Tomorrow marks the premiere of the Syfy mini-series, Childhood’s End, one that I’ve been looking forward to for the better part of a year now. Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, one of the most-acclaimed science fiction novels of all time, will come to life in the first-ever adaptation beginning tomorrow night on Syfy. This six-hour television event from Syfy and Universal Cable Productions will air over three consecutive nights on Monday, December 14, Tuesday, December 15 and Wednesday, December 16 from 8-10PM (ET/PT).

Executive produced by award-winning producers Akiva Goldsman (Lone Survivor, A Beautiful Mind, I Am Legend) and Michael De Luca (Captain Phillips, Moneyball, The Social Network), the star-studded cast is led by Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Mike Vogel (Under the Dome), Daisy Betts (The Last Resort), Yael Stone (Orange is the New Black), Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck), Osy Ikhile (The Fear) and Colm  Meaney (Star Trek: The Next Generation).

Childhood’s End follows the peaceful invasion of Earth by the alien Overlords, who promise to eliminate poverty, war and sickness – ushering in a golden age of peace, health and security for all of humankind. But why do the Overlords insist on hiding their appearance – and what do they ultimately want from Earth? While much of the world enjoys its newfound utopia, some suspect there’s a price to pay. As the truth about the Overlords’ intentions are revealed, humanity will discover its true destiny may actually be a nightmare, instead of a dream.

I was fortunate enough to talk with series stars Mike Vogel and Yael Stone and Executive Producer Matthew Graham on a press conference call recently to get all the deets on what to expect from this highly-anticipated television event. I also chatted with Director Nick Curran this past summer at San Diego Comic-Con. Check out what they all had to say:

QUESTION: I just finished part three last night and I really, really enjoyed the mini series. But I’m curious, I know it was based on a book and now I kind of want to go read it. How familiar were each of you with the book when you first started working on the project and have you read it since?

MIKE VOGEL: “Initially, I did not realize the full weight of the project that I was committing to until I was on an airplane headed to Australia. Just because everything happened quite quickly, and as I started, you know, researching the book, and researching the history and the sort of the position that Childhood’s End held in the eyes and the viewpoint, to think of the fan base, I went, “Oh man, wow, this is a big commitment.” “

“But, yes, I read the book while we were filming. And, you know, that will speak to it. But I think Matt has done a fantastic job of maintaining the integrity and a lot of the characters and a lot of the main ideas of the book. There’s some parts of it have been altered a bit; my character in the book is a 60-year-old head of the UN and from Finland.”

“So we worked with a 35-year-old Missouri farmer instead; it’s a logical leap. But I think it made him, made Ricky, more relatable, more trustworthy as the everyday man rather than the politician. But, yes, that was my experience with the book heading into this.”

YAEL STONE: “Hi, this Yael. I was familiar with Arthur C. Clarke kind of in a periphery way as the guy who kind of predicted the internet, and the use of personal computers, and as a visionary and a kind of futurist. I hadn’t read the book, and then when the project came up, I then read the book.”

“But obviously the book being written when it was, it kind of comes through from this very 1950s framework; it’s very sort of hetero-normative viewpoint. And I think Matthew has done a great job in just re-imagining the story and this incredible novel, while also kind of paying homage through a truth, but also modernizing it.”

MATTHEW GRAHAM: “Thank you Mike and Yael for saying that.  I mean, it was a book, and I read when I was 14, and it kind of stuck with me, mostly because as a 14-year-old, to be told some aliens won’t show themselves, because we can’t handle it, was just frankly the coolest thing you’ve ever read in your life.  And you couldn’t wait to get through the pages to the point where they would reveal themselves, because you couldn’t imagine what it would be, that it would be awful, so challenging.”

“So that was the kind of the initial thing and then of course the fact that the story plays out the way it does. It’s haunting too, especially to kids who’re used to kind of reading stories where things are kind of spoon fed emotionally to you in the way that makes you feel comfortable. So it kind of was with me for on and off through most of my life; it was a book that I remembered always fondly and was always excited by.”

“So, yes, we’ve done something to update it in some ways and make it more accessible to a broad audience, which I think is essential if you’re writing about the future not knowing what’s going to happen to us. You can’t set it in the 50’s, because we all live in the 21^st century, and we know that those people in the 50s in a point have been worrying about the nuclear war and [it’s not] going to happen, at least for a while.”

“So we have to be updated in order to keep a sense of paranoia and uncertainty that purveys the book. And then Mike touched on making Ricky a farmer rather than a politician. I think again that reflects the age we’re in now where we’re more distrustful of politicians, and we’re certainly more aware of the cynicism that purveyed, and the problems that purveyed, global politics. So, I adopted a more kind of old testament approach; it’s a kind of God speaking to the farm boy rather than God making him a king, rather than God speaking to the king.”

QUESTION: This book was in 1953 and it’s already been said somewhat sort of references the original book, references those times, but now we’ve updated it to 2015. What do you think it is that makes this a good time to tell the story?

MATTHEW GRAHAM: “I mean, I don’t think anything has changed. In 1950 we were coming out of a very brutal war and a very expensive one. No change there.”

“We were entering an age of austerity in the 1950s, no change there. We were terrified by the cold war. No changes there it seems because that potentially is rearing up again. And substitute any fear that they had in 1952 to the fears that we have now coming out of the Middle East, and you got the same paranoia in the terrorists that they were facing. So the relevance I think has not changed one iota, and then what the others think.”

MIKE VOGEL: “Yes, I think that’s the scary thing is that sort of fast forward 60 years and we’re kind of still in the same place, which is I think is all the more reason why the story needs to be told. You know, the whole reason that these aliens come down to earth is to say, “You guys have had your shot, you screwed it up, that’s enough of that right there. It’s time to fix some things.” And that we’re still having these conversations this far down the road, and that you can almost insert the same players into the story, the same international and global players in the story, then as now, shows that for all the advancements that we had for in technology and medicine and everything else as it comes to people, as it comes to us dealing with each other, sadly not much has changed.”

“And so as Matt would say, and as the history of this book, it has been many people have tried to undertake the huge task of somehow taking this book and putting it into film or television. But, you know, I think I’m glad that it’s going to happen today, because the ability that we have to reach such a global audience with a project to deal with some issues among humanity, which are global issues. So I think now is a great time to tell the story, and I’m glad we’re able to be a part of doing that.”

QUESTION: If aliens were to land tomorrow and offer to solve all the world’s problems, but it will mean the end of science, the end of culture, would you take that deal?

MATTHEW GRAHAM: “You just hit on the ballroom conversation we have almost every single night in Melbourne. It’s a really tough one, because there’s a bit of me that kind of sides with Colm Meaney’s character, Wainwright. And that in some ways you kind of want to be just in charge of your own destiny for good or for bad. We don’t want to be condescended; we don’t want to be mothered; we want to do it ourselves.”

“But right now with everything that I’m moving down the gun barrel off, whether it’s ISIS, whether it’s the fact that we’re going to run out of antibiotics, and we’re going back to medieval science – medieval medicine in the next generation. I think I would take the gamble; I think I’ll have the Overlords.”

YAEL STONE: “I got to say I agree with you.  I feel like it would be deeply egotistical to say, “No, no, our culture is much more important than people’s lives in the state of our environment.” I guess, I look around and I think, “You know what, we haven’t been doing such a crash hot job so far.” So I’m interested to see what the aliens would do.”

MIKE VOGEL: “And, you know, Daisy had an interesting saying that I’ve heard [her] say, she said, “You know, we should strive for utopia but, you know, maybe never achieve it. And, you know, I fall on the other side, and maybe that six sadistic side of me, but I just think that if we look at the story, yes, the aliens come down and solve the problems, but it comes at a price, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not for free; there’s a time where everything works out, but there’s still a price tag attached to it and a pretty hefty one. Whereas I look at it and say, “Yes, we screwed a lot of things, but I still have a strong belief in the ability and the decency of humanity, as ugly as we can get, and we can get pretty sick and ugly, that in the end decent people, people of courage, will rise up and will stand for what’s right.” “

“And what comes out of that will be something beautiful, and it will lead to great culture, great art, all of those things I think come from that. So I may be alone on an island on the other side of it, but that’s where I side.”

QUESTION: It’s mentioned in the Syfy synopsis for this that the original book of Childhood’s End has inspired a lot of alien invasion TV shows in movies like the Falling Skies, perhaps, and Independence Day, and so on. So what would you say to audience coming to this might see this as perhaps just another alien invasion story? What would you tell them the qualities that make this one different from ones they’ve seen before?

MATTHEW GRAHAM: “I think the big thing is that it’s not about fighting them — it’s a conversation between humanity and the superior intelligence that may or may not be here to hurt us, we don’t know, they don’t know, no one knows for sure. But all the science point to them being benevolent but omnificent.  And so I think it’s the game we’re playing with the audience is hopefully a relatively subtle game, it’s not “Oh, they’re here to help us. But, oh, look behind closed doors they’re cackling and rubbing their claws together and they clearly got a scary plan.” It’s more about how we perceive them. They don’t change; they stay pretty true to themselves, and they are here to help us. Obviously towards the end of the story, the end game becomes apparent. But it’s about how they look about challenges from the characters, and obviously Yael’s characters and other characters are profoundly affected by questions raised in their minds about them.”

“So I think that’s what we’re trying to hang onto, the philosophical aspect of real science fiction as suppose to laser guns and it’s not a wham-bam action type piece. And I think that’s what makes it different.  And also I like about that the three nights are different. I would depict the first night is The Day the Earth Stood Still. Then, the second night is kind of more of a Rosemary’s Baby, and the third night is more like Titanic.”

“And there are three different movies with three different vibes, and I think that’s something that doesn’t normally happen in television. So I think these things make it very fresh. But leaving the spoiler aspects aside and advancing them on watching, I would say this is a relatively smart alien invasion movie, and it’s about a dialog between human and aliens rather than they’re trying to take our bodies over and grow it in pods or something. And that what is so different about it.”

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The miniseries is directed by Nick Hurran, who is well-known for his fantastic work with Sherlock and Dr. Who. I attended San Diego Comic-Con this past July and was fortunate enough to attend the Press Room for the show. I chatted with Hurran, who spoke very enthusiastically about the series and what viewers should expect. “The story is about the lives of the human beings who are affected by a giant event,” said Hurran of the story in which humanity is offered the chance to solve all its problems by an alien who claims to be Earth’s administrator (Charles Dance). “As much as its about the giant event, it’s really about the effect that has on a number of human beings. Is it ‘be careful what you wish for?’ There’s a telling passage in the book that says, ‘the only enemy of utopia is boredom.’”

At the panel while answering fan concerns about how true the series will stay to the original book, Executive Producer Matthew Graham said, that he “tried to preserve what was important about the book. If I left anything out, Nick would come up to me with the book, with passages underscored to say, ‘what about this?’ It’s challenging to decide how to fix the world in 88 minutes. You have to show minutes and hope the audience fills in the rest. You can’t go into too much detail, otherwise it starts to turn the story into a fairy tale. That was the biggest challenge, and also the most fun.”

Although Hurran provided no spoilers of course, staying true to the novel means that the utopia created comes with its own problems, and Curran did go on to confirm that the ending of the novel is the end of the series, as final as that might sound. “The title of the series tells you all you need to know about the ending,” Curran teased.

Childhood’s End  premieres tomorrow night at 8/7c on Syfy. In the meantime, check out the below San Diego Comic-Con video interview and the series’ official trailer.

s are closed.