“The Passage” is a new sci-fi thriller that premiered on Fox this winter. After watching 2 full episodes I still can’t tell you why it’s called that. This series is based on a trilogy of novels by Justin Cronin but I’ve never heard of it before.
The premise is that a group of scientists are experimenting on vampires in order to harness their healing properties. They want to combat a Chinese avian flu that could reach the United States soon and cause massive casualties. After experimenting on a variety of death row inmates by turning them into vampires, they conclude that they can modify the virus (or whatever it is that makes you a vampire) in such a way to harness its healing properties without actually turning you into a monster. Tests revealed that the younger the test subjects, the better the process works. So the mad scientists working on this project decide that they need to experiment on a child. They go in search of an orphan whom they believe no one will miss. Posing as government officials from the CDC they take into custody a 10-year-old girl Amy Belafonte. She provides a voiceover narration as if she is telling the story of what happened to her in the past.
Mercenary Brad Wolgast is in charge of retrieving the girl but his conscience gets the better of him because she reminds him of his own young daughter who is deceased. He goes on the run with her which of course pisses off his employers who will spare no expense trying to recover him and the girl.
The idea that “the fate of the world” depends on a young child is a well-worn sci-fi theme. We’ve had “Heroes” whose tagline was “Save the cheerleader… Save the world.” Kiefer Sutherland stared in a TV series called “Touch” where he was on the run with his young daughter who had some sort of mental superpowers. At age 8 Dakota Fanning had one of her first roles as the superpowered daughter of an alien in a sci-fi miniseries called “Taken“.
The weird thing about this particular “girl upon whom the fate of the world rests” scenario is that there is nothing particularly special about this girl except for the fact that she’s an orphan and has no known relatives so she won’t be missed if we kidnap her and turn her into a vampire. The scientists have not yet got their hands on her so there’s nothing they could know about her that makes her especially suited to their devious plot. The only real reason they are going after the girl and her abductor/rescuer is they don’t want it to get out what they are doing. In the second episode one of the characters says to Brad “They are more interested in keeping you quiet then they are the little girl. They can always just get another orphan.” So even the characters in the show are admitting that the premise is kind of weak.
Amy is played by Saniyya Sidney who has recently appeared in “Fences” and “Hidden Figures“. She’s a talented young actress who handles the role well. Brad is played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar who is known for a variety of TV roles including “Franklin & Bash” and “NYPD Blue“. The only other recognizable face in the show is Henry Ian Cusick who plays one of the scientists Dr. Jonas Lear. He is most remembered for his role as Desmond Hume on “Lost” and recently was on the CW sci-fi series “The 100“.
Except for the fact that this girl is going to save the world is a rather weak set up, it’s not a bad show. You got mad scientists, secret experiments on death row inmates, creepy vampires who can project their mind into your dreams, and a cute girl and her savior on the run from the bad guys. It remains to be seen where the show is really going.
For now I’m giving it a mild rating of “I’m watching” with a sort of wait and see attitude. If you can believe the advertisements it’s getting lots of critical rave. It might be worth checking out if you like this sort of thing.