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.
