Pioneer One
Posted on July 6th, 2011 by Marshall
Genre: drama, scifi, legal thriller
Overall: DON’T WATCH
Production values: poor (2)
Writing: longwinded (2)
Acting: inconsistant (3)
Content Advisory: L
Synopsis: Spaceship crashes with unconscious Russian passenger from another planet? TV length episodes shoot for West Wing meets X-Files.
Review: Because the premise was intriguing and I like scifi I really wanted to like this show. Unfortunately I struggled to find anything that actually worked at all. Watching the episodes I just felt alternately uncomfortable and bored. It’s like something is wrong with every frame whether it’s lighting or framing or the set or the clunky editing or the Canadian accents for American characters or the subtlety bad audio.
The central mystery isn’t actually kept a mystery at all. It’s just thrown out there and everyone just pretends that it’s too crazy to believe (c’mon, this is tv folks). The plot is stretched out so thin that most of the time I’m just waiting for something to happen. I think there was supposed to be a character drama somewhere in there but having a bunch of people who just yell at each other in long soliloquies just doesn’t work unless you’re name is Aaron Sorkin. The actors are doing the best they can with the clunky lines but they clearly aren’t being given motivation and the director doesn’t seem to recognize takes that don’t work. With the long dialog he’s probably just happy to get the entire line. I could go on…
I’m sorry that I didn’t enjoy it but hey, someone did. Enough someones to pay for production anyway.