The Bottom Line
Pros
- Strong teleplays based on ideas from well-known writers.
- Powerful, but clean, direction and production values.
- Outstanding and occasionally riveting performances by name actors.
Cons
- Intelligent writing is not always immune from preachy endings (applies mostly to "The Awakening").
- Only four of the six produced episodes will be broadcast.
Description
- "A Clean Escape" (Sam Waterston, Judy Davis): Perhaps the strongest entry, powerfully written, directed, and acted.
- "The Awakening" (Terry O'Quinn, Elisabeth Rohm): Although the ending is delivered from a soap box, it's still smart and fun.
- "Jerry Was a Man" (Anne Heche, Malcolm McDowell): I enjoyed immensely this Heinleinian exploration of what it is to be human.
- "The Discarded" (Brian Dennehy, John Hurt): Come on, how often do you get Dennehy and Hurt in a story by Harlan Ellison?
Guide Review - Masters of Science Fiction
Masters of Science Fiction comes from the creators of the Showtime series Masters of Horror. It was developed with the internal mandate to employ quality writing with top directors and actors. This goal the creators have largely achieved.Apart from entirely superfluous, perhaps because extremely brief (one sentence each at the top and bottom of the show), off-screen host narration by the physicist Stephen Hawking, there is nothing about these shows that was obviously done merely to pander to audiences of sci-fi fans. Each of the four screen episodes (two more were made, and hopefully will appear on the eventual DVD) has an excellent look and feel that recalls other well-crafted shows like The X-Files.
Several of the performances are outstanding. Sam Waterston and Judy Davis are ideally suited to each other as they drive their story, "A Clean Escape," toward a conclusion that's mesmerizing not only for the twist ending but for the envelope-pushing performances of both actors. In "The Awakening," Lost's Terry O'Quinn delivers another variation on his patented everyman philosopher, here to great effect; he's counterbalanced by a progressively more frantic U.S. president, evoked nicely by X-Files's William B. Davis. Malcolm McDowell is delicious as usual in the arch, Heinlein-based "Jerry Was a Man"; as for his co-star, Anne Heche: normally I find her mannered and overdone, but here those qualities are perfect for the larger-than-life character she plays, a unimaginably wealthy woman who goes to see a man about a novelty custom-crafted animal and ends up taking home a doomed android.
