Nightflyers
Executive producers Daniel Cerone, George R. R. Martin, Jeff Buhler, Gene Klein, David Bartis, Doug Liman, Alison Rosenzweig, Michael Gaeta, Lloyd Ivan Miller, Alice P. Neuhauser
Producers Robert Jaffe, Andrew McCarthy
Production companies: Fevre River Jacket Co., Gaeta/Rosenzweig, Hypnotic Universal Cable Worldwide Sales and Distribution
Main Cast:
Eoin Macken as Karl D’Branin, an astrophysicist and leader of the Nightflyer expedition[2]
David Ajala as Roy Eris, the reclusive captain of the Nightflyer[2]
Jodie Turner-Smith as Melantha Jhirl[2]
Angus Sampson as Rowan, a xenobiologist[2]
Sam Strike as Thale, an L-1 telepath[2]
Maya Eshet as Lommie Thorne, a cyberneticist, who communicates with the Nightflyer’s computers via a neuro-port surgically implanted in her arm[2][3]
Brían F. O’Byrne as Auggie, chief engineer of the Nightflyer[2][4]
Gretchen Mol as Agatha Matheson, a psychiatrist who specializes in working with telepaths
Nightflyers falls into the “interesting failure” category. That is, it has enough interesting features to make it worth checking out, but as a story, fails to coalesce into something that makes it a good story. If that fails to interest you, stop reading now. I promise I won’t mind.
About half-way through the series I thought I had enough to consider a review. I still had no idea where they were going with it, but the characters were reasonably engaging and the premise seemed intriguing enough. I noticed it had generally lousy reviews, but didn’t pay it much mind. It wouldn’t be the first time I liked something the critics hated.
Besides, I thought I had the answer: people tuned in, expected a standard SF tale, but it is, in fact, a horror story.
OK, it was an idiotic answer. Anyone who thinks you can’t successfully combine SF and horror clearly never saw Alien.
I expected it to be somewhat gloomy and suspenseful: George R. R. Martin’s name was prominent in the credits, and he wrote the novella that the series…um, wasn’t based on. I found out later that it was based on a movie made from the novella that had little in common with the novella, and that Martin himself actually had no direct involvement in either the movie or the TV series.
By episode eight I discovered the real problem, and by the end of the series, I was happy that there would be no sequel.
Imagine if they tried to do Game of Thrones in ten 42 minute episodes. Even with eight years, the series finished on a rushed note, with unresolved plotlines. Martin writes complicated stories.
That is the main problem with Nighflyers. It has so many plot lines that it is top heavy with them.
OK, you have a ship of a couple of hundred people who are sailing out past Saturn to meet what they believe is an alien intelligence. They know absolutely nothing about this alien intelligence, or even if it is an alien intelligence. Nonetheless, they call it the Volcryn for unknown reasons, and equip the ship with a complement as catastrophically unequipped to handle a First Contact as Donald Trump is to work up a baseball schedule.
They bring along a psychic, a kid named Thale, who happens to be a gleefully psychotic Cockney. He’s what’s called an “L-1”, and has the ability, if you look at him funny, to send your mind out to the fucking cornfield. Believe it or not, he’s actually one of the more likable characters. Understandably, the rest of the crew finds his presence less than reassuring. So when various systems on the ship start screwing up, the crew starts thinking of various ways of spacing him without attracting his attention to the fact that they are trying to kill him.
Only he can’t make mechanical or electronic systems malfunction; he’s limited to short circuiting wetware.
It turns out that ship is haunted. The ghost of the captain’s mother is secretly controlling all the ship’s system. She’s not really happy about being stuck in this position, it seems. The captain, a seemingly capable and pleasant man, has severe mommy issues (yes, dead mummy on board the ship), and is reclusive, appearing to his crew only as a hologram and obsessively spying on everyone through an elaborate ship-wide camera system. It was a role that could have been played quite well by Freddie Highmore (Norman in Bates Motel) although David Ajala does a exemplary job. Captain sometimes wears some of dear old mom’s clothing. Makes sense, right? You want a diplomat to the stars, you pick the guy who hangs around the schoolyard in a raincoat on a sunny day. Makes perfect sense.
The ship is also haunted by two creepy little girls, one the dead daughter of the mission chief, who is having trouble coming to terms with the fact that his wife is trying to forget both him and the dead kid through an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind procedure. The other is a fragment of dear dead old mum.
There’s another psychic who can interface with the computers on board and is slowly going nuts as a result.
As if all that weren’t enough, the Volcryn start messing with their minds, with the result that in addition to all the stuff listed above, the ship now has a demented axe killer wandering the corridors (Angus Sampson, channeling Jack Nicholson from The Shining. He even gets his own “Here’s Johnny!” line).
Oh, yeah, and the Chief Engineer is kind of a poor man’s Voldemort.
There’s about a half dozen more plotlines, but you get the general idea. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t include dragons, dwarves, and T-Rexes flying F-35s. It’s not like Martin to miss such vital plot elements.
You have to wonder what the Volcryns would have made of this utter madhouse of a ship. It wouldn’t have gone well. In fact, it doesn’t.
The series dies with several dozen unresolved plot lines, and I guess they just didn’t have the seven seasons needed to resolve them. So they settle for a kind of a “everybody die, oh the embarrassment” ending—sorta. In any case, the curiously absent mission control doesn’t have to worry about this particular mission coming back. But maybe that was the idea in the first place. Load up the ship with hair dressers and telephone sanitizers, and send it on its merry way.
Probably not, but I like that better than the notion that this lot were supposed to initiate First Contact.
Now on Netflix.