Superpowered television show fails to be anything spectacular

Photo Courtesy of CW

Next Monday, Mar. 31 is the day The Tomorrow People will air its last episode of season one and quite possibly its last episode of the series. Judging by the dropping number of viewers, and the general quality of the show, The Tomorrow People might not be renewed for season two, though its network The CW has not confirmed or denied cancelation.

The Tomorrow People is based on the concept of the next stage in human evolution: Homo superior. The main characters are mostly human but have superpowers that have been creatively named “the Three T’s: telepathy, teleportation, and telekinesis.” When first introduced, this seems as if it is simply a way of stating their powers concisely. The viewer soon finds out that this is not the case.

Throughout the show, different characters say “the Three T’s: telepathy, teleportation, and telekinesis,” rarely if ever and just end their statement with simply “the Three T’s.” To make matters worse, there are two people in the show who have shown the ability to stop time, so the Three T’s do not apply to everyone anyway.

Vernacular aside, the actual plot of The Tomorrow People revolves around Stephen Jameson (Robbie Amell, Left for Dead), a recent “break-out” or someone who has just discovered that he or she is a Homo superior. Through an overly convoluted series of events that leaves the audience questioning the intelligence of the main antagonists, Stephen finds himself pretending to work for Ultra while actually helping the Tomorrow People, an underground (literally, they live in an inexplicably abandoned subway depot) group of people with superpowers.

Ultra is a ludicrously evil organization that operates on the assumption that no one will ever ask why they have a well-equipped army in New York City as well as a high security prison that holds people who have superpowers for no other reason than they are not technically human. It has been mentioned in several episodes that Ultra has killed many Homo superiors, though the organization tends to capture them and strip them of their powers. There has been no clarification as to how Ultra explains the disappearances nor how an injection can change someone’s species.

Both the Tomorrow People and Ultra have decided it is best not to let the world know that the Tomorrow People exist. While this decision means that the Tomorrow People tend not to use their powers in public, the show does not address the problem of Ultra telling the Homo sapiens what they are doing.

These questions and others could lead a viewer to lose faith in the writers, but some dedicated audience members might enjoy the plot holes. The fact that main characters can be so oblivious can be amusing or very frustrating.

Apart from these unaddressed plot holes, the show is borderline decent.

The over-arching plot is shown in tandem with subplots with less significant breakouts, relationship issues and leadership quarrels. In general, this shows that the Tomorrow People are not just trying to escape Ultra (otherwise, they could simply teleport to another city), but that they are attempting to live a normal life, albeit an underground one where college or a job are impossibilities.

This interestingly plot-hole-riddled story is not the first attempt at creating The Tomorrow People. From 1973 to 1979, Thames Television in the U.K. aired the original Tomorrow People. This show was aimed at a younger audience and is quite humorous in a roundabout way.

In the 1990s, The Tomorrow People was rebooted and lasted for 25 episodes. The most recent reboot has the best special effects yet for teleportation and telekinesis. Sadly, special effects do not, on their own, make something worthwhile.

Perhaps seeing Stephen, a high school student training for combat, going to bars and never doing school work is entertaining for some, but this show raises too many questions for the educated, quick-thinking students found at schools like Tech.

This reboot has yet to introduced aliens, a staple in both the previous iterations. This gives the series some hope for a renewal and deepened interest from viewers.

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