| Author |
Message |
Kitt
Member
09-05-2000
| Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - 9:23 pm 
I'm not sure how I was meant to feel, but it's left me rather depressed! Thoughts, anyone?
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Sanfranjoshfan
Member
09-17-2000
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 2:13 am
It was a bit unnerving and then ultimately very sad.
I even wound up thinking that not allowing Ricky to have children was almost a blessing....everyone losing their children without warning was just SO tragic! Although it wasn't tragic for the children themselves...they seemed quite accepting of becoming part of the "universal consciousness", or whatever you choose to call it.
BUT, they didn't have to let Ricky suffer like that for years and then just let him die in horrible pain. (I don't even remember Kelleran saying "Thank you" after Ricky sacrificed his specially made cure to save Kelleran's life. The big red jerk!)
And I could've done without all the Annabelle stuff. His dead wife constantly appearing to him - and his current wife(?) realizing it! - was just more unneeded suffering for both of them. Annabelle was dead...making Ricky relive that old memory of their honeymoon was just wrong all the way around.
And even though the scientist and Kelleran talked some about about "god" (as just one way to describe the shared consciousness of the universe) AND they had a very good facsimile of "the devil" in it, it just didn't come across to me as anything "religious" whatsoever...well, not in the traditional sense anyhow. Nowadays a lot of people make up their own ideas and have their own personal interpretations of "god", but I don't think any traditional religious text talks about the devil bringing world peace and then taking the earth's children away to become "god"! The aliens had physical attributes that reflected exactly how some religious people imagine the devil....but I figured those aliens had scouted out Earth a loooooong time ago and their likeness might have actually been what gave rise to how the devil's image was perceived in the first place!
At the end of episode 2, when the scientist guy was learning the aliens' language, I had a flashback to that old Twilight episode called "To Serve Man"! I was SO glad they didn't try to combine that Twilight Zone episode twist with Arthur C Clark's novel. I would've been livid!
Oh yeah...it turns out I actually read that novel many, many years ago but had no memory of it except for one point...the part when Kelleran refused to show himself. That's when I remembered reading a sci-fi novel (I did read some Arthor C Clark as a teen), but the only thing I remembered was that the alien looked just like Satan. I'm SO glad I didn't remember anymore than that. In fact, I wish I hadn't remembered that much. I'm sure the big reveal must have been a huge gasp of surprise for the viewers that didn't know what was coming!
Good miniseries. I found it very engaging and entertaining!
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Kitt
Member
09-05-2000
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 9:44 am
It was a huge gasp to me! Such an exciting twist, filled with so many questions. I don't think they explored that as much as they could have. Presumably at some point in history the aliens had visited Earth and whatever happened had been wrapped in folklore so that the aliens became "the devil," but what did they do on their previous vist? Unless one of them described their home planet it's unlikely any Earthling saw "hell," and presumably the floaty children thing couldn't have happened before as humans continued. So did the devil aliens start some sort of event but decided Earth wasn't ready and went away, leaving just bad memories!?
I didn't understand why they couldn't end Ricky's suffering either. Even if that one cure (and you're right, he didn't say thanks!) took a while to create the next part of the story was four years later, surely they could have replicated more in that time! And when the scientist was little they instantly cured him from death, so there was that option too!
If there is any sort of "god" in this world I have always thought of it as a global consciousness. But not one torn from your children, more just a connecting of psyches.
Yeah, very good miniseries. After last year's debacle with the spaceship that didn't even lift off, I was nervous, but I really enjoyed this one.
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Spunky
Member
10-07-2001
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 11:00 am
I'm a bit ambivalent about this sci-fi series. I appreciated the special effects and the 'awesome' make up and costume of Kelleran, so similar to our religious 'Lucifer' but this is what bugged me the most and I had difficulty believing that it came from Clarke's novel. Why couldn't have been a different entity, did it have to be so similar to 'lucifer', that bugged me a lot. I always remembered Clarke for explaining the universe without any connection to a specific divine intervention, a god or an overlord, I may have to research a bit his Guardian Angel novel, why did he choose 'Angel' for example, I don't remember this Clarke. I remember him as the one who described earth as 'the pale blue dot', which explains so much to me.
For the most part I enjoyed the three nights series, didn't make me wait three weeks, that was nice.
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Kitt
Member
09-05-2000
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 11:15 am
I think it was probably to hint that religion comes from folklore or stories from the past, not from a god. Mankind manufactured a religion to put a past experience with aliens into some context they could deal with.
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Spunky
Member
10-07-2001
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 6:04 pm
Mmmm... I agree that Mankind manufactured various religions but this series could have made that point with a different entity, not with this 'good' Lucifer who in the end was only interested in complying with that order from 'above' to destroy the earth well before its timeline, if it's true that we still are billions of years away from destruction and not by divine intervention but only because every star in the universe eventually dies out. This 'lucifer' looking entity was too eager to speed up our end. It left me with a very bitter taste in my mouth... even if this kind Lucifer offered to sugar coat the pill.
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Kitt
Member
09-05-2000
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 6:38 pm
I don't know, I didn't see it like that. I thought the devil aliens were the religious ones if anybody was. They blindly believed they were some sort of benevolent fascilitator to what they considered their god - we've no idea of course whether their god was "a god," whatever that might be, it might just have been a particularly cruel very powerful alien who liked ripping children from their parents and eating them - and were able to excuse their actions and the horror of it all because their god demanded it. >>>getting interrupted, might come back and continue my line of thought later if i can remember what it was<<<
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Kitt
Member
09-05-2000
| Thursday, December 17, 2015 - 8:20 pm
I can't remember what I was going to say, but I think Clarke wanted it to be a comment on religion, not any sort of affirmation of it.
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Spunky
Member
10-07-2001
| Friday, December 18, 2015 - 7:44 am
I get your point, kitt, love the way you clear things up for me. While watching I did get the feeling it was just a way to show us how religion in the end has no meaning in the grand scheme of things, as it too will disappear as we disappear. I get it also that choosing a satan looking alien would make our imagination go wild, maybe this awful looking alien was the one who visited us long ago and this is why ancient reproduction of satan look exactly like kelleran. I couldn't decide if it was a sci-fi or a 'horror' sci-fi but mostly shocked that it came from Clarke's imagination.
Happy Holidays, Kitt!
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Kitt
Member
09-05-2000
| Monday, December 21, 2015 - 11:10 am
That's what I thought too, that these aliens have visited Earth before, and that's why they were in our folklore.
You too, Spunky!
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