Big Worlds On Small Screens: Rebecca Fisher Discusses “The Others”
~ by Rebecca Fisher
Introduction:
I’ll admit to having a fascination with failed projects: shows that were promising enough to get on the air, but which lacked that special something to ensure their continued survival. I’ve touched on some of these in the past, such as Roar and Sinbad, and The Others serves as another example of a show that was cancelled after its first season and so consigned to relative obscurity.
(So obscure in fact, that I was only able to find two pictures for this article).
Airing in 2000, The Others was the brainchild of John Brancato and Michael Ferris, one not to be confused with the 2001 Nicole Kidman film of the same name, or the bad guys on Lost. With only thirteen episodes in total, The Others was a dark and intriguing supernatural procedural, following a group of psychics and their dealings with the Other Side.
Premise:
Marian Kitt (Julianne Nicholson) is in her first year at college, struggling with her studies by day and suffering from nightmares at night. It’s obvious that her problems run deeper than indecisiveness over which courses she should take, and her roommate is getting increasingly frustrated by her erratic behaviour.
Marian has had strange experiences with the paranormal all her life, but only now has she been found by a group of fellow psychics, each with unique gifts of their own. Calling themselves The Others, their leader Elmer Greentree (Bill Cobbs) promises to help her learn to control her abilities and use them for the greater good.
But (as he puts it) once she looks into the Other Side, the Other Side will look back at her. Across the course of the first and only season there are multiple hints that a dark force is moving in on the group, finding the chinks in each member’s armour and exploiting them accordingly.
Plot:
Coming on the heels of The X-Files, the show served as a precursor to the likes of Supernatural and Sleepy Hollow, following their storytelling structure by combining week-by-week cases with an underlying plot that reached its climax in the final episode.
Best described as a paranormal procedural, it dealt with all kinds of supernatural phenomena, from haunted wallpaper to investigating Jack the Ripper; from benign spirits with unfinished business to a strange dark entity that was only ever identified as “the Unnamed”.
The show’s greatest strength was its atmosphere, with an air of foreboding in every frame and the ability to make even innocuous objects seem sinister. It could get genuinely scary at times, though strangely beautiful as well – for instance, journeys to the Other Side were shot underwater and in slow motion, giving hair and clothing a strange diaphanous quality.
Throughout it all, Marian gradually comes to grips with her abilities and forges lasting relationships with the rest of the members of The Others.
Characters:
Unfortunately, this was where the show faltered. With the exception of Marian and Elmer Greentree, who establish a warm mentor/protégé bond, the cast of characters just doesn’t pop.
Each member of The Others has a unique metaphysical gift: Mark is a medical student with empathetic abilities, Alfred is a war veteran who gained a heightened sixth sense after losing his sight in Vietnam, Satori is a commercial psychic who uses New-Age paraphernalia to communicate with the dead, and Warren is a nervy drifter who interprets random “signs” around him to find answers to the group’s questions. Rounding things out is Miles, a professor of folklore and mythology who records and organizes the group’s activities.
From left: Miles, Elmer, Marian, Mark and Satori
They all sound good on paper, but none of them are hugely interesting or even likeable – often coming across as creepy, grumpy, deceitful or all three. Mark is meant to be an empath, but at their first meeting he ends up taking Marian down an industrial tunnel where two children were murdered just to see if she’ll sense their violent deaths (she does, and it’s harrowing).
Many of them are superfluous to most of the storylines, and without that strong group dynamic it’s difficult to get invested in their lives.
Conclusion:
Perhaps the timing was wrong for The Others. With the current interest in supernaturally-themed procedurals, there’s every chance it would have been a hit if it had only aired a few years later. As it is, the season ends on a fairly drastic cliff-hanger with no indication of how things would have turned out for our characters if the show had been renewed.
Since then several of the actors have gone on to bigger things – and it’s amusing that among them is none other than Zachary Quinto (now best known as Spock in the Star Trek reboot) who appears here in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment.
Despite everything, The Others got under my skin. It’s wonderfully atmospheric, genuinely frightening, and with plenty of good ideas buried throughout its thirteen-episode run.
Next Time:
The countdown is officially on for the opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so I decided to revisit Star Wars: Clone Wars, the animated shorts that detail some of the material that got left out of the prequel trilogy.
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About The Reviewer:
Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her They’re All Fictional blog.
To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on:
Big Worlds On Small Screens
Rebecca won this year’s Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Fan Writer, for writing including Big Worlds On Small Screens.