Did anyone else watch the NBC premiere of Surface?
I thought it was pretty well done; I liked not seeing too much of the creatures just yet. They managed to maintain the suspense, keep things moving along, yet take time to establish the main character and her family situation.
I’ll tune in next week.
I enjoyed it, too. I liked the mix of characters, and the definite restraint on the pseudo-science babbling – so far, at least. Much much better than the “Threshhold” premiere, IMHO.
Actually, this is the first of the new shows I’ve sampled that I’m actually interested in watching a second time.
Likely this means it will be cancelled before Halloween. :eek:
I watched it. Yeah, a nice start. I am a little curious what’s going to happen, though I haven’t decided if I’m going to keep tuning in.
Yeah, I’m pretty enthusiastic about Surface.
I’ve been agitating for a screen adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes for a long time, and, while this ain’t it… it seems close enough that I think it’s Wyndham-inspired, at least.
Major points of The Kraken Wakes that also appear in Surface:[ul][]The antagonistic creatures arrive on earth in the form of fireballs that splashdown into the sea.[]People don’t immediately grasp the significance of them.[]The creatures can easily disable the most technologically advanced warships.[]First marine losses are attributed by governments to clandestine attacks from other superpowers using new technology.[]When they begin to suspect the truth, governments actively try to keep it from the populace, spreading “cover” stories.[]Although they generally hide in the safety of the deep, the creatures have amphibious capability.[/ul]If those buggers deliberately melt the polar ice-caps and cause worldwide flooding, I’m gonna have to say “Aha!” 
I watched it and it looks interesting, I’ll probably keep watching. I think it is more interesting than Threshold because they are not shoving the pseudoscience down our throats and they are using “real people” to tell the story, not quirky supergeniuses.
What annoys me is that I read a review talking about the new “alien” shows and they hinted that Surface wasn’t really about aliens but about a heretofore undiscovered marine species that had special abilities. Since there is already a glut of alien shows I thought that concept would set it apart but judging by the “craters” at the bottom of the ocean and the lights falling from the sky at the end of the episode, it looks like they are leaning toward aliens. (Invasion which has not premiered yet, has lights falling from the sky to the water.)
There was an article in the LA Times saying almost exactly that: Surface has more of a human factor while Threshold pushes the effects instead.
It makes a difference. I really don't care to watch any more of **Threshold** than the scattered bits I glanced at between jumping up to do other things.I didn’t catch Threshhold but I liked Surface, except for Little Johnny Wonder Boy. I know they wanna get the kid demographic, but as a kid I didn’t give a flip if kids were in the story, so long as I got my aliens, super-science and whatnot.
As for what’s going on – I keep thinking of a book series called “War Against the Chtorr” (or something close to that.)
In those books an alien species is, the humans assume, preparing to invade Earth, but first they send in their native flora & fauna, sort of the exact opposite of terraforming.
So the very disparate creates we’ve seen – the alligator sized one, the whale sized one, the others – needn’t be different stages of one alien species at all. Instead they could be the equivalent of chickens and sheep and cows that have been introduced to breed up in numbers in preparation for the arrival of the Sapient Alien species.
Just a theory.
OK, I recorded it, but the last…oh, ten seconds to minute were cut off. What happend right after the old grandfather and grandson see a swarm of fireballs in the sky? It looks like (from reading the posts) they crashed into the ocean?
I like it, but almost feel they gave us too much on the first episode. I thought they would show even less of them, and make us wonder where they came from for a long time. Granted, just because it looks like they are setting them up as aliens, doesn’t mean they are, but I would figure even that misdirection wouldn’t be given away in the first episode. Oh, and my theories so far:
(just unsubstantiated theories, but still spoilered)
Seeing as the entire sub crew was gone, and the super-doc asked the woman if she has headaches/numbness, i’m thinking maybe there’s some kind of infection thingy having to so with them. I don’t want to say that the infection makes us become them, cause that might be kinda lame, but, on the other hand, if the infection can infect any life on earth, it explains the already wide variety of sizes we have seen. I mean, we have small egg that hatched to I assume cat size, the roughly man sized one the boy saw, large shark/killer whale sized one, and sperm whale sized.
I too enjoyed a lack of science-babble. I did’nt watch threshold to compare it too (though now I might watch an ep or two just to compare and see if I like threshold) but as long as they stay away from it, it looks to be good. But, given that the super-scientist is an evolutionary biologist, I really hope they don’t pull the “This is the ultimate evolved life ever! They are super-evolved millions of years past human!”
Can someone in TV and movies please get evolution right? But maybe we’ll luck out and Surface will.
The grandfather says: “You know what this means? The fishing will be good tomorrow.” Roll credits.
I’m saving myself for “Invasion”.
Too many good new shows to watch.
I liked the show, and liked some of the humor “what happened to all the fish?”
Also, the ET side story with the kids having their own pet - whateveritis.
I also got a kick out of the good 'ol boys and the four beer time limit.
So far it all seems like a show made up of a bunch of Steven Spielberg films…ET (the kids story), Close Encounters (looks like lots of people finding a sudden urge to travel to a dinky town), War Of The Worlds (things dropping from the sky).
But if you are going to rip off story lines, you could do worse than Spielberg’s.
Did I see that guy’s brother shoot the creature with a spear attached to his wrist and actully think he’d reeling it in?
The guy accidentally shot the creature with the spear gun…his hand clenched the trigger because he was in shock.
I liked the show, but I could really do without the kids and their pet NTI.
I liked it and will probably stay with the show for at lest few parts more. It’s nice to see Rade Serbedzija although concerning the pilot, it looks like his character is going to be a baddie again.