Day Eighty-Six: You've Got A Gift; I Can Tell By Looking
Super-heroes have had a bit of a rum time of it on the telly, at least as far as live-action shows are concerned. The terrible spectre of the 1960s Batman show casts a long shadow, and the Littlest Hobo riff of the Lou Ferrigno Hulk series is, for many people, an indelible impression of the character, for better or worse (hint: worse). The 1970s also brought us the dreadful live-action Spider-Man show, starring the youngest boy out of the Sound of Music, and the 1990s gave us a double-header of mediocre at best DC shows in the form of Lois & Clark and the Flash. Most recently, Marvel’s latest attempt to stake out some terrestrial territory turned to ashes when the Blade TV series was brought to light (sorry, everyone).
It looks like the only way to make a successful superhero TV show is to get it in under the radar – no codenames, no costumes, no branding. The 4400 was the first series to give this a go, but it’s a bit of an acquired taste, and when a show takes two seasons to get going it’s probably not going to set the world on fire (or stretch it, make it invisible or clobber it). The other major superhero show which has been steadily building its audience in the US, and which arrived on UK screens last night, is the rather succinctly named “Heroes” (American readers, this is all old hat to you, so you can come back tomorrow when I'll be talking about something else).
Heroes follows the stories of a disparate group of individuals, who for better or worse have developed superhuman powers. There’s Nikki, a single mum who strips for webcams to make ends meet, and who discovers that she has a murderous mirror double who takes great joy in doling out punishment to anyone she thinks deserves it. There’s Isaac, a smackhead artist whose paintings depict scenes from the future every time he gets high. There’s the aptly-named Hiro, a Japanese devotee of science fiction and comics whose powers of control over space and time fill him with joy. There’s Claire, a suicidal cheerleader whose superhuman healing factor foils her at every Chuck Jones-inspired attempt. So on, so forth, etc.
What all of these characters have in common isn’t clear at this stage – some of them seem to be linked by mutual friends or acquaintances, but at the moment that appears to be more of a device to get them to interact than any deliberate plot-related point, although you never can tell. The first inklings of the first season’s arc plot comes near the end of the pilot, where it’s revealed that one of Isaac’s paintings depicts New York with a gigantic mushroom cloud rising out of it in a hellish rage of black and red. It’s not a massive stretch to guess that the cast, of whom only a few have even met each other at this point, are going to have to band together in some way to prevent this from happening. The reason for the impending nuclear doom isn’t obvious yet, but it’s a fair bet that where there are superheroes, there has to be at least one supervillain…
The touchpoints for Heroes are obvious – the X-Men are the
one which springs to mind immediately. Not just because we’ve got
Nightcrawler-San and Buffy Wolverine, but because a lot of the characters
clearly don’t feel like their powers are any kind of blessing; most of those
whom we’ve encountered as of the end of the pilot, in fact, feel like they’ve
been cursed. Seeing how they unite – if indeed they do – and how they come to
terms with their powers looks like it’s going to be at least as interesting as
the actual main kaboom-focussed plot. We’re also going to be treated to a turn
by Northern Doctor Christopher Eccleston and Star Trek alumnus George Takei later in the season, just to tickle
that nerd funnybone a little. The show's official site is also commendably thorough, and features exclusive Heroes comics which tie in with the ongoing stories.
It’s not without flaws, of course – some of the protagonists have powers which are a smidgen too close to existing comic book characters, there’s a heck of a lot of chatting going on and the various leads are going to have to be fleshed out a bit from the broad-strokes archetypes they fall into at the moment, but the advance word from the US is that these problems are minimised as the season goes on, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops. As long as the eventual fight scenes don’t feature big graphics which say “BIFF!” “POW!” or “BANG!”, I’ll be happy.
