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Something new is lurking in the Earth's oceans and the world
is on the verge of disaster. When young oceanographer Laura
Daughtery discovers a massive underwater creature, her obsession
to uncover the origins of this dangerous unidentified species
leads her and others on a mysterious adventure through the
deepest darkest and most sinister places on Earth. The fate
of the world is in their hands...
Surface
is the start of what could have been a very promising ongoing
series. What's
really sad about this series is that the final episode ends
on a cliff-hanger and because the show was never renewed for
a second season, everything is left up in the air - leaving
it up to the audience to decide what happens to the heroes.
The
show follows the lives of three very different individuals
as they are affected by strange events that unfold. There's
Laura Daughtery, an oceanographer who is the first person
to see the creatures and their underwater home; Rich Connelly,
an insurance salesman who, on a fishing trip, sees the creatures
when one drags his brother into the deep; and Miles Bennett,
a young boy who discovers an egg in the sea and manages to
rear one of the creatures as a pet.
One
of the things that I liked about this show was the fact that
the heroes are fully fleshed out like real people, not some
whiter than white two-dimensional characters that most US
shows seem to create.
To start with, Laura uses her sexuality to get her way (in
much the same way that young girls can twist their fathers
around their little finger). She manages to manipulate her
ex-husband into always picking up their son at a moments notice
and covering for her; her good friend, who she once slept
with, does everything she asks no matter how crazy because
he still has feelings for her; and there is a great scene
in the Deleted Scenes section of this collection in
which she acts all dim and girly to get a geeky librarian
to find some information for her.
Richard
is a bit of wild card, having possibly killed one man in their
bid to escape and then using his fists first in all following
confrontations - he even attacks Laura to stop her from saving
their lives when underwater. It's interesting to see this
character progress from being you average Joe, to a man with
a mission - realising he has to fight dirty to get what he
wants.
And
finally, there's Miles Barnett, who in an E.T. moment
manages to rear one of the creatures from an egg, hide it
from his parents, become ill and get hospitalised and have
the creature cure him by sharing its energy with him. Hmm...
maybe that's more than a little bit of an E.T. moment
and more a rip-off - or should I say homage?
There
are a lot of "similarities" to other classic movies
including Jaws
and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In fact the
very first scene in Surface reminded me of the opening
to Jaws. There is a "homage" to the scene
in Jaws where all the towns folk gather at an official
meeting to see how to get rid of the creature, and then there
is the scene where the local law enforcement officers think
that everything is solved when an alligator is caught by some
local fishermen. Similar to the scene in Jaws where
a caught shark is cut open, the suspended alligator is cut
open to see if it's the guilty monster.
While
there is a smattering of humour throughout this series, it
does tend to take itself a little too seriously which is a
little bit of a shame. This also results in some embarrassingly
poor acting on the part of both Lake
Bell and Jay R. Ferguson in scenes that are a little too emotionally
charged to be believable.
I
was also pleasantly surprised to see that Martha Plimpton,
who most people will remember from her role in the '80s movies
The Goonies and Parenthood, makes a brief appearance
in a couple of the episodes.
Extras
include 24 mins of deleted scenes (which has a really low
sound level for some odd reason) and Sci-Fi and Special
Effects (8 and a half mins featurette that goes behind
the scenes to interview some of the cast and crew).
One
other point worth mentioning, although it is only a very small
complaint, on at least three of the episodes there is some
serious problems with the sound and/or picture. They don't
last long, but it looks like someone was messing with a cable
while transferring these to DVD.
At
the end of the day this is an enjoyable series. It's a shame
that a second season was never commissioned, but then I'm
scratching my head to work out what the three characters can
do now anyway. The quests of the heroes have sort of come
to a dead-end - with each of them fulfilling their main goal
that drove them on in the first place.
Darren
Rea
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