Outcasts

Looks like the main points of conflict will be the dis-enfranchised clones, and Berger's cultish push for power. Maybe a re-occurrence of the virus, and a dose of let's-all-get-along-and-eliminate-those-nasty-human-emotions-that-got-us-in-the-mess-in-the-first-place.
I don't know where another six episodes are going to come from.
 
I'd guess there's some kind of alien (or perhaps another human) presence on Carpathia, which will feature in the later episodes.

***big spoiler for episode 1***




Damned shame Mitchell got killed so early on. He was my favourite character.
 
It might be refreshing if (like Firefly) we don't actually meet an alien presence on Carpathia. When the show was discussed on BBC Breakfast last week, the writer (Ben Richards) said that he didn't set out to write science fiction. The inspiration behind Outcasts was the desire to tell a pioneer story, and the only place you can do that really now is in space. He said he wanted to explore second chances, most fundamentally whether humanity is genetically hard-wired to make the same mistakes again and again. It was only after he started writing that people told him that this had been done before in this science fiction show, and that had been done before in that science fiction show. So, I think the possibilities of aliens appearing are slim.

On the other hand, I think the show needs something like Earth 2 aliens to put some life into it.

And if you want to see it really ripped to pieces, then read some of these posts:
BBC - BBC TV blog: The inspiration behind Outcasts
 
Almost missed this! I saw the trailer after Doctor Who at Christmas and told myself to look out for it... which I soon forgot to do. :p

Then, on my weekly iPlayer scavenge, I noticed that the first two episodes were up.

I'm downloading them now (rather slowly - the fool upstairs is playing WoW again...). Will give my thoughts when I've watched them.
 
Just watched the first episode - I rather enjoyed that. The sets were nice, the few special effects were done well and the story gives me the feeling that it might pick up.

The only thing I didn't really experience was the supposed loneliness of the people living in Fort Haven. You'd have thought that, for a thousand souls who are probably the last of their species, there'd be more... I don't know, despair, maybe.
 
Lenny said:
...there'd be more... I don't know, despair, maybe.
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Given some of the things written about the series elsewhere on the Web, I could be persuaded that that part is being left to audience participation. ;):)
 
Outcasts is a new BBC TV SF eight-part drama, of which I have so far seen the first two parts. The scenario is far enough into the future for humanity to have developed huge starships, one of which had managed to establish a settlement on the distant planet of Carpathia (named after the ship which rescued survivors of the Titanic disaster) some years before. The name is significant, as civilisation on Earth appears to be in its final throes, and the last starship is due to arrive.

All is not well on Carpathia, however, as the team of explorers who spend most of their time away from the settlement are planning a rebellion. The president (Liam Cunningham) aided by the head of security (Hermione Norris, who famously played a formidable MI5 agent in Spooks) try to hold the line while preparing for the arrival of the starship. All is not well with that either, as it has suffered some damage which threatens disaster if it tries to land on the planet, so it launches an escape pod to ensure that some survive. Just to complicate matters further, there is a band of renegade humans in the wild, rejected by the settlement years before.

The focus is on the human drama and the acting is reasonably good (Norris being the stand-out performer) although some of the dialogue still sounds rather stiff and awkward to me - a perennial screen-SF problem. However, the SF elements are weak so far, and even the big CGI effort of the starship is hopelessly unconvincing, simply because the plot requires this vast structure, with living space in two huge counter-rotating artifical gravity wheels, to try to land on the planet. Now you don't have to be an SF geek to realise that such a vessel cannot possibly enter a planet's atmosphere let alone make a landing, a fleet of shuttles being required for that task, but the programme makers don't seem to realise that.

Overall it's moderately promising so far and I'll keep watching; I'll return to it to make some final comments once I've seen the lot.

(An extract from my SFF blog)
 
Ursa major said:
Given some of the things written about the series elsewhere on the Web, I could be persuaded that that part is being left to audience participation. ;):)
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:)


I have noticed a wide difference of opinion of this series from this board to other, non sci-fi ones, I frequent. It is perhaps that we sci-fi fans are so starved of sci-fi TV shows that we hail any that come along. No matter how poor the writing or casting.

I am as guilty of this as any other and I will stick with this till the end, just as I stuck with Defying gravity and the Deep to their damp squibs of a conclusion.

Leaving aside the extremely dull portrayal of a frontier existence, the dubious casting of many characters, the stilted dialogue and the dubious underlying sexual politics of woman as both out machoing the male and also a gentler voice of reason and wisdom (even more confusingly embodied in the same character). The reason why the pilot failed is it didn't follow any established rule of introducing a TV show.

Think back to the successful TV shows of the past and what do they all have in common almost invariably in their pilot episodes, why action. We don't know the characters yet, so while we are introduced to them we have action to keep us entertained.

BSG-Cylon attack on the colonies
Voyager-Exile to the delta quadrant and battle at the array
DS9-Moving the station to the newly formed wormhole to repel a Cardassian takeover of it.
Babylon 5-Gripping assassination plot.

In contrast what did outcasts have? Man goes nuts and goes into the wilderness, two dull characters set off on a camping trip to find him and quickly dispatch him. At no point do the characters or the audience become the slightest bit concerned about the drama overhead as the last ship from earth breaks up in the atmosphere.

Now that to me should have been the central thrust of the pilot episode. The last ship from earth arrives and there is a desperate struggle both inside the ship and on the ground to get it down safely. After all some permanent members of the cast were already on the ship, so it could have been done with a few more guest stars to represent doomed crew and passengers, and a minimal expenditure on additional sets.

On the whole Outcasts is not a failure due to budget. The sets, camera work and SFX seem perfectly adequate for TV sci-fi. It is a failure of writing.
 
Mouse said:
Hoban... Washburne.

All a bit crappy so far really. I'm not really a fan of Hermione Norris. Her face annoys me.
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I quite enjoyed the pilot

But I'm also not a fan of Hermione Norris something about her really puts me off a tv show.
 
What?? I thought last night's was terrible. Did my TV receive a different episode? From the way people were running about in it, the storm was no worse than a force 8 gale. It beggars belief that the writer thought he could get away with a plot where calculations showing a white-out unprecedented in the colony's history should show up the day before it happened (italics added to denote screaming). And we're expected to care (as the soaring mushy music indicated we should) about the death of a bit-part character who delivered about two lines of dialogue (one of them indicating that he's the colony's token gay character, so that's one of the other minorities checked off without having to put in any effort). And after the super-schmalzy ending, I didn't know whether to barf or take a bath. And still no trace of a single intelligent idea. Utter tosh.
 
Well I was 'Lost'

However,that aside, I wasn't impressed. HB has covered most of it.

Why on, oh it isn't Earth, would someone specially selected for his math talent be allowed (Given the take them out and shoot them mentality of the glorious leader) to just sit and take up food and space. Surely they are in a contribute to your full capacity or out you go, situation. Then given ten minutes he works out this old Prof life's work and as HB says just in the nick of time.

Surely it would have been easier for the old duffer just to say - Oi! You with the cross, tell em it's going to get windy.

As for the damage, again as HB says. But in addition, How and on what planet (Oh sorry forgot) does no one get killed but the streets get littered with rusty old bedsteads and bike frames and bits of structural steel and walk ways. Most of which seem to have been picked up from the local tip/recycling centre just up the road from the film set - Despite the fact that a 'lock down' had been ordered.

I'll ignore (well actually I wont) the stupid scene where someone keeps shouting not that building. OK so it paintd him as a hard bossy type but it was the same bloody building he was working on. Why any unsound building wouldn't be 'secured' is beyond me. Unless the corrugated steel in that one is softer when whipped around at 80 MPH of course.

What exactly did they do at the magic tower and why on Ea.. (oh rats) would it need to be set up miles from a perfectly good location where it seemed to work perfectly during the long voyage (IE the space ship roof). Has anyone ever heard of "checking the fuses so that dust doesn't get into them????" I know, it's a bit windy and there's lots of dust already. The best thing I can do is open the sealed door and let all that dust into the cabinet so it can get inside the hermetically sealed fuse units.

Nice wedding, so your best mate got killed because you abandoned him to his fate. No probs, this is a new world and that's what we do here. He would have wanted it this way. No need for recriminations. After all the glorious leader has just announced that he ordered a mass murder (which got no response at all - more tea vicar?) and they seem happy enough about that.

The obvious telling smirk at the end from the religious nutter indicates to me which way the series is going and to be frank I think it will be making the journey without me.

Although, it is fun to pick holes in the plot.
 
TheEndIsNigh: I'm confused. Did you like episode 3 or not?

*hides*
 
TheEndIsNigh said:
Well I was 'Lost'

However,that aside, I wasn't impressed. HB has covered most of it.

Why on, oh it isn't Earth, would someone specially selected for his math talent be allowed (Given the take them out and shoot them mentality of the glorious leader) to just sit and take up food and space. Surely they are in a contribute to your full capacity or out you go, situation. Then given ten minutes he works out this old Prof life's work and as HB says just in the nick of time.
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Aside from the laughable dialogue (of which last night's episode had more than its fair share-a professional writer wrote some of those lines?) that is one of the biggest problems I have with Outcasts.

It is just a british middle class existence transferred to an alien setting. There is no sense of a colony's struggle to survive. As far as we know, this colony may be the last hope of humanity, and yet we have some characters dossing around not contributing the collective good, we also have women of prime child bearing age remaining unmarried and childless.
 
TheEndIsNigh said:
Has anyone ever heard of "checking the fuses so that dust doesn't get into them????" I know, it's a bit windy and there's lots of dust already. The best thing I can do is open the sealed door and let all that dust into the cabinet so it can get inside the hermetically sealed fuse units.
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It was worse than that. IIRC they only went out to fix the unit. The new dust storm had not been announced yet (the season had supposedly finished.) They were supposed to be quick to get back for his Wedding (not because of any impending storm.) Suddenly, without any explanation, all that changed.
TheEndIsNigh said:
After all the glorious leader has just announced that he ordered a mass murder (which got no response at all - more tea vicar?) and they seem happy enough about that.
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A good day to bury bad news?

I also thought it got worse. I won't be watching tonight but might catch up on iPlayer later in the week, so let me know if I should bother.

I also don't understand why they avoid the real problem of the colony that is clearly staring them in the face, vis-a vis making babies!
 
JagLover said:
It is just a british middle class existence transferred to an alien setting. There is no sense of a colony's struggle to survive.
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Absolutely right -- and also, not one of the characters has so far shown any idea of a plan for the future, apart from to muddle along as they have been doing so far. None of them (apart from perhaps the implied plans of the sinister mystic) has articulated any long-term goal or ambition, whether personal or for the colony in general.

First rule of writing: drama arises from the conflicting goals of the characters. Hard to get any genuine (as opposed to soap-opera) drama out of set of characters who have no goals. These ones are just milling around like water in a sink does before it goes down the plughole.
 
Mitchell did.

Damned shame that particular storyline isn't going any further.
 
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