Dream #1

I'm vaguely aware of Alphas and I think I just had a dream regarding the show. Nothing too concrete, just concepts and ideas that stemmed from catching a few too many promos for it and not taking the time to actually get into it.

I think they're doing it wrong, of course.

In my dream, the framing sequence is the introduction of the "mutated" folk through an interview with the POV character-- a police detective?-- and the history of the program being given like that. Characters include a telepath/an invulnerable geek kind of fellow/super speed loser. Their training would be shown, including a scene with dozens of zombies linked together and they have to get to the other side... the geek catapults himslef to the other side... then there's a room of zombies (I don't know how zombies came into it) they have to get from one side to the other of, and the person who is directing the team, who has watched them suffer, who has been in their heads, she decides to help, goes around distracting zombies and twatting them in the head... and then the POV character would say that's all well and good but why has HE been called here.

Some mutated folk were trained differently. They were let out into the world, adopted, and the world shaped them. The detective (hyper-intuitive), the olympic swimmer (hyper-metabolism), the fireman (fearless), etc. The core group of characters, really.

The detective is one of them. He's shocked, but things make sense to him (thanks to his deductive reasoning powers). What he  also wants to know is why the scientist in charge of the program is so battered and bruised...

Six mutated subjects escaped recently. Horrific mutations with names taken from nursery rhymes... The Spider ("...Itsy Bitsy..."), The Wolf, The Headsman, Hansel & Gretel... and they're going to kill everyone because they hate humanity for experimenting on them. The Spider is the ring leader of this group. He induced a change in the subjects, made them shed their skin and break free from their bonds-- nano bonds?-- and unleash hell. They destroyed the labs, killed dozens of the more passive subjects and the scientists, and then left. All apart from The Spider. The lead scientist arrived in the lab and found it in chaos. The Spider was waiting. The scientist picked up a discarded weapon, hides in a toilet cubicle, while The Spider monologues. The bullets ricochet off of The Spider, who mocks the scientist as he tears the door off the toilet. He then proceeds to take a DNA sample of the scientist and then one of himself. He swaps them and injects a into b and b into a.

The subjects are all the scientist's children-- he experimented on himself decades ago and his power was his super-power giving biological make-up. The Spider contaminates his body with his own DNA, twisting any potential super-children into copies of himself-- genetic clones?-- so no more can be made. And with the scientist's DNA in him... The Spider might be able to breed super-powered creatures (imagine a story where a pregnant woman is found in a hotel, her bloated, stretched belly bursting with dozens of mutated foetuses...).

So. The detective needs to bring these monsters in. He needs to take The Spider alive so they can undo the genetic damage done to the scientist so the program can continue. He intuits that the DNA might be changing the scientist but chooses to trust him, and then he assembles his team!

So that would be the story. Dollhouse-meets-Alphas?

I could write that.

Fans Just Do It Better #1: Human Target

I adore Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. This may sound like an unnecessary fact to state at the beginning of an article on Fox's new action packed series The Human Target, but it's important. Pocket that tidbit, and we'll move forward.

I'll do the history lesson first. Familiarise you with the concept, get your brain juices moist and moving.

DC Comics' Human Target is a multimedia property that's hard to pin down, and that's exactly how it should be. For those of you not in the know, The Human Target started out as a back-up feature in Action Comics, playing second fiddle in the back pages to the Superman feature up at the front. Created by comic legends Len Wein (again, for those of you not knowledged-up, the guy that co-created Wolverine back when he was a one-note villain in the pages of Incredible Hulk) and Carmine Infantino (OK, let's just say that both these guys have comic book ink in their veins and that their contribution to the landscape of comic books is comparable to none), the title character, 'Christopher Chance', was the ultimate bodyguard-- he would assume the life of the client he was protecting and draw out the threat to their safety-- effectively become a human target (see what they did there?) that would take down the interloper before damage could be done. A master of disguise, close-quarters-combat, firearms and more, this was a character that would stand the test of time, and whose story is continuing even now in a new television series from Fox.

But that's where things get problematic.

Jonathan E. Steinberg, the show-runner for Fox's Human Target, has stripped away all the cool, intelligent, involving subtextual meat of the property, and has made it generic. Christopher Chance was the ultimate human chameleon, a man that would assume your life to protect you from the forces that would want you dead. Now then, Steinberg, and therefore Fox, have it wrong. Human Target is generic to the action genre, with it's witty one-liners, mysterious helpers, hardened mentor figure... it should be such much more than a distillation of every Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme film you watch on a Thursday night when there's nothing else to watch on television. Don't get me wrong, I really do like the show, but this isn't my Human Target. Mark Valley isn't my Christopher Chance. My Chance is a lithe, educated, scary-as-fuck borderline disassociate personality suffering, master of disguise. Mark Valley is all-American Captain America.

Generic is not a bad thing. Generic embodies all the tropes and covers an umbrella of archetypes that are consistent with whatever we're talking about. But Human Target has been twisted into something it shouldn't be. It's like Jonathan E. Steinberg had an idea for a show, and saw the name and applied it to the property, without caring for the established audience-- however small that was.

Mistake.

Let's role-play for a moment:

"Hey, Charlie, it's Fox, we've heard about your massive ego and your wanting to write for us. Have Human Target. Tell us what you want to do? Please?"

"Oh, sure, here's how it would go...

Human Target is the anti-Dollhouse. It's the alpha to it's omega (see what I did there?). Instead of one actor playing two or more characters as Eliza Dushku did when playing the Doll Echo, imagine two actors playing one character, as our Christopher Chance, a broken man who needs the constant appeasement of someone else's personality imposed over his own, uses high-tech make up and full-body prosthetics to replace his clients and become a Human Target-- fully capable of inserting himself into the highest echelons or the lowest depths of any situation and defuse a hostile event with his smooth talking or gun-slinging prowess!

But the problem is, every identity he immerses himself in leaves gaps in his own character, meaning his own personal tics are slowly leaving him as he adopts the stammers and processes of the people he has become. When does Christopher Chance end and the Human Target begin? Not even Chance himself knows.

Episodes alternate between darker and lighter fare. Sometimes Chance is a gritty bastard, dangerous to mess with and someone you don't want to meet in a dark alley. Something is wrong with this man. Other times, he's doing what he loves and he's doing it with a smile on his face. You can always tell if Chance is behind the face of your favourite stalked celebrity or a friend who's had it rough recently, because there's a hint of a smile just lingering between their lips.

There's a reason for this. Christopher Chance's arch-enemy is himself. Himself... but not. This sounds crazy, right?

Peter Milligan introduced the concept of Tom McFadden to the Human Target mythos. Chance had a mission go sour, his face was blown clean off, and because of this he had his assistant, Tom, impersonate him and draw out his assassin so that the threat to his life would be over. The Human Target became the latest client of the Human Target. At the end of it all, after Chance's face was rebuilt by the best surgeons money could buy-- and Chance has plenty of that to splash around-- McFadden has established himself to be a premier Human Target, perhaps even better than Chance ever was.

So what's the problem?

Chance is single. Childless. No single thing to tie him down. McFadden on the other hand is a family man, the life of a Human Target is not built for someone like him-- but he's good at it. Better than perhaps Chance himself. Christopher returns to the game, convinces Tom to return to his own life, but it doesn't stick...


...Now we have two Christopher Chances running around, and they're headed on a collision course, as the real one-- "which one is that this week?"-- realises that he's gaining enemies because he's done terrible deeds, or, to be more precise, someone with his face has committed those terrible acts. The second Christopher Chance-- actually Tom McFadden-- begins to fracture and break further and further away from reality, and wants to stop his doppelgänger.

So many subplots emerge now. I see Tom McFadden distracting Christopher Chance, drawing him out of his comfort zone, just as he did in the final arc of the Vertigo series-- framing Chance for murder, perhaps, and then simply slipping into his life and into his job whilst the real Chance is hounded...? McFadden infuriates gangsters in the guise of Chance, steals their money, sleeps with their women, their wives-- sure, it's a Chance thing to do, but it's a Chance thing to do for Chance!

Not only are we embedded in the lives of the Human Targets, but what about those who have been touched by them? Tom's family misses him. His wife blames Christopher-- and Christopher is the cause of this, in more ways than one. We have your story-of-the-week format, but on top of that the mystery grows. Who is Tom? Where is Tom? Who is watching Christopher? Everyone is against our hero, even himself, and by the first season finale, our two Chances will collide, leaving one man irrevocably broken, and the other... dead...?"


"Sounds a bit too smart for us, Charlie."

"Then give Jonathan E. Steinberg a call, you bastards!"

That's how it would roll. This series could be brilliant if it wasn't for the fact that it's not what it sets itself up to be. This isn't the Human Target. I wish it was. Then maybe I could tell more people about it. Instead, I think I'll just complain. When acquiring properties like this, the show-runner should use the whole landscape of the idea, rather than just focus in on a name, and spin that off into whatever suits their purpose. We're being robbed of what could have been one of the best television shows out there, just because they're refusing to think inside the box.

But I guess that's just as good in this day and age, right?

(Art by Tim Bradstreet and Cliff Chiang, all rights theirs and in no way mine. But God, aren't they great?)