It's time for the Dream Show Challenge once more! I gave @singledarkshade a list of 7 TV shows or films and we were given a cast of 7 actors in return.
Here's who I had to work with:
The Umbrella Academy - Aidan Gallagher
Good Omens - David Tennant
The Mandalorian - Giancarlo Esposito
Leverage Redemption - Aleyse Shannon
Everything Everywhere All at Once - Ke Huy Quan
The Witcher - Freya Allan
Sense8 - Daryl Hannah
I present you with:
Rift Hunter
Synopsis:
Someone or something is trying to reach Earth, not through space but across a dimensional rift. A secretive agency battles to control the rifts and deal with the incursions that threaten humans and the very fabric of the world. Connor Harris is having a particularly bad day. He is broke, his girlfriend has left him, and he’s desperate for something to go right, when he stumbles through the wrong door on his way to a job interview for a job he doesn’t really want, and into the middle of an incursion.
He is thrust into a world of monsters, aliens and strange science. Jiang Bao heads up the Reality Incursion Fundamental Tactics and Science (RIFTS) Agency which takes in Connor and gives him a new purpose. The secretive agency is tasked with keeping mankind safe but also with making good use of any opportunities that the Rifts produce to further science and technology.
The show plays on Connor's love of video games and retro gaming, getting in references about video games and gaming culture. It has a retro 80s theme tune and a purposefully retro intro sequence. It makes use of garish colours to heighten the strangeness of the rifts and the denizens from it.
Aidan Gallagher – Connor Harris
In the wrong place at the wrong time, Connor never wanted to be part of the agency. However, his quick thinking and problem solving skills make him an ideal operative. He is a gaming nerd, whose last job was at a large game design company. He has very few friends and almost no real prospects after the company he worked for went bankrupt and fired all their staff, but he grows into his role at the agency. His main skills are in computers, but he also somehow gains an ability to predict when and where a rift will occur. He can also track the entities who come to Earth through the rifts.
Aleyse Shannon – Tia Adefope
Tia is a government military operative, and is quite secretive about her past. She has trained to a high level and is extremely competent. She never expected to need to use her skills in this way but she is ready for whatever comes. She now leads a team of soldiers who act as security for the RIFT Agency and protect the scientists and technicians from anything that would harm them. When she isn’t saving the world one bullet at a time, she has a pet cat called Discord and a vintage motorbike to restore. She doesn’t have any attachments because her job never allows her time to stay in one place, but she also secretly likes it that way.
Giancarlo Esposito – Jules Jackson
Jackson oversees the work of the RIFTS Agency. He is their liaison with government and ultimately in charge of everything that happens in the agency, their strategy and direction. He takes a no nonsense approach and takes his responsibilities seriously. Jiang would not have been his first choice to head up the agency and he would rather have found Connor a basement office that he could have left him in. However, he respects skill and comes to see the good points of the team.
Ke Huy Quan – Jiang Bao
Head of the RIFTS Agency. Strings were pulled to get him this job, and Jackson would have preferred a military candidate. Jiang is an expert in the little that is known about the phenomenon of the rifts. Jiang’s parents emigrated from Vietnam when he was only a few months old, but he embraced his new country, becoming an disaster analyst in the government. His area of expertise is seismic activity, which led him to discover the rifts, but since then he has branched into several other areas of science to learn what he needs to know. He is smart, tough and a little out of his depth.
Freya Allen – Corinna Salvor
An expert in aerospace technology, formerly of NASA, she was recruited to the team as an expert technician. She helps to deal with the technological threats that the team face on a daily basis as part of their work. She loves the challenge of her work and will happily pick up a gun alongside Tia. Smart, sharp and with a wicked sense of humour she loves nothing better than to prank Dr Caffrey or wind up Jiang. She is an expert at pressing peoples buttons and specialises in cutting sarcasm.
David Tennant – Dr Alex Caffrey
Alex is a biologist, who found himself disgraced for his unusual views on the origins of life on Earth. Whilst he wasn’t exactly correct, he was closer to answers than many of his peers. Life on Earth wasn’t brought here by aliens but by the rifts. One of his key discoveries has been that humans were not originally native to Earth and he continues to gather evidence for where we came from as he interacts with the creatures that come through the rifts. He is a maverick who continues to clash with the senior team members on academic matters, but has a kind heart and will do anything for his friends. He does not enjoy fieldwork, but there is no substitute for collecting alien goo oneself.
Daryl Hannah – Persephone Turner
Persi is a linguist and expert in psychology. She is empathic and gentle, not well suited to the work she is doing, but determined not to let her fear get the better of her. There is nowhere else that would give her the opportunity to speak to beings from other worlds or to learn how they communicate. Her tenacity means she is unwilling to let things go, even if they look hopeless.
Episode 1: Connor Harris and the Day of the Tentacle
Connor loses his job at EverByte whilst in the middle of programming a game that could make them all rich. Unfortunately for Connor, things go from bad to worse when he applies for a new job and arrives at the interview to then get caught up in an evacuation. He enters the wrong room and instead of the exit, he finds a glowing rift and a waving set of tentacles being fought off by the RIFTS Agency.
Tia rescues him but not before he is covered in a strange alien slime that gives him unusual powers. He is taken back to HQ for treatment and testing. During this period he becomes away that objects from other worlds have unusual auras that he can see under the right conditions. The team take him out into the field to test this ability and he is able to pinpoint a rift before the final incursion appears. The tentacle monster returns and tries to take Connor back through the rift, but the creature is killed by Tia.
When Connor asks what’s on the other side, Tia tells him that no one has ever returned from the other side of a rift.
@singledarkshade came up with the Dream Show challenge last year, where we had to give her a list of 7 TV shows or films and we were given a cast of 7 actors in return. This time we were given someone else’s cast and were allowed to recast one character (plus add some if we wished). This time I came up with:
Virtuality
Synopsis:
Good people die before their time and it happens every day. Eli Danzig is doing his best to change that. He invents a way to upload consciousness to an online server where the dead can live out a normal life in a virtual environment. He builds an entire world to keep his uploaded souls entertained, making it as lifelike as possible. Huge amounts of processing power are required so Eli must choose his clients carefully.
The electronic world is called Virtuality and the uploaded persons are known collectively as the digi-souls. Virtuality has a small but growing population, which is a continuing concern as it means more storage space is always needed. Eli funds his enterprise by playing the stock market using his AI Tallis to filter information and predict stock prices. Sometimes he sells patents for the things that the digi-souls invent, but more often they give their inventions away for free. However, money is always a worry because none of this is a stable source of income.
Cast:
Eli Danzig (Donald Glover) – Eli is a young computer programmer of genius level intellect. He came from a poor background, and was the first in his family to attend university. He is determined to make things better for people, by improving society. He believes that “only the good die young” is a real problem, and if he could keep the good people in the world for longer then maybe more good could be done. He invents a digital after-life for people to upload their consciousness to, but he must maintain it a secret to keep the unscrupulous from corrupting it or destroying it. He researches every person very carefully before inviting them to join Virtuality.
Ashura Hadid (Tala Ashe) – Ashura is a terminal cancer patient who becomes one of Eli’s digi-souls. She is a prize-winning journalist and novelist, known for taking on difficult stories about things that people would rather keep hidden. She’s recently been looking into CharterTech, owned by Maggie Charter as part of a series on corruption in tech companies, but most of her efforts are going into completing her final novel. Eli and Ashura have undeniable chemistry, but live in very different worlds. She is very driven and moral, always looking for new ways to expose corruption and wrong doing.
Oren Murphy (Jim Byrnes) – Oren was Eli’s professor at University. He made sure that Eli got the scholarship that he needed to attend, and then acted as his mentor. He suffered from high blood pressure and had multiple strokes. He agreed to be Eli’s test case for Virtuality and was the first digi-soul to be uploaded. He is a calming influence on Eli’s life, often being the one to counsel him out of a rash decision.
Shona Lennox (Sophia di Martino) – Eli’s technician, she has a background in medical devices and large-scale genetic information storage. She built the mainframe and worked out how to put into practice Eli’s ideas. She often finds herself in unusual situations now she is working for Eli, but likes her new job and the excitement it brings, even if she complains about it. She used to work for CharterTech but Eli doesn’t know that when he hires her. When she leaves CharterTech she decides to start self-defence classes and can definitely handle herself in a crisis.
Ryan Fournier (Joey Batey) – Ryan is an inventor who has been responsible for some of the world’s most important leaps forward in technology, including making ecological sources of power more viable, such as wind and solar power. He is a problem solver and a big ideas guy. Unfortunately, he was born with a genetic condition that meant he died young, but he is now one of Eli’s digi-souls and living on in the Virtuality. He loves nothing better than to sit down with a problem and work out a solution, but occasionally he realises what he’d missing out on in the real world and ends up depressed and unhappy.
Chie Ohta (Naoko Mori) – Chie is a medical researcher and entrepreneur, but she was unable to save herself from a rare blood disease, despite years of trying. In the process she brought many other useful pieces of medical technology to the market and helped save the lives of countless people with cures for diseases. She loved her work, but always knew she was on borrowed time. She left behind a husband and children, who have no idea of her new existence. She continues to check up on them, despite Oren’s suggestion that this isn’t a good idea.
Maggie Charter (Alison Janney) – Maggie is a self-made woman, in the way that all billionaires are self-made. She inherited a fortune from her politician father and invested in business. She had a technical background so she picked tech companies as an obvious interest. She now owns CharterTech, one of the largest technical manufacturing companies in the world. She once tried to recruit Eli and has never been pleased that he turned her down. She knows nothing about Virtuality but has heard rumours that someone was working on something like it.
Tallis (Arthur Darvill) – Tallis is the AI personality that maintains the Virtuality. He is often mistaken for one of the digi-souls by the newly uploaded as he is so lifelike. He is polite and caring, always available to listen. He is Eli’s friend and also occasional advisor. Tallis means “knowledge” and he has access to all of the world’s online resources.
Occam (Karen Gillan) - Is another AI, built by CharterTech. She is new and unruly, but very quick to follow her creator’s orders. Sparks fly between her and Tallis.
Episodes:
Episode 1: Virtually Home
Ashura Hadid, prize winning writer, is dying at the age of 38. It’s not fair, it’s not right and she is having none of it. She is being treated for an aggressive brain tumour, but decides to stop treatment when it becomes clear that it will impact her ability to write and finish her final novel. The novel is partly a work of fiction but is also based on real life events at a chemical factory in the city that she has been researching.
Eli Danzig introduces himself to her and explains that he can offer her a second chance at life, by uploading her mind to Virtuality. She explains that she has no money and Eli tells her how he finances the project. She will never have to pay to live there. Ashura questions Eli further about the procedure and Virtuality itself. Eli tells her that he chooses young people, like Ashura, who have died before their time and had great contributions to make to society. They live in a computer generated world where things are simple but they can continue to work and interact with each other. However, they cannot have contact with the outside world, because Virtuality is a secret. It isn’t ready to be opened up to the world, there isn’t enough storage space on Earth to facilitate it. He doesn’t want it to be something that only the rich have access to, so he has decided to choose who gets to go there.
Elsewhere, Maggie Charter discusses her heart condition with her doctor and hears that she may only have a few months to live. She is 61 years old and a tech mogul. For years she has been looking for a way to cure her heart disease. Her network of corporate spies have heard of a young man with an unusual portfolio of patents and a strange pattern of spending on digital storage. She finds out that it is Eli and decides to look into what he is doing more.
Over the course of their discussions, Eli and Ashura grow closer. Eli’s AI partner, Tallis, warns him that he cannot form emotional attachments to the Digi-souls. Ashura will die soon and then Eli will only be able to have limited interaction with her through the interface he has built. Ashura thinks over the proposal and decides to take the plunge. Episode 1 ends with her death. However, Ashura doesn’t die of brain cancer, she is found murdered in her apartment.
Episode 2: Extra Life
Eli must upload Ashura within 12 hours of her death to retain all of her memories, after that time degradation begins to take place. Eli races against time to reach Ashura in the morgue and take the brainwave recording that he needs. Shona Lennox, Eli’s technician, ends up breaking in while Eli creates a computer distraction. They are finally able to upload Ashura’s consciousness, but she has forgotten the days before her death, and they are unable to find out who killed her. She has also forgotten who Eli is.
Meanwhile in Virtuality, the digi-souls try to analyse Ashura’s work for the likely culprit and begin putting together a picture of who it might be. Someone at CharterTech seems a very strong candidate, but then they discover that Ashura was close to uncovering a chemical spill which derails their ideas.
Episode 3: Online Banking
Maggie is putting together more about Eli and his weird ability to make money from stock market trades and a portfolio of patents that seem to have little in common. She uncovers more about the shell companies that he trades through and puts more pieces together. Tallis flags up her interest and Eli works to cover his tracks. It’s the worst time for Ryan to make a major breakthrough in water purification that could save hundreds of lives, but only if they can get it to the right people. With Maggie watching everything that Eli and Shona are doing in the real world, perhaps only the virtual world can get the idea where it needs to be, especially as Ryan is feeling like his efforts don’t matter as he reads yet another news article on how climate change isn’t real.
Shona is contacted by her former boss at CharterTech who invites her to return, but Shona turns them down. The concerning part is that she’s being asked to work on an AI project called Occam. Ashura continues her investigations into CharterTech whilst rekindling her past relationship with Eli.
Episode 4: Occam’s Razor
Maggie has a heart attack, but survives, however she is becoming more and more concerned about her health. She brings online her own AI, Occam and begins to sift through all of the information that she can acquire on medical technology. Occam comes across Chie’s work when she was alive. No one else seems to have been quite as close to curing the heart issue that Maggie has. Occam notices that Eli’s shell company has patented some devices that were based on Chie’s work. In fact, Occam notices that this is something of a trend in Eli’s patent’s and brings together the other work that he has done to see something that Maggie has been unable to see up until this point. Eli may have some way of accessing the brains of the dead.
Episode 5: Reality Bytes
Ryan is bored and ends up creating a virtual ant colony that soon gets out of control, causing all sorts of trouble for Virtuality. Tallis is very much not amused at the replicating program that Ryan has introduced to the system. He and Oren are left to deal with it with only minimal input from Eli as he is being sued by CharterTech over one of his patents. It looks like a lawsuit brought specifically to waste his time, but there doesn’t seem to be anyway to circumvent it, especially with everyone else busy with the increasingly problematic (and storage sucking) ant farm.
Episode 6: Denial of Service
Someone tries to hack into Virtuality and it is up to Eli and the digi-souls to stop them. Chie finds out that her teenage daughter has a new boyfriend, and against Tallis’ advice she looks into him and discovers that he has a possible chromosomal abnormality which could lead to an early death. Chie tries to decide whether she should find a way to let her husband know.
Eli and the others successfully prevent the hack but are worried that someone now knows of the existence of Virtuality. Certainly someone is testing their defences. Shona finally tells Eli that she used to work for CharterTech and the fallout is unfortunate.
Episode 7: Second Life
Eli finds a possible new candidate for Virtuality and starts his due diligence. Usually Shona would be involved in this process but their recent falling out means that things are not running smoothly. The new prospect seems like the perfect candidate and Eli almost begins his usual approach, until Oren uncovers some anomalies that Eli had missed. They may not even exist at all. The question is, who knows enough about Virtuality to do something like this?
Tallis uncovers the existence of Occam, and there is a brief encounter where they size each other up. Occam is identified as the force that tried to hack Virtuality before.
Episode 8: Power Switch
City-wide power outages see Eli scrambling to ensure Virtuality doesn’t go down and lose all the digi-souls. Shona returns to help and the two resolve their differences whilst saving the world that they built together. The digi-souls come up with increasingly desperate plans to produce the power they need to survive, but save the day in the end. Ryan puts together new plans to ensure it never happens again.
Episode 9: Deleted
Ashura finally gets to the bottom of who murdered her and it was nothing to do with CharterTech or Maggie. Her exposé of a chemical company’s disregard for environmental law was the issue that caused her death. Shona uses some contacts to get the police involved and the digi-souls help Ashura gather enough evidence to get the culprit put away in jail for a long time.
Eli and Ashura address some of the issues with their relationship, but resolve to give it a go, despite the obvious barriers.
Episode 10: Boss Fight
Maggie and Occam finally uncover the existence of Virtuality and the digi-souls. The finale sees Maggie managing to force her way into the digital world, whilst Occam and Tallis fight it out. Eli and Shona do their best to help Tallis, but find their offices raided and their technology confiscated. Maggie gets time to get a foothold, but the strain is too much on her heart.
Just as Eli and Shona find their way back in, Maggie dies in the real world. Eli can either choose to kill her for good or keep her malevolent presence in Virtuality. Tallis isn’t too keen on sharing with Occam either.
