Outcasts: After the Apocalypse, Will We Change?

By Angela Roberts

June 22, 2011

outcasts

On Saturday, June 18th, a new show premiered on Space Channel here in Canada; Outcasts, a program imported from the UK about a group of colonists in the year 2040 awaiting the arrival of what might be the last transport ship to ever arrive from Earth. The show ran for eight episodes on the BBC before being cancelled due to low ratings, and after making it to DVD, has premiered now in North America. It’s not surprising that the show suffered from low ratings; not because it’s bad (I think it’s quite good) but because of a poor reception. I had no idea it had even existed until I was re-watching episodes of Sanctuary this weekend; the Videotron Guide (our cable provider) had the show listed as Outcasts: A Love Story, the story of a Christian man and a Jewish woman who fall in love during the Second World War. Not at all what it actually was. Thinking this was an odd choice for Space, I simply flipped down the guide till I found something else, and thus had no idea what I was missing till I got the opportunity to watch the real show on the network’s website. It might have helped if there had been any real promotion so that I might have been forewarned. So, when I did finally get to see it, I immediately thought that this was something worth blogging about.

The premise of the series seems to be this: For ten years, the colonists of Carpathia have been awaiting more survivors of an Earth ravaged by nuclear war. The pioneer town of Forthaven is led by President Tate (Liam Cunningham) and his Head of Protection and Security, Stella Isen (Hermione Norris). Tate is a charismatic, world-weary, caring leader who inspires loyalty in his PAS officers, the police force of the settlement. But there is dissent in the colony; Mitchell Hoban (Jamie Bamber), leader of the Expeditionaries, the men and women who venture out to explore the world, plans to secede with his group and form his own society. The colony’s youth, too young to remember the hardships of flight and colonization, chafe under Tate’s authoritarian rule. Stella is heartbroken and adrift, pining for her lost husband and daughter, who she left behind to set out on this desperate colonization mission. And there are all sorts of secrets running through and lying underneath this society and its citizens, secrets that no doubt will figure greatly and probably would be better explored if the series had survived its first season.

So, one day, one ship arrives in Carpathian space; one ship that might be the last ship ever. Landing on Carpathia isn’t easy, and the ship is suffering from some heat shield damage, just to make it worse. Mitchell Hoban returns, ready to strike out, only to discover that his wife has been spying on him for the authorities. He attacks her, leaves her for dead, assaults Tate, and escapes to the wilderness with his son. PAS officers Fleur (Amy Manson) and Cass (Daniel Mays – someone who those who love BBC shows will instantly recognize) are hot on his trail, having got his second-in-command to roll over on him after he commits murder. And through all this drama, the ship attempts to make repairs and land safely. On the ship are two passengers of note, Lily Isen (Stella’s daughter) and Julius Berger, a head of the evacuation program who will no doubt cause problems for Tate and Isen later on.

I think it’s fair to say that the people who gave this show dismal reviews, and you can read them all on the show’s Wikipedia page, probably said the same things about Caprica and BSG and SGU. The show is heavy on the drama of relationships between people in a hostile, alien environment, and less about straight action. It’s also fairly morally ambiguous, allowing the viewer to form their own opinion of who’s right and who’s wrong. From the very beginning, you can see a grand storyline developing, which will probably make watching the eighth and final episode all the more painful. I don’t think I ever felt bored or not drawn in to the story or characters. The acting is superb, the dialogue works, and I found the plot pretty engaging. It’s not like there was no action; it was just secondary. And people who put down shows like this one, and the others I mentioned, no offense, just don’t get it. They don’t get how SF can be character-driven; they don’t get that a story can be slow and yet still capture your interest.

My favourite part was the speech that Tate makes to the frightened shipbound colonists. It was well-written, fabulously delivered, and beautifully shot and edited. Words, texts, are powerful symbols in the show. Hoban’s son, Linus, repeats over and over the William Blake poem, “The Tiger,” and is absolutely obsessed with tigers, something he’s never seen and likely never will. It’s little bits of symbolism like this that elevate the show beyond simple entertainment.

Now that I know where to find it, I will definitely be watching the rest of this show’s run. It reminds me a bit of Earth 2, another post-apocalyptic colonist show that ran for only one season before being cancelled. I loved that show. Like Earth 2 and many other much-maligned quality SF shows (Firefly), Outcasts will find new life in syndication and on DVD. So, don’t sit around. Catch up on the first episode and watch it on your network. Shows like Outcasts deserve viewers.

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