Outcasts

I'm totally annoyed that Spooks, one of the most interesting and absorbing BBC spy dramas, which finished its current season a few weeks back (sob, down-turned mouth & other facial expressions to relay disappointment) was replaced by the innocuous Outcasts, an eight part British television series that promised in the first episode to be a 'must see' science fiction series (well, for me at least it was because Ros Myers (Hermoine Morris) from Spooks is the primary female protagonist) has already deteriorated into turgid nonsense. But apart from that, there are a few things that just really get under my skin. Set in the year 2040 earthlings have escaped a post-apocalyptic scenario back on Earth and traveled five years to the planet Carpathia, so why does Carpathia look exactly like Earth and why are the inhabitants of this planet dressed in clothing, circa 2011? Couldn't they have made an imaginative leap and at least tried to convey the notion that these earthlings are living in an alien environment and why did they have to include a baby that had to be saved and an evil leader of a religious cult? I fear salvation is going to be an issue somewhere along the line. Interesting enough the RMS Carpathia was the steamship that rescued survivors of the Titanic. What to make of this? The most consistent saying throughout episodes one to three has been that 'everything will be different here', as if moving people from planet earth to some far away place is going to resolve human behavior. It won't, because running away never solves problems - it just defers them. In the long run it's better to deal with events in the here and now because otherwise all those things you've been putting off will come back en masse and bite you on the bum! The best thing about this series is an acknowledgment that human's ARE the aliens (but even this is an old, but under-developed idea in science fiction films). Will I keep watching it? I don't know, perhaps to be fair I'll watch one more episode, let's face it, it's got to get better, because it can't get any worse!