Outcasts (TV Series) Episode #1.1 (2011) User Reviews

A decent first episode

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 7 February 2011]

This opening episode of BBC1's new science fiction drama didn't get off to the best of starts as the opening scene felt rather cliché but soon things picked up. Set on a planet dubbed Carpathia by its settlers who fled a dying Earth it is clear that life is far from idyllic. Mitchell, played by Jamie Bamber, AKA Battlestar Galactica's Apollo, returns from an expedition and isn't pleased to be told that he is expected to surrender his weapon; he is even less pleased when he learns that his wife has been spying on him for the colony's president Richard Tate. While nothing is explicitly stated it is fairly clear that at some previous time Tate had ordered him to execute people suffering from a contagious disease but he took them out of town and released them. Early on Mitchell's wife is attacked and critically injured leaving him the most likely suspect; as he flees with his son two police officers pursue him. While this is going on there is also trouble in orbit where a recently arrived transport is preparing to land but due to damage to its heat shield is in danger of burning up.

After an unpromising opening I was soon gripped and keen to know more about the characters and just what secrets Tate was keeping and why he isn't keen to see one of the passengers from the ship. The acting from the main cast was solid and the South African scenery made a nice change from the Californian Desert and Vancouver forests favoured by North American science fiction series. Without giving away any spoilers I will say that the ending came as quite a surprise to me. It is a bit soon to be certain but on the strength of this episode I think the BBC might have a good series on their hands.

Episode #1.1

[ComedyFan2010 · 7/10 · 29 November 2011]

I never expect too much from pilots, their main purpose is just to introduce you to the idea of the show and characters. This is what this episode is about. And I think they did a good job. Very often I am still pretty confused about who is who at the end and need to re watch, but here I get the idea

I also like the idea of them having a very Pacifist colony where cruelty to animals is also forbidden. And of course I liked the performance of that cute little piggy in the beginning.

I was very excited to see Jamie Bamber, and I must say he was fantastic at this episode. So I was incredibly upset when he was shot at the end. Ironically by the character that I didn't like, it is hard to say so far if I didn't like the actress or the character. I am not just upset that Bamber will not be on the show anymore, but mainly because I got pretty interested in the whole story about him, so killing Mitchell off right away was not a good idea in my opinion.

But I am looking forward to see what will happen now.

I Love A Good Sci-Fi Space Soap-Opera, NOT

[scocasso · 3/10 · 24 December 2022]

Space Soap-Opera pretty much sums this one up. Silly unbelievable plots, characters that do things nobody else would ever do, after ten years living together they're still all about petty arguments, people shoot other people for almost no reason... they throw a "feminism"conversation right in the dialogue just so that everyone knows what this junk-heap is all about. I thought I'd give this a whirl because it had a pretty good rating... how on earth did it get a rating that high? Makes no sense. A Soap-Opera is a Soap-Opera no matter the setting, and that's what we have here, plain and simple..

Could be a (so bad its good) classic

[blater-972-480729 · 1/10 · 8 February 2011]

I managed to sit through 30minutes of this cringeworthy stodge. I was fortunate to watch it on iplayer rather than live so after the first 15 minutes I was able to fast-forward past the more embarrassing dialog and obvious plot turns.

The production values are good and the special effects are up to standard but the interesting ideas (power struggle/unknown dangers/hidden pasts) are slaughtered by a terrible script, stilted dialog, and inept plot. The plot is obvious and the characters behaviour often unbelievable. Most annoyingly every *important fact* is repeated three times, sometimes v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, in case we were too thick to understand the first times.

My personal favourite is the scene where we find out that the ruling Pacifist clique have made vegetarianism compulsory, but "renegade carnivores" have been cloning piglets to get their "fix". One of the piglets gets confiscated and walked on a leash through HQ. While the characters repeat an *Important fact* to us for the second time, it shakes it's behind and grunts in a way that suggests it's about to show us exactly where the script came from.

Like another reviewer said, this is such a turkey it might end up being a so-bad-it's-good classic.

Reasons this was AWful

[sarastro7 · 3/10 · 24 February 2011]

I usually don't make the Ellisonian distinction between "sci-fi" (poor quality commercial TV and movies trying to cash in on science fiction concepts) and proper science fiction, but when I see a really poor sci-fi movie (like Predators) or TV show (like Outcasts), I begin to see the sense of the difference between the two.

Outcasts is to European pop culture exactly what some run-of-the-mill U.S. sci-fi show is to American pop culture. The main difference being that while an American show would be up-beat, Outcasts is down-beat. Very, very downbeat. Everybody is depressed and pessimistic, everything is going wrong, and even though there's only a small colony of people, everybody is divided into antagonistic and extremist factions who cannot co-exist but do anyway (while occasionally killing each other), etc. Realistic? I severely doubt it.

This is a very adult show, as its pervasive mood of despair clearly denotes, and I am really mystified that anyone at BBC thought this would be what science fiction audiences wanted. Well, I guess they're trying to be everything that Doctor Who is not.

Even so, lots of things don't make sense. Take the technology level (the story takes place around 2060 or so). They have been massively lucky in finding at least one entirely Earth-like planet to live on, and bringing a group of people there (we don't hear how many, but it's a couple of thousands, tops, maybe much less), but their spaceships are hardly able to penetrate a planetary atmosphere (and only have escape pods for a fraction of the passengers - they even mentioned Titanic!), and they prioritized bringing a truckload of old-fashioned handguns with them?! Utterly moronic. And no form of ground or air transportation; they have to *walk* everywhere! This ridiculous level of technology cannot sustain even this unknown number of people, no matter how few they are.

What about the social structure? This little settlement has a "president"?! Guess it must be a gosh-darn independent republic, then. With antagonistic factions (nice pacifists and aggressive self-reliance nuts - stereotypes galore). The definition of a state is that it monopolizes violence. This colony's only means of enforcing law and order is a tiny police force made up mostly of women, who apparently easily disarmed everyone when the pacifists decided to ban guns just now. How the freak did the other faction comply to this, and when they didn't, HOW were they forced to?! Again, entirely unbelievable. People who know anything about science fiction would not have produced anything so dim-witted. Next episode: zombies in the outback, undoubtedly.

My rating: 3 out of 10. The actors are okay, the production values are bearable, it's too early to say anything much about the story, but the concepts and the details of the setting make the show barely watchable.