As the legacy of one BBC show changes the face of Sci-Fi television, another misses the mark in a painful way. The eight-part mini-series Outcasts met with quite a bit of backlash in its original BBC run and after the first few episodes failed miserably to attract an audience, it lost its primetime slot and moved to obscurity where it continued to flounder and fell completely out of the public consciousness. With a name like Outcasts there’s no denying the irony of it falling to the margins of the TV schedule, but did it really deserve it? Yes and no. The series starts off unforgivably slow and seems to meander with no point, but then it reaches its midpoint and the whole tone of the show shifts within a half-hour and it becomes a riveting Sci-Fi tale of religious extremism, inter-species warfare, and a pretty solid series. Unfortunately, a good second half isn't enough to salvage a first half that makes you want to quit watching.
The few remnants of the human species have set up a new colony on Carpathia, but the unseen events of the prologue show that even with the chance to start anew, humanity seems doomed to repeat its pattern of petty politics and discrimination. As the society inside Carpathia deals with the vague threat of a group of humans living on the outer fringes of wilderness, the ACs, President Richard Tate (Liam Cunningham) prepares for the arrival of a shuttle of Earth survivors as they make an emergency touchdown. Among the survivors is Julius Berger (Eric Mabius), a dogmatic figurehead who quickly riles the population to a boiling point in his efforts to elevate himself to a position of power and further a shadowy agenda. Caught in the middle of the power struggle are law enforcement officers Cass (Daniel Mays), Fleur (Amy Manson), and Jack (Ashley Walter) whose work inside and outside the colony gives them an insight into a conflict brewing between the human population and a race of aliens no one knew existed. As the alien presence manifests itself in increasingly unnerving ways, such as the creation of clones of the colony’s inhabitants, the citizens of Carpathia learn that nothing is as simple on that planet as it seemed.
There’s a stark separation between the two halves of the mini-series, and it manifests as the first and second disc. Within the first ten minutes of the second disc, new story lines are introduced that draw the viewer in with exponential effect in comparison to the episodes of the first disc. Did writer Ben Richards have a sudden flash of insight or did the BBC make an attempt to steer Outcasts to a better place? Whatever the reason, Outcasts improves drastically both in characterization and story. Twists are introduced with remarkable subtlety compared to the very heavy-handed and basic Sci-Fi tropes used in the first half. By the series’ second half, all of the damage comes undone and the story enters high gear. While it’s odd to encourage people to start a mini-series at the halfway point, the story and characters take such a new direction that you could do it and get by with little to no confusion. Unfortunately, this also means that after paying for a Blu-ray copy of an eight-hour long series, you should only bother with half of it and that half ends with a cliffhanger that will never get a resolution. Who really wants to pursue that willingly?
The series may be horribly dull at the outset, but the one common factor from start to finish is the beautiful cinematography of the breathtaking landscapes as presented in Blu-ray’s HD. Outcasts makes sparse use of CGI and so a lot of the beauty stems from natural scenery and what’s there to behold makes the series a spectacle, albeit one that’s hard to watch for the first four episodes.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
It should come as no surprise that a mini-series whose final episodes were unceremoniously dumped into the ether didn’t receive any extra features. Although, you could argue that it’s a canceled series where things went so horribly wrong in the first half that would have a lot to offer audiences where the cast and creators can discuss how things played out.
"Outcasts" is on sale August 16, 2011 and is not rated. Action, Drama, Sci-Fi. Directed by Bharat Nalluri, Omar Madha. Written by Ben Richards. Starring Daniel Mays, Eric Mabius, Amy Manson, Ashley Walters, Liam Cunningham.
