SyFy's Helix Season 1 (1 Viewer)

[NeilO]

Mind = Blown

I didn't see almost any of that coming but it effectively sets up a very, very different kind of show for season 2. We've now went from a SciFi medical drama to a very X-Files esque conspiracy and one man on a branch trying to sort it out.. talk about a huge, huge shift.

I'm sure there will be some who don't go for it, but I loved everything about the finale

Seeing Day 235 at the beginning was quite a surprise. I wonder if they had an alternative finale in case they weren't picked up - without the Day 235 and possibly just leaving the base?

An amazing body count in the series as a whole. I wonder how many survived the base blast.

Major surprises in the finale
1) Peter having smuggled the virus off the base before the series even started and working with Ilaria. [I am guessing that they contained and cured the mess in Peru in the intervening days. ]
2) the final scene with Julia, now as chairman of the board?

It will be interesting to see where they go from here. Somehow I don't think they have the whole of the next season planned out yet.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I was surprised by the Day 235 as well. I'd read an interview with Ronald D. Moore where he stated that each episode would be one day, so that each 13 episode season would be roughly two weeks of story time, and bigger time jumps between seasons. So I expected a jump between Season 1 and Season 2, but I didn't expect the flash forwards. The best reveal of the finale was that this whole outbreak started when Peter got infected trying to smuggle the virus out in the first place. Great way of bringing things full circle, and having him in Ilaria's pocket changes everything.

It'll be interesting to see if next season starts on Day 235, or Starts on 227 or something and catches up to Day 235, or starts on Day 452 when everything's changed again. Lots of gaps to fill in. We didn't see what happened to Sarah in the future, we don't know what (if anything) caused Julia to switch allegiances. We don't know Alan knows that Peter's playing him. We don't know how they all got back to civilization.

As much as the remote arctic base was a key selling point for the show, I'm glad the show's presumably going to get back out into the world for season two. They took the arctic base as far as they could and mined it for its dramatic potential.

 

[dana martin]

day 30, he tries to warn the US Government and starts the search for Jules

 

[JediFonger]

brilliant series! love it!

but imagine this (a bit of fanfic): hitake is the same character from Lost! imagine if Ilayara and Dharma were all one and the same ccraziness!!!

BTW Jules said Hitake was around since 1500s. when was that communicated to her or how did she learn that? i don't recall anyone revealing that yet it seemed a bit out of the blues. but i may have missed something.

 

[Stan]

Is this really worth the time? I recorded all the episodes, started a mini-marathon yesterday, up through episode five.
Very slow moving and rips off a lot of plot twists from other films. I see pieces of "Alien/Aliens, The Thing, Outbreak, The Andromeda Strain and others". Seems like it could have easily been a three-part mini-series, really dragging the story out.Does it get better? Worth watching the other eight episodes?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The last four episodes or so are much faster paced than the first eight or nine. I think episode five was right around when I was considering dropping it, too.

 

[mattCR]

It starts off as a bit of a slow boil but really gets going in the last half. What helps this series is that some of the payoff in the last few episodes addresses things brought up in the first few quite well.

 

[Stan]

The last four episodes or so are much faster paced than the first eight or nine. I think episode five was right around when I was considering dropping it, too.

Thanks Adam (and Matt). I'll finish the series. FF through the mega-commercials, will probably only take another five hours or so.

 

[DaveF]

I finished Helix today, watching the last four episodes the past two weeks. I thought it started great and finished weak. I'm not sure I care about season 2.I was excited at the start. The beginning of a new mythology is always fun. And it had some new quirks that made it fresh. I especially liked the ironic music; the elevator music for the title sequence was jarring and unsettling against the stark terror of Antarctic viral outbreak. But this musical ploy fizzled about halfway through the season, losing impact and becoming a pointless gimmick. And that left the show with a poor theme song that doesn't fit it at all. The emotional aspects left me completely bewildered at the end. Hatake, I completely lost any belief in as a character. As a mysterious upper-echelon player in Ilaria, both conniving and manipulated, I liked and accepted him. Even as an inscrutable liar, I could accept him. His ability to look Danial / Meeksa in the eyes and tell him he needed him to survive the vectors, and then blithely walk past the vectors, silver eyes glowing, was perplexing but fit the idea of psychopath. But Hatake as loving father to Julia, "adoptive" father of Daniel, and mourning husband -- doing everything only because his wife was hostage -- I found impossible to accept. He was everything, and so became nothing to me. Just a meaningless character void to spout dialog in his cryptic cadence.I might have tolerated that, but the cumulative toll from the other characters pushed me over the edge. Peter becomes a viral vector, nearly dies, is resurrected, becomes an uber vector, and is finally cured. There is zero reaction. No consequence. Why isn't he irate at Ilaria and torn over his allegiance? Why isn't there some mixed gratitude towards Alan? Julia seems oblivious to Peter being back amongst the living.Julia makes Sarah immortal. Nothing. Just a moment's school-girl giddiness over being a perpetually hot 20-something.A pouty 15 year old boy who is supposed to be the most murderous murderer of all the Ilaria murderers. Bored now.Oh, and Peter works for Ilaria. What? Why? After being vectorized, why would he continue? I'm lost on this.And I lost track of the basic story. There's a Narvik that sprouts uncontrollably as a crystalline entity from a Petri dish. There's a Narvik that turns mice and monkeys into monsters. There's a Narvik that makes people sick and die. There's a Narvik that makes them into heat-seeking vectors. And there's a Narvik that makes at least one human into an uber Vector, with seemingly telepathic control of the others. And there's an anti-Narvik that cures human vectors. There's also the silver-eyes gene that cures all, and would seem to provide an easier route to getting a Narvik cure, if anyone had bothered fiddling with it.And Ilaria wanted and didn't want the CDC there to find the cure.And Ilaria did not have and did have human-vector Narvik outside the Arctic facility. I feel like I know less than when the show started. The characters make less sense to me now than at the beginning. The show lost me.

 

[DaveF]

And I'll add that my guess midway was that Ilaria wanted a virus that created a subjugate class of people. But the virus had the nasty side effect of killing them, or turning them into mindless vectors. All the business about plagues and cures was to be red herring over perfecting it and its delivery mechanism.I liked that more than it being face value, a nasty-virus / zombie / resident evil story.

 

[Stan]

I finished Helix today, watching the last four episodes the past two weeks. I thought it started great and finished weak. I'm not sure I care about season 2.

Dave, complete 180 compared to me. I thought it started terribly, almost gave up, but it ended really well. Apparently well enough for a second season.

Kind of like "Falling Skies" and "Under the Dome", I'm guessing we'll be waiting almost a year for the next season.

 

[mattCR]

Yeah, I had the opposite reaction. I thought it began slow and then really hit a stride as it got going, and I like that it has moved into an open world future for season 2.

 

[DaveF]

I was surprised that everyone else loved it I enjoy inscrutable mythos when good characters anchor it. But if I struggle with the basic relationships, I lose interest in the complex plot. Helix had a fantastically unexpected irony and the core of a good story. Delights like "The White Room" thrilled. And the turn by Jeri Ryan was fun. But the characters and relationships lost me in the final third. Hatake and Peter turned into inchoate assemblies of inconsistent behaviors. The interactions between Alan, Hatake, Sarah, and Daniel become unrelatable: 'contrived scifi writing' rather than 'humans with emotions'. I will probably try Season 2 next year. There's a dearth of good scifi on TV, and I still hope Helix can excel.

 

[JediFonger]

ron moore is amazing he has the golden touch currently

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Season two trailer:[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUHdPxqu3jg[/media]

 

[JediFonger]

nice. i love it!

 

[DaveF]

I'm mixed. Helix started falling apart for me in the latter third. But there's appeal in the story moving outside the Arctic and into the greater world.