Leave it to the boob tube to show up the Passion of the Christ (well not like that’s very tough). NBC’s obvious answer to quality well-written fare like Lost (over on ABC), Revelations proves that you can get a kick out of the old religious scriptures without having to feel like you’ve just flagellated yourself. It’s a shame the show will have to develop in unbefitting conditions (beneath the ratings-rapturous American Idol, the first episode attained a respectable but not quite miraculous 15 million viewers). But given its time, this show could thrive into the scripted equal to the Apprentice.
The hour-long Revelations is a big, juicy update to the old Biblical Armageddon classic set to the backdrop of the digital age. With a story that’s told from all four corners of the globe it feels almost as epic as the finest of Hollywood’s disaster movies (though considering The Core of 2003 was the best one to be released in the last few years, this statement may require more of a qualifier). At worst, with its partial setting in a environment of scholarly learning, it kind of feels like a big-budget, realist version of the Relic Hunter, only without the cheesy dialogue and exploitive shots of Tia Carrera’s cleavage.
Wednesday’s episode was the first part of six, and laid all the necessary foundations a show like this should to keep us interested. As increasing numbers of inexplicable anomalies crop up around the globe, including mass hysteria and suicides, the appearance of superhuman Satanists, vanishing sea vessels, et cetera, the world is beginning to split between the believers who see this as the second coming of God, the End of Days, and the non-believers, or the nay-saying scientists, who argue logical explanations must exist for every one of these enigmatic circumstances.
This conflict, between science and faith, is the driving force of the show’s storytelling, and it hasn’t been handled so interestingly since Contact. The 1997 Robert Zemeckis adaptation of Carl Sagan’s book was about a woman (Jodie Foster) who discovered proof of radio communications with an alien race and sparked a debate between faith and science when the world decided to listen by building a vessel with the alien’s blueprints to travel to their galaxy. This woman was distinctly in the camp of non-believing scientist and was persecuted for her sacrilegious believes in the choice of the pilot, when most of the world demanded a representative of God. The conflict was furthered by her relationship with a minister and religious scholar and her own experience with faith, when attempting to explain the validity of her journey (after a seeming malfunction) to a skeptical US congress. In Revelations, though the plot is considerably more science-fictional, the struggle between the warring factions is renewed.
The central combatants are Dr. Richard Massey, an astrophysicist and professor at Harvard University and Sister Josepha Montefiore, one of those inquisitive nuns the Roman Catholic Church send, armed with fully fluent Latin scholarship, an endless source of funding and a rosary, to investigate religious enigmas around the world. The situation is fairly typical for a disaster movie in the early stages, where only a select few believe there is any reason to panic and everybody else, especially the smart scientist-folk and government investors with preventive muscle, is skeptical. Massey, channeled with subtle determination by Bill Pullman, is the world-renowned scholar and physicist that believes the events of the Bible can be fully explained by scientific rationale’or at least those events that actually happened. He’s so exhausted and tired of threats and condemnations from fanatic Christians that when Josepha is led to Massey for answers, he lumps her with the feebleminded biblethumpers. But like Massey, this nun is a scholar in pursuit of the truth, played with passion by Solaris’ Natascha McElhone, who relies on empirical investigative techniques in her serious Oxford-trained work before making religious claims, so ignoring her becomes more and more difficult, both literally and personally. This is especially the case when he does the ol’ late night research to check her crusading references and learns that she was consulted to inspect pretty much every major spiritual catastrophe or seeming miracle brought up in a google search.
The big event of the episode that forms the connection between Josepha and Richard is the mystery of a comatose girl struck by lightning who seems to be spouting Latin scriptures despite being in, by all medical accounts, in a vegetative state. Fillings that were thrust back into the frontal lope of her brain don’t seem to stop (or supernaturally encourage during the frequent electrical thunder storms) her from experiencing godly prophecies. While the hospital sees her as a lost cause and is quick to cut the oxygen, Josepha stays by her side long enough to act as her ouija medium, and she draws a map that leads directly to Richard. The patient, a former student of Massey, also happens to give up some rather choice personal details in her near-death state (the kind that nobody else should know and relating specifically to a Don Quixote bond once shared) that forces the doc’s skeptical brainpower to work overtime.
By the end of the episode, Revelations is just getting good. It passed the inevitably formulaic first leg of the race where the skeptic must be given some form of frightening evidence to unnerve his belief system while remaining somehow fresh. The scientific debate is taken very seriously, and though it seems obvious that the writers are in favor of the religious phenomenon and staging of the contemporary battlegrounds for an end of days without Arnold Schwarzenegger, this isn’t accomplished without first passing it under the unforgiving microscope. It also helps that the production values are through the roof, (like in the big-budget crash-intensive pilot of Lost), with the show believably simulating a universal setting, without it looking like a few schlocky sets in LA merged with stock footage of major landmarks, across the globe. The acting is good (the terrifyingly evil Michael Massee as Isaiah and spiritually insistent McElhone as Josepha are standout faves so far) and the pacing is surprisingly fast. Revelations is setting itself up to be an intelligent blockbuster of a disaster-themed series that just might teach us uncivilized barbarians a thing or three about the Bible.
Rating: A
