Since this is a double episode, it's a long recap: skip to the end for my first thoughts on Helix.
2 days ago
It was apparently very cold and windy (in a place that
looks like it’s always very cold and windy) and we have an isolated underground
bunker and people in Hazmat suits and a computer voice over saying “contamination
over and over.” Well that’s set that scene. 2 Haz-mat clad people calmly walk
down the halls, elsewhere a man, not wearing plastic, runs in sweaty panic;
until someone grabs him from behind.
The Haz-mat suited people arrive in a room full of dead
people – messily dead people, a jaunty tune playing on the Ipod shows the director
has his art-schools staples down. There is one survivor, suffering on the floor
with prominent veins and black goo coming from his mouth. When one of the
haz-matted men offers him water he seems afraid – when he calmly squirts some
down his throat the ill man starts convulsing and his throat bulging nastily.
Eerily clam and disturbing haz-matted man calls this “progress”.
To the CDC in Atlanta – possibly the present. Introducing
Dr. Alan Farragut (giving a lecture on historic cholera outbreaks, epidemiology
and John Snow whose name doesn’t appear in the history books nearly enough. He
also loses things) and Dr. Sarah Jordan (finding the things he’s lost). He has
a flare for the dramatic, throwing vials of cholera around to teach his new
class of CDC operatives what’s at stake if they fumble. The drama and joke
afterwards is interrupted by a woman entering with a very serious look on her
face. She’s Dr. Julia Walker
He’s lead to a conference lead by Major Sergio Balleseros about a private company’s arctic
research facility having an outbreak of some kind which is a Bad Thing. People are
dead, he wants to take a CDC response team to the site: for extra problems,
because it’s about the 89th parallel, there’s apparently no
jurisdiction and they’re getting access because Artic Biosystems is generously
allowing it – yeah that sounds very very very bad (shouldn’t the WHO be called
then?). Now for some personal bombshells – Dr. Walker was specifically
requested, but she wants Dr. Alan Farragut (everyone’s going to end up being
called by first names by the end of this, I’m too lazy to keep this up) because
one of the infected is Peter – Dr. Peter Farragut. Alan’s brother.
I hope there’s a reason for giving Alan the personal
connection – as a CDC member, as he already dramatically lectured, it’s his
duty to do this stuff anyway. Does he need motivating with a family connection
Day 1
Back to really cold place (yes I see the personal
motivation to get him there now – that place is really cold). They helicopter
into the zone, all the people we’ve seen plus Dr. Doreen Boyle who Does Not
Like pharmaceutical companies. Or, well anything else for that matter since she
gives grief to Sergio as well – but she takes grief back as well – I think I’m
going to like her. Extra personal drama,
Julia is Alan’s ex-wife and Sarah, Alan’s protégée has an epic crush on him –
or so Doreen guesses (she quickly uses this knowledge to quite cruelly tease
Sarah). That sounds like enough personal drama, let’s focus on the illness now…
oh wait, no Alan doesn’t mention Peter or Julia because he caught them in bed
together.
Oh dear. That’s
far too much romantic personal drama established in the opening minutes of the
pilot. This doesn’t bode well.
They’re greeted by Daniel Aerov (head of security) and
Dr. Hiroshi Hatake (head of research and the sinister guy in the beginning with
the water bottle). They’re perturbed to find that Hiroshi hasn’t initiated quarantine
but there’s only been three infected, all of which worked in the same lab; it
hasn’t spread so no quarantine (there were only 3 people in the big room o’
bodies?)
They have ID chips implanted into their hands to give them access to the base and, ominously, the helicopter leaves because it’s too cold for it to stay. And we see how big the place is – huge – employing 121 people
They suit up (Alan and Julia having a “we still have
feelings” moment and confirming that she and Peter are not together) and Alan
sees Peter – the man who was given the water at the beginning of the episode.
He does not look good. While they try to treat Peter, Sarah talks to Daniel
learning that they only get 1 hour of satellite connection (internet
connection) a day and that Daniel is Hiroshi’s adopted son. Peter is somewhat
aware, says something about a “white room” and surprising Julia by having black
blood – and surprises everyone by going berserk and trying to stab Alan. He yells
“everyone lies” before Julia manages to sedate him.
Brief sad-music-look-how-upset-we-are scene before
joining Doreen and Sergio swabbing down Peter’s lab. Daniel is very cagey about
Peter’s projects and even tries to discourage Sergio checking some things –
Sergio’s not impressed or willing to take the hint. Doreen also doesn’t believe
Daniel’s claim that they have no monkeys, only lab rats (that has been
engineered to have no sex organs).
Meanwhile, Julia, Sarah and Alan go check out the body bags of the other two victims – they’re just skeletons in bodybags full of black, viscous fluid (Sarah vomits in her face mask which is probably one of the most awful things I can imagine).
Doreen confirms the pathogen isn’t airborne – staking her
life on it by taking off her mask and we learn some of Sergio’s military
history as Doreen pokes and prods him – and she finds monkey hair.
Julia sees Hiroshi in his awesome office trying to pin
down what Peter was working on – and is snowed under by 20 boxes of research.
When she presses for an actual answer, he says Peter was working on mutagens.
Which is so wonderfully specific.
While she’s only getting vague clues there, Alan is checking Peter’s office, having some angst moments and watching his brother’s video diary where he laments about his poor relationship history (you’re living in the Arctic. This is not conductive for dating). It’s not an entire waste of time though, on the video Peter makes a hand signal from their abusive childhood, signalling him to run like hell.
Investigation stalls because Peter has escaped – cut through
his restrains and opened a hole in the roof (no-one is shocked by this so I
imagine the roof isn’t that strong). Hiroshi wants to gas (knock out gas) the
vents rather than risk contamination spreading while Alan wants to take Peter
alive ostensibly so they can test what protection he has that stops him
becoming goo and bones. Hiroshi wins the argument – and Alan insists on searching
the vents with Daniel.
Doreen and Sergio are having great fun searching the
whole base for monkeys using the chips they were given (well, Doreen is
enjoying herself anyway). Until they find a door the computer won’t let them
through – not exactly unrestricted access they were promised. They decide to
break through using liquid nitrogen… wait... what… you don’t think confronting
Hiroshi before breaking possibly very important doors MAY be the better idea?
They enter the ruined lab/storage room where the bodies
were picked up at the beginning. The room is full of empty monkey cages –
including one that was broken open from the inside.
And they hear movement in the dark lab. A monkey creeping around and evading them in a way Doreen calls “too smart”.
Up in the vents, so small Alan has to crawl, Alan finds
black mucous which he takes to be signs of Peter… and then he hears something
moving. It does the classic, horror movie, crawling through a pipe behind him.
AIE THE TENSION!
The monkey leaps at Doreen. It’s completely hairless and
goes for her face, though Sergio manages to get it off her and unconscious on
the floor. They check her for cuts but she’s fine. The monkey looks… awful
In the vents Alan finds a body. It isn’t Peter’s. It’s one of Daniel’s security people and it looks like someone – Peter? – has cut off his hand. Alan wonders why (for the security chip) and at the super-strength Peter seems to have. Alan calls for a full lock down and security procedures.
Sarah and Julia brainstorm (and touch on Alan and Sarah
though Sarah insists they have no relationship) and find a
super-duper-teeny-tiny virus. They show it to Alan and declare it “not natural”
at least not to this century. Also a very small percentage of the time the
virus doesn’t just kill people, it mutates them; hence why Peter is changing
and not dead.
And Sergio cuts something out of his rucksack… something he had hidden. It’s a little satellite dish. He goes out into the snow and uses it to receive and send some data. As he walks back he sees the snow is littered with hundreds of frozen monkeys, all twisted and contorted
Yessss… that’s creepy.
He goes to see Hiroshi and they talk about a delivery – Hiroshi thinks it can go ahead but Sergio thinks it has to change because of the CDC presence. And the people they work for are Not Happy.
And whatever Peter’s changing into he’s walking around in stolen clothes and using the guard’s severed hand to open locks (I would say “I told you so” but this was really damn obvious and why hasn’t that guard’s info been removed from the system?). Inside the room he enters there’s a scream and a spatter of blood.
Day 2 I think this is the beginning of episode 2: Vector. Did I
mention how much double episodes annoy me.
They interview 3 people who were in the room – Peter held
them down and put his mouth other theirs possibly infecting them. There were
also 3 more people in the room… and they’ve gone missing.
Leaving Sarah to watch isolation, Alan intends to go room
to room with Sergio to find the 3 escaped people. Hiroshi has equipped his
guards with restraints and stun batons, much to Julia’s disapproval. She’s also
not thrilled to be left in the lab rather than tracking patients leading to an
argument before he invokes his authority and sends her to the lab (despite him
having less recent field experience than her). The first escapee they check,
Dr. Tracy, has a ransacked room and a damaged window – she, unsuccessfully,
tried to break out to the snow.
Doreen dissects a monkey – and is joined by the missing
Dr. Tracy – she’s confused and suspicious and refers to herself as “we”, she fears
the white room, fears what “they” will do and she wants off the base. Doreen
tries to convince her to go with her, but Tracy doesn’t buy it
She begins arguing with herself – talking about how easily the virus was weaponised and she should have known, then shouting at herself for playing dumb and pretending she didn’t realise it was a weapon. When Doreen tries to leave, she lunges at her and tries to spit black gunk into her mouth. Doreen dodges and runs – but stops when Tracy collapses
Julia has been hearing things in the vents and watches a
CCTV feed with Hiroshi and sees 2 huge metal shelves fall over with no-one
touching them.
During all this, Sarah has to keep the three doctors in
isolation calm as they become varying degrees of agitated and one of them gets
sick, making Sarah re-suite up. He also becomes paranoid about his two fellow
isolated patients.
Alan, Sergio and Daniel track down another of the
escapees – Leclerk, but when they tackle him they attract an audience of
scientists who question their roughness, his being infected, why they haven’t
been evacuated and in general want to know what’s going on. Alan has to explain
why evacuating a whole base full of infected people is a bad idea, and the
concept and need for quarantine. The scientists clear out in time for Julia to
arrive and explain what she saw and have an argument with Alan which basically
comes down to “you will respect mah authoriteh!” and drag their relationship
drama out all over the place.
Sarah goes seeking morphine for the sick quarantined man
and finds the med cage open – she goes in, closes the door and Peter appears,
banging on the bars and declaring she’s “here for a reason.” She says she’s
there to help but he says “not you, Walker” (that would be Julia) and scrabbles
up into the vents again with super-creepy speed.
Alan arrives to comfort Sarah and finds several empty morphine vials – Peter is taking pain killers (which shows he’s rational enough to medicate himself which Alan takes to be a good thing). Peter went into the vents, leaving a trail so it’s time to explore again – only Sergio this time with Alan following by camera below. And after much crawling he runs right into Peter who just APPEARS
Yes it was a fall out your seat moment – arrrgh, in the
narrow pipes with things coming from any direction and you can’t even turn
round!? I’m going to have some inarticulate flailing over here just thinking
about it.
They get Sergio out, he’s fine – apparently just hit with
his own stun baton. Which didn’t seem to do a lot to Peter
Julia returns to Peter’s research with Hiroshi and he
continues to be incredibly vague and unhelpful. She decides to replicate what
Peter last did – injecting rats with the same unknown experimental substances A
& B. A kills nearly every rat, B kills some but infects them all – leaving them
hairless. She and Hiroshi talk a little – until one of the infected rats hits
the glass, damaging it – then charges through the glass to the next cage to
pounce on an infected rat and spit black goo into its mouth. Extra extra creepy
Sarah continues to work on the quarantined until Bryce
loses his shit and holds her hostage to try and make her let him out. Hiroshi
tries to talk to them but, of course, it’s Alan who suits up and goes in with
them and takes off his suit to show how determined he is… he’s now personally
dedicated to solving this problem.
This… seems dubious since he then breaks quarantine but
since there’s no airborne transition, it’s not quite as bewildering as it
seems.
Outside, Sergio finds someone trying to make a run for it
– he talks about the transgenic unregulated research they did and what an
abomination they created. (Apparently unregulated research sounds awesome until
you do it. Personally, I have to disagree – unregulated research sounds epicly
horrific on a truly horrendous scale). The man is determined to tell the world
what they’re up to – so Sergio stabs him.
Back in the labs, Doreen arrives dragging Tracy. Because
Doreen is awesome. They take Tracy to the isolation room – but the three inside
use the opportunity to escape. Damn, they need more Doreens.
Hiroshi and Alan lock horns over whose fault everything
is before Alan goes to Julia and has a “I can’t lose you again” moment to
explain why he was keeping her safe. Quick cameos – Sarah is all shaking and
Hiroshi has a photo album full of pictures of a woman… is that Julia? He’s been
stalking her – is that why the call went SPECIFICALLY for Dr. Walker? Then then
removes his contacts to do some work – and has odd, translucent blue eyes
without them. Ok, random…
Julia has a shower… and is joined by Peter. The Head Goo
Zombie. She’s shocked and frozen and nearly lets him kiss her before she comes
to her senses and pushes him away. He grabs her – and forces the black goo down
her throat.
First Thoughts!
They do a real good job of setting the scene without being
clumsy – the helicopter leaving and the satellite reference to how little
contact they have with the outside world shows how isolated they are without
making it ominous when it has no reason to be, or without really overdoing it.
It’s a good stand in
We have a little problem with overdramatic camera work.
But it’s not too bad, but rather than being dramatic it does tend to make me
smile (they’re walking down a corridor BEHOLD DRAMATIC CUTS OF THE WALK!) which
breaks the otherwise excellently developed tension of the show
I think the overly personal nature of the storyline
irritates me on a few levels. I don’t see why Peter needs to be Alan’s brother –
I don’t see why professional dedication and duty isn’t enough to get him out
there, I don’t seen the need for the extra pathos – or the old relationship,
the cheating or the blatantly-crushing Sarah. None of these elements are
necessary, they’re distractions. And really, why does everyone CARE?! Given the
situation why is this on anyone’s minds?
Characterwise… DOREEN. Doreen I love. Doreen I want to
have a little party for. Doreen rocks.
She’s the only one who does. Alan is a Big Damn Hero full of dramatic speeches and Epic gestures and tersely issued orders to everyone around him completer with angsty past (honestly does he mention his father was an abusive alcoholic to everyone?).
Sarah could be compelling, the whizkid proving herself and determined to impress – but too much of her story is wrapped up in potential-Alan-love-interest and/or being the scared one Alan gets to rescue/reassure. Julia, again, is too wrapped up in being Alan’s ex. We need more character elements from both of them
And inclusion? Yeah the ball has been badly dropped here.
Hiroshi came from central casting for a sinister Asian scientist (frankly,
World War 2 propaganda was less subtle). Daniel is another MOC and basically an
extension of Hiroshi. Sergio, also POC, could be an interesting character, but
sinister military guy isn’t original and we need to see more
And what do they all have in common? If you said “they’re
all villains” give yourself 10 points. We have some other POC in the background
– but they’re infected so either going to die or become monsters. Effectively
that leaves us with all the POC actual characters being villains and ALL THE
VILLAINS being POC.
Uh-huh.
So where does it leave me? I love the concept. The
direction, the atmosphere, the plot – love ‘em. Really well done. The
characters? I don’t like any of them (except Doreen).
I worry that, by episode 6, if that doesn’t improve I’m
going to end up on Team Goo Zombie. The characters need to really improve.
