I love good science fiction shows and Helix is a science fiction thriller that premiered on the SyFy channel in January. Helix is the brainchild of Cameron Porsandeh who submitted the story to Sony Pictures. Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica), Lynda Obst (Contact), Steven Maeda (Lost, CSI Miami, XFiles) and Porsandeh are the executive producers with Maeda also serving as the day to day showrunner. Not only does it have all the bells and whistles to keep you on the edge of your seat, it’s outright scary. How scary? Find out after the jump.
Plot
The action in Helix takes place at a research facility in the Artic. A team of scientists from the CDC are called in to investigate a breach at a research facility. When Dr. Alan Farragut (Billy Campbell) and his team, accompanied by military escort Major Sergio Balleseros (Mark Ghanime) arrive at Arctic Biosystems, they are pulled into a life and death struggle to control an outbreak of mysterious origin.
There is just one itty bitty problem; the man in charge of the facility, Dr. Hiroshi Hatake (Hiroyuki Sanada) is holding the cards and he has all the aces, hairless monkeys and rats. Yes, the monkeys are hairless and found frozen outside the facility that they were trying to flee. Why were they fleeing? No one is saying. Dr. Hatake decides to quarantine the infected against Dr. Farragut’s advice and against the workers’ refusal to be sealed off from all support.
Dr. Alan Farragut has the added stress of trying to save his brother Dr. Peter Farragut (Neil Napier), who before being exposed to the infection, was the reason that Alan and Julia (Kyra Zagorsky) also with the CDC team broke up. Yes indeed Helix offers a big dose of family angst, guilt and flashbacks in the form of hallucinations. The infection which reminds me of something right out of the X-Files makes people hallucinate and then go stark raving mad.
Along with Dr. Farragut and Dr. Julia Walker the other scientist on the CDC team is Dr. Doreen Boyle (Catherine Lemieux) a veterinary pathologist and Dr. Sarah Jordan (Jordan Hayes) who is hiding the fact that she has an incurable disease and the hots for Alan.
Ilaria Corporation
Someone has to be funding this research and we learn that Dr. Hiroshi Hatake and his adopted son, Daniel Aerov (Meegwun Fairbrother), who is the Chief of Security are under the thumb of Constance Sutton one of the big guns of the Ilaria Corporation. Constance is played by the fabulous ‘Seven of Nine’ herself, Jeri Ryan, who wants the virus that her company paid for and she wants it, now.
Conclusion
Porsandeh wrote the story so that each episode represents the events of one day. There are thirteen episodes. The infection causes victims to hallucinate, but we the viewers are not sure if the hallucinations are real memories of past events or not. The infection is spread in a very unsettling way and some of the characters might not be human. You definitely need to catch up on the previous seven episodes, but when you do, tell me what you think of the episode titled The White Room.
