Date of airing: September 24, 1995 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 14.7 million viewers, 9.5/15 in Households
written by: Glen Morgan, James Wong
directed by: David Nutter
A handful of years ago, I decided to watch a handful of episodes of this series, and I liked it enough to have kept it in my digital collection, though I was too lazy to continue watching it, because as always, when I was young and lazy, I decided to sleep, eat, surf the internet, or play computer games, instead of watching TV. Plus, a “handful of years ago,” I was not particularly into 1990s television – that little obsession developed a bit later than that. With time, I started to realize where the charm of 90s TV was, and how much nostalgia it could bring me, especially when it is 90s science-fiction TV. I quite enjoyed EARTH 2, which I recently reviewed to completion for the purpose of this blog, and that means I might enjoy this very show even more, since it was more than EARTH 2 ever could have been (EARTH 2 was stuck on a planet, SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND has the entire universe to play with), as it wanted to tell a bigger story than EARTH 2 ever thought of. I know that both shows cannot be compared, but it is a fact that both were science-fiction shows of the mid-1990s, and SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND followed the unintended series finale of EARTH 2 by a couple of months. I am pretty sure even the few TV critics who were out there had difficulties separating the more grounded science-fiction drama on NBC from the more hovering science-fiction military CGI action show on FOX that had angry aliens in its backstory, as well as a bunch of in-vitro humans that serve to symbolize racism in this series.
This pilot movie was near perfect. With the exception of the CG effects, it might even stand the test of time, though some story choices in the final act might have to be changed to entertain the streaming audience of today. Once more I have realized that, when you give your high-concept genre drama a 90-minute pilot episode, you not only have all the time in the world to introduce the characters and the setting, but you can create an entire universe of events without looking too absurd. I only need to throw a side-eye on the pilot episodes of THE EVENT or FLASHFORWARD or V or REVOLUTION (all four shows are on my extremely long to-do list, because every once in a while, I do like me some high-concept thriller trash) or any other genre drama pilot of the 2000s and 2010s that did not run for more than 46 minutes, and tell them that they screwed up, because writers and producers and networks figured that a show had a better shot at being a hit show on TV when the viewers were smashed in the heads by plot points (remember that LOST had a two-hour pilot that was split into two one-hours for broadcast)
 |
| Join the Marines, they said. It will be fun, they said. |
SPACE:
ABOVE AND BEYOND already had a wonderful first act by getting into the
characters first, before establishing the world and the universe it was
set in. It did not throw you into cold waters and let you figure out
stuff on your own (though that can be fun sometimes), and it made you
connect with the characters first before telling you and those
characters what the stakes of the story were. Nathan, Shane, and Cooper
were all introduced with some heavy baggage they needed to get over
first before getting into a fight with an advanced alien race, and I
already liked these three main people before they even lived through
their first life-and-death experience, and that says a lot.
I also loved that the first half of the pilot was spending time in a realistic manner by having the characters go through military training first. Granted, the show could have started with all of them already being military experts, so they could have gone to Mars after the characters have been established, but I figured just jumping into the war action was not the purpose of this episode. Probably because it was painfully obvious that the show would quickly look a little more dated with more of these CG effects, so one hour of non-space-fiction imagery was created to save the budget from exploding.
Glen Morgan and James Wong wanted a TV show that was more about the realistic experience for the characters than the entertaining experience for the viewers. If the entire first half of the episode had been light and a more silly version of FULL METAL JACKET, I would have been happy, but I can understand why Nathan needed to know immediately about his girlfriend’s death (even if the aftermath of it did not bring a lot to the story for him). Shane already had a pretty dark backstory, and Cooper could have simply decided to kill himself to end his suffering as a persecuted and hunted in-vitro. And with the death of Nathan’s woman, all three main military characters got the opportunity to shine as troubled people in a pool of troubled characters in the midst of an interstellar war.
The only thing I found a tiny bit questionable was the fact that humanity was unaware of the attacking alien race until after it was known that the colony was attacked. Like the characters, even the threat was established from its very beginning, and unlike the characters’ beginning, I would have preferred the STARSHIP TROOPERS approach here. It seemed like everyone in this episode did not even give a damn about the existence of alien life in the universe. Humanity started settling all around the universe. One settlement was attacked (okay, two were attacked, and maybe more, but the news about those have not traveled to Earth yet). Humanity learns that aliens attacked settlements. Humanity goes into war with aliens. The end. That is what the pilot movie was essentially about. No “We’re not alone in this universe” moment (except for half a dialogue line, which established that fact), no stunned faces that Earth had been declared war at by an unknown alien race. Maybe I am thinking a little too much about STARSHIP TROOPERS right now, but the chaos and fear on Earth people were missing in this episode, because it was just focusing on Cooper, Nathan, and Shane, and their new best friends, who will most likely all be dead before the season/series finale.
A few words about potential stories for the season: I got the slight feeling that Nathan’s girlfriend whose name I stopped remembering a long time ago might have survived the attack on the settlement. It was said that 25 people were unaccounted for, and the attack looked like some might have jettisoned off on the planet beneath them with an escape pod, since the settlement ship was falling apart very slowly. In addition, the alien on Mars, there to lead humanity into a trap, clearly recognized Nathan somehow, even if it was just through the dog tags turned family picture on Nathan, giving the humans and the aliens something to compare themselves to. Of course, it would be extremely coincidental, as well as convenient, that the alien on Mars would have been involved in the attack on the settlement, but who knows, maybe the 25 unaccounted people saved themselves onto the planet, or were taken prisoners of war, and Nathan will soon race there to save their lives. Let him find that one out, and he will have a reason to fight.
 |
| Welcome to Mars. The weather is cold and uninviting, and aliens may lurk behind the dunes. |
Furthermore, I was seeing a little bit of a romance between Cooper and Shane, which could be interesting for Cooper, who was never considered a full human here. The in-vitro backstory sounded intriguing enough, though that plot device has been done beautifully on GATTACA already (which was released two years after SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND), and no one can beat Andrew Niccol’s film, but with Cooper’s dark and mysterious demeanor and an “I don’t care” attitude, and Shane’s dreams of becoming a top-notch pilot and soldier, the two were already contrasting each other to the fullest, suiting them perfectly for romance. And they already shared a kiss in this episode, even if Cooper was a creep during that scene.
And finally, mentions were made about the A.I. wars. Did Shane say that her parents were killed by A.I.s? Because I find that kind of an awesome premise for a show to be wasted in a military space-fiction series. The A.I. wars sounded like THE TERMINATOR for a bit, or at least took its premise, creating the potential for a show within a show, in case the writers were tired of the humans versus aliens storyline. By the way, I cannot believe humanity won that war, or even survived. In THE TERMINATOR, or even THE MATRIX, the world was doomed because of artificial intelligence. In THE MATRIX, the sky went dark because of it. But in SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, humanity outlasted artificial intelligence. Somebody from within the show should tell us how they did it, so we can listen and learn.
