Fringe showrunner and executive producer J.H. Wyman has jokingly said that he created his new series, Almost Huma, to keep Fringe fans happy; and though that's likely not the entire reason behind his new venture, the result will be the same. Fringe fans will be very happy.
From J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot, Almost Human is set 35-years in an imagined future in which the Los Angeles Police Department's standard practice is to utilize synthetic humanoid androids as a one part partner, one part protector, for each of their human officers. The series follows LAPD officer John Kennex (Karl Urban), a man who suffers a tragedy and awakens two-years later to find that his life is not what he imagined it to be. Wounded both physically and emotionally, and highly suspicious of technology at large, and A.I. in particular, Kennex is paired with a previously decommissioned model, Dorian (Michael Ealy); very much against his will. As you can imagine the show centers of this relationship and the things that Dorian and John have to teach one another about the nature of humanity.
Wyman and his co-producer Naren Shankar were on hand at today's TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour along with Urban and Ealy to talk about what they hoped to tap into with this forward-looking, futuristic science-fiction series.
"We wanted to do something that was a little bit different," Wyman said when asked about his approach to this classic science-fiction trope. "I think we've all seen the robot that longs to be human. We felt that, to tell the story we wanted to tell, that it was probably better for us to have a robot that was more human than he could handle and sort of trying to understand what he is versus wanting and longing to be something he's not. So that was our way in."
"As an actor, you tend to draw on y our human instincts and your background, what you've gone through as an individual," Ealy said, reflecting on his approach to playing a character who is not a man, but has the emotions of one. "And the hardest thing in terms of playing Dorian is to act like I don't have that and to bring that kind of innocence to him, that he doesn't have the experience, the life experience that Karl's character, John Kennex, has. He doesn't have that.So he's fascinated with that, and he observes it, and he learns from it. He's just ‑‑ you know, Joel and I talked about this from the beginning. Let's make him as observant as possible...I hate to simplify it, but I tend to try and reduce Dorian sometimes to make him somewhat childlike in that he's just innocent in terms of observing what's going on around him. It's interesting to play someone who's constantly trying to grasp something that he'll never have."
One of the questions that a series that deals with A.I. raises is: At what point does the android stop being treated as if it's an appliance and gain the rights of any sentient, autonomous being?
"We had the good fortune of speaking to somebody at MIT who literally was in robot ethics," Wyman said when asked how the idea of synthetic rights would play into the series. "Of course, part of the scope of the program is our investigating these very things -- what is human? When do rights come into play? If you tell a story about somebody who's a pedophile that's using children - but robotic children - is it still wrong? Well, yeah. So there's so many interesting things you could talk about, and ethics is one of those. In the show right now, we're going to be examining that. We're not at the point in the future where it's almost like this is an actual concrete thing. These androids are supposed to help make sure and make certain that the police force and the brave men and women that fight on the front lines day‑to‑day are out of harm's way. So the truth is that John [Kennex] could say, 'Hey, look. This is just like having a great gun, you're with me, and you're an incredible smartphone and shut up and don't speak until you're spoken to.' And the problem is the gun/smatphone feels very differently."
As Shankar points out, there aren't a wealth of science-fiction series who are really dealing with futurism at the moment. Almost Human is a show that seeks to explore the "just around the corner" possibilities of technology. This is about taking things that are happening right now and forward projecting those advances 35-years into the future.
When asked what he imagined the future would hold when he was growing-up, and how that vision gelled with what this series was presenting, Urban responded, "You know what, I watched a lot of television as a kid. I was always drawn to shows like Star Trek, which presented a wonderful kind of vision of the future where it didn't matter what race or culture or creed that you came from, that you were accepted on equal terms and that humanity had overcome the warring and the differences and was now united. And it's a very positive and optimistic vision of the future. And I think that's why that show was so successful and people were latching onto that. And one of the wonderful things that I think that Joel is doing in Almost Human is we're not presenting a dystopian vision of the future.This is a future that is immediately accessible. We've still got mortgages. Mom and dad still take the kids to soccer. It's just that, in this slightly futuristic vision, society is dealing with elements and difficulties that are just a little bit beyond the curve for us, and I find that interesting. And we play characters who are really at the frontline of protecting the society against the misapplication of, whether it be genetics or robotics, or anything like that. And the wonderful thing that I think the show does is it really sort of questions us. It makes us, as an audience, ask what does it mean to be human? And if I was in that situation, how I would react? And I think that's a key of all good shows."
One of the biggest themes at the press tour this week was, how serialized, or not, was any given show going to be. Most network shows go for a hybrid between, the now somewhat old-fashioned CSI strictly episodic approach, and the more cable-esque highly serialized. This is a particularly interesting challenge when it comes to science-fiction. Fringe had initially been more episodic and eventually became almost entirely overarching story-focused, at which point, it transformed into a primarily a serialized drama.
When asked about his approach with Almost Human, Wyman said, "You know, with Fringe, we figured it out that mythology was very key to telling that story, but that story really sort of evolved. And that story wasn't very clear what it was at the beginning, not from a storytelling point of view, but just by plot it was something that turned into something else that then, again, turned into something else. This is a police drama. This is about hardworking, brave people on the front lines of a future that's just a stone's throw away. And I want ‑‑ we're hoping that people care about them because I would, and I'm as interested in knowing about these people's lives as I was with great shows like NYPD Blue. I mean, nobody really sort of dogs you for being an episodic because, really, the characters were serialized and you really are kind of invested in them, in those characters. So that's what we're sort of angling for here. There is a mythology. I think all the show is is it's a family unit.There's going to be a natural mythology. There are some elements here. It wouldn't be something that I would conceive if there wasn't a mythology, but I think that on a week‑to‑week basis, telling exciting cop stories, we're going into this as a cop drama. I mean, there are some cases we can tell that, absolutely guaranteed, no other show can tell, and we're really, really excited about that. So we don't look at episodic television as a bad word. We think that this is just part-and-parcel of the world we're in. So will we learn more about the characters? Will we actually invest in their lives and their struggles? Absolutely. Will there be things that come up that will be intriguing and you'll want to know more about? I can guarantee they will. You know, but are we going to tell a really great, compelling case every week that involves these incredible people? Yeah."
Shankar added: "Joel and I have been trading episodes of Fringe and episodes of CSI (which he executive produced) because Fringe was so hyper-mythology‑driven and CSI was completely self‑contained and episodic. We really are looking for that great middle ground. Joel said NYPD Blue. The beauty of this show are these incredible cases, great villains. But, really, the continuing drama was the lives of the characters, and that was the element that knitted all of the stories together. And that's really what we are going for."
"And I think what makes Almost Human unique and original is the fact that if you can see the case on another cop show, we are not going to do it," Urban elaborated. "You know, we are going to show the audience something that they haven't seen. And, to me, that's one of the more interesting and compelling elements of the show. The technology you hear Joel talk about, the research they are doing, you know, this stuff is coming. It's coming down the pike, and to me, that's infinitely exciting."
Almost Human premieres Monday, November 4, 2013 at 8/7C FOX.
Source : ign[dot]com
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