n the city of Betaville, technology has triumphed. Crime, disease and violence have been eliminated. But as virtual reality threatens to replace real life, people in this near-future utopia must fight harder than ever to hang onto that which makes them human.
Welcome to Paradox uses the setting of Betaville to tell a different story every week. The episodes are based on short stories by noted science fiction writers, such as Alan Dean Foster and James Tiptree Jr. Each episode is introduced by a character called Paradox, who functions much like the title character in the earlier anthology series The Hitchhiker, also produced by Lewis Chesler.
In the premiere episode of Paradox, "Our Lady of the Machine," police detective Angel Cardenas (Steven Bauer of Scarface) investigates an unusual extortion ring operating in Betaville's Montezuma quarter. The ring, masquerading as a religious order, invokes a startlingly real hologram of the Virgin Mary to carry out its schemes. But the closer Cardenas gets to uncovering the mastermind behind the ring, the more he realizes that the image of Mary may be more than it seems.
In a future episode, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," a homeless woman (Megan Leitch of The X-Files) is saved at the brink of suicide by a mysterious corporation. They want to use her mind to remotely operate a perfect android, an artificial celebrity shill for their products.
The woman agrees, and she suddenly finds her artificial self, called Delphi, the object of adulation. "You have no idea what it's like to have no one, then suddenly to have everyone," she tells her adoring fans. But as the woman is swept up in the glamor of her new life, she is unaware of the danger presented by her puppetmasters.
"In Betaville, nothing is impossible anymore."
Based on a review of the first two episodes, Welcome to Paradox seems to be a promising addition to the long history of SF anthology series and an ambitious undertaking by the Sci-Fi Channel.
Like those that have come before, Paradox makes use of the conventions of SF--in this case, the themes of cyberpunk--to dramatize issues that other TV shows can't touch. Future episodes deal with the ethics of genetic engineering, prisons, virtual reality and the tension between order and freedom in society.
"Our Lady," based on a story by Foster, tackles a crisis of faith in a distinctly Latino-flavored story. (It's nice to see a non-Star Trek multicultural future, though the episode makes use of some stereotypes.) "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," based on a Tiptree Jr. story, uses its unusual premise to look at the cult of celebrity.
But neither episode loses sight of character development as they explore these universal themes. In "Our Lady," Angel must come to terms with his own past and lack of belief. In "Girl," Leitch's poignant character fights against all odds to find love and happiness. The level of writing doesn't compare with The Twilight Zone, and the supporting characters tend to be caricatures. But the story lines are intriguing, and the acting in the first two episodes was uniformly on a high level, particularly by Bauer and Leitch.
The look of the show, which is filmed in Vancouver, is deceptive: all muted jewel tones and bright blue skies--a counterpoint to the dark soul-searching at the core of the episodes. Perhaps a sign of Paradox's modest budget, more effort appears to go into character interaction than into the sets, costumes or rudimentary special effects.
