Pilot – 1 hour
Creators: Michael Karnow and Zak Penn
*Warning Spoilers*
Broadcast on SyFy channel. IMDB describes it as Action/ Drama/ Sci-Fi/ Thriller Pg-14/ UK 15, but Common Sense media forum shows that parents say 12+ and kids 13+. X-files (Carter, 1993-2018) meets Heroes (Kring 2006-2010) as these Alphas are super-powered investigators.
The pilot begins with a teaser. A man named Hicks starts hallucinating that people are telling him it’s time to kill. The thought follows him: Almost like ‘Obey’ in They Live (Carpenter, 1988). As if by chance he finds an assault rifle. This set up leads itself to the Thriller genre with the active question asking; who is controlling him?
An ensemble cast is quickly introduced at the beginning. Along with Doc – the rich guy in charge of Alphas (60s, oddball, swims 2 miles a day, drinks weird things), there’s Don, boss of some kind, uptight, no sense of humour. FBI bloke Bill, and his doting wife (later we find he has boundary issues when he eats Rachel’s cake).
Nina is the first of the characters introduced to have a graphic introducing her name and power ‘Hyper Induction’. After her, there’s Rachel – ‘Synesthesia’. She’s young and a little anxious, shy or insecure, and Gary – ‘Transduction’. He’s good with electronics and is portrayed as typically autistic. Active question, how much do they all know about their powers?
The teaser is followed by the X-Files (Carter, 1993-2018) style, briefing scene setting it up as a ‘police procedural’ or ‘investigative thriller’. Occasionally the viewpoint is of the antagonist watching the Alphas, showing that the true antagonist is clearly manipulating Hicks, which the Alphas hint at about half way through the episode before it is revealed in the ‘big twist’ in Act 2.
When Doc interviews Hicks, he explains that Hicks has hyper-kineses and is also an Alpha. Doc mentions that some Alphas go bad/mad when they don’t have control/understanding of their powers. The active question is the morality of bad and good decisions and how these choices can have dangerous implications when made by people who don’t understand their powers.
The big chase in Act 3 to catch the bad guy, shows why the powers don’t make them all powerful. There is still room for human error. The moral choices that these investigators will be forced to make may pit them against other Alphas in order to hold up the law.
Wicks has the opportunity to see it through and trust in himself. He succeeds and achieves his desire for self-validation. The investigative mystery narrative is furthered by the antagonist’s dying comment that Wicks has picked the wrong side.
Neuro-diversity is a theme often present throughout the series, with many of the characters having diagnosis or traits. The theme of moral choices builds throughout the season, including the question of whether Alphas are a problem to be fixed, or the next stage in human evolution? There are narrative mysteries from the start and later in the season we get a sense of political thriller as more Alphas are introduced and the plot turns to how the US government is handling the situation.Overall it’s a decent attempt at an investigative thriller where the protagonists have super powers, but a little cliched and obvious at times, the evil corporation is called ‘Red Flag’. The characters aren’t as well developed in the pilot of Utopia(Kelly, 2013-2014) there are too many of them to get a feel for each protagonist in one episode. It takes until about halfway through the season, episode 5, for full characterization development.
