From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 20:27:47 MDT
Interesting show. So far, there has only been one
significant break with scientific reality in a couple
years now, I guess. MUCH better than Star Trek, TNG,
et al.
(The last "Star Trek" episode I forced myself to watch
- what's that new pre-Star Trek idiot program called?
Oh, Enterprise, right.. - featured a situation in
which two guys are trapped a few light days from the
Enterprise in a shuttle. Their subspace radio is
trashed and the life support is only good for half the
remaining time before they think that Enterprise will
have figured out something is amiss and come back
looking for them. Ordinary radio signals will not
reach Enterprise for two days, of course....
Solution? They make a big RADAR! flash that
miraculously is seen two light days distant
instantly!! Wow, so clever....)
Anyway, there are several sites devoted to DA, for
those who need more details to be convinced. Tomorrow
- Friday - however, is the season premier episode, so
I'll fill you in a little. Max - Dark Angel - is a
genetically modified super-girl. She was built by a
secret government project aiming at producing super
soldier, specialized for various battlefield and/or
strategic needs. Max is a general killing machine,
super fast, super strong, night vision, etc., but
hardly invulnerable, just enhanced.
Max and a bunch of her classmates - X-5 series -
escaped from Manticore - the secret U.S. military lab
- and the first year or so of the series dealt with
Manticore's attempt to kill or capture all the
escapees, culminating with Max and friends blowing
Manticore up, incidentally freeing a couple hundred or
so other genetically enhanced people, as well as some
rather drastic failures.
This takes place in a Max Headroom kind of distopia,
where electromagnetic pulse weapons were used to fry
the digital infrastructure of the U.S. some ten or so
years prior (about now, in fact). The consequent
breakdown of society led to a kind of feudal state,
with high surveillance and draconian, corrupt police
forces guarding city entrances. Kids are kidnapped
off American streets and sold as sexual slaves to
foreign bidders, for example.
Sub-plot: Max's love interest is a guy who used to be
one of the ultra-corrupt rich and changed course to
become one of the subversive good guys, running a
pirate video hack called "eyes only," where he
announces/exposes the latest public scam. Max meets
him while attempting to steal some very valuable
artwork from his office. (Her sideline is as a
professional thief.) At one point, Max is captured by
the bad guys and injected with a lethal virus keyed to
his DNA and then allowed to escape. Now they can't
touch.
Now that Manticore is gone, the real bad guys have
moved in, which is where it gets really interesting to
extropians. The real bad guys are this ancient cult
of people going back to Sumer who are also enhanced,
but via several thousand years of selective breeding.
They HATE the Manticore products and consider them
obscene. To really make them mad, it turns out that
the genius behind Manticore was one of their own, who
rebelled against the cult and became a geneticist.
The cult has its fingers in a lot of pies and is
planning some kind of takeover move. But first, they
stage events to demonstrate how evil the Manticore
escapees are, with resultant public hysteria and
lynchings, etc.
So, elitist breeding vs. genetic engineering - and the
good guys are the ones genetically engineered. What
more could an Extropian ask for. This is one dynamite
show, lots of hard cutting edge science, libertarian
themes, with ten times more going on than I have
hinted... Don't miss it. Tomorrow is when it all
hits the fan.
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