Genre: Sci-fi
Premise: In the future, 99% of the human race has been eliminated due to a virus outbreak. One of the survivors is sent back in time to try and kill the man who started it all.
About: This is college roommates’ Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett’s first series, although the two have worked before in TV on such shows as “Terra Nova” and the CW’s “Nikita.” Fickett is pretty excited to have the job, offering, “It’s constantly surreal. I’m still not used to writing something and almost the next day seeing a prop or piece of costuming or something just take shape.” Indeed, this is every writer’s dream! 12 Monkeys will premiere on SyFy this January. This is an earlier draft of the script, before showrunner Natalie Chaidez came on and added some finishing touches. For those who don’t know how a TV series works, the writer of the show will sometimes head up the showrunner position (where they’re actually running the show), but in cases where the writers are really green, or in situations where the writers don’t want the responsibility, they’ll hire a separate person to run the show, as was the case here.
Writers: Terry Matalas & Travis Fickett (inspired by the film written by David Peoples & Janet Peoples)
Details: March 2012 draft – 62 pages
Count me as a big fan of Terry Gilliam’s 1995 film, “12 Monkeys.” You remember those days, right? When studios took chances? And 12 Monkeys was one hell of a chance to take. It dirtied up its stars. It was “artsy.” It was different. It even gave you an ending that, gasp, made you THINK!
So I wouldn’t say I was against making the film into a TV series. But here’s my problem. In this new dash to fill up the hundreds of original TV spots that are out there, the TV folks are starting to do what the lazy film folks have been doing: Look into the past. Find something that’s already proven, either in this medium or another, then translate it. I mean they’re making a TV show based on Limitless for God’s sakes. Limitless?? That’s not a TV show.
And then there’s Syfy. Syfy is this channel that has the potential to dominate the sci-fi landscape, to take this new television world that stresses quality, find some wild out-of-the-box ideas, and give them the A+ production treatment. Become the genre version of AMC. Instead, they’re making bad B-movies and cheesy shows like the cringe-worthy Walking Dead knock-off, Z Nation.
I’m going to hope that 12 Monkeys is part of a new company mandate to start offering quality material. Because if there was ever a project that had some actual weight behind it – something that you could really play with and sink your teeth into, this is that property.
Cole lives in a post-apocalyptic future. Weeds have grown up through the pavement. City buildings are falling apart due to lack of care. Technically, Cole is one of the “lucky” ones who survived the virus that killed 99% of the world, but it sure doesn’t feel that way. In this future, you can’t even breathe without the help of an oxygen mask.
So it sure is nice when Cole gets sent back to the past, like before this whole apocalypse thing happened. Cole’s looking for a woman named Cassie Reynolds, a cute doctor who, later in life, will inform Cole that he has to jump back into the past and find her. If that makes sense.
The reason Cole needs to find Cassie is because Cassie knows where the ominously named Mason Frost is. And Mason Frost is the one who creates the virus that kills everyone. I’m guessing Cole saw Terminator 2 growing up, and he assumes that if he kills Mason, he’ll save the world.
But first he’s got to convince Cassie that he’s actually from the future, as people of the year 2014 have a hard time accepting time-jumping at face value. Once he convinces her, the two go on a little quest to find Mason and (big spoilers!) when they do, Cole kills him. Except that when he gets back to the future, it’s still the same. Mason must not have been the key piece. Which puts Cole right back at square 1.
12 Monkeys Retro!
One of the things I found really cool about the original 12 Monkeys was that we weren’t sure whether Cole was crazy or not. The future could’ve all been in his mind. The past could’ve all been in his mind. Maybe he was just a guy sitting in a white padded room in a straight-jacket.
When they ditched that here, the pilot lost something for me. However, I did recognize the difficulty inherent in maintaining a question of sanity over an entire series. Time travel alone is tricky to wrangle, so I’m guessing they saw this other question as too complicated and turned a variable into a constant.
Was the constant any good? It’s hard to say. Sort of, maybe? I’ll tell you one choice that infuriated me though (spoilers). There are zombies in 12 Monkeys. It’s been many years since I’ve seen the Gilliam film but I’m fairly certain there were no zombies. Yeah, they don’t call them “zombies” here. But there are these semi-dead people with white eyes in the apocalyptic future who try to kill you.
Look, I don’t have a problem with adding zombies or vampires or werewolves to anything. What I have a problem with is when the monsters are shoe-horned into the story inorganically. Readers and viewers can tell when you’re hopping on a trend instead of building an honest mythology. And if it screams “cheat,” we’re going to call you on it. I mean there’s a chance this will all be explained later satisfactorily. But there wasn’t enough good in this pilot to imply that that would be the case.
Further lowering my confidence was the use of “Occam’s Razor” in the dialogue. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve read a character asking another character, “Have you heard of Occam’s Razor?” in a sci-fi script. Yes! We’ve heard of Occam’s Razor! In just about every single science-fiction screenplay written between the years of 1995-2005. It’s the sci-fi equivalent to the “Scorpion and the Frog” fable. These things need to be locked up in a writer’s “never to be used again” box.
I mean, come on. We’re writers here. One of the only things we have control over is effort. We might not be the most talented. We might not be the most educated. But we control how hard we try. And if you’re going with Occam’s Razor, one of the most often used example theories in the business, it says you’re not trying hard enough to come up with something original.
Another red flag here was the villain who was evil just because he’s a villain. Mason Frost is a nasty evil individual not because there was something in his past that made him this way. Not because of some psychological problem. But only because he’s the villain and it’s the villain’s job to be evil.
Characters in screenplays are supposed to be REAL. They’re supposed to have lived full lives, just like you and me. If you treat a character as if they are a simplistic cog in the machine, they will treat you that way right back. They will only give out what you put into them. And if all you think of them is that they’re “evil” then how do you think they’re going to represent themselves? In big general generic evil ways.
But if you figure out why your villain became this way. If you map out (either mentally or in a document) what brought them to this point in their lives, they’re going to give you a lot more. Because they have more to give back from. So yeah, that really frustrated me.
I mean the story for the 12 Monkeys pilot isn’t that bad. It’s kind of cool to see this disheveled guy from the future come back to this perfect world and try to kill this guy. It’s got a lot of the story elements that I champion here on the site. It’s got a goal. It’s got some of the biggest stakes you’re going to find. But everything else here felt too familiar. It didn’t feel like the writers were trying hard enough to give us something fresh. The zombies are a perfect example of that (“Hey, why not throw in zombies?” “Yeah, why not!”).
I will hope that the series proves me wrong but as for the pilot script, it wasn’t for me.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of the many things you have to pull off in a TV pilot, is a “preview,” if you will, of what the show will be like going forward. By watching the first show, we should get a feel for what dozens of future episodes will look like. After 12 Monkeys was over, I didn’t see where we were going from here. (spoilers) He’d killed Mason, so he’d achieved his goal. Game over, right? Sure, when he gets to the future and learns that it’s still the apocalypse, we’re guessing he’s going to have to go back to the past again, but in what capacity? Are we just going to repeat this episode over and over again where he looks for “the next guy” to kill? I’m not getting a strong enough sense for what’s next. And when the audience doesn’t get that feel, they don’t tune in next week.
