EERIE SF/PARANORMAL/STEAMPUNK: 1899

A ship steams toward destiny in Netflix's 1899.

Just before we are swamped by television’s annual flood of holiday movies and specials, you might want to take a few nights to binge something completely different. Fans of steampunk and classic mad-scientist SF, in particular, will be fascinated by 1899, an eerie psychological paranormal thriller on Netflix from the German creators of Dark.

  I’ll admit I’m only about halfway through this limited series starring an ensemble of international actors (the dialogue is delivered in German, Polish, Cantonese, Spanish, Danish, French and I’m sure I missed a few languages) led by British actor Emily Beecham, but I’m definitely hooked. It’s a bit of a slow build, I don’t mind waiting for a show to reveal itself, as long as the characters are interesting (which they are in this case—everyone seems to have a secret and/or a painful past).

The basic premise is that a shipful of European immigrants—some richer on the upper decks, some poorer in steerage—are making the trip across the Atlantic on the symbolically named Kerberos (yes, the three-headed dog that guards Hades). The captain of the mostly German crew (played by Andreas Pietschmann) and his officers remark that, 1) they are grateful they weren’t laid off when the company was bought out by a British cruise line and, 2) they are cruising at only about half capacity in passengers and with no cargo.

Aboard the ship are a mix of odd characters, including a female doctor (Beecham) who specializes in the brain and has studied medicine, but not practiced (which was common at the time for women); two gay men posing as brothers, one of them a fake priest; a madam posing as an imperious society matron; a Chinese mother and her daughter, who is destined to join the madam’s brothel as a “geisha;” a devout Danish family in steerage, the oldest brother of whom is a target for one of the rich gay men and the oldest sister of whom is pregnant; and so on.

About a third of the way into the trip, the ship receives a repeating telegraph of coordinates from a ship of the same line (the Prometheus) that has been lost for four months. There are no other details. The captain determines they must change course to check it out. (I was suddenly reminded of STAR TREK, forced to investigate a mysterious emergency distress signal in the black of space.)

Now, what we have come to understand is that both the captain and the doctor have received black-edged letters from the same anonymous source urging them to investigate the cruise line (owned by the doctor’s father) and the disappearance of the (again symbolically named) Prometheus. On the back of the envelopes was this message: What was lost will be found again. And it’s useful to know that a black-edged envelope in Victorian times meant an announcement of death.

So, despite much grumbling from passengers and crew, the Kerberos is diverted to find the Prometheus. When they get there, they discover the abandoned ship, looking very decrepit (like it’s been abandoned much longer than four months), but no bodies and no evidence of what might have happened. They discover only one survivor—a boy of about eight, locked in a cabinet (from the outside). He doesn’t speak, but hands over to the doctor a pyramid-shaped black object with markings on it. No one has a clue what it is, but immediately all the compasses on the Kerberos go haywire. If it were me, I’d toss the thing overboard, but no one ever does, do they?

Also, while the Captain and his crew (and the doctor) are searching the Prometheus, a young man (Daniel Solace, played by Aneurin Bernard) swims aboard the Kerberos from the abandoned ship, fully clothed, boots and all, and finds an empty room to hide out in. He starts releasing scarabs (another symbol of death) in the ship, why we don’t know. But, pretty soon, people start dying; the captain and the doctor start having visions; and things start going south. (The scarabs, by the way, also unlock doors and portals to other worlds.)

When contacted for orders, the cruise line insists they sink the Prometheus, which is strange enough, but the Captain refuses and makes the decision to tow it back to their port of origin. Passengers and crew are all unhappy—several of the passengers have big reasons for not going back—and the crew fear their captain has lost his mind. But the Captain just knows something is wrong about that ghost ship, and he’s determined to find out what. But a mob blames the boy for the spate of deaths on the ship, chaos leads to mutiny, and Daniel Solace turns out to hold the key to some fearsome new tech on the Kerberos.

But that’s not the end to the wild and inexplicable events on the ship. Manipulation of the new tech places the Kerberos elsewhere, miles from where it had been, back on course for America and separated from the ill-fated Prometheus. Another push of a button starts up the ticking of a spectral clock which sends most of the passengers into a zombie-like state and over the side into the ocean. It’s only much later that we discover the cause of all this may be a mad scientist behind what is a massive mind experiment.

The show has a few faults, the biggest being that Beecham’s character, Maura Franklin (the doctor), is what we in the science fiction world call a Mary Sue. She should be just another passenger—well, with a few connections to the plot, certainly—but for some reason she manages to insert herself in all the action. That would never happen onboard a real ship. Still the show is worth a watch for fans of the paranormal, of steampunk (the Victorian setting, the gears and odd tech—Solace even wears a long coat and boots), and of classic mad scientist SF. They, like me, will want to tune in to find out what happens next in this twisty tale.

Cheers, Donna

MORTAL ENGINES: CITIES ROLL ON THE BIG SCREEN

Every once in a while a science fiction movie comes along that just has to be seen in the theater. The concept, the special effects, the cinematography are such that watching on your television or your computer are not adequate to the task. You really need the big screen and the big speakers of your local multiplex. MORTAL ENGINES, the latest production of Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Films, is one of those big-screen movies.

I knew when I saw the trailer for this future-dystopia-steampunk-young-adult-action mashup about massive mobile predator cities that I would have to see it. The machine-cities are spectacular, grinding their stories-tall gears, swallowing smaller towns whole and breaking them down piece-by-piece, chewing up the landscape shattered by a long-ago “60-Minute War.” The way the apex-predator London has incorporated the landmarks of the ancient city—St. Mark’s Cathedral, Big Ben, the Tower—is evocative and macabre at the same time.

Even more visually impressive are the floating sky cities cobbled together from hydrogen-filled “balloons” and the graceful flying vehicles that serve them. These house members of the “anti-tether” movement, resisters fighting the predatory cities who terrorize the countryside. And, of course, they eventually provide the haven—and the overarching cause—for the film’s young heroine and hero, revenge-bound Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) and nerdy artifact hunter Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan).

The pair are literally thrown together in the action-packed first third of the film when Tom foils Hester’s assassination attempt on the chief engineer of the rolling London, Thaddeus Valentine (a scene-chewing Hugo Weaving). Rather than reward Tom for his help, Valentine tosses him down the same waste tube Hester has just disappeared into, leading to the usual enemies-become-friends/lovers subplot as Tom and Hester cross a perilous wasteland toward an uncertain goal. 

Hester, at first, wants only to kill Valentine for murdering her mother over a valuable piece of old tech. But it turns out that piece is central to Valentine’s plan for recreating the ancient weapon responsible for destroying the earth. (He wants to use it to take down a wall protecting the last unspoiled land paradise on the planet.) The piece was then lost, but Tom happens to know where it is back on London. So, of course, our heroes find their individual causes become intertwined with the larger goal of saving the world.

I’m not usually a fan of the young-adult model of The Kids Save the World. But, in this case, the “kids” are not that young (early twenties, rather than teenagers), they’re interesting to watch, and they have plenty of help from older adults. Best in this category would be a hydrogen flyer pilot named Anna Fang (Jihae) who almost steals the show. 

A terrific subplot involves a cyborg named Shrike (Stephen Lang) who had raised the child Hester after the murder of her mother and now pursues the girl for breaking her promise to become a cyborg like him. The creature is a combination of the Terminator and the toymaker from BLADE RUNNER. He was once human, but his humanity is now twisted and obsessive, making him both terrifying and compelling as a character.

MORTAL ENGINES is based on a four-part book series by Phillip Reeve. The screenplay was written by the same award-winning trio that created the LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT films, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. It was directed by Christian Rivers, who directed the special effects unit for Jackson’s KING KONG. Other critics have slammed the story as derivative and the plot full of holes, but I hardly noticed the flaws, given the breathless pace, the likable characters and the spectacular visuals of this screen experience.

Give it a chance while it’s still on the big screen. MORTAL ENGINES is a definite go.

Cheers, Donna

LOTR'S JACKSON TAKES ON STEAMPUNK

I can remember years ago when I first saw the preview of the lead film of Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. The New Zealand director’s vision of my favorite fantasy world seemed to match my own exactly, and I sat in the theater absolutely gob-smacked by what I was seeing on the screen. I was so filled with excitement and anticipation I was like a kid waiting for Christmas; the months until The Fellowship of the Ring debuted stretched out ahead like an endless desert of time.

One of the nomadic cities in Mortal Engines takes to the air.

 Well, Jackson has done it again, this time offering up a visual delight that is even more jaw-dropping given that it is unexpected. At least, I had no idea this film was coming until I saw the preview in the theater as I waited for the much more mundane Duane Johnson action pic SKYSCRAPER a few days ago. The LOTR director is adapting (but not directing—that job is going to his longtime storyboarder, Christian Rivers) the British young-adult SF novel Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve, a post-apocalyptic/steampunk mash-up about huge, nomadic, predatory cities. Jackson’s co-writers from LOTR, Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh, are sharing screenwriting duties with him, and word is that the romance elements of the story have been accentuated, with the protagonists aged appropriately for the beefier story.

And you would not believe the beautiful decayed-glory-remade-into-scary-tech eye candy of this film! I was immediately reminded of Meljean Brook’s Iron Duke series, also set in an alternate-universe London, or Zoe Archer’s The Ether Chronicles, which features balletic air battles between zeppelins. We’ll see all of this onscreen in Mortal Engines. Let me tell you, I cannot wait!

The only problem is that, once again, a young-adult novel had to serve as the basis of this wonderful science fiction film. The SFR series I mentioned above are only two of many that have been around for a long time that would have served just as well—and they wouldn’t have required massive rewriting to have two grown-ups carrying the weight of a serious plot. With a romantic element.

Just wondering when the film industry will get the message that science fiction is NOT just for teenagers.

Cheers, Donna