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Kicking off Syfy’s winter season, Childhood’s End is a science-fiction alien mystery taking place over three nights beginning Dec. 14.
The cast and crew presented the miniseries at the TCA summer press tour Wednesday, speaking about adapting the book and the idea of utopia.
Childhood’s End, which is also produced by Universal, was written by 2001: A Space Odyssey author Arthur C. Clarke, in which an alien race peacefully invades earth, led by an eerie leader named Karellen (voiced by Game of Thrones’ Charles Dance).
Throughout the story, the alien race wipes out war, poverty and disease, but some continue to question what Karellen’s true motives are.
On one side of the debate is Mike Vogel’s character, a farmer from Missouri who becomes the reluctant voice of Karellen on earth.
“He’s almost a Moses character,” said Vogel. “He’s reluctantly rejecting this, but he’s pushed to the forefront. They call him the blue-collar prophet.”
The miniseries adaptation is very true to the book, according to Writer/Executive Producer Matthew Graham, who says “it would be crazy to deviate from what Arthur C. Clarke has envisioned.”
He goes on to point out that the storyline itself is just as relevant today than when it was written in the 1950s.
“The idea is pertinent today as it was then,” said Graham. “One man’s surveillance is another man’s security.”
Colm Meaney thinks it’s a larger issue of a perceived utopia.
“The central theme of the book is that question of ‘Is utopia achievable, and if there is, is that a good thing?’” he said.
And, even more to the point, “One person’s utopia is not the same as another,” said Childhood’s End star Daisy Betts.
To represent this struggle of a perceived utopia before questioning what sacrifices it entails, Syfy launched a marketing stunt at Comic-Con for Childhood’s End last month that introduced the storyline to attendees and sparked a social media curiosity campaign.
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