Whenever I look over movies, TV shows, books, or music, I try to give the people who created the work the benefit of the doubt.
This is a relatively new thing for me as I used to have very stringent standards for what I perceived as “good” works vs. those that were “bad”. Perhaps its a sign of mellowing with age. Perhaps its the realization that all works were created by people like me who certainly had no intention of making something “bad”.
In the books I write, the only deadline I have is my own. I will not release any of my works until I’m satisfied they are about as good as I can get them. And even then I know the works aren’t perfect. A typo or two might have escaped me. A passage might have worked better had I written it this way versus that way.
While I have the luxury of time and budget (as a novel writer, there is no budget!), others aren’t so lucky. A project can be greenlighted and the people before and behind the scenes may have a very limited time and an equally limited budget to create their work as best as they can. Long, loooong hours may be invested to make sure the project gets to the screen at a given time and sometimes compromises are made. A work that looks like it “can’t miss” therefore comes out looking sloppy and not at all well thought out.
Which brings us to the SyFi network’s Helix.
Just before the show aired its pilot and first episode back to back last Friday, there were posts on the blogs that I frequent talking about how good the show was and how it would be a “must watch” in the future. The show involved a group of Center for Disease Control (CDC) officers sent to a remote arctic base where a mysterious virus has been released. The CDC officers are trying to find and contain the virus while dealing with the fact that the people behind the base are keeping secrets…and one of their own members may be in cahoots with the base’s brass.
Now, this description sounded OK to me. Not great, I would admit right off the bat, but not all that bad.
But then I watched the two episodes.
Ouch.
While the show features decent actors and a decent “look”, the story presented veered from the dull to the absolutely preposterous. The head of the CDC, Dr. Alan Farragut (Billy Campbell) is sent into this situation along with his estranged wife (Kyra Zagorsky) and have to deal with a survivor of this mysterious virus, his brother (Neil Napier) who happened to have slept with his wife!
Are these the people you want to send into a potentially Earth threatening hot zone? Do we need this potential drama between professionals who should be focused on their jobs?!
But it gets worse. There is a military officer liason and another CDC Doctor who break from the others and explore the facility essentially on their own. They do not report back to their superior for what appeared to be two days or so despite quickly finding evidence that the head of the research facility was withholding information/lying to them about the research center. I mean, come on, shouldn’t you tell the others that the head of the base might in fact be a bad guy? Are you going to let your teammates stumble around a couple of days not knowing the man they’re dealing with may be about to make them victims? Then again, the head of the research center was only missing a thin twirly mustache and the name “Dr. Evil” to fully cement his persona. If the others didn’t realize he was holding back, perhaps it was their own damn fault.
No, I did not like the show at all.
One wonders how some of the talent involved in The X-Files, Lost, and the excellent Battlestar: Galactica reworking could also have had a hand in this show.
The answer is we’ll never really know…unless we were there. Perhaps the writers were rushed. Perhaps the directors and actors and crew didn’t have the time necessary to fully flesh out the characters and scripts before filming began. It’s far better to think that than to think these two first episodes are exactly what their makers were hoping to create.
Needless to say, a pass.