Save the Cheerleader, Save the World
Okay, a very unoriginal post title. Tap this into Google and you get 2,320,000 results. That’s a nice round number, but it’s still a lot. But how else to introduce one of the cleverest and most inspiring television series of all time?
So I have your attention. Good. Heroes, as that – if you hadn’t guessed by now – is what this all about, has finally proved to me that I have a slightly obsessive nature when it comes to tv. I don’t dip in and out of things. I give my full attention or none (which is why I usually avoid long running series); I’ve found I can become easily engrossed in long, intricate, absorbing, at times infuriating, at times very demanding television. For all of these reasons – and others – I love Heroes.
One of the most rewarding aspects of blogging is that people read from all over the world. I don’t claim to have a huge readership, but people have stopped by here from all around the globe. So it’s important to stress that this post is based on my enjoyment of Heroes in its current UK run of the first season, and we’re about halfway through at the moment. So anything I might say, any predictions about what’s going to happen, may turn out to be rubbish. I’ve already made this mistake over summer barbecues, where my theories about the series have amounted to nothing as it has brilliantly unfolded. I sometimes wish I could do a Hiro (character in Heroes – keep reading!) and teleport forward in time, watch the whole series on DVD, then teleport back to do the rounds of barbecues and dinner parties. But, hey, it doesn’t always work out that well for the real Hiro…
Heroes has been described as akin to the X-Men. Think more of Marvel Comics on the page rather than on the cinema screen here – Heroes does the Marvel thing of looking at the hangups of its superheroes. People with special powers but ordinary people as well. Peter Parker was Spider Man but he also had trouble with girls, he was pushed over and had his glasses knocked off at school. Being Spider Man could be a drag. The characters in Heroes also have very real and complicated lives to lead. Their special powers only serve to complicate them more. The cop who still directs traffic after years and years on the force without career progression. The mother of a young child, his father escaping from prison. The complications of life as a cheerleader. But that’s only one aspect. Heroes also reminds me of the long forgotten British tv series of the 1970s The Tomorrow People, where especially gifted individuals suddenly broke out into the world and needed help and assistance to survive and come to terms with thier gifts. Some just don’t make it through.
The series offers a mix of memorable characters (there are many of them) and iconic moments. Each of the heroes has their own unique ability, although some are more obvious than others, and some use their abilities to try to kill cheerleaders – rather than save them. Some aren’t even aware of their abilities at all, others find them a curse. Some just don’t make it through.
The most memorable character is probably Hiro, a Japanese computer programmer who discovers that he has the ability to both travel through time and space and to stop it entirely (he flirts for a while with the benefits of this and visits Las Vegas casinos to mess with time at the roulette table). During his first teleport, he travels into the near future to discover that an enigmatic comic book artist has the ability to paint the future – Hiro reads about his own exploits in a published comic – and he narrowly escapes some kind of global disaster as he ports back to the present day. Cue a very complicated plot revolving round Hiro’s plight to “save the cheerleader, save the world”, further paintings of comic artist Isaac (who can only incidentally, paint whilst on heroin), a serial killer called Sylar, more flashbacks and flash forwards and several other character who are yet to be revealed as either heroes or villains of the piece. Be warned, this is merely the briefest synopsis.
Heroes is great because it does sci-fi well; good and believable writing yet somehow endulging in the craziness of it all. It’s comic book stuff – it’s mad – but you fall for it all. You’re willing to suspend your disbelief because it’s all so well structured; especial care has been taken over this series. If you guess that something’s going to happen it probably will, but not in the way you thought. When Hiro warns Peter Petrelli, who has the ability to somehow absorb the abilities of others, to “save the cheerleader, save the world” we know he probably will – it’s how it all falls into place that’s so exciting. And whose abilities he just happens to absorb at the time.
And one last thing – anyone who has criticized this series for being slow is wrong – the reason why it gets so good around episode 9 is precisely because it has been allowed to breath and grow. There is a lot of attention to detail that is easily missed first time around. And what’s best about it is I really really don’t know how it’s going to turn out…
If you haven’t seen any of Heroes yet please do, and I might leave my predictions for the outcome of this series to one side and instead pay you a visit via teleport at a future barbecue (or should that be past barbecue?)
Characters from Heroes. Keep away from the one on the left! Run now!!
The Saturday night TV series Primeval has been billed as ITV’s answer to Doctor Who. It’s taken them long enough to think of something – or has it? Charlie Brooker, in his entertaining Screenwipes on BBC4, sees Sapphire and Steel as ITV’s original rival to Doctor Who. There’s also The Tomorrow People, which ran for a few years in the 70s, and let’s not forget Space 1999, Gerry Anderson’s short lived effort also from the same period. But let’s face it, ITV’s competition to Doctor Who has always been a bit thin on the ground.
So how does Primeval fare? Pretty good, at least in my house. It’s better than Torchwood, and after watching the final episode on Saturday I’m going to suggest that it might be better than Doctor Who. Primeval is about Professor Nick Cutter, played by Douglas Henshall, and his small team of young and attractive people who are investigating an outbreak of anomalies. This is a word that crops up quite frequently in the series, and an anomaly in this context is a hole in time (or something like that) which gives the excuse for Primeval‘s main premise – all sorts of dangerous prehistoric monsters sneaking through the anomalies and rampaging around in modern settings.
Scenarios so far have included:
- A dinosaur rampaging through some woods and deliberately terrorising a small boy
- Huge scorpions loose on the London Underground
- A prehistoric crocodile at large
- Dodos. Okay – not very frightening – but these ones carry a rather nasty parasite
- A homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds with the skies full of prehistoric winged creatures
- Just as we’re becoming over familiar with prehistoric monsters, a dangerous predator from the future
Primeval also has a subplot involving Cutter’s wife Helen, missing and presumed dead until she is discovered living in and out of the anomalies. She knows a lot about what’s going on, much more than she’s prepared to let on. She’s also one of the most headstrong female characters I’ve ever seen in a British TV series, somebody for who the term doesn’t suffer fools glady is most apt. She won’t take any shit, and when it’s Helen materialising from an anomaly instead of a 20 foot dinosaur I’m more afraid.
Character-wise, there’s a lot for the viewer to get their teeth into, with several interlocking love triangles being revealed as the series progressed. Apparently Hannah Spearitt has caused quite a stir by skipping around in her panties, and if you search for Primeval on YouTube these are the scenes that you are most likely to find. All of the actors make a good job of making the preposterous premise believable, and Ben Miller provides a comic turn as a disbelieving top civil servant.
The series manages to pull off all of the ridiculous situations it throws at us, there’s some outstanding special effects (are we supposed to say “CGI” these days?), and – unlike Torchwood – all of the supporting team are quite likeable. Primeval also had one of the best cliffhanger endings for its final episode that I’ve ever seen, throwing the gauntlet down at Doctor Who‘s feet and shouting “touché!”
Friday Sci-Fi: Quatermass
Stone circles, strange cults, mankind in danger and an alien menace. For a twelve year old boy, need they be tempted any more? At that age I absolutely relished the Euston Films adaptation of Quatermass starring John Mills. Broadcast in four weekly instalments, I fought – and won – battles with my parents to be allowed to stay up and watch it in the post-watershed slot…
Another recent television adaptation has had me rifling through piles of old paperbacks to find the original. This was the BBC’s slick new version of John Wyndham’s short story Random Quest starring Samuel West.
Following an accident during an experiment, a scientist wakes up to find his familiar world a little different. The most startling surprise for him is that he is now a successful author and married to a girl he has never met before called Ottilie. Eventually returned to his own world, he sets about finding his new wife. Even though she appears not to exist in his universe, this doesn’t put him off…
I eventually found my book of John Wyndham short stories called Consider Her Ways and Others, first published in 1961. Random Quest is set in 1954, and the differences that Colin Trafford notices between the two worlds are somewhat quaint:
I added soda to the brandy, and took a welcome drink. It was as I was putting the glass down that I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind the bar….
I used to have a moustache. I came out of the Army with it, but decided to jettison it when I went up to Cambridge. But there it was – a little less luxuriant, perhaps, but resurrected. I put my hand up and felt it. There was no illusion, and it was genuine, too. At almost the same moment I noticed my suit. Now, I used to have a suit pretty much like that, years ago. …
I had a swimming sensation, took another drink of the brandy, and felt, a little unsteadily, for a cigarette. The packet I pulled out of my pocket was unfamiliar – have you ever heard of Player’s ‘Mariner’ cigarettes – No? Neither had I.
In the 2006 version, unexpected military moustaches, Army life, smart suits and cigarettes are all jettisoned. What’s different here is the gleaming white space age apartment and attempts to be futuristic on a low budget. Trafford’s party guests stand around looking like extras from Space 1999. Where the 50s Trafford reads about the new universe in copies of The New Statesman to discover that the Second World War hasn’t taken place, the 21st Centrury Trafford watches BBC News 24 to realise there has been no fall of the Berlin Wall. Condoleeza Rice and Tony Blair receive appropriate namechecks. There’s nothing like a modern pesrpective to sketch out your alternative universe.
What’s striking about Random Quest the short story is what’s ultimately odd about the new television version. Parallel universes are old hat in 2006, but Wyndham’s story must have come across as a very fresh and original premise in 1961. One of the conceits of the new BBC film is that our hero, momentarily trapped in the parallel world as the sci-fi author version of himself, proposes a new book about a scientist – you’ve guessed it – who is catapulted into a parallel universe. Everyone thinks this is a very original idea for a book. In fact, nobody has thought about parallel universes in this world, but perhaps this is an alternative Earth that’s missing Star Trek, Doctor Who, Sliding Doors and countless other film and television science fiction. And, most importantly, what possibly influenced all of the above – John Wyndham.
Footnote: The new version was a disappointment, although Random Quest was previously filmed in 1971 as Quest for Love with Tom Bell and Joan Collins. I haven’t seen this film for years, but putting the seventies production standards aside, I’d imagine it’s still a very enjoyable film.
From the Stacks: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Most people probably know that Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was turned into the film Bladerunner. The novel was published in 1968, although the film wasn’t released until 1982, just a few months after the author’s death. So Dick didn’t get to see this cinematic reworking of his future, along with other films based on his work (Total Recall in 1990 and Minority Report in 2002).
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