MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION episode 4: adapting "The Discarded" by Harlan Ellison (from the 2007 TV GUIDE blog for the series)

Continuing from yesterday, some of the text entries from now-vanished tv series blogs on the TV Guide website, this one the fourth in a series I wrote in 2007 about the ABC-TV airing of the (six-episode) Masters of Science Fiction, the last episode they chose to air, adapting Harlan Ellison's 1959 short story, "The Departed".

This episode, "The Discarded", as available ("free with ads") on Roku TV.  The series' page.

Tonight's episode is the fourth and last ABC intends to run, of the six that were produced (all six will be seen in Canada, at least, on the cable channel Space, starting in November). And it was the episode a number of people were most eager to see, I suspect, since it was based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, who has established himself as a major figure in both prose fantastic fiction (among other sorts) and in screenwriting, as well as some notable comics scripting and work in other media. Apparently Ellison gave executive producer Keith Addis strong support when they resisted the attempts by ABC to call the series "Masters of Sci-Fi" which would be comparable to calling its Showtime sibling series Masters of Horror something like "Masters of Spookiness" instead.

(ABC chose to slip "scifi" into the URL for the series' pages on ABC.com, anyway...perhaps the smallest of many hostilities the network has shown toward this project). And the story was adapted for television by Ellison and Josh Olson, best-known for his excellent work in adapting the graphic novel A History of Violence for the 2005 film; Jonathan Frakes, of Star Trek: The Next Generation, directed the episode.

It's a pleasantly baroque staging of a rather simple tale of multiple betrayals, most of them betrayals of people with unusual appearance due to their infection with a plague known to the characters as "RIGM" or the "Blood Poo" (broadcast self-censorship) which causes limbs or organs to undergo extreme  deviance from the norm...John Hurt's character grows an extra head, albeit a smaller one, from his shoulders. A number of these folks have been quarantined, like the lepers exiled to the Hawaiian island of Molokai referenced in the drama, on poorly-maintained spacecraft and left to their own increasingly dispirited, often suicidal devices. Suddenly an emissary from Earth comes to beg for their blood, to help create a vaccine for RIGM, which has grown more virulent as it continues to plague the planet's human population; the emissary himself is infected and suffering. The deal: a trade of their blood samples for an opportunity to take up tracts of land, rather like reservations, on Earth. The de facto leader of the Discarded on this particular cargo ship is certain that the Earth government won’t honor its end of the bargain, and aggressively insists as much, till he's accidentally killed...leaving Hurt's character as the grand old man of the ship's crew, despite being the one who killed his best friend.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the late leader's suspicions are borne out...once the Earth has the blood cultures they need, they simply exile a few more of the most "unsightly" folk to the ship, crushing the hopes of those waiting to return to Earth for the first time in years or decades.

Ellison’s early short stories often are grim and relentless, and this one, written while facing great personal hardship (including attempts by his immediate commanding officers to court-martial him for a minor infraction, living off-base as a married draftee without permission), is no exception. Today’s Ellison touch is most obvious in the word-drunk play with language evident in the lines given Hurt’s character, named for a most unpleasant fellow GI Ellison knew then. Hurt delivers the speeches with a Shakespearean’s aplomb, in a good performance among many here, one that works well with Brian Dennehy’s gruff cynic and the largely Canadian supporting cast (Ellison has acute cameo role, as well). Among those Canadian actors were a number who are in their daily lives unusual-looking, due to circumstances of birth or surviving severe burns among other mishaps...they moved Ellison mightily by suggesting that they’d adopt the term “the Discarded” for themselves. (The short story was give this title in its 1959 magazine appearance by the late Cele Goldsmith Lalli, who went on from “discovering” such writers as Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch, and Keith Laumer as editor of the Ziff-Davis fiction magazines Fantastic and Amazing, to become the chief editor of ZD’s bridal magazines when the publisher sold the fiction titles). You may decide for yourself how many in-jokes are suggested by a character who shares the cameo scene with Ellison, an apparent teenage girl in a cheerleader’s outfit who is otherwise unusual mostly for having only one large Cyclopean eye centered above her nose; a reference to Maria Bello’s former cheerleader role in A History of Violence, to the gifted cheerleader in Heroes (rather unlikely, given when this was filmed), or to the monocular character Leelah from Futurama…or none of the above. John Frizzell’s jazz score for the episode was impressively good, seeming at one point to rework or quote another 1959 cultural product, the Miles Davis Quintet’s “So What?”

And the arguable betrayal of this series by ABC wasn’t restricted only to the network’s lack of publicity or other support, but, also by a number of local affiliates, who particularly have been eager to pre-empt Masters of SF from its 10pm ET/PT slot on Saturdays, in favor of local specials or sports coverage, often delaying the run till early-morning hours on Sunday. Given the (at least) interesting nature of at least three of the episodes, this seems more than a shame…but one that will presumably soon be remedied for those interested by a home-video release. And Canadians, at least, will have the option of seeing the two episodes, based on stories by Robert Sheckley and Walter Mosley, that we in the States will have to wait for.

[Since I haven't recovered them, not] Coming soon…a recap of the series as presented by ABC…and a consideration of the controversy surrounding the treatment of Robert Heinlein’s story by Michael Tolkin for the third episode, “Jerry Was a Man”...