The Tomorrow People: I’m Really Trying to Like It

This fall the CW has taken on the task of reviving the 1973 British sci-fi series The Tomorrow People. In this show, the eponymous people are individuals who are an evolutionary step forward in that they have a common set of abilities summarized as the three Ts: telepathy, telekinesis, & teleportation. But they also have developed an inability to kill (presumably as a defense against a hostile species takeover). There were a number of other aspects unique to the 1973 show that this new reboot has ignored thus far, and likely for good reason as some of them were a little far afield of the more grounded approach the CW seems to be going for (e.g., aliens, evil alien shape-changing robots, and 163-year-old time travelers from the 26th century) … at least so far.

The new show centers around Stephen, a 17-year-old who suddenly discovers he is one of these “tomorrow people” and is contacted by a group of others like him who’ve segregated themselves from society to live underground in abandon tunnels below the current NYC subway system. Here they live out of the reach of a government group known as Ultra who rounds up “break-outs” (teens who start to manifest such abilities) and either recruit them as agents, neuter them of their powers, or if they are deemed too dangerous (or run at all from the mysterious government agents that they are) they take them out. And as it turns out, Ultra is headed up by Stephen’s uncle Jedikiah. Further, it seems that Jedikiah had the help of Stephen’s father (a tomorrow person himself) to develop a lot of the technology they have to suppress their abilities before he mysteriously disappeared 7 years ago in a fiery car explosion.

So far in the half-season that has aired, Stephen has been skirting a line (one he arguably shouldn’t be getting away with skirting as easily as he is) by agreeing to work for his uncle to bring in break-outs, but spending a lot of time actually managing to get the break-outs the find into the care of the “tomorrow people” (and not getting caught by his superiors despite two of his partners haven’t gotten killed in the process). He’s also managed to get himself into some weird love triangles that in most cases he’s failing to win out in.

Here is my issue with this show so far: being a CW show, it seems that the script-writing is trying to make each episode a sliver of an ongoing teen soap opera that happens to center around people who can teleport and read minds (much as I assume The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf are written around their respective tropes). So most scenes involve convenient alignments of two or three people showing up in some room to exchange some information/emotions/barbed commentary that leads to some next series of events, many of which involve either people doing/saying things that normal people wouldn’t do or say in the same situations, or people not doing/saying things that normal people would.

For example, in episode 6 of this first season, “Sorry For Your Loss”, the break-out of the week turns out to be Piper – the little sister of Stephen’s partner, Darcy. After Stephen convinces Darcy that her sister is better off escaping than handed over to Ultra, they make a getaway out the back door of the restaurant. As agents are closing in, Stephen and Piper manage to hide behind a truck while the agents coming onto the scene confront Darcy. She starts off explaining how their lateness caused her to lose the break-out. Fine so far – she can explain it out, the agents head back to base, or if things get close, Stephen and Piper can teleport out without anyone the wiser. But no, instead Stephen and Piper are hanging out behind the truck making for unnecessary tension as the agents approach Darcy and potentially discover that she’s covering their escape. Still, Darcy could still sell it by storming away and Stephen and Piper could bamf out of there. Nope. Darcy pulls her weapon bringing more suspicion and Stephen and Piper stick around long enough to see Darcy gunned down and dead before finally poofing away.

The sad thing is that I’ve come to expect this from CW shows – it happened all the time in Smallville right up to the end, and it happens all the time in Arrow, both of which I am a fan of and watch regularly. I can only venture that my lack of taste for it in The Tomorrow People is because I have no vested interest in the subject matter. I am/was a fan of the others in spite of these tropes because it was Superman and is the Green Arrow. Stephen and his band of mutant misfits aren’t yet endearing enough to ignore the writing style.

I’m willing to admit though that much of this may just be due to me not being the target demographic for this show. Like most of the programming on this network, their target seems to be the young adult market who can relate to the stark drama of these shows. That noted though, there is at least one other thing that peeves me about this show: These people with powers have continually been referred to as a new species (both internally and externally) – they are not. They don’t meet the tenants of speciation. So long as they are still genetically compatible with humans, even if there are clear genes that indicate their unique set of traits, they are human.

I can only assume that it is this “speciation” justification that gives Ultra the latitude to do what they do with them (e.g., hold them without just cause or due process, involuntarily administer drug therapies, use lethal force against them) as they are somehow not considered protected by normal human rights. And if so, I could see a potential plot arch to this show of the underground group trying to take their story and their plight public so as to get sympathy and civil rights (whether successfully or not). It could at least be an improvement to the constant silo of us vs. them with the only change being the players on the board.

I will likely keep watching this show with the hopes that it will improve over time and/or hit a stride that feels more natural. But my hopes are low and so far this is my least favorite new show of the season (at least that I’m bothering to watch).