Parallels

2015, Christopher Leone (writer for The Lost Room) -- Netflix

Getting it out of the way, Parallels is the new age Sliders. Its a show, and I will stick to calling it a show even if its only a pilot presented on Netflix as a movie. This show is produced by Fox Digital Studio, the imprint that just about every big media studio now needs. Finally, they are getting it and breaking ground in new forms of production and distribution. Even if they don't fully get it, at least the attempt is there. But the model is still evolving so I will forgive that.

So, Sliders. Parallel worlds. For each and every possibility, every choice we make, each choice anyone makes, there is a world. So, it might be as simple as New Coke was a success. Or it might be as drastic as the Americans won the war of 1812 and we are (*shriek*) just another bunch of states. Now imagine you can travel from one to the other. That is the basic premise of any parallel world fiction. Sliders had them swooping down tubes of energy, desperately trying to get home. Parallels uses a building that exists in all worlds. Yes, a Tanelorn or Well of Many Worlds. A building is the portal to all the alternate worlds, existing in all realities, no matter how different they are. This will be interesting should they go to one where technology never went past medieval.

Ronan and Beatrix are two siblings brought back together by a mysterious message from their father. This message leads them to said building where they are almost immediately sent to a world destroyed by nuclear holocaust, one that may or may have not been caused by their father. Conflict, mistrust and mysterious secondary characters are introduced pretty decently for a non-big studio production. Its not quite Lost in its weirdness and confusion but there are references to high technology and legacies mixed with a slight possibility of the main characters actually returning to their home reality.

I loved it. But I also loved his The Lost Room, which dealt with a weird never changing hotel room and the magical items created when you removed an item from the room. It plays on my love of the multiverse, alternate realities and the ability to travel to them. The acting is decent enough and the story is more solid than many shows actually being aired right now -- think Olympus if you have seen it, much to my pity for you.

I desperately need this to make it to regular series status. Hopefully enough views on Netflix will influence such.  Hint hint.

Graig also rather enjoyed it.