Episode Written by James Jordan
Review Written by David A. Bindley
Hey, look, I’m actually reviewing something! Gasp!
This episode certainly has a lot to live up to. It’s gotta function as a pilot for a completely new series for the Night Stalker newbies, it’s gotta function as the next episode in the chronology of the series it’s based on for the hardcore fans, and it’s gotta reintroduce the basic concept of the original series for those who are vaguely familiar with it (like myself). It also needs to be a decent standalone effort on its own merits. Does it do that?
Honestly, I’m not entirely convinced it does. Sure, it fits the style of the show – devoid of cheesy love triangles, pop-culture references, and sci-fi fanwank, but with the stylistic elements preserved – and it dovetails in with the existing mytharc nicely, but… like, there were times there where, if I wasn’t aware of the “real” show or what had happened on it, I wouldn’t have been able to follow the script. I get that you can’t dumb it down for the people who know the show inside and out, but… this wasn’t a huge success as a show, and it’s far more likely that people had no idea what happened on this show. To use a reality TV analogy, you’d have probably been fine going down this path had the show been as high on the pop-culture recognition scale as Dancing With The Stars or American Idol, but this show’s really more of a Celebrity Survivor: Vanuatu (which even I barely remember, and I’m in the process of writing about it). SPAG was a fairly minor issue, but one that does need a little bit of work – ambulance only has one E, won’t needs an apostrophe throughout, and the second period in the abbreviation b.g. doesn’t actually function as a full stop on its own merits – and a couple of bits of exposition were clunky, but that’s to be expected given the circumstances.
Having said that, of course, I still found it thoroughly enjoyable to read. The idea of using a concept as instantly recognisable as the Sphinx and turning it into a monster-of-the-week style killer was a clever idea, as was the not entirely revealing it’s motivations for killing the people it did. If I’m not mistaken, I counted homages to at least four X-Files episodes – Within (a killer tracking down one particular kid at a school), Badlaa (the idea of someone killing because of genetics, and of not explaining why it was killing the people it did), Existence (the whole rooftop climax), and Dod Kalm (the flashback to the people in a vehicle aging rapidly). And yet, none of them stuck out waving signs like “Hey! Rip-off! Over here!” So congratulations for that. And thanks for having the cojones to kill off kids. Helps make this stand out a little bit from the televised series, and makes the Sphinx more menacing at the same time. Great work.
Grade: Seven kiddie corpses out of ten.
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