What’s the name of the show? 12 Monkeys.
Wait, isn’t that, like, a movie? Yes, the show is based on the 1995 Terry Gilliam movie that earned Brad Pitt his first Oscar nomination.
So, this is kind of like Fargo? No, this isn’t an entirely new story like Fargo, this is just the same old story retold. But with way more detail.
When does it premiere? Friday 16 January at 9pm EST, on SyFy.
What is this show? Well, have you seen 12 Monkeys? That’s what it is. The world is wiped out by a plague, so a group of scientists in Philadelphia (why Philadelphia?) sends a man back in time to collect clues to try to stop the plague from happening.
What’s the show’s pedigree? As we’ve established, it’s based on the movie (can you believe that was 20 years ago?!) which in turn is based on a short film by Chris Marker. Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, veterans of genre shows like Nikita and Terra Nova, wrote the adaptation.
What happens in the premiere? The Philadelphia survivors still don’t know exactly who or what caused the plague, but they have a new theory that it has something to do with the Army of the 12 Monkeys. They discover that the first drawing relating to the Army was made in a mental institution in 2015. They send Cole (Aaron Stanford, who played Pyro in the X-Men movies) back in time to investigate. He finds the picture’s creator, Jennifer Goines (Emily Hampshire), a mathematical genius whose father is the head of a bioengineering firm. He also runs into virologist Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull) who he has jumped back in time to visit in the past. A man with a scarred face, who has met Cole in his past but also Cole’s future, is also on the hunt for Jennifer and takes off with her and holds her in a shadowy room. Ooh, the future is scary. Wait, or is it the past? The present? Whatever. Scary.
Is this show any good? I hate time travel. There, I said it. I feel like it’s a sloppy storytelling device and it creates absolutely no stake in the narrative. If something bad happens then – whoosh! – zip back to the past and make it right again. It makes everything strangely irrelevant. The chronology is also so complex that it made the inside of my skull itch trying to figure out what happened when and where, and how that is going to affect the continuity of the story.
However, the interesting thing about time travel is that it creates a whole new set of puzzles for a mystery sci-fi show like this. It’s not that the truth is out there and we haven’t uncovered it, it’s that the truth hasn’t happened yet. Or maybe it has happened but we just don’t know it yet because it happened in a past we haven’t visited. See? This is why I hate time travel.
But time travel does open up some other interesting things to explore. Cole’s relationship with Cassandra is fertile territory for examination, since it’s happening in a linear fashion for him, where he only waits weeks or days to see her, but for her it’s scattershot and takes years. They’re having two vastly different experiences of the same romance. That’s kind of cool.
The biggest problem with the storytelling is that it is tremendously slow-paced, as though they’re worried that there’s not going to be enough plot for all six episodes. Also, the events of the second episode happen before the pilot, which is kind of weird. It makes the episodes feel somewhat unconnected, which is bad for a show that is attempting the complexity of 12 Monkeys. If there is no forward momentum or no sort of “now” to latch on to among all the time-hopping, then this show will turn into season five of Lost before it even gets renewed for more episodes.
Which characters will you love? Eh, so far none of them are that spectacular, but Cole is pretty interesting. Let’s give it to him.
Which characters will you hate? Cole’s commanding officer Jones (Barbara Sukowa) has an accent so weird I’m surprised it didn’t leap to the future from a season of American Horror Story.
What’s the best thing about it? Like most SyFy shows, this is not something for people who are newbies to the genre; it revels in the tropes and conventions of this sort of storytelling. Aimed right at the core audience, it is uncompromising, not watered down like it would have been on network TV. However, that is also the reason why so few SyFy shows break out into the mainstream.
What’s the worst thing about it? The cinematography is missing the zip and creativity of the original movie. Everything is dark and dimly lit, even the scenes in the past. (Present? Oh, whatever.) It’s like someone put a pair of black tights over the camera lens and never bothered to take them off. It’s hard to follow the action when it looks like everything important is happening in the shadows.
Should you watch this show? No, not yet – 12 Monkeys needs to find its voice and figure out the physics of its storytelling first. But it really has potential. Let’s see what the hardcore sci-fi fans think of it first and see if we need to revisit the rest of the season once it’s wrapped.
