Review:Global Frequency

From AJS.COM

Overall: Anthology SF with some great and some only very good stories: 8 of 10

Global Frequency is a graphic novel and a never-aired TV series, created by Warren Ellis. This review was clipped from the larger, Warren Ellis reviews on AJS Reviews.

Graphic novel

The setup is fairly simple: the Cold War left dozens of horrible things in the world that no government can afford to admit to, and thus there's no one to clean up after them. Our hero, Miranda Zero, has formed an extended network of the brightest minds in the world to take on these world-ending terrors. For the most part, we're left to accept that Miranda has seemingly unlimited resources for the creation of her own private communications devices, field equipment, and at least one permanent staff member, but this is not the least believable setup I've seen to date. From there, it's pretty much the sort of modern-day science fiction anthology that you would expect. All of the stories have a pretty interesting core idea. Some are executed better than others.

Highlights of the series include the unconventional hacker, Aleph, who acts as Miranda's operator in a global switchboard that can draw on the resources of 1001 of the world's top scientists, former spies and conspiracy theorists. She's a foil for Miranda's steely presence, and the only thing that I wish the series had done more of is exploring her character. Beyond that, it's all about the stories. From alien meme s to super-soldiers, it's all solid Twilight Zone material that would be equally at home in comic or big-screen form.

If you enjoy science fiction short stories, then I heartily recommend the first collected reprint of this series.

TV series

Miranda Zero (Michelle Forbes, right) and Aleph (Aimee Garcia, left) from the Global Frequency pilot

The TV series based on the comic was never aired. WB did not pick up the series after the pilot was filmed. In an odd twist, attempts to save the show apparently backfired when someone on the inside leaked the pilot to the world of peer-to-peer file sharing. In his BAD SIGNAL newsletter/mailing-list, Ellis said, "bittorrenting of 'GLOBAL FREQUENCY' has rendered it as dead as dead can get as a TV series. It seems that people in high places did not take kindly to the leak." Can you imagine being the exec who decided not to release a series to DVD because its pilot was too popular? I don't think there's a short enough bus in the world to take that action!

Still, I think the pilot deserves at least a small review.

Mark Burnett (creator of Survivor ) tried to bring this series to the screen in 2005. Michelle Forbes starred as Miranda Zero and was joined by newly created characters Sean Flynn (Josh Hopkins) and Dr. Katrina Finch (Jenni Baird). A somewhat toned-down version of Aleph was played by Aimee Garcia.

Overall, the pilot was excellent. It managed to be even more convincing than the comic as to why these people throw their lot in with Miranda, spending a good chunk of dialog on a particularly rousing, "you know that what you do will matter," speech from the mousy but brave doctor of particle physics and what-not-all-else. The story was directly taken from the first issue of the comic. It was both beautifully filmed and realistically portrayed. The man with the bomb in his head wasn't re-dressed to look like James Bond, and they didn't give him any shockingly bad dialog that I would expect of a TV show.

I think my only complaints were with the rather toned down version of Aleph (she's still great, just not as great), and a rather cheesy Matrix-like scene with Miranda breaking into an NSA prison. I'm not sure why that scene had to be there, but I guess that's what you get when the creator of Survivor makes a Warren Ellis comic into a TV show.

If you aren't too concerned with downloading a show that the studio says it will never bother to distribute, then I recommend this pilot almost as strongly as the original comic.