Alphas, “Pilot”
Air Date: Monday, July 11 at 10 p.m. EST
Network: SyFy
Slice of SciFi Rating: 2.5 out of 5.0
On the surface, Syfy’s new summer series Alphas feels an awful lot like a clone of NBC’s Heroes. Ordinary people with extraordinary abilities are brought together to fight evil. But dig a bit deeper and you’ll see that, well, the show really is a lot like Heroes, only this time instead of fighting against a mysterious governmental agency, our elite team is a special branch of the Department of Defense.
Led by Dr. Lee Rosen, the series starts out with four of the five member team in place. There’s Bill Harken, a man who can channel extraordinary strength, Gary Bell who is autistic and can see electromagnetic signals all around him, Nina Theroux, who can bend the will of those around her and Rachel Prizard, a woman who can isolate one of her five senses and trace clues back to their original source. In the pilot, we meet Cameron Hicks, a new potential member of the team who has hyperkinetic abilities.
For the first installment, the team is called into investigate a locked-room murder mystery with a twist. The victim was being interviewed by the police when a bullet suddenly struck and killed him. At first it appears Hicks is the long assassin, but the team’s investigation uncovers something greater is going on—not only with the murder mystery but also for the entire series as a whole.
Wisely, the pilot starts with most of the team already established and quickly introduces viewers to the characters and universe through Hicks. We’re spared a lot of heavy-lifting in terms of exposition, which would be well and good if the pilot actually focused on making the characters interesting as people and not as “oh look, there’s the girl who can bend the will of other people.” Perhaps future installments will delve more into who these people are.
The biggest problem with the pilot is the sense that we’ve seen all of this before. Rosen feels like a thinly veiled new version of Professor X from the X-Men comics and movies and beyond Gary’s power to see electromagnetic signals around him, nothing feels new, different or interesting from the power standpoint. Again, future episodes could delve more into the powers, their uses and limitations as the series goes along.
Also, Alphas’ attempt to introduced a long-term arc feels a bit heavy-handed.
That’s not to say the show is entirely terrible. It has flashes of potential throughout and hopefully the series will pick up on these and expand them in future installments. As a pilot, Alphas has a lot of heavy lifting to do. The problem is that the heavy-lifting isn’t done in the most interesting or compelling way. The characters, potential stories and universe have a lot of potential and the pilot did leave me interested enough to give the series a pass on my DVR to check back in on the first three or four episodes.
I’ll pass. After Stargate Universe there is not much use watching SyFy for an ongoing series. Why read a book if you only can get half of it?
With that attitude, no show will ever work. If you don’t watch, it doesn’t get ratings, it doesn’t sell ads and it gets cancelled. If you’re not watching because you think it will be cancelled, chances are you’re probably right.
Gazerbeam, I almost always agree with the argument you’ve posited against James’ statement, but I have to side with him on this. Were Alphas on any other network I would be all for supporting it, but Syfy has done everything it can to alienate its core audience. Having done that I feel completely justified in abandoning all their programming and hoping the majority do the same so that hopefully Syfy will become just a bad memory. That would make room for others to hopefully fill the void, and if it doesn’t then at least we’re rid of the insulting attitudes of Syfy’s executives. I, like many others, are just waiting for Syfy to go off the air so I might stand in unison with other true fans of science fiction and applaud the demise of this Trojan horse, this abomination, of what was once a great network for science fiction. Good riddance.
I haven’t abandoned SyFy…Eureka is one of my favorites and have every intention of watching its new season however since I’m completely hooked on Teen Wolf I’ll have to pass on trying out Alphas since they occupy the same time slot. What I’ve heard about it hasn’t appealed that much to me anyway.
To those who won’t watch because of a bad feeling toward SyFy for past transgressions, this is what we call a self-fulfulling prophecy. I would caution against it. Had we all stopped tuning into Fox after their really atrocious handling of Firefly we would not currently be enjoying the genius of Fringe.
I’m with James and ParasailPete. I used to turn my TV on to channel 122 (Dish SyFy), but no more. I don’t even stop on SyFy to watch Star Trek anymore. SyFy can die a long slow death or a quick one, I don’t care. I won’t be watching.
I just saw it… It was good enough to make me want to watch more. Far better than the cape and ordinary family.
I thought is was fairly pedestrian but that’s kind of geige issue from SyFy, not great, not awful. Although there were moments of intrigue there were a number of turly egregious mis-representations that threw me out of the show from time to time including their ‘homage’ to memorable X-files ep Blood and the show’s embarassingly made up definitions for the real world conditions of Synesthesia and Hyperkinesis. Toronto looked good, though.
I thought it was OK for what it was. It also reminded me of a show I watched for maybe half a season back when I was a kid in the early 80’s about a group of people with special powers that had a couple of scientists that took care of them. It’s all a little fuzzy. I remember 1 tall black guy who was one of the scientist who could shrink and the other scientist was, in real life, I think a famous actors son. I believe he was killed in an Air Force Reserve flight training accident. Strange I can remember that but not the show or the actor. I want to say he was a Van Patton or a Van Dyke or someone like that.
That tv show was called “Misfits of Science” and I used to watch it as well when I was a kid. Courtney Cox played the girl with telekinesis…I thought I was the only person in the world that remembered that show…lol
Never mind, found it. Dean Martin’s son….
Misfits of Science
I’ve decided to never watch any show live as it airs ever again. I will always watch them off the DVR. The only way networks will change their current ratings/business model is if enough people stop watching live and start time shifting all of their viewing. Then they will have to adopt to our viewing habits or become extinct. Sure, a few good shows could end up being casualties in a war like that, but in the long run, I think we as viewers will be way better off with a ratings model that favors the viewer rather than the networks. I strongly encourage everyone to time shift all your viewing if possible.
If only this were true. I have been time shifting since the VCR first came out and it has not helped yet.
The reason it’s not working is because not enough viewers are jumping on the bandwagon. If the majority of viewers did it, I believe it would work.
@Mike H: I’ve been DVR time-shifting since Jan 2000 when I bought my first Tivo but I don’t think it matters one tiny bit unless you are a Nielsen “family”.
I don’t think anything matters (viewing live with commercials, viewing next day with or without commercials, viewing 2 weeks later) unless you are a Nielsen family.
Imagine though if 80% or 90% of viewers started time shifting all their viewing. Those are numbers the networks would have to acknowledge & adapt to. Right now, not nearly enough people time shift to make a difference, but it has to start somewhere.
I just watched the first episode a couple of night ago, and while it was by no means perfect, it was still written better than most of the episodes from Heroes. In fact, I would daresay that this is the show that Heroes was supposed to be!
It’s still on the 6 episode probation period, but I generally like what I’ve seen so far and am hopeful that it will only improve from here on out.
So far so bad, I was not impressed as we have been here before. I will give it time to see if it gets better but this type of show is not my cup of tea so to speak. It seem very formulaic and it seemd like they tried to rush in too many characters all in one episode. The characters themselves seem like your run of the mill personalities. The angry black man, the anxious nerdy kid with no respect etc etc.
As to SYFY failing if you look at the stations ratings you will see that the crap they put on is actually making their audience grow. All their reality crap and their brain numbing Sat movies seem to work. Ycu can thank the mindless American viewing audience for not wanting to think about anything and just watch the reality crap- Really- Quantam Kitchen??? This sounds like science but in fact is junk with a flare and do not even get me started on Wrestling.
I too hope eventually they will come back to their roots but I am not expecting it. I am expecitng the SCI-FI portion to continue to shrink especially if this ia all they have left now. Even if you watch all 3 shows on Mndays; big deal you get 10 days oout of 182 or so with something good on due to thier short seasons. Just when they are getting good they stop and then call it season 4.5
At this point I do not care what happens to SYFY channel as I get used to not seeing Eureka and WHS 13, Haven and Alphas are only so good I would not miss them.
I was not thrilled with the Alphas TV show, quite mediocre and boring. I thought the cast of characters did not blend well and they were annoying. The tv shows like Heroes, Santuary, Warehouse 13, Leverage, Fringe, Torchwood plus other shows are superior in imagination, character casting and writing. I would rather see the new tv show Three Inches, there cast sounds like an excellent match. I also would like for the three Inches show to be the originally planned 1 hour show. I read it would be reduced to a 1/2 hour show, which is a big mistake. Haven’t heard when the Three Inches tv show will be viewed. Maybe they should bring back Joss Whedon to write new tv shows. There’s a talented guy who has imagination and originality.
Di