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Don't know if anyone else watched this, but I did and felt myself tres impressed. Childhood's End of course first saw publication in 1953, creating a few tropes that by now have popped up elsewhere countless times. One of these remains the ginormous alien spaceships that simply appear above many Earth cities one day without warning. SyFy's three-night adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's classic aired last week.
S P O I L E R S D O F O L L O W
In essence we see the alien ships arrive, and the voice of Karellen, who calls himself the Supervisor for Earth, speaks to the world. He assures everyone they mean no harm, please do not be afraid. We are not invaders but helpers, for we are going to help you achieve all your fondest dreams. No more war, no poverty or crime or injustice, a healthy environment, an end to disease, etc.
Almost immediately the visitors/invaders are dubbed the Overlords. In part because they will not show themselves.
Here a bit of comparison might be in order. Karellen in the book uses the Secretary General of the UN as his mouthpiece, but in the miniseries he persuades a farmer with a great gift for negotiation. Someone whom others trust. Their relationship proves more personal and frankly frought with drama than in the book. This highlights differences between the two media--literary versus dramatic. One can address broad issues of the whole world, whereas the other requires a strong emotional commitment to the characters first and foremost (in theory this need not be positive--Hannibal Lecter remains fascinating, for example, but in this case we do develop affection for the 'heroes'). So instead of answering all the scientific questions that the story involves, we instead find ourselves trying to answer questions about how to feel about events.
Karellen refuses to show himself. So can we trust him? Those who oppose the Overlords automatically come across as reactionaries, sometimes violent ones at that. Yet Karellen proves himself very willing to manipulate us. This fact grows more obvious as time goes by--even as all the Overlords' promises come true.
Then we finally see Karellen himself. Tall. Red. With hooves, horns, a tail and huge bat wings. An image of evil. Whose first words when we see him are "Hello. Please do not be afraid."
But we also know from the very first shot this doesn't end well. Because that is when we meet Milo, a crippled boy when the Overlords arrive but a fully grown man on a ruined Earth in the prologue. The last human being alive. Begging someone to remember the human race. We don't deserve to be forgotten.
Again, this story focused on the individual, the personal story involving hopes and fears of a handful rather than a multitude. Exposition came only in the form of personal communication between people asking about things, for reasons that mattered to them rather than because the script needed somebody to do a data-dump at that point. We don't learn about New Athens--a community of those who reject the Overlords' gifts--via a news broadcast or someone arguing politics. Just a couple debating whether to move there, to where there's still crime and even some disease. But where artists still create.
Each of the three episodes feels quite different, which frankly must be deliberate, and in keeping with the tale of bittersweet maturity. A sense of real paranoia grows in the second night, as we learn for certain the Overlords do indeed have a secret agenda, one somehow tied up in an unborn child. Then, in the third act, we learn the Overlords are mere servants of something they call the Overmind, a kind of consciousness of the universe itself. It seems some races ascend, their children uniting and becoming eventually part of that Overmind. Others, like the Overlords, do not. But of course for the former, their end of childhood becomes in at least one way an extinction. Milo, who stowed away an Overlord ship to see what their homeworld was like, returned to find Earth empty save for the children in a vortex of power. He volunteers to watch the end from the surface. Those he begged to remember us at the prologue turn out to be Karellen and another of his race--who, as the Earth itself begins to disintigrate, long more than anything to give Milo some comfort, to ease his passing.
I enjoyed it very much. I didn't care that it didn't follow every detail of the novel. I didn't care the script didn't meticulously answer all sorts of questions the author of the book took such pains to ask. It succeeds on its own terms, as itself. (Honestly, if you need to read the book in order to "get" a dramatization how good can that adaptation be?)
What did anyone else think?
S P O I L E R S D O F O L L O W
In essence we see the alien ships arrive, and the voice of Karellen, who calls himself the Supervisor for Earth, speaks to the world. He assures everyone they mean no harm, please do not be afraid. We are not invaders but helpers, for we are going to help you achieve all your fondest dreams. No more war, no poverty or crime or injustice, a healthy environment, an end to disease, etc.
Almost immediately the visitors/invaders are dubbed the Overlords. In part because they will not show themselves.
Here a bit of comparison might be in order. Karellen in the book uses the Secretary General of the UN as his mouthpiece, but in the miniseries he persuades a farmer with a great gift for negotiation. Someone whom others trust. Their relationship proves more personal and frankly frought with drama than in the book. This highlights differences between the two media--literary versus dramatic. One can address broad issues of the whole world, whereas the other requires a strong emotional commitment to the characters first and foremost (in theory this need not be positive--Hannibal Lecter remains fascinating, for example, but in this case we do develop affection for the 'heroes'). So instead of answering all the scientific questions that the story involves, we instead find ourselves trying to answer questions about how to feel about events.
Karellen refuses to show himself. So can we trust him? Those who oppose the Overlords automatically come across as reactionaries, sometimes violent ones at that. Yet Karellen proves himself very willing to manipulate us. This fact grows more obvious as time goes by--even as all the Overlords' promises come true.
Then we finally see Karellen himself. Tall. Red. With hooves, horns, a tail and huge bat wings. An image of evil. Whose first words when we see him are "Hello. Please do not be afraid."
But we also know from the very first shot this doesn't end well. Because that is when we meet Milo, a crippled boy when the Overlords arrive but a fully grown man on a ruined Earth in the prologue. The last human being alive. Begging someone to remember the human race. We don't deserve to be forgotten.
Again, this story focused on the individual, the personal story involving hopes and fears of a handful rather than a multitude. Exposition came only in the form of personal communication between people asking about things, for reasons that mattered to them rather than because the script needed somebody to do a data-dump at that point. We don't learn about New Athens--a community of those who reject the Overlords' gifts--via a news broadcast or someone arguing politics. Just a couple debating whether to move there, to where there's still crime and even some disease. But where artists still create.
Each of the three episodes feels quite different, which frankly must be deliberate, and in keeping with the tale of bittersweet maturity. A sense of real paranoia grows in the second night, as we learn for certain the Overlords do indeed have a secret agenda, one somehow tied up in an unborn child. Then, in the third act, we learn the Overlords are mere servants of something they call the Overmind, a kind of consciousness of the universe itself. It seems some races ascend, their children uniting and becoming eventually part of that Overmind. Others, like the Overlords, do not. But of course for the former, their end of childhood becomes in at least one way an extinction. Milo, who stowed away an Overlord ship to see what their homeworld was like, returned to find Earth empty save for the children in a vortex of power. He volunteers to watch the end from the surface. Those he begged to remember us at the prologue turn out to be Karellen and another of his race--who, as the Earth itself begins to disintigrate, long more than anything to give Milo some comfort, to ease his passing.
I enjoyed it very much. I didn't care that it didn't follow every detail of the novel. I didn't care the script didn't meticulously answer all sorts of questions the author of the book took such pains to ask. It succeeds on its own terms, as itself. (Honestly, if you need to read the book in order to "get" a dramatization how good can that adaptation be?)
What did anyone else think?
