Orphan Black Echoes is More Than Just A Pale Imitation of the Original

 

 

In retrospect almost every element of Orphan Black the BBC America series that aired from 2013 to 2017 seemed to be made up of all the worst parts of so many other brilliant sci-fi fantasy series that had come before and a few that came after. The central story of the series involved cloning and if you were a fan of The X-Files you know just how much the series ran that storyline into the ground before they ended it. It involved a child who represented a danger and a new world to a society and that was in a sense one of the most important storylines in the remake of Battlestar Galactica. There were an increasing number of insidious cults that bore the title characters harmed, which describes so much of Lost. There were evil scientific corporations which is at the center of Fringe. And there seemed to be an argument that none of the characters could be taken at face value which is the underlying theme of all of these series. When you throw in the fact that trying to understand the meanings of the episode titles in correlation with the episodes themselves was nearly impossible – something I’ve constantly had issues with shows as varied as Brotherhood and Fargo over -  I should never been able to watch, much less enjoy the series. Yet despite all of that I was riveted by everything that happened week-to-week and felt immensely satisfied by the series finale in a way I haven’t for almost any mythology series I’ve watched in more than a quarter of a century. Why was that?

A large part of it, of course, had to do with the incredible work of Tatiana Maslany as all of the clones that we saw throughout the series five year run. Maslany’s performance was by far one of the great achievements on television in the 2010s and arguably in TV history. Her Emmy win for Best Actress in a Drama in 2016 was one of the most gratifying to me in the last decade and one of the reasons I knew that I was onboard with the Critics Choice TV awards was that Maslany had by that point won two consecutive Best Actress Awards in that same category in 2013 and 2014. Maslany had to play four completely different regular characters at the start of the series and several different variations during the run. Throughout the show Maslany also had to have variations on the character play different variations which led to both great suspense and great humor, often in the same moment. When you throw in the fact that in many of the episodes, several versions of her were onscreen at once – most memorably in a ‘sistras dance party’ in the Season 2 finale -  there’s an argument Maslany had the most demanding role of any performer in the entire 2010s.

There was also the fact that Orphan Black was, from the start, a groundbreaking series when it came to the LGBTQ+ community. This was clear not only for Sarah Manning’s adopted brother Felix (the wonderful Jordan Gervase) but the fact that one clone Cosima was having a lesbian relationship with Daphne, a scientist who was supposed to be monitoring her and who fell in love with her instead. It was because of their relationship that the two began to work together against the corporate overlords that were trying to use the clones. Throw in the fact that at least one clone had transitioned to male by the time we met them and at least one male clone was gay himself, and Orphan Black may have been one of the most inclusive shows for the past generation.

Finally there was the fact that for all the complexities of the mythology Orphan Black was about family more than anything else. Not just the sisterhood of the clones which was deservedly front and center, but the troubled relationship Sarah Manning had with her own toddler daughter Kira and her adopted family, including her surrogate mother. Many mythology shows concentrate far too much on the science and forget the human element.  By the time the show ended in 2017 I cared less about the story making any sense but whether everything would work out for the ‘sistras’ and their family. In that, I was more than rewarded.

Now considering that we live in the age of the spinoff and the reboot, it was a matter of time before we knew we’d be returning to the world of Orphan Black. And indeed in the fall of 2022, AMC+ announced that we would be getting Orphan Black: Echoes. After numerous delays including the strike, it finally premiered on both AMC and BBC America last week. And what strikes me about it after two episodes is that the writers have decided not to – well, it has to be said – clone the original. It would have been easy to do what every other spinoff has been doing for the last decade: either continue the story years with the original characters years older: (see The Connors and …And Just Like That) or take place in the same world a few years later and have holdovers from the original and a whole new cast of characters (see every Walking Dead spin-off). Echoes, however, seems to be striking a different path, one that I have admired and loved in the recently cancelled Quantum Leap and the return of Twin Peaks.

Echoes begins with a woman named Lucy waking up in what appears to be a country cabin. There’s a very nervous scientist in a lab coat who asks her to read a series of words. Lucy begins to panic as she realizes she can’t remember certain things and while the scientist tries to calm her down, Lucy eventually panics. She eventually manages to break the door down – and finds out she’s in a combination lab and warehouse. The nervous scientist comes out and tells her: “This isn’t how I wanted you to find out.” Lucy then sees a tank full of goo and what looks to be someone exactly like her. The scientist tells her that she has been essentially created from a 4D printer. Lucy freaks out and runs outside.

The series then cuts to two years later and tells us the year is 2052. Already this is a step forward from Orphan Black which for all its futuristic trappings was solidly in the present. We are in a brave new world that has vast technological advances which are, by and large, just more advanced versions of the world today.

Lucy is now living as a migrant worker in Massachusetts. (The story takes place in an around Boston.) She has since becomes involving with a former soldier and his young daughter, who happens to be deaf and its clear she has built a life with family and friends. Its clear Lucy has not gotten over what has happened to her but is trying to build a life. That gets shot to sunshine when she is in an accident and is hospitalized. The scientist we’ve met learns about it. That day, a corporate goon comes after Lucy and tries to track down in a way that can be called “by any means necessary”. It becomes violent and Lucy seems doomed – until her surrogate daughter finds out what’s wrong and shoots the goon dead. Rather than go to the police, Lucy tells her new family to go on the run and heads to Boston to get answers.

Her next stop is a rehab house where she came a year ago and she tells him that the people who came after her a year ago are back again. She doesn’t fill in the details but she ends up going to the corporation and running into a girl named Jules (Amanda Fix). Lucy recognizes her in a way that doesn’t make sense to the viewer or us – but we soon realize that she has a mark on her that Lucy and something close to a brand.

By this point we have learned who the scientist was at the start – its Kira Manning, the daughter who was at the center of all the action in the original series. Now played by Keeley Hawes, we get our clearest picture of her when Uncle Felix (Gervase much older, but no less debauched) visits her and says that she’s been out of touch. Kira has grown up to be head of an organization that provides organs to people who need them and has become such a major figure for good that the UN apparently calls upon her regularly. She’s also a mother to a child named Lucas and she does seem close to her family. But it’s clear that there are parts of her that are badly broken. She hasn’t talked to her son in months and its clear its entirely on her part. She hasn’t confided in Felix in a long time and its not clear if she’s talked to her mother in that period. There are numerous pictures of her family, and numerous sistras there but through random conversations we can tell she’s been traumatized. She mentions all of the therapy she had to go through (understandable considering what happened during the series) but she’s clearly uncomfortable beyond that. In a critical conversation at the end of Felix’s visit, she asks him: “What if I’m not really good? What if I’m just selfish?”  By this point we know she’s not only involved with Lucy’s creation but very likely Jules and given how nervous she is about her work, she’s clearly terrified about something that we’re not yet privy too. Considering how much of the original Orphan Black was about the sins of the parents, it would be fitting if a sad irony if Kira was playing those same sins out.

I have not yet mentioned that Lucy is played by that brilliant talent Krysten Ritter. Ritter has been a part of Peak TV almost since it began with roles on Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars but from the moment she appeared as Jane, the landlord who became the first real victim of Walter White during Breaking Bad, you know you’re in for a treat when she shows up on Peak TV. Best known for riveting work in the title role of Jessica Jones, her characters are proud in how much they are determined to survive. It’s clear watching Lucy that she has been able to do that for as long as she existed but there is a softness to her that we rarely get to see in Ritter’s work, particularly with the people she loves. She is paranoia, reckless and incredibly dangerous, but given everything that’s happened to her you really can’t blame her. Like Maslany, Ritter carries this series when it is in danger of not working.

It's worth noting that the series has been available on a streaming service for awhile so many of the secrets are known to those who subscribe to AMC+. I don’t and have only seen the first two episodes. Looking at the cast of performers, I can tell by some of the names that there’s clearly a larger link involved and it’s pretty clear that indeed, what we see is because of Kira’s decision to do something in regard to her family. That said,  I give credit for Echoes for not doing the obvious. It would have been easy to just have Ritter run into incarnations of herself but what we see is that in fact she and Jules are just a younger and older version of the same source. Neither have any past. Jules has been adopted because her birth parents supposedly died in a car crash and she has amnesia ever since. She has a grandfather who fills in details but as we learned in the second episode, he’s an actor. It’s also clear like so many of the sistras, Jules is following in their path of criminality. After she has been abducted and escapes from Lucy, she doesn’t tell her father about it and when her adopted brother asks her why she doesn’t, she makes it clear its because she’s selling drugs. Sarah Manning was originally a con artist. It’s also clear the show is leaning in just as busy leaning into being inclusive as before: Lucy is clearly bi and Jules’s adopted brother is gay. And just as important is the concept of family, not so much the one you are born into but the one you make.

 What Echoes seems to be hinting at is whether or not that will be enough to protect you against the evils of the world. That might actually be a more fitting message for an era where we are repeatedly told that all the norms we have will not hold. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Echoes is set in Massachusetts which has been a reliably blue state for years. There’s also an industrialist named Paul Darros who seems to be at the center of so much of the research that’s going on, a corporate philanthropist with a darker edge. “Listen to what he doesn’t say,” an employee tells a new cohort before meeting him for the first time.

The initial reception to Echoes has, as you might expect, not been as glowing as the original. This is hardly shocking considering that it has been the de facto nature of the internet to argue that any new version of a sacred property – even one that is about cloning – is an offense to God and man. The arguments are that the links to the original are tangential and it doesn’t keep what fans wanted from the new version. Paradoxically that’s exactly why I think Echoes works. Rather than bring back Tatiana Maslany for as many new versions as we could get and just continue the original story, it is determined to stay spiritually true to the original while trying to beat its own path.  As someone who was exhausted by clones of former hit and cult series for the past decade I can’t tell you what a relief it is for a spinoff to try to do something original. I prefer a show that uses its source material as a starting point for a new story rather than just does the same narrative we were used too. If I wanted to watch the original Orphan Black I could watch it on streaming. I prefer a series that is  not afraid to fall flat on its face with something different rather than bring out a variation of the same standard.

I grant you its possible my position on Echoes will change as the series continues. It may very well take on the measure the original did and have an increasingly incomprehensible mythology before too long. But at least the new Orphan Black is trying to be different. Considering that it was a show about cloning, you have to give credit for that.

My score: 4 stars.