Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Stegall
OutcastsBBC America, Saturdays at 9PM
“Episode 1”
Written by Ben Richards
Directed by Bharat Nalluri
Warning: this review contains some spoilers. If you’d rather not know what the episode is going to include, bookmark this page and read it after viewing.
“We were pioneers before; we’ll be pioneers again.” —Mitch Hoban
That’s a great premise for a series, one which will always catch my attention: confronting a new world, a new landscape, with new challenges to be met only with intelligence and opposable thumbs. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be the premise for the series. The guy who speaks that line is the bad guy. I don’t want to put too much weight on cultural heritages, but maybe it has just been too long since the British were pioneers in their own land, whereas there are Americans still living (admittedly, very old Americans) who remember the homesteading of Oklahoma. Our pioneer history is still present in our memories of grandparents’ tales of homesteading, mining, and Indian attacks. So when a character living on an unexplored alien planet evinces a hankering to go wandering the far yonder, I’m in sync with him, not the soulless bureaucrat out to stop him. Which tells me this series would never play well here in America.
“We can do whatever we like now. We’re free.” —Mitch
Jamie Bamber, the heartthrob of Battlestar Galactica (recent version), strides into view covered with dust, sweat, and a three-day manly growth of beard. He’s an explorer named Mitch Hoban, on Carpathia, an alien planet settled by humans who, in a fit of black humor, have named it after the first ship to reach the site of Titanic‘s sinking. All of the colonists have come here as refugees from an Earth 30 years in our future, which is wracked by unnamed but deadly horrors that have sent people fleeing helter-skelter, with little organization. Humanity is scattered over a handful of distant worlds, out of communication, out of resources, desperate for news from home and new supplies, which never come. I like this premise; there’s plenty of old-fashioned Heinlein-style potential here for conflict against a hostile environment, other humans, and of course those shadowy aliens. Because how could this be an alien Wild West without redskins hiding in the bushes? The humans on this planet have forted up in a dusty town called, er, Forthaven (could we get any more obvious with the names, guys?), where life apparently picks up where it left off in London’s East End: pubs, drug deals on the corner, hanky-panky in the bedrooms.
“She did love him, and it was an agony for her.” —President Tate
In the grand tradition of the American western, the first thing Mitch encounters is a law officer telling him he can’t wear his guns in town. This was the basis of the gunfight at the OK Corral, so I’m not surprised to find it here, where it likely had altogether different connotations for the British. In a very few minutes, we discover that Mitch is surly, angry, and rebellious. His bosses don’t trust him (maybe they have “issues” with him). In fact, they’ve persuaded his own wife Karina (Jessica Haines, The Lost Future) to spy on him. When Karina is beaten to death shortly thereafter, no one has to look far for the suspect. Especially when Mitch abducts his own son and takes him past the colony’s boundaries, into the bush. A tedious chase sequence has two colony cops following him, being menaced by the unseen but noisy aborigines, and finally confronting Mitch after we see him preparing to kill his son. Mitch defies the cops and is shot to death, taking with him the only face in this show recognizable to American audiences—at which point we find out that no, Mitch did not harm his son. Don’t you just love being cheated like that?
“What you’re planning amounted to a coup.” —President Tate
What brought on Mitch’s crime spree? The discovery that Mitch’s own wife was spying on him, at the behest of the authorities who have resented him ever since he refused to massacre the indigenous natives. So, to put this in American terms: he likes to explore, he carries a gun and knows how to use it with restraint, he wishes no harm to the Indians and defies bureaucratic orders to wipe them out. His crime, in the eyes of his wife and bosses, was to dare to dream of breaking out of the colony, with its restrictions and limitations, and make his way into the wilderness with his family to carve out a pioneering future. He wasn’t planning on blowing up Forthaven, just planning to leave and strike out into the wilderness on his own, to make his way as he saw fit. Who in his right mind thought American audiences would believe he’s the bad guy?
“You start all over again, you mess things up all over again.” —Mitch
This is not the only point where Outcasts falls completely off plumb. We’re supposed to be on an alien planet here, but the desert looks suspiciously Earth-like (it’s South Africa, in fact). The atmosphere is apparently breathable, yet is so lethal that all incoming transports burn up on re-entry. The weather is subject to sudden “whiteouts”, which look a lot like a cloud of dust, yet no one adopts desert-appropriate clothing. We get odd moments like two cops, trudging along the edge of a gray mud-lake ringed with dead trees, telling one another straight-faced how beautiful nature is. What, these two don’t remember Hyde Park or Kew Gardens? Worse, the dialogue descends into complete weasel-speak. When the captain of a transport ship arriving at Carpathia asks if there are any hazards he should be aware of, President Tate (Liam Cunningham, Clash of the Titans) says that “atmospheric heating has been an issue”. An issue? Calling the very problem that brought space shuttle Columbia to a fiery death in 2003 an “issue” instead of a problem is weaselly. When the President asks the fate of Earth, he gets weasel-speak in return: “Anyone still down there is not having such a good time of it.” What, did they run out of ice cream? Or were they fried by global warming? I wanted to reach through the screen and smack both characters. This is truly shoddy writing.
“Do you really believe human beings can live together in peace?” —Mitch
Despite being cast as the bad guy, Mitch had all the really incisive lines in this story. And he’s gone. We are left with some really drab sets, some dusty scenery that looks no more alien to American eyes than southern California, and dialogue spoken in the Queen’s Anguish that is literally unintelligible to us. And the truly alien thing about this series is that the British somehow think the things that are “bad” in this story—independence, outspokenness, gun ownership, and a lust for adventure—are bad things. Not where we live, old chap. If you’re going to paste together a collection of SF ideas we’ve already seen a hundred times, try to do with a little more panache. Something along the lines of, oh, Super 8; predictability need not be boring. And this show, so far, is boring.