It's not looking good for the Outcasts
Feb. 15th, 2011 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snorkackcatcherAll right, episode 4 of Outcasts was an improvement on the first three, and finally -- finally! -- contained something that came as a surprise to me, but it really needs to build some momentum in the second half of the series. I'm trying hard to like the show, but it's not making it easy.
The main problem I've had so far is that for prime-time drama there hasn't actually been much that's dramatic about it -- the whole thing has felt rather lifeless. Hard to say whether it's the script, the acting, or the direction, but my feeling would be all three.
There hasn't been a lot of narrative drive -- it's been more like the outline for a drama, with things that should be major crisis points just falling flat from lack of onscreen reaction. The announcement of the existence and history of the ACs is a obvious case in point; the President broadcasts a major confession, and we get essentially zero indication of what the bulk of the colony felt about it. In fact too many of the actions the characters take feel perfunctory, as if it's merely that something like that needs to happen at this point in the script. Fleur or Cass need to do some kabuki agonising over a moral dilemma. Stella needs to emote about Lily or vice-versa. Berger needs to show a Previously Unseen Side To His Character, Jack has to be badass, Pak has to look rugged ... oh, whatever. The dialogue briefly sketches things out according to a fairly conventional format, the events happen in a loosely connected way, and I fail to be gripped.
Of course, if the actors throw everything at it routine dialogue doesn't necessarily matter, but for a lot of the first three episodes it felt like they were going through the motions. Liam Cunningham isn't bad -- he plays Richard Tate like Jean-Luc Picard acted by Sean Connery -- and Eric Mabius as Berger has had a few moments, but no-one else, not even Hermione Norris, seems to have really grabbed their character by the scruff of the neck. I've been especially unconvinced by Daniel Mays as Cass.
I may be picky, but I wish they'd done something more to make the setting feel more alien. It really does look like the BBC Quarry with a few extra very Earthlike trees. I'm not sure what they could do that would be cheap enough, admittedly -- but even something like filming with slightly coloured filters to give the impression of a different shade of light from the sun might have helped. Then again, the colony still doesn't feel much like a city or even a town. Sure, there are reports of things happening, but (to nick a Clive James phrase), the teeming street life consists of an insufficient number of extras dutifully teeming as hard as they can. We see so little of Forthaven, and so few of its inhabitants, that it's more like Albert Square in space. There's not much sense of distance -- even the ACs feel like they're just out of shot, waiting in the wings for their cue. Because something involving them needs to happen at this point in the script ...
If I'd posted last night as I'd meant to (before the computer crashed taking my draft with it), I might have left it there. However, as I said above episode 4 was better -- it seemed to pick up the pace both in storyline developments and direction. (There's very little background music -- normally I don't notice that, but here it has stood out as not helping much.) It wasn't without problems -- given the portrayal of the rogue AC I could have done without them deciding to cast a black actor, and the quibbles above still applied for me, just not so much. But Fleur and Cass actually benefited from a fairly continuous sequence of scenes, there was a hint of revolution brewing with Jack and Berger, and we got a couple of actual mysteries in the fossilised jawbone and the 'ghosts' (the first of which at least I definitely wasn't expecting).
All right, I'm a bit like the football fan carping at the £25m striker who puts the ball into Row Z -- it's not that I could do any better, more that I think better could be done. I've started so I'll finish and tune in next week -- here's hoping that it finds its form.
Anyone else watching this? Am I being unfair here?
The main problem I've had so far is that for prime-time drama there hasn't actually been much that's dramatic about it -- the whole thing has felt rather lifeless. Hard to say whether it's the script, the acting, or the direction, but my feeling would be all three.
There hasn't been a lot of narrative drive -- it's been more like the outline for a drama, with things that should be major crisis points just falling flat from lack of onscreen reaction. The announcement of the existence and history of the ACs is a obvious case in point; the President broadcasts a major confession, and we get essentially zero indication of what the bulk of the colony felt about it. In fact too many of the actions the characters take feel perfunctory, as if it's merely that something like that needs to happen at this point in the script. Fleur or Cass need to do some kabuki agonising over a moral dilemma. Stella needs to emote about Lily or vice-versa. Berger needs to show a Previously Unseen Side To His Character, Jack has to be badass, Pak has to look rugged ... oh, whatever. The dialogue briefly sketches things out according to a fairly conventional format, the events happen in a loosely connected way, and I fail to be gripped.
Of course, if the actors throw everything at it routine dialogue doesn't necessarily matter, but for a lot of the first three episodes it felt like they were going through the motions. Liam Cunningham isn't bad -- he plays Richard Tate like Jean-Luc Picard acted by Sean Connery -- and Eric Mabius as Berger has had a few moments, but no-one else, not even Hermione Norris, seems to have really grabbed their character by the scruff of the neck. I've been especially unconvinced by Daniel Mays as Cass.
I may be picky, but I wish they'd done something more to make the setting feel more alien. It really does look like the BBC Quarry with a few extra very Earthlike trees. I'm not sure what they could do that would be cheap enough, admittedly -- but even something like filming with slightly coloured filters to give the impression of a different shade of light from the sun might have helped. Then again, the colony still doesn't feel much like a city or even a town. Sure, there are reports of things happening, but (to nick a Clive James phrase), the teeming street life consists of an insufficient number of extras dutifully teeming as hard as they can. We see so little of Forthaven, and so few of its inhabitants, that it's more like Albert Square in space. There's not much sense of distance -- even the ACs feel like they're just out of shot, waiting in the wings for their cue. Because something involving them needs to happen at this point in the script ...
If I'd posted last night as I'd meant to (before the computer crashed taking my draft with it), I might have left it there. However, as I said above episode 4 was better -- it seemed to pick up the pace both in storyline developments and direction. (There's very little background music -- normally I don't notice that, but here it has stood out as not helping much.) It wasn't without problems -- given the portrayal of the rogue AC I could have done without them deciding to cast a black actor, and the quibbles above still applied for me, just not so much. But Fleur and Cass actually benefited from a fairly continuous sequence of scenes, there was a hint of revolution brewing with Jack and Berger, and we got a couple of actual mysteries in the fossilised jawbone and the 'ghosts' (the first of which at least I definitely wasn't expecting).
All right, I'm a bit like the football fan carping at the £25m striker who puts the ball into Row Z -- it's not that I could do any better, more that I think better could be done. I've started so I'll finish and tune in next week -- here's hoping that it finds its form.
Anyone else watching this? Am I being unfair here?
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Date: 2011-02-24 08:19 pm (UTC)Yeah, that peeved us as well.
Just caught up and also watched episode five which I thought was rather good, though the lack of anything involving, er, science from, er, scientists is disturbing. They seem to view evidence (e.g. on the beach) as a fascinating opportunity for personal enrichment rather than a chance to do hard science and answer questions. I mean, don't these people even carry cameras? (We established last week that if they can have portable radios for leisure then they do not have an energy crisis.)
Why do they have vinyl records?
Last week we decided that anyone from outside may not be real. I wondered if we had a sort of Lotus Eaters scenario and the planet met characters' deepest needs. (Does Tait need an external threat as badly as Stella needed her daughter?) This week I wondered if in fact we are watching a ghost story and the fossilised remains are the colony's own.
Interesting also that 'weather' wipes out colonist ships and that almost all useful-to-humans steps seem to be absent from the planetary food web. Tho' Voice-of-the-Planet-Man did eat a berry today.
I dunno. I'm enjoying it. But I hated the main plotline of episode 4.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-24 09:07 pm (UTC)It's the kind of nominal SF where you wonder if the writer even did GCSE science. Stella: "I must go to the sea because that's where life started on this planet!" Er yeah, right, and you expect to find what, exactly? A complete fossil record that just happens to be lying around on the nearest beach to your current position out of an entire planet? And how come a virus mutates in a completely Earth-life-sterile environment enough to kill someone in three hours? And since this is apparently set in 2040, we need to have completed colony ships ready to go by 2025 or so? Wow. Better get a move on then.
I can actually buy the vinyl records on the theory that all the colonists were allowed to bring a small number of freely chosen personal items and those were Tipper's, although that does play into another pet peeve of mine which I shall have to post about.
It is looking pretty much like something is generating hallucinations of what the characters want to see and so a lot of what we see may not in fact be real, although I rather like your theory about it being a ghost story. (Maybe not if we're getting a putsch from Berger and whoever's approaching on that colony ship.) Although I would have quite liked it to be what the billing suggested, alien- and spook-free and about how the factions among the colonists tackle starting from scratch.
Apparently we get some kind of cliffhanger ending and probably little chance of a second series given the ratings and the fact that it's been summarily booted out of prime time. Unfortunately, it's suffering from trying to cram a large canvas and individual plotlines into only eight episodes.