THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-1992: STORY 1: untitled origin story

 

1992 series: story one: THE ORIGIN STORY (?) episode one

 

Okay. So I’ve hated on this series for a long time since first seeing it. I’ve only ever watched the unaired pilot more than once since. For a pre-BUFFY, pre-CHARMED, pre-LOIS AND CLARK, pre Earth 2 story, pre MUTANT X and pre –almost everything else (yes, the UK did have KNIGHTS OF GOD, bore me to sleep) and a few RTD written mini-series, I never realized this was slow for the times. It seems to fit in somewhere between 1960s and 70s DOCTOR WHO and all those other mid to late 1990 series that were all more fast paced and action oriented with little BS filler (BEASTMASTER, THE LOST WORLD).

 

That said, I’ve tried to look at this first episode (and will continue to try) with an open mind. There’s nothing that’s completely awful here. Okay, Kristen Ariza’s acting is …bland. She’s come a long way and her small role in THE FOSTERS is quite interesting and her acting good. Her mom just displays the comedy selfishness of a show business mom and nothing too awful in this first episode.

 

Kristian Schmid is the one to watch however. His Adam is compelling from the first moment he’s on screen. Unfortunately he does not get much screen time. There’s nothing wrong with the rest of the cast either. Adam Pearce is a bit rough around the edges and Christian Tessier is still learning his craft but nothing is wildly terrible.

 

The location work is nice. The island a breath of fresh air and open spaces. The ship looks fantastic, the little we see of it and the streets of London (?) look great. Colonel Masters, here, is played completely straight and Prof. Gault is properly comedic and not over the top. None of the excesses that follow are even hinted at. Gault is also properly creepy as he talks about a telepath that they caught previously and that they used too much power. The telepath apparently died and Gault laughs that there was not much left of the poor chap. Megabyte and his dad (that he doesn’t get to see much) live in a huge castle like structure that’s apparently called the Ridge.

 

Megabyte’s absent mom and sister are somewhere else? He’s from Vermont, so maybe they are there? In any case, mom took sis to a baton twirling audition? What is this series and auditions? I don’t think we ever get to see his mom and sis, ever.

 

The problems, however, are evident from the start. Maybe not the ones that grow into huge ones but some minor ones here. First, we see two falls down the spaceship tunnel (Adam, Lisa) and some four flops into the ocean (Adam, Lisa, Kevin).

 

In addition, things crop up that are properly weird in a show about weird kids. Extra unexplained weirdness is not something that should be invoked here. Everything else should be as realistic as possible and unfortunately, it’s not. For one thing, there’s a man dressed like Uncle Sam holding birthday balloons of some sort walking into a building that Lisa and mom emerge from. What?

 

More telling is the background to some of the characters. Megabyte and Kevin have encountered the big and small bullies before (were they going for a Ginge and Lefty thing with these two?). So, what do they do? They pull out water rifles and shoot them, starting the trouble here. They hop on a bus and I could have sworn the little bully yelled, “Faggits,” at the two! Mega and Kevin are supposed to be characters we like…and I want to like them. But the writers are not making it easy. First, they started the trouble here. Second, when they hop a fence and think they got away with it, they are chased by a large German Shepard dog. It’s not particularly funny. Third, Megabyte and his mom worry about Kevin wetting the bed. Fourth, Megabyte has already heard of Kevin’s teleporting, sort of and wonder what happened to him on the bus when Kevin vanishes from the grip of the bullies…again.

 

If Mega seems stupid, Kevin seems stupider. His mom called him a witch in the past and to prove he was, he jumped off a roof. He found out that way he was not a witch. So already, two main characters seem…a bit disturbed and one, Lisa, seems bland. The other, handsome Adam, gets NO lines in this episode. And the villains do not yet interact with our people.

 

The ship? Despite a great design…why was it  underwater? Why did it have tunnels to the top soil with doors? What was it doing there and from where? We’re never told…ever. The show jumped the shark when it didn’t make the ship TIM. An early idea was to have Phillip Gilbert voice TIM as the ship. Or the ship as TIM. Big chance but failed because it was never done.

 

It’s clear there’s a lot of filler. Lisa finds Adam’s tent and THEN the spaceship bit sticking up…in full view. Kevin teleports twice to the water and Lisa. The bullies strike twice.

 

It is also clear (Moffat DW like) that much screen time is wasted when less could have been more. A lot of info could have been conveyed without all the filler and endless forced dialog. Having TWO potential break outs in one first episode is probably too much.

 

Still, nothing here is adamantly bad (the three dancing girls dressed like Emily and the Momma from A MAN FOR EMILY just seem to be Shirley Temple impersonators but it did not inspire confidence, bringing back memories of Emily singing, “Good Ship Lollipop!” The show was to be given a chance. There were hints it might be good. There were hints it might link the old show.

 

Again, there was a lot of potential here and one wanted to like this, as a TP fan. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as TP fans, there were a lot of FAN FICTIONS out there about how the Tp managed between 1979 and 1992 and it didn’t include silent alien ships on an island buried in sand and water, nor bed wetting jokes and bullies. This raised expectations that anyone could still become at TP, that any new show might link to the Galactic Federation, Steen, John, Liz, Trish, the government forces out to get the TP, Timus, TIM, jaunting belts or bands, the word jaunting, Jaunt Pads, the old Labs, or any of the previous TP and/or Time Guardians. None of this pans out in this story later or later in the entire 25 episodes of this mess.

 

Still, trying to be positive, this first episode was not terrible. It was not terribly pacey but not embarrassing.

1992 series: story one: THE ORIGIN STORY (?) episode two

 

So this episode was also not that bad. I counted only one fall through the ship tunnel (this time Lisa falls upward) and one water fall on screen (Lisa again much to Adam’s amusement). Kevin also gets doused but we do not see it, although a few seconds doesn’t seem enough to get him wet (I also wonder if the American version had him fall into the water as I seem to remember that). Adam tells Lisa a lot and his scenes are the most realistic and easy going…maybe too easy going. In any case, he tells Lisa the Ship is called the Ship (again, shades of A MAN FOR EMILY) and that it talks. If it does, we don’t hear it, it must talk to their minds directly. Rather, we do hear some gibberish but not words. Again, this was a missed opportunity to have Phillip Gilbert be TIM from the original series.

 

We still want desperately to like Megabyte and Kevin, who both seem like good friends…however…when Kevin is out of the room, Megabyte tries to teleport himself and says, “If that idiot can do it, I should be able to.” This makes Megabyte talking about his friend behind his back. We also establish further that Megabyte is not happy with his dad, that his sister is named Millicent, and that Kevin does not a passport (he has to use Millicent’s and dress like a girl). Kevin makes fun of Megabyte’s real name, which is Marmaduke. They fly to America (Florida!) to find Lisa. We also learn Kevin’s family trips are to Dorset. They do not go anywhere else much or out of the country.

 

Adam heals Lisa’s hand, not knowing he could do that. He and Lisa find they can mind talk to each other and apparently the Ship to them, too. The talk about others, Tomorrow Kids and Lisa suggests sending a message out to all of them that might hear them in their minds. Adam makes a short speech about kids that don’t fit in but they’re really just Tomorrow People. How they do they know the name? I guess the Ship, one Adam calls alien, told him. When Lisa didn’t ask nicely by saying, “Please,”  the ship ejected her roughly. This is a nod to the TIM of old, especially in THE MEDUSA STRAIN. Adam impresses once again and when he puts his finger to Lisa's lips to keep her from talking with her mouth and show her mind talk...it's warm and chilling at the same time. And charming.

 

Even the introduction of later camp Gloria does not disrupt the episode. She shakes and nearly crushes the hand of Gault, who keeps setting things on fire by accident.

 

In the airport, Kevin finds a bathroom (after brief confusion over the term bathroom UK vs US). Outside it, a huge motorcyclist and his female partner scare him (Ginge?). Behind the scene is another strange thing: a man (a worker there?) is proposing marriage to an African American woman (John and Liz???). Both are odd events.

 

As Adam tries to show Lisa how to teleport, he does a flip. The effects during this are impressive and well done. Lisa tells him about Kevin. Lisa goes back to Florida to find her mother while news of Kevin’s teleport from and to the bus reaches the media…and Colonel Masters.

 

When Lisa leaves Adam, his look conveys that he’s lonely. This is never expanded upon really from what I recall. He also, earlier, told her that he’s from Australia.

 

The location work is quite impressive. The island scenes, with the water in the background, look better than most films do. The spaceship set is impressive and almost wide screen fantastic. When it lights up when Lisa and Adam want to send their message, it looks great. The airport sequence is impressive looking and the “on the road” stuff in the US is quite good looking. The entire production looks polished and of quality.

 

Best of all Megabyte and Kevin approach the room Master, Gloria, Gault, and their men are in, run from them, hide from them and are captured by them…and brought to the room again, just as Lisa appears, screaming as she is caught in Gault’s trap. It’s an exciting action sequence as Kevin teleports away, allowing Megabyte to escape the stunned Gloria (she was holding them both in the air by the collars of the back of the necks), grab a chair and smash the equipment. This allows Lisa to teleport away, too, escaping the trap as he yells at her to teleport. I do wish they used the word JAUNT instead. That would have made this wonderful action sequence even better.

 

Masters and Gault feel they have a teleporter…Megabyte. “No! Not me! You’ve got the wrong kid!”

 

End. In all pretense, this was a good episode. Yes, a lot of Adam and Lisa’s talk could have been as they were searching for Kevin and other TP and that would have given it more of a sense of urgency but honestly, it’s not that slow. It really sort of works, more than I think the show does as it goes on.

1992 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE: THE ORIGIN STORY ep 3

 

First, this cannot be the same universe as the original TP because…the ship was on Earth for at least 1000 years according to Adam and called out to TP…waiting for them to break out. We don’t know when Adam broke out but if others broke out in the 1970s why didn’t the ship call out to them?

 

This is the first wonky episode. In hindsight, it’s not as bad as some of the others but I remember having a sense of sinking feelings while also wondering where they were going, literally. Megabyte doesn’t teleport because he can’t and tells his captors that repeatedly, yet the dummies believe he can and fit him with a head band of some kind that can explode if it is moved too much. Masters also lets Galt take him with Gloria back to the UK…at times, concealing him in a suitcase through the airport…until he has to go to the bathroom. All sense of a good show goes out the window here. The bad guys are idiots and that does not bode well. Further, realism goes out the window, too as the airport, even in pre-9/11 days would let this happen. What’s more: it’s boring. We see various moments of the trip the trio make from the US to the UK.

 

If that’s not bad enough, Kevin goes on his own mini adventure. It takes Adam and Lisa several conversations to realize Kevin teleported and might be in the water drowning. They dive in. Kevin, in what starts as a well-executed scene is in rain in the UK and in a bus parking lot of some kind. Now, comes the psycho bus driver who, when he will not believe Kevin’s story of how Kevin came to be in the locked yard, starts the bus…with Kevin on top of it and drives through London. He passes some of the locations Pavla ran past when she escaped her Russian captors in the first part of THE DIRTIEST BUSINESS. Kevin doesn’t’ want to tell the driver his real name and gives it as, “Kevin Willsmith.”

 

There’s nothing wrong with the locations and the shooting/filming. It is just that the bus driver acts like such a madman, trying to kill Kevin who is on the top of the bus, I was convinced he was Jedikiah or some alien out to get the TP. He’s not. He’s just what Kevin screams out from the bus top, a psycho. Kevin jaunts as he slides off the bus rooftop, screaming…and into the water. So the water stuff is now officially tedious. So, too, is the back and forth of the ship tunnels as the TP come and go up the tubes, Lisa and Kevin, and sometimes Adam, screaming both ways. And landing on Adam’s tent. It’s not even funny when Adam suggests perhaps he should move his tent.

 

Mega has bathroom antics as he has to go and is in a strait jacket…in the airport in the UK. He tells Gloria she will have to do everything if she does not take it off. It’s also not funny. When Galt wonders how Megabyte knows about teleporting without being one if he truly is not one, Mega tells him he reads comics books, science fiction and watches shows like Doctor Who and Star Trek.

 

What time there is spent on anything serious is short. Adam has a brief discussion with Kevin and Lisa about the TP not being able to kill. He has a scar on his side from a shark. He had a knife on him but couldn’t kill it. Kevin believes he could have but then reneges on that, saying he’s just a kid.

 

The brainy trio (oh, yeah, Kevin, at first thinks the other two might be aliens who will eat his brains) figure out they should go rescue Megabyte.

 

Before all that, Masters contacts two other villains or seeming villains. Lady Mulvaney is supposed to be an eccentric interesting boss of the AVENGERS (the good AVENGERS, the TV spies of John Steed and Emma Peel)…she’s not. She just comes off as puzzling and needless. She has a butler, too but I forgot his name. Maybe they were going for a Lord Dunning type thing. It doesn’t work in the slightest.

 

Masters also contacts General Damon, a good looking man, in charge of him (?) and Galt.

 

When Adam goes to the school that Megabyte was captured in and in the US (Florida), he’s being watched by government men. Who give chase in a van. Adam and Lisa do not teleport because Kevin is running ahead of them and won’t teleport either. On the face of it, it could be that he’s just scared and that makes some sense. He runs into the path of a Mack truck and screams into the cliffhanger and then the theme music (which is nice but NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS THE ORIGINAL’S THEME SONG). All of that “action” could be avoided if they just teleported.

 

There’s nothing particularly terrible about this episode but it sort of gives one that sinking feeling that this show is not worthwhile watching. It’s not that silly yet but not that serious yet either. The humor is not funny and there is not enough action in the 22 minutes to warrant watching more. There’s almost no drama or sense of urgency about any of this and there should be.

 

Would I have watched this if it were not called THE TOMORROW PEOPLE? Maybe.

 

The driver of the van, the government man, is also ranting like a lunatic who just wants to run down kids. The kids aren’t that smart. The villains aren’t that smart and/or dangerous. The script is not tight enough. The maturity level of the plot, dialog and characters seem to leave a lot to be desired. Lots of time wasting when less exposition could have meant less boring scenes, more falling into water, tunneling out of and into the spaceship while yelling, a long 3 minute recap, an inferior to the original theme song, and NO TIM. There’s also no sign that ahead will have ANY link to the original series and in fact, the DVD box states that it has no link to the original series.

 

In a way, this is the first ep that signaled that no one seemed to really care here, behind the scenes and not much was happening.

1992 THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-THE ORIGIN STORY episode 4

 

Wow. The ineptitude of this episode is stunning. This is where it all went downhill. Well, the dance off isn’t that bad but …almost everything else is. Which is sad because there are one or two minutes that could have been menacing and dramatic but they are all undermined by a terrible slapstick execution that defies logic.

 

Where to start? Megabyte’s escape is not only poorly done but the execution is illogical from beginning to end. He sprays some kind of solvent at Gloria…and she screams as he aimed at her eyes…but…but she’s wearing glasses. The door seems to fall on top of Galt. Who pushed that? Gloria? Megabyte gets the band off his head? How? He throws it at Gloria and it explodes…while she stands there, unaffected. Is she a robot of some kind? Is SHE Jedikiah, years before Captain Marvel became a female or DOCTOR WHO did?

 

Okay, I can almost accept there is a disco party or birthday bash or disco open in the day time and this scene on the whole could have been better but it’s not that bad except for…Galt announces to the men at the door, who stop him, that…he’s going to find a young boy and strangle him to death. Gloria seems to be lifting a man by his neck. Does she kill these doormen/bouncers? Then, when Megabyte has only American money (why?), the bus driver leaves him. Why didn’t the redhead tell the bus driver he was in trouble? The boring bullies chase Megabyte at the end of his big chase and they get thrown off him by…General Damon, who turns out to be…wait for it…his father. Did he know Megabyte was the “teleporter” that didn’t teleport and kept telling the inept Master and Galt….uhm, the truth, that he wasn’t a teleporter? By the end of ep 3, despite having seen Lisa and Adam teleport, Masters tells Mulvany, they finally established that Mega’s friends are teleporters after HE TELLS THEM THAT!

 

Gosh, what else? Oh, Adam seems to have lost his sneakers and socks when he, Lisa and Kevin teleport from the path of the Mack truck…and, dat’s right, right into the water again.

 

Mrs. Hawthorne is the cleaning lady at Galt’s and she’s one of those “fun” comic relief characters. Only she’s not funny and has been vetted by the spies, whatever that means. She makes a dumb joke about it.

 

Lisa explains to Adam that when she was lost once, her mom baked brownies. That’s exactly what Lisa’s mom is doing now. Adam and Lisa plan to go to Lisa’s mom’s apartment…despite knowing the gov’t men will be there waiting and watching for them…only when they do, they don’t remember this or plan for this in any way. They only think they’ll tell the gov’t to let the redhead kid go and the gov’t will. So WE have firmly established that not only are the bad guys idiots, so are our heroes.

 

There’s a lot of slapstick that’s not funny. Masters uses the stun gun or darts on his henchman Jones, who already seemed to be in the path of the Mack truck himself. Jones locks himself out of the apartment where Masters is using…UHF antennas on his devices?

 

When Adam and Lisa appear, they teleport onto a busy basketball court. No one seems to notice or care. A basketball is thrown to Lisa from…who? She shoots a basket. There are newspapers with her face on them as she vanished last night.

 

Damon goes to Galt and tells him that he is a US Intelligence Authority and that Masters works for him. He is the coordinator for the Anglo American Security Alliance Teleporter Investigations Project (AASATIP?). Galt puts his foot in a bucket in yet another unfunny bit of slapstick.

 

Megabyte passes by a man walking a turtle on a leash in yet another unfounded bit of nothing. It has nothing to do with the story. Oh and the recap, some FOUR MINUTES LONG, gives us a recap of Kevin’s bus adventure with the psycho, despite the fact that it, too, had nothing to do with the plot or with this episode at all.

 

Uhm, mind telling us if Damon knows if Megabyte was the redhead Galt thought was a teleporter? It’d be nice to know. As it is, it looks as if BOTH Damon and Galt are morons as Damon never asks for a description (but to be fair, he does ask Galt to tell him everything he can about the boy so maybe…just maybe they’re trying to keep it secret from us that Damon knows Megabyte is the escapee).

 

Up to the scene where Adam and Lisa go to Lisa’s mother’s apartment building and go up the elevator (why not teleport to the floor?) and in front of the same henchman that was driving the car that chased them…there’s literally no drama and no tension.

 

What little there is after that is undercut by more stupidity. Why do Adam and Lisa split up at all? Adam could teleport away from Lisa’s mom to prove to her that they can teleport. Why does he go to the roof? In what appears to be more slapstick from the silent movie era, Jones launches himself at Adam when Adam teleports and Jones goes over the edge of the building but holds onto the American flag. From which he slowly loses his grip on. Yes, it’s shocking when he falls over the building and seemingly dies (we don’t see him on the ground yet). But none of it matters because everything else in this episode is so poor and uninvolving.

 

Lisa, trying to talk to her mom, tells her she’s trying to lose weight so she will not have one of her brownies. Really? That’s what’s important? When she sees Adam teleport in, Lisa’s mom passes out, comedy style.

 

Watching and listening to them, Masters jumps to the conclusion that the Tomorrow People, based on the name, are time travelers. This unrewarding moment is cut short seconds later when Adam explains they are not time travelers. Just another example of the dialog and script going nowhere.   

 

When Masters and men attack, Lisa’s mom and Adam are stunned. Lisa seems hit by a dart and teleports…into the blooming water again. Kevin swims to save her. Hold on? I thought he couldn’t swim or maybe that’s just me getting my facts about the first three eps wrong?

 

Masters levels a threat to Adam, similar to the one Masters leveled at Liz in SECRET WEAPON’s cliffhanger at the end of part 3, “If you teleport, Lisa’s mother dies.”

 

Lisa’s body appears in the ship? Kevin teleports in alone? Didn’t he save her? He seems confused that she’s there. He goes over to her and checks for breathing. He thinks she is dead. “NO! She can’t be dead! NO!”

 

Cliffhanger.

 

It’s clear to me that judging from the execution in this episode alone, no one cared about such things as logic, drama, execution, taped humor, action, motivation, good dialog, character points, or making your heroes and villains intelligent. Almost everything here is inept. Frankly, technically, there’s nothing wrong with this other than the UHF rabbit ears that Masters uses as tech. The filming, location, camera work, costumes, lighting, sound, and music are fairly adequate and even superior. Which is a shame as the story unravels and falls apart in the execution of almost every joke and every pratfall and every reaching for humor. None of it is funny or interesting and what drama could have been squeezed out of several confrontations that happen here is totally lost by poor dialog, poor execution, and badly timed “action” that clearly has no tension. Masters’ threat, Damon being Mega’s father, Lisa’s teleport out, Kevin’s rescue, Jones’ fall mean NOTHING because the entire episode seems to be telling us, “WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU, VIEWER if you’re watching this *(*&.”

 

A great premise, two or three good characters and actors (digging Megabyte, Adam and even Kevin), good sets and locations, and fairly good cinematography, do NOT make a good series. Without a tight script, you have nothing. And memory tells me it only gets worse from here. God, how will I get through 21 more episodes of this S*(&?

1992’s THE TOMORROW PEOPLE-the Origin Story-part 5

 

On the surface there’s nothing wrong with this episode. The one thing that I don’t buy though is something that hinges the whole story and indeed, most of the rest of this ill-fated, ill-advised series on: that General Damon didn’t know anything about what Galt, Masters, Jones, and Mulvaney were doing. I’d have to go back and re-check (and I REALLY don’t want to) the previous four episodes but I thought Damon knew some of what was going on. If he did, this doesn’t hold together. At all. If he didn’t, it makes him as inept as all the others.

 

There’s a lot more good than bad in this episode though. Adam heals Jones, which is, as Masters says, “Outstanding.” Of course, this being the inferior TP series, this most interesting power is dropped after this episode, as is Lisa Davis. And her mom. Also, the reaction of Jones is …unrealistic. I would think he’d be a bit more grateful to Adam for …well, either healing him or resurrecting him. And speaking of that…Kevin seemed sure Lisa was dead. A glow from…the ship (?) and she’s alive. She and Kevin link hands (gosh, maybe a link table would have been nice here?). Another interesting power that is depicted well is, when later in the episode, Kevin is able to see in his mind’s eye (actually we see the scene IN his eye) of what Lisa is seeing: the helicopter holding Mulvaney. It’s nicely done. Another positive is that Kevin has learned not only how to control his teleporting but to be able to take people along with him…namely Gen. Damon and later, Lisa’s mother.

 

I’m sure it looked like a dramatic movement for Megabyte to teleport and for us to find out at the same time as he that he’s one of the Tomorrow People but he teleports when Gloria is dangling him over a huge staircase drop. This cannot hold a candle to Tricia’s break out. In fact, we DON’T see anyone actually go through a break out.

 

That written, Damon and Megabyte’s interaction is quite natural here and it’s interesting to know which side Damon is on. And as Andy says in his book JAUNT, they’re both likable. However, tighter scripting would have made me trust Damon some more. I didn’t fully trust him right on through all 20 more episodes. Damon’s line, “What the heck?” is a bit immature when the Original TP series used the words “hell” and “damn” once in a while. As did 60s DOCTOR WHO. WTF?

 

Kevin’s, “We’re supposed to be the next stage of human revolution…” is kind of cute.

 

I’m not sure what OKAOIAO is but it’s on the screen in policeman Young (with his annoying female partner Holloway)’s police car. THEY are how Galt and Gloria find Megabyte’s house. It seems odd they do not know where their “boss” Damon lives. Hey, what does happen to Galt and Gloria here? Or Mulvaney for that matter?

 

Speaking of Mulvaney, she seems to be having a chess game with…the Queen? I’m guessing? Who cheats when Mulvaney takes a phone call from Masters. The climatic showdown is actually well done and not at all bad. Mulvaney expresses that she wonders what it would be like to have teleporters take nuclear bombs into the White House, the Pentagon and Disneyland (or did she say World?). It’s a scary moment that I’m not sure would be scripted or allowed that way in this day and age, post 9-11.

 

So all in all, out of five episodes, only episode four as a disaster. That’s not, so far, a bad track record. I mean four is really awful but one, two, three, and five are not. In fact, five is actually quite good and shows there might be some hope for this series. There’s also hope that somehow the new series might still link to the old series. It’s a hope that goes unfulfilled. Again, the music, the sets, and the location work, the expense gone to: all of it is quite good in episode five.

 

Any dangling threads from this story are left dangling as we do not see or hear about Masters, Lisa, her mom, Mulvaney, and presumably Jones again. Or the man walking the turtle. I’m not sure but even the Ship is downplayed and phased out after a while.