How Outcasts tried to be Lost: The Next Generation and failed

[J]

Long post about how Outcasts became Lost: The Next Generation:

I just finished watching the 8-episode run of Outcasts, and the only reason I'm posting is because the series struck me, both positively and negatively, to deserve some sort of postmortem autopsy that went beyond it sucked/it rocked.

(Warning: spoilers follow -- proceed at your own risk.)

I wanted to check this series out after not being able to generate much interest in Falling Skies (but Tom almost has me ready to horse through some more Falling Skies). I also wanted to see Liam Cunningham's latest work before becoming Davos for Game of Thrones. But I went in wary, knowing Outcasts was already canceled. The comparisons to BSG, Caprica and Survivors are well-taken, but this series had so many thematic and narrative parallels to Lost that it made me wonder if it was a conscious effort on the part of the writers to snag that audience; or if the writers had so deeply internalized Lost that they didn't realize they were producing an echo; or if the producers hammered in those parallels in order to get that Lost audience -- and failed in the offing.

Both Outcasts and Lost start with some kind of tragedy in the first minutes of the pilot episode. That either grips and audience or confuses those who have no patience for such tactics (what would impatients make of the Iliad?).

Both feature rugged landscapes that hide all kinds of secrets; either the island wants/doesn't want its new inhabitants, or Carpathia wants/doesn't want its new inhabitants.

Both are takes on the Robinson Crusoe/Lord of the Flies concepts, where a population of survivors has to figure out how to rebuild society and what ideas play into that process. Lost actively sampled historical and philosophical concepts through books shown, names, etc., and then put those concepts into conflict with each other. Outcasts just didn't develop a similar conflict-of-ideas method where the characters operated out of clear points of reference alluded to through the narrative structure.

Just check out the Lost episode "The Brig," where Locke has his father Cooper shackled in slave chains inside the Black Rock, and then cons Sawyer into killing Cooper. Then read what the philosopher John Locke had to say about war and slavery; he argued the only reason you could enslave someone was if they committed an act of war against you, which Cooper did to Locke (took his kidney, tried to kill him and left him paralyzed). But the philosopher Locke also believed in natural rights -- life, liberty, property -- and argued no one had the right to to deprive someone else of those rights. So the character Locke has the right to enslave Cooper, which he does symbolically by holding him in slave chains, but the character Locke would be violating the philosopher's own principles if he deprived Cooper of life, so he cons Sawyer into doing it -- which also helps Sawyer free himself from the man who triggered his own life's misery. You don't have to know Locke's Second Treatise of Government in order to get "The Brig," but if you do, or if you look into John Locke because a character shares his name, you see some of those enlightenment principles being played out on screen. The key is that those principles are shown and demonstrated, not told. Outcasts is far more open about telling the audience what principles of civilization its addressing, but those principles are far more broad-based -- is it just human nature to repeat its past conflicts and mistakes, or can reason overcome that tendency? That really needed to be narrowed down in order to avoid simplicity.

Another example: When Lost wanted to take on some of Philip K. Dick's themes, we at least see Ben reading VALIS; no one patronizes the audience by explaining what VALIS is about, but the audience is invited to check out the book and recognize how it's adapted into the narrative. However, Fleur's being a new kind of Advanced Cultivar with her own memories of a childhood is a direct lift from Blade Runner, but it lacks the invitation to audience curiosity. We're just flat-out told what she is, rather than brought to that point through a process of discovery. A more interesting spin might have been if the entire population of Forthaven were next-generation AC's and didn't know it.

Both shows have a population of outsiders who have seeming strange abilities, the Others (Dharma Initiative) and the Advanced Cultivars. But those outsiders have outsiders of their own to deal with -- the original inhabitants of the island that the Dharma Initiative displaced, and the doppelganger species that was already on Carpathia.

Both feature quasi-religious demagogues who cultivate spiritual fear/faith for political ends -- Ben Linus and Julius Berger. Both function as Machiavellian creatures bent on sowing division and then playing those sides against each other.

Both shows have a kid-and-contagion problem: the Dharma Initiative were faced with a seeming contagion that stopped any births from coming to term, and some contagion killed most of the Forthaven children and almost no births had come to term since.

Both feature ghost-like beings creeping around the screen: In Lost there was Walt and others who were bi-located, and in Outcasts there were Tate's sons and Pak's dog. And Pak's dog Molly is even a bit reminiscent of Vincent.

Both feature the remains of some prior inhabitants, the discovery of which throws the main characters for a loop. In Lost there were the skeletons found in the cave, Adam and Eve. In Outcasts, they found the fossilized jaw and later Cass and Fleur found the humanoid skeletons on Pak's beach.

Both feature crazy people living in the wild -- Rousseau and Pak.

Both feature people who have questionable or criminal backgrounds who have erased their histories in the new land, but those histories catch up with them; Sawyer, Kate, Sayid, Cass Cromwell.

Both feature characters who are told they're more like the outsiders than like the people they live with, Locke and Fleur, and both characters go to be with those outsiders.

What did the Dharma Initiative use to keep out Smokey? A sonic fence. What did put up around Fort Haven to keep out those doppelganger creatures? A sonic barrier.

Lost's season 3 finale featured a ship (freighter) that they believe could be there to rescue them, but is actually another invading force. The end of Outcasts featured a ship (space) that apparently introduces another invading force.

So many parallels cannot be simple coincidence, and it seems unlikely that a writer would just accidentally recreate so many of the key elements of one of the more popular television series' of the past decade. That really makes me wonder if Outcasts' problems were introduced at the hands of producers trying to do Lost: The Next Generation; they saw a formula they assumed worked and rammed a Lost-shaped peg into a space-shaped hole. But those parallels to me seem more problematic than complaints like there should at least be birds or bugs on such a Goldilocks planet; had some of those hard sci-fi fans had given the series more than half-an-episode's chance, they would have gotten their wish (Outcast's Jack nearly dies after a horsefly bite).

That said, Outcasts had promising moments. Yes the dialog could be stilted and clichéd at times, especially in the early episodes, but finding the fossilized humanoids and those doppelganger things who seemed to physically manifest people's memories in order to overtake them had possibility -- especially if the native humanoids evolved and became extinct on the planet without ever having left, or if they arrived from elsewhere and were killed off by the doppelgangers.

I hung in there and watched the entire 8-episode series because I like that kind of narrative, but wish the series had time to breathe and develop its own unique possibilities, rather than rehashing so much of what had already been done. It just felt like it needed the space to grow out of Lost's shadow and find its own identity, kind of like how the early going of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children feels like he's writing out from under the shadow of Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum.

If you hung in there and read this whole post, cheers.

[Colin]

Interesting, but i don't think Outcasts should be compared so heavily with Lost, or even that it was an attempt by writers/producers to make the next Lost, and it is unfair to do so, IMHO.

I haven't really looked for, or seen any writer/producer interviews where they would give any admissions that Lost was a major influence or driving force in the creation of Outcasts. Until that is made known or accessible to the public large, Outcasts should stand on its own, without Lost being forced into it by philosophical thematic similarities. If it is to be compared with anything, it should probably be the science fiction genre as a whole, and how well it fits into the genre.

I am reminded of the "Simpsons did it" episode from our dear friends at Southpark, that any 'new' idea has already been done by the Simpsons. You yourself already connected it to Lord of the Flies and Robinson Crusoe. The chain will continue going back. Lost copied this, this copied that, until we return to the mytical ALPHASTORY from which all known stories are derived.

- I did read a review of Outcasts though, by a British journalist, (link provided below) who used it as an example of how UK sci-fi television is lagging far behind that of North American sci-fi. I think this might be a bit more to the point of why Outcasts failed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radi...