The early 2000s saw a brief but exciting wave of new Tremors media. After the film side seemingly became dormant, following the 1996 sequel to the original Tremors, a third installment went straight to video in ‘01. And two years later, Tremors: The Series burst from the collective imagination of franchise co-creators Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson, and landed on the mid-season schedule at Syfy (née the Sci-Fi Channel). The show didn’t last all that long, much to the disappointment of fans everywhere, however, its enjoyability is endless. This TV show is remembered for trying some new things in the Tremors-verse, all while illustrating just why good ol’ Perfection is the ideal setting for any and all Graboid storytelling.
Maddock and Wilson first tinkered around with the notion of a serialized Tremors sometime back in the mid-nineties, after Tremors 2: Aftershocks, and several of those ideas were put to use in the 2003 television show. Yet, rather than a series where Val and Earl, the characters first played by Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, hunt down Graboids and other monsters every week, that messy and thankless job was granted to franchise mainstay Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) and new Perfection resident Tyler Reed (Victor Browne).
At this point in the overall timeline, Graboids are not only old news, they are a protected species in the Tremors series — namely one dubbed “El Blanco,” the lone specimen now residing in Perfection Valley. And so long as El Blanco doesn’t pose a massive threat to them or anyone else foolish enough to visit the area, Burt and his neighbors are allowed to stay put. Of course, that one condition is always hanging over their heads, given the precarious nature of living in these parts.
Image: Victor Browne in episode “Flora or Fauna?” from Tremors: The Series.
Tremors is always more keen on mixed action than pure drama, and it’s never prone to invasive character study, but at the same time, the series would be nothing without its ragtag group of nonconformists and oddballs. In addition to former NASCAR racer and self-proclaimed redneck Tyler, who now works the Graboid tour once run by Tremors 3: Back to Perfection character Desert Jack, is Vegas showgirl-turned-rancher with a past Rosalita Sanchez (Gladise Jimenez). Also new to this whole franchise was Agent W. D. “Twitch” Twitchell (Dean Norris), the government man overseeing El Blanco and constantly determining if Perfection is too unsafe for human habitation. As for other characters who originated in the films, local hippie Nancy Sterngood and shop owner Jodi Chang were recast with Marcia Strassman and Lela Lee, respectively, whereas the now-adult and always-scheming Melvin Plug was, once again, reprised by original actor Robert Jayne (credited back then as Bobby Jacoby).
Needless to say, sharing a space with a giant and carnivorous sand worm is not the most sane or logical life choice, but it’s this central conceit that gives the series its drama and the Graboids their sense of being. After all, without the Perfection folks around to witness and interact with him, El Blanco feels more mythical than tangible. In return, El Blanco gives this set of social recluses a bit more purpose in their lives. They look after him, and at times, he looks after them. The series regularly touched on this aspect whenever the Graboid showed up in the nick of time to save his humans from harm. It’s a concept that feels a bit too plucked from Hanna-Barbera’s Godzilla, but somehow Tremors pulls everything off without too much questioning on the viewer’s part. It doesn’t hurt that the generally offbeat tone of the show makes these stranger moments of interdependence far more digestible.
The more recent Tremors films have jetted off to different and bigger destinations around the globe, however, the TV series predominantly stuck close to home. For Burt, Nancy and everyone else, Perfection is an idyllic haven that remains unspoiled. Even still, the town’s simplicity and aversion to modernness doesn’t stop the intrusive and troublesome real world from visiting. Passerbys, and in some cases fodder, include military scientists, animal rights activists, and even mobsters. At the end of every brush with the outside world, though, the complicated and messy affairs of these tourists make the appeal of Perfection — worms and all — more understandable. It’s no wonder they always fight to stay there.
Image: Christopher Lloyd and Michael Gross in Tremors: The Series.
The prospect of thirteen episodes with only Graboids — really one Graboid and the occasional Shriekers and Ass-Blasters — might sound too redundant to outsiders of this franchise, but as it turned out, there is more than just El Blanco lurking in and around Perfection. In the spirit of the first film’s inspiration, primarily vintage creature-features, the countless scientific experiments conducted in the area led to the creation of many dangerous anomalies; water-absorbing microbes and the “Plantimal” are just some of the oddities unique to the TV show. Enhancing that general monster-of-the-week formula was then the inclusion of Mixmaster, a top-secret and government-made chemical compound that allowed the hybridization of various non-human DNA. Typically, the outcome was chimeric or mutated creatures whose very existence was, as you might have guessed, threatening to all mankind.
While Mixmaster and its makers confirmed Burt’s unrelenting paranoia and readiness for conspiracy theory, it also gave the Tremors series something of an overarching story. Mind you, even whenever Mixmaster did factor into the origin of an episode’s antagonist, the result was, more or less, self-contained. All audiences really needed to know about Mixmaster was often explained in the episode itself, via infodump, by a Dr. Cletus Poffenberger. This recurring character, played by Christopher Lloyd, was the manifestation of the show’s theme of misguided-yet-not-quite-sinister science. And if Cletus was unavailable, or if the science component required more attention, then a Dr. Casey Matthews (Sarah Rafferty) might have been summoned; she and her fellow researchers had later moved into Perfection Valley to look at Mixmaster’s effect on the environment. At any rate, Tremors has connective tissue once Mixmaster comes into play, but don’t expect to see any greater plot in the vein of The X-Files. For sure, Burt goes off in search of the shuttered lab that conceived the chemical, even finds himself on the right path to it, but the show’s premature cancellation prevented any concrete discoveries or developments.
A Tremors series getting the greenlight is nothing short of a miracle, especially when realizing the odds that were stacked against it. The network kept the production on a tighter-than-usual shooting schedule, and the budget was, evidently, limited. There was also miscommunication between creators and crew that led to these supposed plot holes and inconsistencies. For instance, El Blanco’s frequent travels beneath Jodi’s store were not ever meant to be so seismic. Another factor in the matter of continuity, which was no fault of the writers themselves, was Syfy airing the episodes out of order. One glaring case of their meddling was the intended second episode, “Shriek and Destroy”; Syfy delayed it until the season’s end because they found the episode to be “terrible” and its shot footage was “almost unusable” — hence the shorter runtime. So, indeed, it’s surprising how well this show turned out, and even more so that it lasted as long as it did.
Tremors premiered with impressive ratings, but unfortunately, those numbers dipped as the season continued. The crew and cast were still shooting the last couple of episodes when they got the bad news. Nevertheless, as far as one-and-done seasons go, and taking into consideration the standard risks that come with turning cult films into television series, Tremors was a success, not to mention an immense gift for fans of this underdog franchise.
Image: El Blanco in Tremors: The Series.
The post Back to Perfection: Revisiting the ‘Tremors’ TV Series 22 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
source https://bloody-disgusting.com/editorials/3857220/back-to-perfection-revisiting-the-tremors-tv-series-22-years-later/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=back-to-perfection-revisiting-the-tremors-tv-series-22-years-later
No comments:
Post a Comment