Flash Forward pilot script – CliqueClack review – Guest Clack

Ivey West is back Guest-clacking for us again this week….

Imagine a two minute glimpse into your future: Where are you and what are you doing…? Most importantly, who are you doing it with? Having a dinner with your wife? Watching the news? Reading Keith’s post about the BSG finale (can someone let me know if the Earth they found is the ‘real’ Earth?)?

Flash Forward, a new series being developed by David Goyer (Threshold, The Dark Knight) and Brannon Braga (Enterprise) for ABC, examines just that flight of fancy, writ large. The series, which is based on a novel by Robert J. Sawyer, has not been slated yet and is still putting together its cast. Just a reminder, that the following script review is filled with spoilers, including some for the novel.
In one moment, every person on the planet blacks out and experiences “memories” of six months in the future. When they come to, however, society finds that everyone losing consciousness for two minutes has disastrous consequences: planes crash, cars pile up, and people simply fall down stairs. The script follows FBI Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes – Shakespeare in Love, The Escapist) and the very beginnings of the investigation of the Flash Forward. Benford’s flash involves shadowy figures closing in on him while he works the case. His wife, Dr. Olivia Benford (Sonya Wagner – Lost, Tell Me You Love Me) finds herself in the arms of a lover she has never met. His partner, Dominick Witten (John Cho – Harold and Kumar, Star Trek), experiences nothing, which he believes means that he’ll be dead in six months.

Based on the novel, and what I had heard about the series, one of the most important themes will be the question of predestination: Now that they’ve seen the future, can they change it? Benford, a recovering alcoholic, found himself with a drink. Does the knowledge of what could be give the characters a change to change what will be?

Several things were (smartly) changed from the source material. The novel followed the lives of the European-based partical physicists that may (or may not) have caused the flash-forward (because there’s nothing like a prime-time show about a partical physicists … you know, other than the Big Bang Theory). The future viewed in the novel is 40 years in the future; in the series its the week before May Sweeps (Coincidence? Doubt it). There is one interesting carry-over, however, in that the father of a boy that Olivia treats in the aftermath (and, its implied, is the man she sees in the future) has the same name of the novel’s main character, Lloyd Simcoe (Jack Davenport – Swingtown, Pirates of the Caribbean), who, I assume, is involved with the “why” of the flashes.

The pilot, in my eyes, falls a little flat. It does a decent enough job in setting up the first season (Goyer has reportedly mapped out five seasons), but in an episode that will see a global event and and catastrophe, it really doesn’t feel like much happens. The script was originally written for HBO, but will now be on ABC. I believe the script I read was for cable, and thus will see some rewrites. They focus just a little too much on Benford’s alcoholism, something that would be better served touched on in the pilot and explored more down the road. The relationship between Olivia, Lloyd, and Lloyd’s son Dylan, both in the present and in the future, needs to be cleaned up a little so it’s easier understood.

The source material was good, and the concept is interesting. There have been few things that Goyer has been involved with that haven’t been outstanding (OK, so the exception was the Blade TV series … which, in my mind, never happened, so I’m still golden). They are putting together a talented cast (also includes Courtney B. Vance (Law and Order: CI, ER)), and the show will likely air with Lost. They have some work to do to meet the potential this show has.

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Jan 07, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT