Syfy’s Helix is just what I’ve been missing in my TV viewing life. Cool, creepy, smart, fast-paced, compelling, super-serialized, and full of mysteries – and maybe even a conspiracy or two. The kind of show I can really sink my teeth into, the kind of show that warrants rewatching at least once a week. Twice is better.
And speaking of twice, the show’s creator, Cameron Porsandeh, very kindly agreed to a second interview with SciFi Mafia, on premiere day. He gave some terrific insights into the process, the scariest science, and A HEAD’S UP ABOUT A CLUE …
I asked him if he would happy to have people obsess over the show, rewatching and dissecting and taking notes and theorizing, or if he’d prefer that viewers just relax and go along for the ride.
We built in a mystery and we very much wanted people to wonder what’s going on up at this base and to try to figure it out in an active way. It’s kinda the fun of the show, coming up with theories, and then having those theories subverted or changed when new information comes to light. Having said that, I think the show can definitely be enjoyed the other way, too. I think that it’s kind of like Lost. I feel like a lot of people were incredibly active in trying to figure out what was going on. I had other friends who would sit back with a beer and just enjoy the ride, and I’m thinking, like Lost, this show works in both those ways.
I had just come off several rewatches of the first three screener episodes when we spoke, and I told him that I kept noticing things during the rewatches that I had missed the first or even second time around. It turns out that was something that he and the other writers intended:
It’s really nice to hear, and I’ll tell you why. When Lost first came out, there was none of this sort of “binge-watching” and constantly rewatching that we have now. I think one of the great things about doing a show in 2013 is, you can sort of cater to that audience that wants to rewatch and rewatch. And we tried to lay things in that would be satisfying on a second or third viewing, or may not even come to light until a second or third viewing.
He clearly didn’t know me and my Lostie friends back in the day, but I’ll grant him that we weren’t necessarily in the majority, and now that kind of obsessing over shows happens with every fandom. It’s wonderful to know that the Helix writers (one of whom, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, actually did write for Lost) are crafting the episodes for people like us, and that we’ll get some payoff for our attention.
So… I have heard from more than one source that Helix “starts out as an outbreak show but becomes something else.” No, I did not ask him that question (spoilers!). But I did ask if there are clues to what the show becomes, whether or not it stays an “outbreak show,” in the first two episodes. “That’s an excellent question, and the answer is: very slight but yes. I would say there are clues in every episode as to where it’s going, but they’re slight and it’s meant to twist and turn.”
We very much hope that by the end of the two-hour premiere tonight people will already be having theories and, based upon what they’ve seen, ideas about where this is going. But our hope is, (laughing) I think, like any great tv show, that you won’t be able to figure it out. It’s a delicate line, giving people enough to be satisfied and anxious to see more, without ruining it. And we think we hit that sort of note perfectly. But you know, people are smart, so (laughs again)… I think we gave just enough but we pulled back I think in the right spots. Our hope is that everyone doesn’t figure it out quite so quickly.
Promising that I was done with all the potentially spoiler-ish questions, I moved on to the science of the show. Little did I know, that was going to lead to AN EXCELLENT CLUE.
Porsandeh says that he had a little bit of background in the science of the show before he started writing Helix. Since he spent a lot of time working in third world countries in his first career as an economist, he spent a lot of time around viruses and virologists, “because in the third world, a lot of viruses that we take for granted as not being an issue in the States or in Canada, still exist over there.”
But once he started writing, “I got really much much deeper into it. There’s a book called The Hot Zone that I quite liked. Obviously there have been a number of virus movies in pop culture, including Contagion most recently.”
But I read a ton about it, and what I think it does, is it just grounds the show in moments, and I think that’s really really important . Even shows like House, which I like, a lot of times they throw out a lot of jargon, but if you look up some of the jargon, it’s real, and I think that that’s fun. And I think what’s different between our show and Lost is …
Here we go kids…
THE JARGON AND SOME OF THE CLUES END UP BEING RELEVANT AS TO WHERE WE’RE GOING WITH THE SERIES.
Got that? If you can translate the scientific terms they use in the show, you may get an idea of what’s coming. I think I’m going to need to befriend a scientist, because I don’t know if I’d even be able to spell a lot of the terms they use, which means Googling may not be helpful. Clearly another rewatch is in order.
Porsandeh reports that the show’s science adviser, Dr. John T. Brooks of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been the best. “Really, really great. And other virologists would sorta just call in, and have ideas too…”
The community’s been really great. These guys get really excited when there’s a show about what they do, and they’ve been really, really, really good about weighing in and saying, “You know what you could even do? You could even do this!” Really fun. And you could just see the excitement on their faces. We’ve been really lucky in that sense.
I love that the science is real, and concerned that it’s not, as we’ve been told, very far off in the future. But what part is truly looming only a few years away? “I guess it’s in terms of the way viruses behave and the way we can manipulate them now. For the longest time, viruses were out there and we would figure them out and we would kill them. Now we’re getting to the stage where we can manipulate viruses to do very specific things.”
As an example, when he first started creating the show Porsandeh read an article about a girl who was infected with HIV in order to cure her cancer. “It was fascinating. But the real takeaway for me in terms of this show is, we can now use the miracle of viruses and how they work in the human body and do all kinds of new things. And not tomorrow, but it’s coming, and it’s coming very very quickly.”
Which could be considered scary. Any chance Porsandeh could share which aspect of the science of the show he found the scariest, or is that a spoiler? “Part of the answer is yes, you should wait for the future episodes,” he laughed. “But part of it is that classic question of ‘When is science really really cool and when does it become uncontrollable?'” As he says, other shows and movies have played with this idea, it’s not a new question, “but I think with viruses it’s particularly scary, because viruses are everywhere, all the time. and if one started to spread like fire, it’s not clear that we have the means to control it.”
Great. As if I needed another reason to find Helix extraordinarily chilling. “Viruses take on human-like elements, and to me that’s completely terrifying. They can mutate, evolve, and act in ways that appear almost strategic. And we don’t have a way of shutting that off. That, to me, is very scary.” To me, too.
About those human-like elements… I told Porsandeh that the vectors (the violent infected people) seemed to me to be a human version of an aggressive virus. Is that where he got the idea for their behavior? “That was an astute observation.” Of course I had to include that lovely thing he said. Thank you, sir. “We tried to think about how a virus would behave, if there was a human incarnation. That was very much the thought process to it. Personifying something that we don’t see normally.”
So very creepy. And definitely a type of attack I don’t remember seeing before. These aren’t brain-eating zombies, but very much living, infected people, who just want to give you the most horrible kind of kiss since the Dementors. Even the CG vector rats were horrific to watch when they attacked.
Moving away from the scary creepy for a moment, I asked Porsandeh what it was like, as the creator of a series, to be in the writers’ room and see his creation, well, tweaked. “There are moments when it’s challenging, but one thing that Ron (Moore, showrunner for Battlestar Galactica and executive producer of Helix) told me, and I think it’s really wise advice, is the creative process doesn’t really stop with any one person. Ever.”
Even after the script is written, the actors breathe new life into it. When we were shooting the pilot with Jeffrey Reiner, you see certain actors had strengths you didn’t know about, and you start to play to those things. So in that sense, yes, there’s a little bit of letting go, and that can be a challenge. But I feel like it got better, and when you let go and things get better, there’s something nice and reassuring about that when it happens a second and third time.
He also reports that the writers room contained “a really really good group of people. And they came from very different backgrounds. We had people from Mad Men and House of Cards, to Heroes and Sons of Anarchy, and I think that was a really really useful thing for the show. I can’t say anything but positive things about them, personally and professionally.”
And every episode was a collaboration:
In the writers’ room, everybody had a say. We had six writers in total, and everyone sort of contributed to everything. we broke the stories as a group with everyone in the room, and then people would sort of branch out and do outlines. but people would contribute to the outlines, so things would sort of change and evolve, and they got better with those contributions. It was a communal effort, episode by episode, at almost every stage (of each episode), various people would weight in and make it better.
Even the management notes were great. “As you can imagine, it would go through the studio and the network; oftentimes they had some really really good ideas, and we would go back and make further adjustments.”
So, is he ready to do the whole thing again? Would he like to have a second Helix season? “Of course I do!” he laughed. “It’s a roller coaster ride, but I have never heard of a show creator wanting their show to end after one season; I don’t feel that way at all. I hope we get tremendous ratings, and I hope we know soon.”
SO DO I. Come on, Syfy, let’s get that second season ordered!
As we wrapped up the interview, I asked Porsandeh about watching the premiere that night. “I have four younger siblings, and one flew in from London, and they’re all gonna be there,” but he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted a lot of people around. “Part of me wants to actually sit there and have the viewing experience that the viewer does, and if it gets too big, it turns into a party.” A Super Bowl party where no one watches is the opposite of what he wants. “Although I do think this is the kind of show where, if you turn off the lights, 30 people in the room can enjoy it together, almost like a theatrical experience.”
I told him I almost recommended in my review to watch the show with the lights down, because it’s a nice dark creepy cold show to watch. “I completely agree with that, and there’s not a lot of stuff like that on TV, in my opinion.” Agreed, but at least now we have one, and it is the best.
Thanks once more to Cameron Porsandeh for taking the time to talk with SciFi Mafia about our absolute favorite new show.
Helix, starring Billy Campbell, Hiroyuki Sanada, Kyra Zagorsky, Mark Ghanimé, Jordan Hayes, Meegwun Fairbrother, Catherine Lemieux and Neil Napier, airs Fridays at 10/9c on Syfy.
