Ophan Black: Echoes (Season 1)

Way back when, 2016 or 17 I think, in response to a question about my favourite show, I described Orphan Black as the show of my head, and Wynonna Earp as the show of my heart. I’m happy to be able to say that Orphan Black: Echoes is a worthy, and glorious, follow up in the show of my head category but it also scores well as a show of my heart. It’s clever and thought-provoking in the ways the original was, clearly the daughter of Orphan Black but, just as you can usually see similarities between a mother and daughter white seeing them as distinct, different people, Echoes is similar to, not just a clone (sorry) of the original. We’re still in the world of biological sciences, but this is set 40 years into the future. It’s not clear how the world sees the clones now, at least not for a long time but, in fairness how much do you remember about the big news stories of 1984? So we have a different story, one that I found as engaging, and I’m sure it was much less technically demanding to shoot than clones. It helps that the actors cast in the various key roles all do really good jobs with what they’re given and, equally, that what they’re given is also good and interesting as we’d expect and as I’d hoped for from this show.

Because it’s well advertised that Kira, yes that Kira, is one of the central characters, I’m going to talk a bit about her. I think they build her character in interesting ways. I started off thinking they’d gone in a really bad direction with her character but over the course of the season they filled in background and I came to understand her decisions. Not necessarily agree with them, but I was at peace with the writing. I think that serves as a kind of description for the wider form of how they tell the story actually. They start out by setting out questions, they certainly left me hooked and wondering exactly wtf was going on. Then they filled in answers, mostly - sometimes those answers turned out to be new questions rather than simple answers. But those answers, and those new questions, always felt satisfying. It’s hard to remember watching Season One of Orphan Black for the first time, when I rewatch it there’s a sense of “oh look, it’s Alison, it’s Cosima, it’s Helena, it’s Rachel (boo)” but that first time? There were a lot of WTAF moments and spiralling questions that gradually got answered, or spun out new questions. So I think this is the way that they write, and it works for me.

There are massive twists and turns along the way. Some of these take the form of reality satisfying easter eggs, others are massive plot twists, several of which had me swearing in surprise. The easter eggs are nicely used in my opinion, frequent enough that I had nice bursts of nostalgia, never intrusive enough that they stopped the story moving along. I can’t imagine watching this without having watched Orphan Black because the original is such an important part of my life, certainly of my TV history. The vast majority of the twists are plot twists. As is usual for me, some felt well telegraphed, some got me. Given their nature, I’m not going to go further than that because they’d all be spoilers. But I liked them all. The ones that didn’t surprise me, I appreciated the craft, the ones that did, I enjoyed the shocks.

I found I binged the first few episodes then slowed down to take more time. Neither of those are intended as criticisms, but the series takes more time world building in the early episodes, and I can drink that sort of stuff in like crazy. Later on, there’s much more heavy plot development in each episode. It felt organic as it happened, but reflecting on things to write this it was pretty obvious. How it hits you I can’t predict. But I found I wanted time to take in the plot, absorb it all before I watched the next episode. That was very much my choice and your mileage may vary, but the shift in tone of the storytelling is quite noticeable even though I didn’t find it jarring. Like a lot of people I have been known to watch TV with something (for me it’s my iPad) in my hand. Whether I’m reading or on discord or something else is a bit random, but not during this show. If I got pinged I’d press pause rather than pick it up to read on. I honestly don’t remember the last time I did that. Even back in pre-iPad days I would usually have a book in my hand. The original Orphan Black, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica maybe? It’s rare and it’s a nice feeling to have. Gripping TV at its finest. I really hope there’s a season two of this.

Bechdel Test: Pass. The vast majority of lead characters are female and talk to each other all the time. There are male characters around, but the majority of them are female, so most of the conversations are between women. They talk about science, religion, ethics and all kinds of things. They do also talk about men sometimes, one couple have a son, Lucy has both a boyfriend and a clean sponsor for example. But the vast majority of conversations pass the Bechdel Test. Ko Test: Pass. There isn’t a single woman who passes in every episode, but there is at least one in every episode, usually two or three. There is also a WOC who communicates in ASL throughout, something this test fails to address… Russo Test: Pass. Who isn’t passing? That’s not quite true, there are characters where we don’t know their sexuality at all. There are characters portrayed in straight marriages. They may not be straight of course, just passing, but they don’t pass this test because they’re not clearly LGBTQIA+. I’m not going to name names here, because the reveals come at their own pace, so [spoilers] but there are a lot of queer folk of some flavour or another around.