Syfy to present Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End"

[The_Waco_Kid]

SyFy is presenting a mini series of Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" on Monday the 14th. it's a 3 night event.

http://www.syfy.com/

http://www.syfy.com/childhood039send...nd-trailer-2-0

http://www.syfy.com/childhood039send...nly-just-begun



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood's_End

like many of Clarke's later novels, "Childhood's End" began as a short story, "Guardian Angel" (1946), interestingly, Clarke and Stanley Kubrick considered "Childhood's End", by then a finished novel in 1953, for a movie. they ultimately chose another short story, "The Sentinel", to expand into what became "2001: A Space Odyssey". that worked out rather well.

Syfy has not had many well done recent original works. i hope this is more like the re-imaging of "Battlestar Galactica" rather than more recent and somewhat disappointing works like "Defiance" which had promise but ultimately fell flat.

one good sign is that Syfy realized you can't present the material in "Childhood's End" in a short movie, they are presenting it over 3 days starting Monday Dec 14th, with 3 two hour segments.

i hope they get this right and respect Clarke's work. i would hate to see one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time not correctly done.

[The_Waco_Kid]

so far, so good. while i could nitpick many details from Clarke's novel, written in 1953 to the re-imaging on modern times, the overall story so far remains the same.

Charles Dance's portrayal as Karellen, so far with minor variations, is spot on. yes it should have been Rashaverak during the Ouija board segment is still true to Clarke's original intent.

so far, after two episodes of three, this is an excellent rendering of Clarke's novel.

the finale is tomorrow. and to see it played out on film, with some variations, is excellence. Arthur C. Clarke would be proud.

[The_Waco_Kid]

ok, the mini series is over. overall, it was an excellent rendering of Clarke's vision. my only major complaint is the unneeded death of Ricky Stromgren. not that in the novel Stromgren was Secretary General of the UN and in the re-imaging he was a farmer in the US Midwest, but that the Overlords made he and his wife barren so that their children would not ascend to the overmind. and that he died not of old age as in the novel (the original time frame for the overlords to revel themselves was 50 years not 15) but of some unknown "disease" by visiting the overlord's ship. did not the overlords heal Milo Rodericks (Jan Rodericks in the novel) from being shot by a {forbidden topic} dealer but also cure him from being a paraplegic?

surely if the overlords could do that, they could have prevented Ricky Stromgren's death from visiting their ship?

i also liked the use of Ayer's Rock in Australia as the meeting point/point of ascension of the children to the overmind. this is consistent with the novel, as the children, while waiting/evolving to the overmind were relocated to an island continent.

also consistent with the novel is the destruction of New Athens, by a nuclear device. in the novel it was by mutual choice, in the re-imaging it was by the choice of the creator of New Athens. a minor issue.




if anyone else watched this re-imaging, what are your thoughts on it?