But perhaps you haven't (for whatever reason) had the opportunity to sample the latest offerings from Tapert and Company. Well then, you're missing out. And I'm going to tell you why. This week I'm going to look at Cleopatra 2525. Here's the premise.
In the early twenty-first century, a small-time actress and exotic dancer by the name of Cleopatra went into a plastic surgeon for routine breast augmentation surgery. For some reason, complications arose during the procedure and young Cleopatra was placed into cryogenic suspension, to be awakened in the future after a cure for her affliction had been found. She wakes up five hundred years into the future to find humanity has retreated below the surface of the earth to hide from the mysterious "Baileys" that have taken over the surface.
It is virtually impossible to take a show with this premise seriously. That, I believe, is precisely the point. Just as Hercules took the conventions of Greek myth and television action-adventure and mixed them with a twist of that unique Raimi and Tapert flair, Cleopatra takes the conventions of science fiction and does much the same thing.
The show isn't perfect; there are several aspects of it that may prevent it from catching on. The biggest problem facing it, I believe, is the amount of time they have to tell the story each week. It seems to me that there is a rich back-story present in this setting, but the half-hour time limit prevents much of this background from being presented.
This wouldn't be a problem if the series were presented in a serial format, but it isn't. Each episode is supposed to stand more or less on its own, but I have found too many blanks left unfilled in the six or seven episodes that have aired so far.
With my background in science fiction, I can guess at the missing pieces without too much difficulty - that is one of the advantages of the Renaissance style. But for people who don't have as extensive a background in the genre, I can see where difficulties might arise.
The other problem I see with the show is that it isn't terribly original. Science fiction on television has actually been doing fairly well in recent years. Shows like Star
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