This was an unusual video homage to the writing of Philip K. Dick. What made this pilot (and the subsequent series) unusual was that the world pictured was actually a combination of both Total Recall (taken from the story, "We Remember For You, Wholesale") and Bladerunner (from the book, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"). This unusual fusion gives the viewer a cop show, with a science-fiction edge which is remarkably sharp.
The story is that of David Hume (Michael Easton), a tired officer of the CPB (citizen's Protection Bureau) who walks a daily tightrope between the duty he owes the people and the cryptic Assessor's Office, which enforces the law on the megalithic corporations whose power dwarfs the government. When Hume's partner Nick Blanchard (Thomas Kretschmann) is killed by rogue androids, he finds himself at odds with everyone. Things only get worse when the department assigns him a new partner, Ian Farve (Karl Pruner), whom Hume sees as naive and hopelessly new to the job. The only bright spot is Hume's lovely wife, Olivia (Cynthia Preston), who is there for him, but she has a few skeletons in her closet, too.
Like Philip K. Dick's own writing, themes of empathy and reality are emphasized throughout the film, while the yawning canyons of skyscrapers and flying cars are offered as a technological counterpoint. The film also mimics one of the central themes in Dick's stories; an existentialist view of the world: do we see things as they really are? Can you, for example, spot the androids in the shots of the streets of Hume's city? The series which followed this movie continued the same style, but its ultimate failure in the ratings was not through poor story quality. The series had, by far, the best writing I've yet seen. What doomed it, I think, was probably the largest irony in the Science Fiction genre. SF stories on TV usually spend too much time on the technological end and not enough on the people themselves. Any one of the Star Trek shows from Next Generation on is a perfect case in point! Total Recall 2070, by contrast, spent too much of its time telling the stories of the people at the CPB; it was too human, and in Philip K. Dick's world of lifelike androids, that is indeed a bitter irony!
The story is that of David Hume (Michael Easton), a tired officer of the CPB (citizen's Protection Bureau) who walks a daily tightrope between the duty he owes the people and the cryptic Assessor's Office, which enforces the law on the megalithic corporations whose power dwarfs the government. When Hume's partner Nick Blanchard (Thomas Kretschmann) is killed by rogue androids, he finds himself at odds with everyone. Things only get worse when the department assigns him a new partner, Ian Farve (Karl Pruner), whom Hume sees as naive and hopelessly new to the job. The only bright spot is Hume's lovely wife, Olivia (Cynthia Preston), who is there for him, but she has a few skeletons in her closet, too.
Like Philip K. Dick's own writing, themes of empathy and reality are emphasized throughout the film, while the yawning canyons of skyscrapers and flying cars are offered as a technological counterpoint. The film also mimics one of the central themes in Dick's stories; an existentialist view of the world: do we see things as they really are? Can you, for example, spot the androids in the shots of the streets of Hume's city? The series which followed this movie continued the same style, but its ultimate failure in the ratings was not through poor story quality. The series had, by far, the best writing I've yet seen. What doomed it, I think, was probably the largest irony in the Science Fiction genre. SF stories on TV usually spend too much time on the technological end and not enough on the people themselves. Any one of the Star Trek shows from Next Generation on is a perfect case in point! Total Recall 2070, by contrast, spent too much of its time telling the stories of the people at the CPB; it was too human, and in Philip K. Dick's world of lifelike androids, that is indeed a bitter irony!