The Tomorrow People

[Kellicopter]

The first episode aired over here in the UK on Wednesday so I'm assuming it's also airing everywhere else?

I've watched it as it's aired in America, and love it. I wasn't so sure after the first episode and it took me a couple of weeks to put the second one on, but I'm now hooked.

It's weird (and disappointing) seeing Luke Mitchell with clothes on, but I'm glad his show got further than 2/3 episodes like Rebecca Breeds' show did.

So yeah, views? (I'm sorry if wherever you are haven't had it aired yet!)

[Zetti]

One of my friends suggested I watch it, I was planning to wait until E4 started showing it but decided to watch it through other means. I ended up watching 6 episodes straight, its fantastic, I am hooked as well. Luke is amazing and I have my eye on Stephen in more ways than one but I am looking forward to more.

[Kellicopter]

One of my friends suggested I watch it, I was planning to wait until E4 started showing it but decided to watch it through other means. I ended up watching 6 episodes straight, its fantastic, I am hooked as well. Luke is amazing and I have my eye on Stephen in more ways than one but I am looking forward to more.

I keep watching random things and Stephen keeps popping up! He was in How I Met Your Mother and Pretty Little Liars. I normally get the feeling when I see someone again but I had no idea I'd seen him in anything before!

[Zetti]

I totally fancy Stephen, he's my new crush but I love rewatching it, looking forward to a new episode soon I hope.

[Lesley Bee]

Watched the first episode on wednesday night on E4, i loved it right from the start, definitely gonna keep watching

[Red Ranger 1]

Hmm.I watched the first episode and tried very hard to avoid comparing it to the original, then five minutes in Luke Mitchell is beating up two innocent bystanders(Unless I missed something?They were just regular security guards, right, not the bad guys?)and I'm going "Oh, right, you're not bothering will the whole 'We're a new, gentler, non-violent human' then?"I'm not sure why they've bothered calling it The Tomorrow People when frankly at present it seems to be more like a remake of the much derided early 2000s X-Men-rip-off Mutant X with a few familiar names.The more I think about them abandoning the whole point of the original in favour of featuring a bunch of derivative violent super-powered-teens-in-hiding anti-heroes, the more annoyed I get.That will probably fade a few episodes in when I start judging it on its own terms and getting used to it, but as it stands it feels like they've just used the title to feed on the nostalgia.It just feels like a rip-off of every superhero movie and series of the last decade, with Stephen's school scenes being straight out of the latest Spider-Man movie.(Is it worth pointing out what a thoroughly unconvincing teenager he is?Then just to make it obvious you've got Madeleine Mantock, last seen as a nurse in Casualty, as his best friend.)I'm surprised they even bothered with the no-kill rule but the way they've done it makes no sense.Both the '70s and '90s version presented the TPs as not being killers by instinct, they were incapable of wanting to kill or harm others.Here they really want to kill people but for no adequately explained reason they magically getting glowing eyes and headaches and pass out if they try, as if genes in this show are somehow capable of making moral judgements.

It probably doesn't help that I'm also having difficulty separating Luke Mitchell from his HA character.Nicholas Young in the original made John a likeable dick, someone who was cynical and laconic in contrast to the wide-eyed innocence of the others:That was a contrast that worked and an actor knowing how to stand out.Here, we have Luke Mitchell, who's made a career out of playing unlikeable dicks, in a show where everyone's cynical and he takes it up a notch and just comes across as someone without compassion.(Which admittedly was something John struggled with at times in the original.)Not sure why they've bothered making John and Cora(who I want to call Carol, just as I want to call the fourth one Kenny...was his name mentioned more than once because I found I couldn't remember it?)an established couple when they've spent the whole episode focussing on the bond between Cora and Stephen.Probably going for a love triangle thing.(Of course, it's hard to get the very different surrogate family dynamic of the original out of my head.Now if they'd just called the female Elizabeth, that'd be fine.Well, regards John anyway.)Having a bunch of ND-TPs hanging around in the background makes sense from a mythological sense but could be tricky from a narrative sense.

There's a few nice nods to the past with Tim, the subway base replacing the London Underground one and having Kenny/Whatever put on a watch felt like an echo of the jaunting bands from the later series(or maybe I just want it to be).Could have done without Cora's rather smug "We didn't choose the name", which kind of emphasises that they don't really want to be making The Tomorrow People.And Jedekiah.Shame he's not a shape-shifting robot instead of a Lieutenant Gerard clone, that would be more interesting.Actually, he's not Jedekiah at all, he's Colonel Masters, which isn't a bad thing since Colonel Masters was one of the best villains in the original.Guess having used the name in both the '70s and '90s versions they didn't want to go for the hat-trick.

As for the plot...well, mostly standard fare and a necessary retread of the traditional opening episode.Stephen going to work for Jedekiah could be interesting in a way the Cain and Abel thing isn't as yet, is he playing both sides against each other or is he using the position to keep an eye on them?Still, at the moment it feels like the biggest case of missing the point since Michelle Ryan's short-lived Bionic Woman remake.

[Slade]

Never seen the British version of The Tomorrow People so this was new to me but barring the season finale I liked the show overall. I actually really liked John and liked the relationship that was developing with him and Astrid. Stephen was OK I guess. Out of the good guys, the person I liked least was Cara even though she's hot. I just couldn't warm to her. Maybe I couldn't connect with the character because a lot of the time she seemed to lack genuine emotion. I think Jedikiah was a good character but but I preferred The Founder, who actually experimented on his own daughter - wow (and don't you just love how they always make the bad guys British). Jedikaiah did some really bad things as well but I felt they were trying to present him as more of a grey character than black or white. I did suspect when Jedikiah helped The Tomorrow People kill the founder it was a way of eliminating his main enemy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend an all that. I think the thing about Jedikiah was although he was human, he had the potential to be more dangerous than The Founder because he was an expert at manipulating people. He did it to most of the characters throughout the entire season. I was worried when I first started watching because having watched shows like this before, they generally tend to get repetitive after a while but I didn't feel that was the case here although I guess we'll never know now.

[Red Ranger 1]

I'm torn between wanting to rant about everything I thought was wrong with the show and thinking I should just let it drop...and I'm afraid the first one won out.Around the time it ended, I read someone talking about the return of Doctor Who and the fear that it would be placed in the hands of someone who didn't get it and how Russell T Davies was the three things the show needed to succeed:a master dramatist, a fan and a populist.And I looked at The Tomorrow People, which seemed to have been handed over to people who were none of those three things and who utterly, resolutely didn't "get" it.Who took a few surface elements instead of what was at the show's core and didn't even know what to do with those.Who completely missed the point that the Tomorrow People are meant to be a new better human that every child should aspire to be, and instead made them either evil rapists and indirect murderers(or indeed direct murderers:the no-kill rule was meant out of shape so badly I'm surprised they didn't just drop it, when that's a core part of the mythology)or unlikable sociopaths or victims who have to choose between being murdered or tortured by evil organisations or being stuck in a sewer being shouted at by an insane cult leader with no shirt.I really really hope this show gets forgotten about because the idea that people will think of this when they think of The Tomorrow People rather than "You're becoming one of us, Stephen...The Tomorrow People" is one that leaves me deeply depressed.

I don't know if I had a problem with John and refused to get over it or if other people seemed determined to see him as tortured and complex character rather than someone who came across as either a dick or a loser.Seriously, everything he says in the pilot is a lie.He's not a noble rebel leader, he's a deranged cult leader who's dealing with his guilt at murdering his people's best hope by locking them up underground, bullying them into obeying his arbitrary rules, dehumanising them by keeping them away from their families and keeping them loyal and docile by feeding them a quasi-religious myth about how one day he'll lead them all to a better place.(Result:They turn on and crucify the guy he built up to be their messiah when he turns out to be an ordinary man.)The way that Stephen just shrugged off the revelation that John shot and, as far as he knows, murdered his father was absurd.The show did seem to realise halfway through the season that he was a useless leader and tried to reformat him as a sort of roguish, tortured second male lead, the Han Solo to Stephen's Luke Skywalker, but for me it was too late and the way that reviews and fan comments seemed to treat him like an idol just made me push against the idea even more.The reaction to Jedikiah was even more absurd:No-one either on the show or out of it seemed to remember that he was the bad guy and just accepted him as a father figure for John, ignoring the fact he was an evil racist who only sided with the Tomorrow People because if not the Founder would have killed him (and, to be fair, the rest of his kind).As has been pointed out, John and Stephen seemed to fall into the trap of thinking they needed to trust either Jedikiah or the Founder, ignoring the obvious fact that they're both evil.

I actually really liked Stephen, who seemed to be the only truly noble person on the show, yet got hatred from John fans because he slept with his on-off girlfriend.Talking of who, Cara.Again, it might be me being perverse and fighting against the common opinion but, while there were times I intensely disliked her(torturing Kurt being the stand-out), on the whole I liked her.The fact that plot and character arcs were being made up as they went along didn't help but she came across as someone torn between the examples of Stephen's compassion and John's pragmatism, coupled with a fervent desire to be proactive and make a difference.By the end, she seemed to have settled on a decent balance.The hysteria about her kicking John out of the lair was ridiculous, not only because John was being a dick but because the received opinion that John was right seems dubious at best, since he basically sent Cassie to be tortured and experimented on in order to get Stephen back, feeding her his cult doctrines in the process.

Was the Founder meant to be British?Simon Merrells wasn't using his normal accent so it was hard to tell.His daughter was clearly meant to be and clearly wasn't and whoever wrote her school record has obviously never been near a British school.I did quite like him as a villain and he chewed the scenery well.

The relationships...Oh good grief.They dragged the John/Cara relationship, the least interesting which was clearly on its last legs by Episode 3 at the latest, out for the entire season by which point I don't think anyone really wanted them together.The Stephen/Cara relationship gets given huge emphasis then forgotten about until the last few episodes, which at least gave those of us who liked the idea a clear pointer that they were endgame.The John/Astrid relationship had a lot of potential but they had no interaction for about five episodes then randomly started kissing when he was still with Cara and the last episode still couldn't let that relationship go, hence the awkward bit where he clearly wants to hug Cara but Stephen's doing that so he hugs Astrid instead.

There were so many things wrong with it I could be here for hours.The way that plot twists like Stephen's mother being a Tomorrow People were just thrown in for shock value even though they made a mockery of earlier episodes.The shaggy dog story of the hunt for Roger.The way some recurring characters were neglected while others should never have been there at all:What, really, was the point of Jedikiah's mistress?The complete lack of fun, where every time someone felt that having powers is a good thing they get killed, beaten up or shouted at by John and Cara as "punishment". The horribly restricted format that meant every episode had to boil down to the Tomorrow People v Ultra.I'm seriously glad it's over, the few good elements really aren't enough to make it deserve to supplant the earlier versions.

[Guest]

This show is still airing in Australia we will be airing season 1 episode 17 this Thursday July 24th and I'm a sucker for supernatural like shows so I love this show sad it's not airing another season as the CW cancelled it.