Syfy goes viral
Arctic chiller ‘Helix’ could catch on with viewers
AT LEAST two viruses are threatening to wipe out humanity on TV this year.
For the record, in case either one does wipe us out, and alien travelers find the remains of our extinct civilization a few million light years in the future, Syfy’s “Helix” got here first.
Like TNT’s “T he Last Ship,” the other pandemic drama that doesn’t sail into town until summer, “Helix” sends disease-control scientists to the Arctic in hopes of finding a way to stop the lethal virus.
The stories take very different paths from there, however, and as one might expect, Syfy’s has more weird-science elements.
Billy Campbell plays Alan Farragut, a levelheaded CDC expert who arrives at a secretive research facility, Arctic Biosystems.
The polite Dr. Hiro-shi Hatake (Hiroyuki Sanada), who runs the joint, promises Alan full access to its information. It’s no big spoiler to say he may be lying, which is a problem when every day the virus gets a little closer to its goal of annihilation.
Alan has other dramas along the way, including the strange things that are happening to his brother Peter (Neil Napier), a fellow scientist who may have been exposed to the virus.
Viewers glimpse the fuller scope of the problem, in most cases, at t he same time Alan does, giving “Helix” a nice sense of ominous, building tension.
It’s also not too geeky a story, so someone who just likes suspense drama can follow it.
At the very least, watching all the Arctic scenes might make some of us here feel warmer.