The pilot had a lot of promise. I mean there was the usual "looking the other way" on a few silly details, but that's OK.
Then the slide began. By the end of episode 6 it was impossible to look the other way. It had reached peak stupidity.
We'd already seen people who had been sent back in time to SAVE THE WORLD! acting like juvenile brats. Like the one who was sent back into a junky's body but couldn't be bothered going on methadone (or some futuristic cure for addiction) even tho the FUTURE OF THE WORLD! was at stake. And if that wasn't bad enough, he became obsessed with saving a few lives, which, due to the butterfly effect, could jeopardise the mission and the FUTURE OF THE WORLD! Being from the future, he knew that some apocalypse had kill billions and brought the human race to the brink of extinction (funnily enough, that's the whole premise of the series). OK, fine you say, junkies don't think too clearly - see above about trying to kick his addiction (and BTW, how is it possible to know the time of someone's death to the exact second, but not that he was a junky? I know, suspend disbelief - sigh).
But then came Episode 6. And Oh My God, what an episode!
It started well enough. A bunch of travelers took the bodies of some apocalyptic suicide cult members. We learned soon enough that they were expert marksmen. Now, you would think that their marksmanship skills were in some way important - I mean, why go to the bother of sending them back in time if they couldn't hit a bus at point blank range, right? It turns out their skill was in missing targets! You'd think any idiot could miss a target, but no, apparently it takes futuristic skills. But, I hear you say, they had to miss by just a bit so as not to kill anyone (hold that thought) but just to delay them. Two points: 1. the people who were being delayed were going to die anyway if the mission succeeded, along with the shooters from the future, so why not minimise losses by shooting them all, and then getting the hell out of there? 2. Once the targets had worked out that they weren't actually being targeted, which took all of a few seconds, the jig was up and they could proceed with complete impunity. As idiotic plans go, they don't get a lot dumber. I guess it was some government committee of the future that devised the plan, so maybe it's quite plausible.
Why, why, WHY do writers think we are all complete idiots and won't notice their stupid, pathetic excuses for a plot? Since this series gets a lot of 10/10 reviews and was renewed for a second season, I guess it just proves that the great H.L. Menken was right when he said that nobody ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public.
Review of Helios 685
