“DON’T LET THEM TAKE YOU”
You only have to mention that Ronald D. Moore is involved in a show for me to sit up and take notice immediately.
That’s pretty much what happened when I first encountered news of his new show, Helix, which is set to premiere on syfy on Friday 10 January at 10/9C, a show which promises all manner of mystery and conspiracy, all set in the bleak surrounds of the Arctic.
In fact so bleak is this remote corner of the world, that you could well ask why anyone would want to place a scientific base working on goodness knows what way up there?
Well, I would suspect anyone who wants to keep their work away from the prying eyes of a curious world probably, something that Moore confirmed at spinoff online:
“It’s not really owned or controlled by any one particular nation. It’s a group of people who got money together through mysterious sources and have been up there for quite some time doing some medical research. Something happens in the base, a virus breaks out and they go into quarantine, and they call the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta to send a team to help them contain this.”
And then as is customary in shows such as this, all hell breaks loose, and what looked like a baffling if reasonably ordinary retro virus, suddenly becomes something far more scary and portentous.
Add in to that a whole host of interpersonal issues, the head of the base Dr Hiroshi Hitaki (Hiroyuki Sanada) who appears to have a lot to hide, and last but not least a love triangle involving the leader of the CDC team, Dr Alan Farragut (Billy Campbell), his ex-wife and his brother, which is pretty much the last thing you’d want on your hands when the world is going to hell in a petri dish of black viral goop:
“We’re going to reunite all three of these characters up there under horrific circumstances. So I would say it’s the most screwed up love triangle ever under the most screwed up context ever, and they’re going to find a way to reconnect in an Artic base in a snowstorm, while a virus is breaking out, killing people.” (Cameron Porsandeh, pilot writer, spinoff online).
Coming from the hand of Ronald D Moore and his talented team, I think we can look forward to skilfully executed and wholly engaging storytelling, with each episode covering one day at the base, and an overarching humanity-threatening conspiracy that will link the show season to season, each of which will have it’s own self-contained mystery, according to Moore:
“The bigger mythology, which we will learn toward the end of the season, is what’s gonna bridge us over to these other seasons,” Porsandeh said. “It’s always going to be a mystery per season, but we are going to change places where these things happen. Just like in real life, we have outbreaks all over the place, but they’ll be tied together under this larger mythology, which is frankly what we’re really excited about. It’s people doing bad things, but they’re trying to do something good, too.”
Get ready to be afraid,very afraid in the very best possible way!
You can read the full post on spinoff online.