It’s Raining Fractals
Posted on | September 17, 2005 at 11:12 am | 2 Comments
The federal government’s response to the potentially disastrous situation was swift, decisive and completely planned out ahead of time. Everyone knew exactly what they had to do and they did it. Funding and resources were allocated appropriately. The team was quickly assembled and sprung into action to avert the crisis.
Ah, only on TV…
Last night I watched the premiere episode of the first of the “alien invasion” shows that are taking over the network this season, CBS’ Threshold. A lot of names familiar to the SF geek crowd are involved with the endeavor, including Brannon Braga and Brent Spiner of Star Trek fame, and David Goyer, writer of Batman Begins and the Blade movies (as well as the director of Blade: Trinity, and a decent comic book writer). So there’s some cred there (although I’m sure a lot of people have problems with Braga and his involvement with the ST franchise). The cast is certainly appealing – I’ll pretty much watch anything with Carla Gugino in it and enjoy watching a show with a strong female lead who seems utterly competent on the outside yet still has her faults. Peter Dinklage is great as the language/math whiz who cracks wise and doesn’t really want to be there. And it’s interesting seeing the aforementioned Brent Spiner in a rare non-Data role as the former 60s radical doctor/scientist who now finds himself working for the government that he still doesn’t trust. Charles Dutton always does a good job in his roles.
So, the cast and characters are pretty good. The premise is somewhat interesting – an encounter with an obviously alien object causes changes in humans and animals, as it appears the aliens are attempting to “bio-form” the earth before they colonize or invade or whatever. They also leave behind bits of a fractal geometry form everywhere, like an unhousebroken puppy that’s good at math. There are a lot of mysteries that obviously have to be uncovered gradually. There wasn’t much in the way of special effects. There were also more than a few “oh, come on” plot moments, but that’s to be expected these days. I will probably keep watching for awhile, mostly due to the cast, but if this turns into another “we must hunt down a new strangely behaving human every week” type show, I’m going to give up fast. I can see it falling into predictability and I hope they can avoid that. That’s assuming the show survives. I’m afraid there’s a bit too many of these types of shows on this season for them all to find an audience.
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “It’s Raining Fractals”
September 17th, 2005 @ 12:05 pm
Why should we find this acceptable? Seriously.
September 17th, 2005 @ 5:04 pm
I’m not sure I find it acceptable, it’s just that I’m used to it. And the things I objected to were more along the lines of nit-picky issues – nothing totally egregious that I could find. Really, I expected worse.