« Riverworld »

Last night, Becca and I watched the premiere of the new Riverworld series on the SciFi channel. Although we were entertained to some degree, we were both pretty disappointed at the liberties that were taken with the original books. The two biggest changes:

• The central character in the novels, the great adventurer Richard Francis Burton, a fascinating and complex historical figure from the Victorian era, was replaced by a generic modern American military guy. I guess the makers have a low opinion of the ability of the viewers to relate to a character from a different time and culture.
• Whereas in the books, everyone is initially resurrected simultaneously across Riverworld, in this version the resurrections were staggered across at least a 10-year time span. This allowed the makers to collapse events that took place across two or three novels into a single two-hour episode. So much for thoughtful plot development — let's skip the boring philosophical speculation and go right to the action sequences!

There are many other differences, of varying degrees of significance, but my overall impression is that Phillip Jose Farmer's ambitious books were dropped into a blender and reconstituted in a smoother, blander, less challenging form. Clearly the makers have a low opinion of their audience. This is pretty ironic, given that science fiction readers are by nature more capable of the willing suspension of disbelief, and generally ready to be challenged to a much greater degree than the general viewer. It's doubly ironic given that the SciFi channel's treatment of the Dune books has been relatively faithful to its literary origins.

There are some positive points: the show is visually stunning, the casting of familiar characters (Alice, Gwenafra, Zev, Monat, Sam) was well done, the acting is generally good.

We will probably continue to watch, to see how things unfold. But it is quite disappointing to see another example of a project with such huge potential get dumbed down into yet another action series set in an exotic locale.

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