Helix: new SyFy Channel show (2014)

I saw no previous threads on this one, so I thought I'd give it a kick.

This cable channel in America recently started a new science fiction (I hate to say "Sci-Fi" because it denigrates the genre) show about a group of CDC doctors from Atlanta who are summoned to an isolated outpost on the North Pole where several hundred employees of a mysterious corporation have been exposed to a deadly disease.



The show combines elements of Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain (about a secret underground military facility dealing with an Ebola-like virus brought back on a satellite from space), The Thing (about people on a frozen military base who've discovered an ancient alien who can take their own form), Alien (about people being terrorized by a creature that can change form and gets around by moving through air conditioning ducts), and The Walking Dead (where you never know who's going to be attacked and infected next, and so far, there is no cure), plus some elements of Fringe and X Files (deadly disease that threatens to take over the world). Once you get the disease, instead of getting weaker you wind up getting stronger, puking up black stuff all over the place and desperately trying to infect as many new victims as you can. The disease doesn't so much want to kill you as it merely wants to take over, which is a scary premise indeed.

What's intriguing to me is that this is clearly a cable show with no money, but they managed to squeeze a fairly scary, believable premise. Each episode takes place in one 24-hour day. The CDC doctors are portrayed very realistically, with human flaws, egos, tempers, and yet also much compassion and great knowledge about medicine. The head of the North Pole base is played by Hiroyuki Sanada, who plays a corporate guy who clearly knows much more than he wants to let on. And the shows are very well-shot, though I'd quarrel with the editor, who is apparently so hyped up on coffee, he or she is cutting the episode with shearing scissors, creating a lot of weird, disjointed moments in the tense "exciting" scenes for dramatic effect. It's a little much. I would've rather they just told the story conventionally without fast-cutting nonsense and let the action carry the scene and not the editing.

I've watched three episodes so far, and I've found it to be a surprisingly effective show. The show is produced by veteran film producer Lynda Obst, who was part of the 1990s Jody Foster film Contact, as well as Ron Brown, who was part of the Star Trek franchise in the 1980s and 1990s. I don't think it necessarily breaks any new ground, but for a no-budget cable show, I was very pleasantly surprised by how scary it is, and how well they disguise their lack of budget (all shot in Canada).

There are the usual cheap-ass TV failings, like how whenever they're searching for a new person who's become infected, the doctors immediately head to the darkest corridor possible, split up, and then look for them all by themselves, with only one double-A battery flashlight between themselves and Certain Death. (Ray Bradbury used to refer to this as the "Stupid Character Premise," meaning the story only works if the characters behave in a stupid manner.) There are also a lot of unanswered questions -- like why are there about 250 dead, frozen lab monkeys in the show outside the base, apparently terrified and trying to run away from the building in -100 degree weather, and was this disease something being developed on the base deliberately or was it just an experiment that got out of hand? -- but I'm sure they'll be answered in the weeks to come.

Check it out, Friday night on the (I hate this word) SyFy Channel in the U.S. Dunno when it'll hit overseas, but I'm sure that -- like the disease -- it'll make it's way around the globe before too much longer.

 

I also have seen the first three episodes and am enjoying it. The similarities to Andromeda Strain and The Thing (From Another World) also stood out to me. Guess I'll stick with it......

 

It's playing on Showcase in Canada. I've been watching it as well...sure there are some obvious 'low budget' scenes but overall it's a decent show.

 

I like it more than I expected I would through three episodes.

 

It's okay. I'm enjoying it but not crazy about it. I really like Billy Campbell, that's probably the biggest reason I'm watching. Don't forget "Resident Evil" as an influence for this one.

I'm not as interested in the subject matter as I'd like to be, really don't dig disease zombieism etc.

 

I forgot about this. I was going to check it out because Ronald D. Moore's name is on it.

 

I think you mean Ron Moore rather than Ron Brown. Moore was also the writer-producer of Battlestar Galatica. Helix is well made show.

By the way the real reason the SyFy channel changed their name was so they could trademark it.

 

Did I get the name wrong? Damn, it is in fact Ron Moore. I dashed this thing off in about a minute and a half. This is why I need a copy editor!

 

No worries. I knew who you were talking about but there IS a producer named Ron Brown which is why I mentioned it (didn't work on Trek from what I can find...but you never know it is a small business).

"Helix" is (so far) a good show, believable performances and is what the remake of "The Andromeda Strain" SHOULD have been (the remake was pretty awful although it had some good ideas buried in the script with bad dialog).

 

Ah, Resident Evil is a movie series I never saw, but I worked on one of them a little bit (the third one, I believe, shot in Mexico). Strange film -- kind of a Night of the Living Dead thing? I just read the description of Resident Evil over on Wikipedia, and I gotta say, it's very close to Helix!

Eh, it's an entertaining TV show for what it is, and I was surprised to see a basic-cable TV show that wasn't horrible.

 

The first two episodes gave me hope that this might be a decent series. Fairly good scripts & acting, a nice setup and a few plot twists I didn't see coming. The third episode, however, was nowhere near as good. I predicted all the 'surprises' ahead of time and a few things made no sense. Blowing up the satellite dish disrupted the internal communication system? I'll probably give it a few more episodes but it's starting to fray at the edges for me.

 

I'm enjoying it as well (haven't watched episode 3 yet). Compared to other SyFy shows I've tried to watch, it's refreshingly intelligent. Not high art or anything, but above average for the SyFy channel (or is that damning it with faint praise?).

 

It started tonight on Channel 5 here in the UK, didn't see it but you give it a good review so I'll catch up with the first episode on the Channel 5 catch-up service.[/quote]

 

I found the first three episodes mildly entertaining. I thought the pilot was dynamite stuff, though at first blush this premise doesn't seem to lend itself to an entire 13-episode season.

 

Thanks for the heads-up, I've just set the DVR to record the series. I need something now that Walking Dead is a few weeks away, and Homeland, Ray Donovan, and Masters of Sex are months away.

 

That was real stupid, I agree.

An SF expert pal of mine commented that he also thought the show looked real cheap, and complained that it looked like they had four sets: a long corridor, a medical bay, a large room where they kept the prisoners/infectees, and the head scientist's office. (Plus the fake snow/styrofoam exterior.) I gotta admit, when you watch the shows back to back, you figure it quick there's not many sets.

But the acting's very good and Billy Campbell is a terrific actor. I'm glad to see him working. They also seem to have done a very good job on the medical terminology: Helix is one of the rare shows where the "doctors" actually seem to know what they're talking about.

 

I'm glad to see that they downplayed the soap opera nature of the story line that was established in the first episode.

 

I have now watched the first episode to air in the UK and didn't think much of it to be honest, the script seemed stilted, the acting wooden and the flashed up in neon lights "hints" of sexual tension (which is, I guess, what Craig is refering to in his post above) and the endless exposition.....exposition.....to explain the storyline, with one character facing another as if immobile. The whole thing was (IMO) flat and boring, I'll see what the next couple of episodes bring but so far it's not looking good.

 

On this thread’s recommendation, I gave this show a try. For those who are interested, the “Pilot” episode is free to purchase (not rent) through Amazon Instant Video. It’s not a “Prime” streaming item, it’s a purchase-to-own episode whose price is currently free.

Of course, “SyFy” has aired three going on four episodes, so while Episode 3 (repeated) and 4 (new) will air on Friday, it left me purchasing Episode 2 to be caught up in time for Friday. (Looks like Episode 2 will air again in a few weeks).

The show is far from perfect. But its production values do seem a few notches above the crap “movies” SyFy seems to air. The CGI stuff is pretty wonky, though, ranging from acceptable (the expansive shots of the base outside), to pretty lackluster (the monkeys), to really bad (rat attacking rat). As much as too much exposition can weigh down a show, I was almost left wishing they would just cut out the CGI stuff and have someone stand there explaining what they’re seeing, as the rest of the show, even if modestly budgeted, looks nice enough overall.

I too felt the soap opera elements introduced in the pilot sounded tiresome, as if they had to shoe-horn that in. I’m glad it hasn’t been too prevalent thus far. I’d say it’s the overall tone and story arc of the show that is more interesting than the cast or acting. Billy Campbell has the requisite gravitas for this sort of TV show, though. Sanada’s character obfuscates enough to create a good amount of mystery, although his degree of non-answers to nearly any question asked of him stretches the suspension of disbelief a bit. These CDC people seem to get riled up about a lot of stuff, but not so much Sanada’s character not fully answering numerous direct questions. The rest of the cast has been pretty “meh” so far. The blonde CDC lady started out in the pilot as the “annoying character you kind of secretly hope gets iced”, but that status has quickly shifted to Campbell’s other two CDC staffers, the young one and the old girlfriend.

But the show is not falling victim to as many go-to horror motifs as I thought it might, so that’s good.

Overall, so far, much better than a SyFy production has a right to be. It does indeed have a bit of Lost, Walking Dead, Fringe, X-Files, The Thing, etc., and while I would imagine shows like this get a greenlight in part due to the success of “Walking Dead”, I’m glad this show is evocative of those other shows and movies without feeling like a straight “Asylum Entertainment” style “mockbuster” sort of thing.

 

I have been watching the show & really enjoy it!

 

Comparing Syfy channel TV shows with those Asylum-produced Sharknado style films they show is doing a serious disservice to the TV shows which are generally MILES better in production values and actors.

I've really enjoyed some of the Syfy series from the last several years (some homegrown productions, some licensed from Cananda) including Eureka, Warehouse 13, Haven, Alphas, Continuum and even the guilty pleasure Lost Girl has its charms. All of these series are low budget but that doesn't mean they can't also be very entertaining.

I'm not a budget snob when it comes to film/tv, if the story is engaging and I like the characters I could care less how little money they have in comparison to the major networks. There are plenty of AWFUL big budget shows out there that I would gladly skip and watch a new episode of Continuum instead.

 

I can't say I watch a bunch of stuff as it airs on SyFy. But several times I've rented films only to discover afterwards that it was a "SyFy" (or "SciFi Channel") film, either an original production or something first aired there. A recent one was called "51", and the fact that it was predictably mediocre at best and I had just recently watched it was probably what made me wonder about "Helix." But I agree, the TV stuff based on your list of shows, is easily higher grade than a lot of the "films."

I love "great awful movies", and some early stuff from "Asylum" and the like were at least a bit funny in that regard. But it's hard to get through most of that stuff now.

 

The problem is a lot of the CG just looks like garbage, like $1.98 effects flown in from some kid working in his garage on a Mac. But I get that they just have no time and money to do a show like this. Typically, a major American network project like this would be about $2.5M minimum per episode to do, and I bet SyFy gets this done for a million (tops) in Vancouver. What surprises me is that the quality of the scripts and acting are as good as they are.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. It'd be interesting if the infected people recover to the point where they have all their wits but still want to infect other people, which would give it that Invasion of the Body Snatchers / The Thing plotline.

One thing I can't figure out is how they're gonna string this thing along for more than a season! Do they expect to be confined to this Arctic base for 85 episodes (that is, 85 days)?

 

I started watching this today on Amazon streaming. Two episodes, so far, so good. I guess I'm ok with B-level SF, since there is 'C,' 'D' and worse. One question: who started the whole routine of crawling around in the air ducts to move around a ship or base surreptitiously? I have a vague memory of this from the old 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' television program; much later, there was another series that used the device constantly. Anybody?

 

I'm hard-pressed to say who started the "crawling around in air duct" cliche, but I think it was going on even before the 1960s, though Mission:Impossible made it an ongoing detail every week. Later movies like Die Hard really established it as a significant plot element.