By Dawoud Kringle

It hardly bears mentioning that translating a novel to cinema inflicts upon the story inevitable changes. I expected this; but still felt it right to hold ScyFy to rigorous standards.

For me, personally, the book has been a favorite since my early teens. When I learned that the ScyFy channel made it into a TV miniseries, directed by Nick Hurran, I was more than a little intrigued.

In fact, I have waited 40 years for this.

Be forewarned: the remainder of this article contains spoilers.

The story is the prototype of the mass invasion from outer space. Without warning, giant spacecrafts enter earth’s atmosphere and settle above most of the major cities of the earth. Yet, unlike other such stories, this invasion is a peaceful one. The extraterrestrials, who soon are named the Overlords, bring peace and prosperity to humanity. Humanity are introduced to the leader of the Overlords, and the “supervisor of earth” Karellen. Karellen chose a man, Rikki Stormgren to act as spokesman / intercession between humanity and the Overlords. Within less than a decade, war, famine, disease, injustice, oppression, and environmental pollution are eliminated. But for years, the Overlords refused to show themselves to humanity. The side effect of their presence was that all cultural development and scientific research came to a halt. Humanity felt it was futile to pursue knowledge that the Overlords achieved centuries or millennia ago. After some years, Karellen announced that he would show himself to the world. Many people were shocked that the physical appearance of the Overlords was identical to the classic description of the devil (horns, leathery wings, barbed tail, hoofs, etc.). Eventually, after decade of a utopia devoid of any real progress, a group of artists and scientists decided to form their own community and pursue the development of art, science, and culture. The Overlords largely ignored them. One of them, an astrophysicist named Jan Rodricks (Milo Rodricks in the miniseries, played by Osy Ikhile) found a way to stow away on one of the Overlords’ ships, and visited their home planet. But then the children all over the world began to exhibit unexplainable behavior. Eventually, it was clear that these children represented the next stage in the evolution of humanity into purely spiritual / mind beings that were to merge with an omnipotent, omniscient universal consciousness (which some interpreted as being God). With this, the rest of humanity would be extinct, because there would never be another child born on earth. Rodricks returned to a barren earth, and witnessed its eventual destruction.

The Hugo Wainwright character, played by Colm Meany, was altered in a number of ways. In the book, he was described as an honest and sincere man who sought humanity’s best interest, despite his occasional shortsightedness. In the miniseries, he came across as a fanatic, and eventually a criminal. 

Charles Dance did an excellent job in his interpretation of Karellen. His authoritative yet understated British accent was well suited to the character. The makeup / CGI they used on him, and Vindartan (the only other Overlord shown, played by Benedict Hardie) was flawless. The only problem I saw with the miniseries’ portrayal of Karellen was that the brilliant dialogue found in the book was not brought to the screen. In the book, everything Karellen said was a statement of superlative genius. This was largely lost in the screenplay.

Hurran and the writers took a number of very obvious liberties with the story. In the books, the story unfolded over two centuries. The miniseries compressed it into a few decades. A great deal of it took on the persona of modern 21st century cultural zeitgeist; which is, admittedly, inevitable. But somehow this came across as almost cheap gimmickry.

They took considerable license with the role of Rikki Stormgren (played by Mike Vogel); in the book, he worked for the UN. In the miniseries, he was a farmer. A great deal of time was spent on Stormgren’s personal life; much more than the storyline merited. The immense time spent dwelling on Stormgren’s life detracted from the overall story.

Rodricks entire life was woven into the story. An impoverished boy who’d been confined to a wheelchair was eventually cured of his malady, and grew up to be an intellectually restless scientific adventurer.

There were also some additions of characters that Clarke would doubtless have felt were superfluous. The addition of Peretta Jones (played by Yael Stone) was not in the book. Her presence was, despite Stone’s excellent performance, seemingly added as an afterthought in order to alter the real purpose of the story. She was professionally a child psychologist, but in her personal life was a devout Christian in a world where religion had become largely irrelevant. She was opposed to the presence of the Overlords, largely on religious grounds, and immensely frustrated because she was powerless to do anything about it.

In one scene, she was attempting to help one of the children who was transforming. In a scene where the boy’s psychic power was manifesting in a violent and uncontrollable manner, a gold crucifix on a chain that Jones wore suddenly began strangling her, and the crucifix was damaged and misshapen in the process. This was clearly an irrelevancy that served absolutely no useful purpose to the story. Yet Hurran and staff took great pains to emphasize it. It was irrelevant because the apotheosis the children were going through both ignored and validated religious doctrine; especially as is interpreted through Christian eschatology.

This was the greatest weakness and flaw of the miniseries. Hurran and the writers of the miniseries almost failed to understand (or at least were weak in communicating) the main point of Clarke’s vision. Clarke’s story did not drive a wedge between science and religion; it united them in a way wherein the two polar opposites validated each other. Clarke was one of the few writers of any genre who succeeded in writing anything original about God, and presented it in a way that answered more questions than it created. Perhaps these religious dichotomies were an inevitable part of the process by which the real answers to these problems must be sought. But there were times when the miniseries was attacking religious bigotry (or at least the unimaginative) when a more subtle approach would produce a desirable result. Its navigation of these metaphysical and philosophical obstacles and conundrums was at times, a little clumsy. The failure to find a common focal point between all the world’s religions (and not just Christianity) was another flaw in the story.

Clarke’s novel, Childhood‘s End draws on Christian allegory: the Overlords are Satan and his rebel angels, the Overmind is a God-like figure, and the assimilation of the children into the Overmind is the Rapture and Armageddon rolled into one. Saddled with his conception of a science fiction version of Armageddon, Clarke was forced to have the Overlords shut heaven off to mankind. This was why humanity was forbidden from leaving earth; they could never hope to handle what was among the stars, and Karellen told humanity that one of his duties was to protect them from forces they could not understand. The celestial portals were shut in humanity’s face. But what was perhaps not properly emphasized in the miniseries was that the Overlords were, really, slaves of a power, God, if you will, that they were powerless against and could never understand, despite their immense achievements. In the end, humanity would surpass the Overlords and become their masters.

Although the end of the miniseries was somewhat true to the book (despite some weaknesses that would have been alleviated had they not wasted so much time and budget on Stormgren’s personal life earlier in the series), the emphasis on the aforementioned spiritual / metaphysical element of the story was almost lost.

Rodricks’s meeting with the “Overmind” on the Overlords’ home planet Jejedda (which would merit a thorough etymological analysis: the Arabic words for paradise and hell, respectively, are Jenna and Jehenna) was an interesting affair. The CGI treatment of Jejedda was well done. As for the Overmind itself, I imagine anyone daring to tackle such a Herculean task is worthy of respect, and any error or shortcoming would be justifiably overlooked. The Overmind’s statement “I am the collective consciousness of the universe” implies a pantheistic identity which, all things considered, imposed a limitation upon limitlessness. The other problem presented here was that it told Rodricks that “only the children are God.” If pantheism were to include all consciousness, then, to reject the older generations of humanity would be to cancel its own claim to pantheism. The only real solution to this is the concept of a universal consciousness that transcends pantheistic traits, and is omniscient as well as omnipotent. This was another flaw the writers tried to wiggle their way out of, and lacked the metaphysical sophistication to provide any real answers for. The explanation of how consciousness survives physical earth was a bit sophomoric, and lacked the subtlety that a true resolution between science and religion demands.

Some of the CGI for the end of the earth was a disappointment. In the book, Rodricks saw “,, a great auroral storm. The whole sky is lit up,,, red, golds, and greens are chasing each other across the sky – oh, it’s beyond words. It doesn’t seem fair that I’m the only one to see it. I never though such colors,,.” Modern CGI technology could easily have produced this. They did not, which was a terrible disappointment, to the point of being a pitiful oversight.

At the end of the story, Rodricks when was reporting his impressions of the destruction of the earth to Karellen. Rodricks’ description was immensely beautiful, and he faced this with courage. He mentioned sensing a feeling of achievement, and expressed a sadness for Karellen and the Overlords, who were stuck in an evolutionary cul-de-sac from which they would never escape. The miniseries portrayed this differently, or at least lost the inherent nobility and majesty of Clarke’s original vision of Rodricks’ role as the last man. This was a terrible disappointment.

I must make mention of the music. Most of the incidental music score of the miniseries was, while competent and effective, somewhat unremarkable. Nothing stood out (or really needed to, it being in a role of subliminal subservience to the story). There was, however, one exception.

In Rodricks’ childhood, he had a friend. A homeless man living in an abandoned car, who often played a recording of Ralph Vaughn Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending.” When reporting the destruction of earth to Karellen, he asked that some part of humanity’s achievements be preserved. In what was clearly a “downloading” of Rodricks’ memories, Karellen found this music, and used some mysterious technology to insure that, in the ages to follow, whoever would visit our solar system would encounter this music. Of course, this never happened in the book, but it seemed a somehow fitting and poetic nuance that Hurran added to the story.

And of course, Karellen was left with the loneliness that followed. I quote the book: “Six thousand million kilometers beyond the orbit of Pluto, Karellen sat before a suddenly darkened screen. The weight of centuries was upon him, and a sadness that no logic could dispel.” Hurran’s vision missed this important point.