Clearly NOT automatic for any species … the Overlords for example are a cognitive dead end. As individuals many times more advanced than individual humans (made very clear in the book) but not ever going to develop into cohesion with the Overmind. OTOH to my understanding of the book inevitable for some species (such as humans) … so long as they do not destroy themselves first.
Thanks again.
I agree. Most of my favorite scenes had Karellen in them.
Moderately enjoyable, in spite of the writers’ ignorance of basic science. For example, why would the Overlords have a written alphabet based on earth constellations . . . which would be totally meaningless from their home planet? It reminded me of a few of the old *Twilight Zone *episodes, that involved an unknown planet merely three million miles from earth. Or a small asteroid with earth gravity and breathable air. Why is it so hard to find screenwriters with basic scientific literacy?
And oh yeah, the hyper-annoying honeymoon suite scenes.
Or, why is it so hard to keep the parts in the book which would have avoided these issues?
And it’s depressing to think *The Lark Ascending *is the only thing saved from earth’s collective cultures. I would have preferred cookie-dough ice cream.
The Overlords wouldn’t have come if humanity was not going to evolve. Karellen just touched on it briefly, but in the book it was clear that the Overlords great tragedy was not being able to go to the next stage. While they were immortal and powerful, they envied us.
I didn’t much care for Carina (the name in the book also) looking like hell, though. A bit too obvious.
I’ve finally caught up. The first section was by far the best. It was nice that they kept the ending more or less true to the book, but the special effects for the destruction of Earth were pretty blah.
The biggest problem I saw was that they felt the need to keep character continuity across all three segments, which meant that the time scale for the second and third parts were compressed. I don’t buy Earth turning into a paradise that quickly, and how it was done was never shown. If no one had to work, why did people work?
And they had to inject not one but two romances in there, the Stormgren one being especially useless. Clarke doesn’t do romance. If you want nightmares, consider a version of 2001 with Kubrick shoving a love interest onto Discovery. Brrr…
But the parts that covered the actual book were good and true to it. The Overmind being God was specifically rejected. So thank Og for that.
It could have been much, much worse - and I’m looking at you, “I, Robot!”
Just finished watching this…
The second one is easy: people like being productive. I’d still work if I didn’t have to.
But I agree, the utopian stuff was never shown. Milo’s grandfather (?) says that people come by delivering food every day. Why? Where do they get the food? How does it get delivered without a giant transportation infrastructure?
The Saudis turn their oil pipelines into water pipelines. Ok, but then how do the helicopters and trucks work? It didn’t seem like they’re electric, but even if they are it would just raise more questions.
The aliens did make war obsolete, which I guess might improve global efficiency by 10% or so, but that’s not enough for a utopia. For a true utopia you need massive automated production capacity. They should have big automated factories, robots all over, and so on. But we don’t see any of that.
There are those magic beams. They healed Milo, so maybe they can heal other people as well? We don’t see it, though, and it also doesn’t seem consistent with how New Athens is a “free city”; if the aliens are just healing us and stuff from space, then how could any city “opt out” of utopia?
So I just don’t get the setup. Whether it’s magic machines or magic from space or whatever I don’t care, but I don’t know how to make it consistent.
Karellen looked cool at any rate.
The book — in which the timeframe was 50 years, not 15 — clearly stated that almost all production (and perhaps distribution) was automated. This freed humans to engage in whatever activity they found fulfilling.
Clearly, they couldn’t heal Stromgren – or Karellen – 'cause otherwise that hard-to-make one-of-a-kind injectable cure wouldn’t have been necessary.
This is long.
Though I enjoyed the mini-series, and though it could have been much much worse, it is too bad that too many unnecessary deviations were taken. I completely understand that you can’t do a “word for word” translation from book to film and that it is the spirit of the story that you want to retain. I will also preface this with the fact that I love the book.
From “Rolling Stone”, Dec 14 2015, How ‘Childhood’s End’ Finally Made It to TV – Rolling Stone, comes a quote which reveals an unfortunate truth about the production:
“According to the creators, trying to make things different is part of the DNA of the production. “I have a tendency to deviate from source material at every turn, and have made a career of it — for better or worse,” Goldsman admits…”
To me this smacks of unneeded self-indulgence and a desire to “leave his mark”.
The series probably could have been reduced to four hours of excellent story-telling by removing the late-wife/honeymoon suite elements. I can’t think of any way that that added to the plot and helped move it forward. It probably did help to round out the various characters, and having Ricky Stormgren engaged and then married sufficed to accomplish that.
In the novel there was a 50 year gap before Karallen showed himself. Perhaps that would have been a needlessly complicating factor onscreen, in terms of trying to predict what things would look like 50 years down the road so I can understand that compression. On the other hand, if the Stormgren character had been selected so that he (or why not she?) had died prior to Karallen’s appearance, that might have clarified things as well.
If I understood it properly, the Overlords created the room with the Ouija board whereas, in the novel, Rupert Boyce designed the Ouija board himself as a sort of entertaining parlour game which had an unexpected outcome in the presence of Rashaverek, another Overlord. In the novel it served a purpose in driving the plot forward. In the mini-series, in comparison, it seemed to be overly contrived and some compensatory plot gymnastics had to be created to make it serve a purpose.
In the novel there were no biblical, good versus evil, Christ versus Satan, elements at all. The entire Christian counselor, bent crucifix stuff did not exist in the novel. In the novel this had a few important effects that were watered down or nonexistent in the mini-series:
[ul]
[li]there was never any suggestion that Karallen was the devil, only that he looked like the devil. This created an initial shock amongst humanity but none of the conflict shown in the mini-series[/li][li]in the novel the Overlords were explicitly described as a dignified, powerful and intelligent race. The evil devil thing helped detract from that[/li][li]the way the Greggson son’s dreams were reported was significantly watered down in the mini-series, to the point that they only made a reference to hell. In the novel they were revealed in a much more explicit fashion (without religious references) in a way that carried much more power and importance[/li][/ul]
There are several points in the mini-series when Karallen appears almost angry and uncaring, but that is never evident in the novel. There are a few great passages in the novel which leave no doubt as to the dignity of the Overlords. In one, Karallen is writing a report, one part of which says:
“I grow more and more sorry for these people.”
And, in a conversation between George Greggson and Rashaverak:
“‘Yes, we are the midwives. But we ourselves are barren.’
In that instance, George knew that he was in the presence of a tragedy transcending his own…here was a great and noble race, in almost every way superior to mankind; yet it had no future, and it was aware of it.”
For me, this aspect was never portrayed in the miniseries, though I did still enjoy it.