Train to nowhere: Sci-fi thriller series ‘Snowpiercer’ journeys through an artificially frozen wasteland

It can be hard to imagine a completely frozen-over Earth in the middle of a sweltering July, but that is the catapult of the story behind the new sci-fi series, “Snowpiercer.” A new episode airs Sunday, July 12, on TNT.

The last surviving humans on the planet all boarded the 1,001car-long, super-speed train, Snowpiercer, before the Earth became inhospitably cold after an ill-advised attempt to cool the effects of global warming went horribly wrong. At the final boarding call for passengers, people without tickets rushed the train, violence broke out between those desperate for survival and the guards of the Snowpiercer, and a handful of those desperate souls staked their claim on the final carriage of the train, becoming Snowpiercer’s “Tailies.”

Subjected to abhorrent treatment under a strictly enforced class system, the Tailies are given the bare minimum necessary to survive. They are fed disgusting, constantly shrinking rations and treated as less than human by those who enforce the status quo. Tailies with special skills are selectively chosen as needed to ascend through the train for whatever jobs need doing for the upper classes, and those that are returned to their home car bring with them intel about the rest of the train.

Seven years into the train’s never-ending journey, Tailies have banded together to organize a revolution to force their oppressors to improve their living conditions. Andre Layton, portrayed by Daveed Diggs (“Black-ish”), is the leader of this revolution, and when he is unexpectedly plucked out of the last car to investigate murders in the upper classes, the Tailies enact his planned takeover without him.

As a former homicide detective, Layton investigates a series of murders that the First Class was wholly unprepared to handle. Layton is surveilled at a distance by the mysterious head of Hospitality, Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly, “Labyrinth,” 1986), and more directly by Brakeman Till (Mickey Sumner, “Low Winter Sun”), a security enforcement officer who is saved from the bloody uprising by Layton.