When I saw a promo for this, my first thought was dread. “Shit, they’re going to make the aliens actual Satans.”
But it gets good reviews, even from the NY Times, which says it remains faithful to the spirit of the novel. So I will give it a shot. It’s a 3-part series, but I haven’t seen if it runs nightly or weekly or what. Here’s the web page.Here’s the Times review.
A Salon article about it also mentions the staion has a plan to produce Frederick Pohl’s Gateway, which is among my top 2 or 3 sci fi novels ever.
Set to record. The Times review looks promising. I’ve read the book a couple of times, of course it had to be updated a bit, but the initial timing was not that important. In the book the major human character in the first part was the Secretary General of the UN - times have changed and it is not surprising that it seems that this role is no longer important.
Nice that Clarke did his own diverse casting for the major character at the end of the book.
I’m a little annoyed that change means out of 7 billion people Karellen found fit to deem a random heterosexual white male American as the most worthy of being his spokesmen. :dubious: Speaking of Karellen…
…I really how they did the reveal and his design. I thought all we were going to get to see on night 1 was his shadow and the reactions of the crowds.
Now, now. The second choice was an 82-year old blind woman from Seoul.
And they did the reveal scene just like in the book - where it was the beginning of the second section, but there is a big gap after it.
I grew up reading Clarke - he got me into both sf and technology. So I was nervous, but I’m pretty happy with part one. It updates the story but stays true to it.
And I loved the shout out to the hotel room at the end of 2001, and what seemed to me to be an image of the monolith. I could have used less of his ex-wife, but I guess Hollywood is required by movie law to have at least one hot blonde in every movie.
His late wife’s repeated appearances started to really annoy me as irritating and pointless gimmick, which was too bad because, otherwise, I think that they did a good job. Though not faithful to the novel in terms of the details, I think that it does capture the spirit and intent of it quite well.
I’m recording it as well and I look forward to the rest of it. I was expecting severe cheesiness and, thankfully, it’s not there. I’m quite happy with it.
I remember reading the book loooong ago and thinking (like I did with most ACC books) “Yawwwwn”. Watching the first fifteen minutes of the TV version, I had the same reaction, and turned it off. Sorry, Arthur.
Indeed if you do not like Arthur C Clarke’s book you won’t like this movie; I loved the book back those many moons ago and am enjoying this well enough, though I miss some of the aspects of the book and am not thrilled with every change made.
Well overall I enjoyed the show. I never read the book but is the Overmind supposed to be good, bad or neutral? I mean it’s ending entire species just to add maybe a third of the population to itself. And why the need to blow up the planet? They got what they want. Why kill all those puppies, kitties and penguins?
The book, like the movie never, never passes judgement on the Overmind- how could it? The Overmind is essentially a small-g god, and is above mortal moral judgements, and supposedly so far above ordinary beings that trying to understand it is pointless. Ascending to Overmind status is a natural part of a species development- The overlords just make sure they don’t freak out and destroy themselves before it happens. The destruction of the world is a side effect, consumed to fuel the transformation, and the new trancendant being doesn’t even notice what it’s doing- and probably wouldn’t care if it did.
This was never my favorite Arthur C. Clarke book. If I had my druthers, I’d want to see an adaptation of Rendezvous with Rama or The Fountains of Paradise. as I’ve mentioned, Pepper Mill isn’t the biggest fan of the book because she soesn’t like the way women are underrepresented. Neither of us really care for the ending.
Nevertheless, we watched the whole thing, commenting frequently on the changes made. I could have done without the endless flashback sequences to the Honeymoon Suite (which isn’t even related to anything in the book, for cryin’ out loud) which drag on for So Damned Long. You get the feeling they were padding for time.
Still, a surprisingly serious and mature handling of a major SF book. And how often do we see that, even in the movies?
I’ve read the book numerous times and, for the most part, I enjoyed the mini-series as well. However, while I understand that, for various reasons, the TV version won’t necessarily be the same as the book, I found that some of the changes were pointless and unnecessary.
I found the honeymoon suite and the dead wife thing quite annoying and distracting; I can’t think of any useful purpose it served. I’m also having difficulty recalling if the Ouija board scene served any purpose in the show. It certainly did in the book.
There was one scene where Karellen has Amy put her hand on the disk on the board and he says he can now talk to the other voice or something. I assumed he meant unborn Jennifer.
What purpose did it serve in the book?