"It’s not a series about them coming to earth. It’s a tale about them already being here."
My only initial reason for tuning in was
Brina Palencia and Matt Lanter. Both are some of my favorite actors/actresses. Matt I recognize from 90210 and Disaster Movie while Brina voices
some of my favorite characters such as Yuno Gasai (The Future Diary) and Natsuki (Summer Wars)
to name a few. That was it! Two people made me tune in. So what happened next?
Well, what happened next was that my socks
were blown right off my feet folks. Unlike previous alien invasions, this one
didn’t deal with it in a normal fashion. In fact, it didn’t deal with an
invasion at all. The Atrians, a race of alien beings with two hearts and
clearly distant cousins to the Time Lords (Doctor Who), crash land – or at
least one ship full of them – on planet earth seeking refuge. Now some of them
are gunned down because humans are bastards and xenophobic idiots, but some of
them are allowed sanctuary and seven teens are even allowed to attend school as
part of an ‘integration’ program to help the two species co-exist on earth. Now
that is an award winning story idea. Kudos! There is an actual
Romeo-Juliet-esque love story that takes up about half the story, but what intrigues me is the ‘refugee integration’ which is much more enjoyable.
The cast are brilliant. As
mentioned, I initially only knew about Brina Palencia, who plays Matt Lanter’s
sister Sophia, but Matt’s character Roman is really quite interesting. Not too
lovesick like some other CW productions and shows a remarkably mature
personality and wisdom well beyond his years that makes a change from the
precedent set. Joining them is Grey Damon as Grayson who serves as
Roman’s rival for the female protagonist’s affections, Natalie Hall as Taylor
who resides as queen bee in the school, Greg Finley as Drake who looks like the
muscle in this show with a very frustrated personality that I can’t blame given
how he and the other Atrians are treated and Chelsea Gilligan as Teri whose
mother leads the Atrian rogue element that distrusts the humans completely.
The acting on almost all the characters is
top quality. I’ve seen way too many shows nowadays with acting deader than a
‘walker’ in The Walking Dead. Don’t
misunderstand, The Walking Dead’s
acting is spot on, I was just making a joke with the zombies in the show. Not
just that, but despite having a large and diverse cast, the writers of
Star-Crossed have also managed to give each and every one of these characters a
unique story and purpose. You never feel as though someone is there solely to
make up the roster or the background scenery. Granted, after only four
episodes, you really can’t expect all the characters to have undergone intense character
development, but you are made aware that there is something about this
character that you don’t know – that you want to know! That’s attention to
detail folks.
Naturally this series is all about accepting
a foreign species, so there are factions who seek to destroy the ‘integration’
and wipe the Atrians out. Ready to meet the challenge are the Trags, a rogue
Atrian group who want earth for themselves and want to wipe the humans out. The
other half of the series revolves around these factions duking it out, which
provides a unique clash as you really start to understand just how much
something like racism and discrimination rules our planet. After about ten
minutes I started wondering: “What if the roles were reverse? What if we sought
the Atrians help? Should we get it from them – given our behavior towards these
refugees?” After twenty minutes I decided that ‘no’, I don’t even want to know
the answer. It would most probably break my heart.
What really sold me on this series is the
social and political experiment going on. It’s heartbreaking seeing how petty
and scared mankind becomes when faced with things they don’t understand.
Anxiety breads hatred, which leads to conflict and ultimately war.
The topics dealt with in Star-Crossed aren’t exactly new to me. As a huge fan of Gundam Seed, I’ve already seen how you properly do interstellar racism and prejudice, so I set the impress-me-if-you-can bar quite high for Star-Crossed and I’m happy to report that the first four episodes have guaranteed that I’ll stick by them until the end.
Rating this series: 8/10. Star-Crossed aptly
depicts what the world would be like if visitors from another world came and
asked the people of earth for sanctuary.
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