes Forever

See also reviews of Season 3 Heroes Gets Lost ... Heroes 3 Begins: Best Yet, Riddled with Time Travel and Paradox ... Sylar's Redemption and other Heroes and Villains Mergers ... Costa Nuclear ... Hearts of Gold and the Debased ... Seeing the Future Trumps Time Travel ... Superpowered Chess with Shifting Pieces ... Villains and Backstories ... The Redemption of Sylar ... Thoughts on the Eclipse, Part I ... The Lore of the Comic Book Store ... Hiro's Time Traveling Closure ... Augmented ... Shades of Recalibration ... Baby, Rebel, and Last Fantasy ... All that Shape Changes Remains the Same? ... Season 3 Finale: Hopeful Deceptions

Reviews of Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7. Heroes Meets 12 Monkeys ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Futures? ... 10. Penultimate for the Fall ... Heroes 2 Finale: Heroes Who Didn't Survive

And from Season 1: Heroes in Focus ... Heroes Five Years Gone: Triumph of Time Travel and Comics ... Heroes the Hard Part: Only the Pictures Not the Words ... Heroes Landslide: Winnowing and Convergence ... Heroes Volume One Finale

 
no heroes, but pretty strange