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Infinity Ammo
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2005
- Messages
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Plot
When five strangers from an online comic book forum agree to meet after gaining possession of the original manuscript for the cult graphic novel 'The Utopia Experiments', they find themselves pursued by a shadowy organization known as The Network who are in pursuit of the manuscript - and they are prepared to kill to track it down.
While three of the forum members - Ian, Becky and Wilson meet in the pub, another is confronted and killed by two Network henchmen. The only witness to the murder is 11-year-old Grant - the fifth forum member - and when he flees with the manuscript, the henchmen give chase.
Ian and Becky soon find they've been set-up for crimes they haven't committed, while Wilson's hacking skills attract the attention of Network henchmen Arby and Lee. As the trio's lives begin to fracture, the world of civil servant Michael Dugdale is also torn apart as he is blackmailed by The Network.
Trailer
[YT]drh2HiEAj3c[/YT]
Anyone else watching this show?
Its like if Warren Ellis and Grant Morrisson wrote a R-rated TV show which was co-directed by Richard Kelly and Nicolas Winding Refn.
Word of warning if your thinking of watching the show its pretty violent. Chracters get shot in the head, stabbed in the neck, pushed off buildings, tortured, beaten to death and strangled with a large about of blood splatter.
Episode 2 of Utopia was crazy good.
Jessica Hyde makes Sarah Conners look like a soft weakling.". Come with me now, or you'll all die".
I know people complain about Brtish TV having really short seasons but the fast pace really works well for this show which is only 6 Episodes long. I'm glad they aren't dragging the plot out lost style.
Plot spoilers
• The Network was established during the cold war as a black-ops unit run by geneticist Philip Carvel and "Mr Rabbit" (yes, that's his code name) to combat Soviet plans in the 70s for germ warfare – they were busy weaponising anthrax, ebola and smallpox.
• After the cold war, the Network had no intention of winding down their international operations. Carvel wanted out, but was tortured to keep him working.
• Carvel ended up in a psychiatric hospital where he was given a new name – Mark Deyn – and started drawing as part of his art therapy: the Utopia Experiments is the result.
• Deyn is also Jessica's dad: she's been on the run from the Network since she was four.
• The unpublished manuscript (currently hidden under Alice's bed) came to Doomsday Comics via Jack Tate – Utopia's publisher.
• Tate walks into traffic on the A22, and his wife is taken for interrogation.
• A CIA agent is installed in the Tates' house – another loose end mopped up by Arby, who's now working solo.
• After the cold war, the Network had no intention of winding down their international operations. Carvel wanted out, but was tortured to keep him working.
• Carvel ended up in a psychiatric hospital where he was given a new name – Mark Deyn – and started drawing as part of his art therapy: the Utopia Experiments is the result.
• Deyn is also Jessica's dad: she's been on the run from the Network since she was four.
• The unpublished manuscript (currently hidden under Alice's bed) came to Doomsday Comics via Jack Tate – Utopia's publisher.
• Tate walks into traffic on the A22, and his wife is taken for interrogation.
• A CIA agent is installed in the Tates' house – another loose end mopped up by Arby, who's now working solo.
Awesome plot twist at the end of the episode
IO9
It's like a mix of Donnie Darko and William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition. No, it's like a mix of a Dennis Potter series and a Ben Templesmith comic. Maybe it's like Fringe, only a lot more sick and violent. Actually, the new British TV series Utopia, which started last week, is all of these things. It's a conspiracy tale that slides like a wet tentacle between the world of comic books, mad science, and the Russian pharmaceutical mafia. And it's set in a near future where the world's food supply is starting to run out.
The show has a kind of jangly, surreal style, as you can see in the clip above, where our main characters meet on a message board devoted to a mysterious comic book called Utopia. The comic, which appears to be illustrated by Ben Templesmith, is about a scientist who makes a deal with the devil. The devil appears in various forms throughout the book, but always as a half-human, half-animal (this will become important later). The comic itself is rumored to have been created by a geneticist who went insane and saw into other worlds. It's also possible that the comic contains the key to understanding a bizarre new degenerative disease that has started killing people all over the world.
The plot begins right after a rich guy has bought a copy of the rare sequel to Utopia, and decides to share it with four random people on the Utopia message boards. Unfortunately, he and a bunch of other people connected with the comic are killed by two stylish and ultra-violent investigators. These investigators want to find both the comic and a woman, and they are willing to kill and torture to find them. Is the comic actually a gateway to another world? What is its creator's relationship to the disease? Who are these seriously scary investigators, who will remind you of the seriously scary investigators from China Miéville's novel Kraken?
At the same time, another subplot is unfolding. A health department official is being blackmailed by the Russian mob — if he doesn't go on a "mission" for them, they'll tell his wife about his affair with "a Russian ****e." It turns out this "mission" is to trick the British health department into buying an enormous and unnecessary amount of vaccines for the Russian flu. What the hell? Why would the Russian mafia do that? We know it's got to be connected with the Utopia comic, but how?
All of this is set against a backdrop of a near-future where food prices are skyrocketing and it seems as if a health crisis may be on the horizon too.
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