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Episode Recap: "The Discarded"
Tonight's episode is the fourth and last of the six that were produced that ABC intends to run. (All six will be seen in Canada, at least, on the cable channel Space, starting in November). And it was the episode a number of viewers were most eager to see, I suspect, since it was based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, who has established himself as a major figure in both fantastic fiction (among other sorts of prose) and in screenwriting, as well as being responsible for some notable comics scripting and work in other media.
Apparently Ellison gave executive producer Keith Addis strong support when they resisted the attempts by ABC to call the series "Masters of Sci-Fi," which would be comparable to calling its Showtime sibling series Masters of Horror something like "Masters of Spookiness" (ABC chose to slip "scifi" into the URL for the series' pages on abc.go.com, anyway... perhaps the smallest of many hostilities the network has shown toward this project). And the story was adapted for television by Ellison and Josh Olson, best known for his excellent work in adapting the graphic novel A History of Violence for the 2005 film of the same name. Jonathan Frakes, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, directed the episode.
It's a pleasantly baroque staging of a rather simple tale of multiple betrayals. Most of the betrayed are people with unusual appearances due to their infection with a plague known as RIGM (pronounced "rig-gum") or (more insultingly) "the Blood Poo," which causes limbs or organs to undergo extreme deviation from the norm.... John Hurt's character grows an extra head, albeit a smaller one, from his shoulders. A number of these folks have been quarantined — in the manner of lepers exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai (referred to in the drama) — on poorly maintained spacecraft and left to their own increasingly dispirited, often suicidal devices.
Suddenly an emissary from Earth comes to beg for their blood, to help create a vaccine for RIGM, which has grown more virulent as it continues to plague the planet's human population; the emissary himself is infected and suffering. The deal: a trade of their blood samples for an opportunity to take up tracts of land, rather like reservations, on Earth. The de facto leader of the Discarded on this particular cargo ship is certain that the Earth government won’t honor its end of the bargain, and aggressively insists as much, till he's accidentally killed... leaving Hurt's character as the grand old man of the ship's crew, despite having killed his best friend. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the late leader's suspicions are borne out... once the Earth has the blood cultures they need, they simply exile a few more of the most "unsightly" folk to the ship, crushing the hopes of those waiting to return to Earth for the first time in years or decades.
Ellison’s early short stories are often grim and relentless, and this one, written while facing great personal hardship (including attempts by his immediate commanding officers to court-martial him for a minor infraction, living off-base without permission as a married peacetime draftee), is no exception. The latter-day Ellison's touch is most obvious in the word-drunk play with language evident in the lines given Hurt’s character, named for a most unpleasant fellow GI Ellison knew then. Hurt delivers the speeches with Shakespearean aplomb, in a good performance among many here, one that works well with Brian Dennehy’s gruff cynic and the largely Canadian supporting cast (Ellison has a cute cameo role, as well). Among those Canadian actors were a number who are in their daily lives unusual-looking due to circumstances of birth or surviving severe burns among other mishaps... they moved Ellison mightily by suggesting that they’d adopted the term "the Discarded" for themselves. (The short story was given this title in its 1959 magazine appearance by the late Cele Goldsmith, who went on from "discovering" such writers as Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch and Keith Laumer as editor of the Ziff-Davis fiction magazines Fantastic and Amazing, to become the chief editor of ZD’s bridal magazines when the publisher sold the fiction titles). Decide for yourself how many in-jokes are suggested by a character who shares the cameo scene with Ellison, an apparent teenage girl in a cheerleader’s outfit who is otherwise unusual mostly for having only one large Cyclopean eye centered above her nose; a reference to Maria Bello’s former cheerleader role in A History of Violence, to the gifted cheerleader in Heroes (rather unlikely, given when this was filmed), or to the monocular character Leela from Futurama… or any or none of the above. John Frizzell’s jazz score for the episode was impressive, seeming at one point to rework or quote another 1959 cultural product, Miles Davis’ "So What?"
And the arguable betrayal of this series by ABC wasn’t restricted only to the network’s lack of publicity or other support, but by a number of local affiliates, who particularly have been eager to preempt Masters of SF from its 10pm ET/PT slot on Saturdays in favor of local specials or sports coverage, often delaying the run till early-morning hours on Sunday. Given the (at least) interesting nature of at least three of the episodes, this seems more than a pity… but one that will presumably soon be remedied for those interested by a home-video release. And Canadians, at least, will have the option of seeing the two episodes, based on stories by Robert Sheckley and Walter Mosley, that we in the States will have to wait for.
Coming soon… a recap of the series as presented by ABC… and a consideration of the controversy surrounding the treatment of Robert Heinlein’s story by Michael Tolkin for the third episode, "Jerry Was a Man" (reflected in at least one comment here).
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Aug 26, 2007 12:40 AM
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Harumph. My local ABC affiliate in DC pre-empted the series two weeks ago for pre-season football and pre-empted again last night for the bio-pic "Ray".
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Aug 26, 2007 1:30 PM
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Sorry, Sheldon. To add insult to injury, WJLA actually did run MOSF this morning, according to their schedule...at 4-5a.
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Aug 26, 2007 6:27 PM
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This was the worst of the four episodes. A story that could have been done in about 15 minutes... bless you TiVO! A real bore. The acting was below all of the other episodes. The makeup was fair. The plot was one we've seen time and time again. I expected more.
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Aug 27, 2007 12:23 PM
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Every time there is anything resmebling thoughtful, character rich, story telling it gets... overlooked...
Q: Perhaps there wasn't enough sex and/or violence in this particular episode, eh?
Q: too many large words for the network exec's...?
Q: perhaps the reminder that there are ugly people in the world -- albeit outside of Hollywood...?
When such actors as Hurt and Denahenney choose to participate, ask yourself why...
All that you need to do is provide a tight script, time for rehearshal and allow multiple takes... cheaper sets make it all the more necessary for the actors to perform...
You don't have build elaborate sets, nor spend millions, to tell a good story. Heck, if you find yourself too scared of science fiction, there's plenty of stuff by Sam Clements (AKA: Mark Twain) and O'Henry... which is in the public domain...
*SIGH*
Howard NYC
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Aug 27, 2007 3:45 PM
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Every time there is anything resmebling thoughtful, character rich, story telling it gets... overlooked...
Q: Perhaps there wasn't enough sex and/or violence in this particular episode, eh?
Q: too many large words for the network exec's...?
Q: perhaps the reminder that there are ugly people in the world -- albeit outside of Hollywood...?
When such actors as Hurt and Denahenney choose to participate, ask yourself why...
All that you need to do is provide a tight script, time for rehearshal and allow multiple takes... cheaper sets make it all the more necessary for the actors to perform...
You don't have build elaborate sets, nor spend millions, to tell a good story. Heck, if you find yourself too scared of science fiction, there's plenty of stuff by Sam Clements (AKA: Mark Twain) and O'Henry... which is in the public domain...
*SIGH*
Howard NYC
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Aug 27, 2007 3:46 PM
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Having watched all four episodes that ABC decided to show, I can only say that I was disappointed in the series as a whole and the individual episodes. As much as I enjoy science fiction and fantasy (I consider episode 2 more fantasy than science fiction and I am not certain what category episode 1 really fits in), I found the presentations boring. They were overlong and often preachy. I wish that there truly was a TV show (probably would be on cable) that would dramatize some of the interesting SF&F short stories out there, like Serling used to do on Twilight Zone.
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Aug 27, 2007 6:39 PM
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graymatters:
Right there with you on the same page. What a wasted opportunity.
I think the 1-hour format was their downfall. Hey, I am all for long-form sci-fi. But these producers didn't have it in them. They should have stuck with 2 stories per ep. That would have helped.
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Aug 27, 2007 6:56 PM
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"The Discarded" looked good visually, but the music score was too much "Charlie Brown Xmas" for me and a total distraction to the story. Couldn't focus on what John Hurt was saying in the beginning because of it. Whoever did the music for the series, he's no John Williams that's for sure.
Is the 20 minutes of commercials normal for a 1 hr show on network TV? It wasn't perfect, but I liked the series (I liked "A Clean Escape" the best, "The Discarded" and "Jerry Was a Man" tied for 2nd, "The Awakening" the least). My main complaint is the episodes could've benefitted from more time to tell their story. The 40 minutes of actual screen time was just too short to establish characters, give detail... and I'm sure these stories all had a lot more detail that wasn't dramatized due to time contraints but would've gone a long way toward increasing viewer satisfaction. If these get released on DVD, it'll be interesting to see if the run times are closer to 60 minutes as some Masters of Horror (Showtime) episodes are.
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Aug 28, 2007 3:45 AM
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