Does “Pandora” Live up to it’s Show Title?
Watching that new show Pandora, and as a scifi nerd, I like the creative ideas and the possibilities that are open to this show. It reminds me of a lot of Star Trek, which I kind of appreciate. However, I have some major issues with the show.
The storyline jumps around.
I can’t tell if any time has passed, or if these students, each with huge personal issues who should have big trust and vulnerability issues really HAVE become BFFs overnight? There are holes in the story line, where they are in the middle of one thing, and suddenly jump to something else without explaining how they got from point A to point J in a matter of TV seconds.
I touched on this already, but the fact that the main characters are already best friends, and it’s only the second episode. I mean, if they are only planning on this show being a “one season wonder”, I can understand. However, realistically, a group of people would not be this chummy so soon. Jax just lost her parents, and yet, she acts like that doesn’t affect her in her decisions. Whereas when we look at strong female characters from other scifi shows like Captain Catherine Janeway, Colonel Samantha Carter, Temperance Brennen, Seven of Nine, and even Rey and Leia, from the very beginning of their time on screen, we see that they have personal issues that they need to work through. This doesn’t apply to just scifi women characters, but since we are talking about the genre, I thought that the scifi pool of female characters was ideal to choose from. So far, the deepest characters on the show are Atria and Ralen, neither of whom are the main character of the show. When the supporting characters have more depth than the main character, something os wrong with the plotline.
Science Fiction gives room for a lot of creativity. Yet, this show seems to be drowning in cliches, and the parts that may have been influenced by previous scifi shows are obvious. (i.e. Atria is one out of a unit of nine, possibly alluding to Seven of Nine from Star Trek Voyager. The issues with the Zalterans(?) feels a lot like the tension with the Klingons in Star Trek: The Next Generation. And the whole concept of every boy on the show except Tom vying for Jax’s affection is a little too Twilight-ish.) What they lack in plot, they make up for in cliche’s.
Also, like... the automatic enemy of Regan? Or the automatic shade on Professor Osborn? Like... seriously? Where’s the mystery? It’s like watching an old Disney Channel movie, or a teenage romcom where the popular, preppy kids are automatically outed at the mean kids who play the antagonist.
I think this show has a lot of potential, and personally, I can usually get past acting that might not be up to par, as long as the story line is really good. But so far, after only two episodes, the story line is lacking, there are big plot holes, and the timeline jumps around so much that it’s hard to tell if they are progessing or moving backwards. Also, just the whole “automatic BFFs” thing really bothers me, before trust has not been formed yet, the audience does not get the pleasure of watching relationships being formaled organically, and yet, they are defending each other, stealing ships for each other and noticing tiny details and errors in a person’s personality as if they have been at this for a minimun of 3 seasons already.
Overall, I just want more depth. It’s very two-dimensional, when SciFi is supposed to be the BEST place to be three-, or even five-dimensional.
