Total Recall 2070
A noir sci-fi series about androids and corporate power.
Total Recall 2070 is a science fiction television series that first aired in 1999 on the Canadian channel CHCH-TV and later on the American Showtime network. The series, a Canadian/German co-production filmed in Toronto, Ontario, draws on the work of Philip K. Dick. A single season of 22 episodes was produced.
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Science fiction
- Runtime
- 60 minutes (pilot); 44 minutes (series)
- Creator
- Art Monterastelli
- Executive producers
- Art Monterastelli; Drew S. Levin
- Producer
- Jeff King
- Starring
- Michael Easton
- Karl Pruner
- Cynthia Preston
- Michael Rawlins
- Judith Krant
- Matthew Bennett
- Composer
- Jack Lenz; Zoran Borisavljevic
- Country
- Canada; Germany
Facts from the source article.
Story
The series is set in a dark, crowded, industrial and cosmopolitan world with a noir sci-fi aesthetic. Government bureaucracy is heavily influenced by a small number of powerful companies known as the Consortium, which includes Rekall (a provider of computer memory and virtual-reality vacations) and Uber Braun (an android manufacturer). David Hume, a senior detective for the Citizens Protection Bureau (CPB), loses his partner to self-aware androids and is reluctantly paired with Ian Farve, a naive new officer who is secretly an Alpha Class android with a complex psychological nature. The CPB frequently clashes with the Assessor's Office, which has sole jurisdiction over Consortium-related crimes, and with private security forces of Consortium companies. Major story arcs involve the Consortium's agendas, Farve's origins, Hume's wife Olivia (whose memories have been tampered with), and the mysterious manufacturer of Alpha Class androids. The series was cancelled before resolving significant plot elements, including a suggestion that the memory expansion used on self-aware androids contained non-human DNA and that a material found on Mars could create a hybrid of human and android DNA.
Production
Art Monterastelli created Total Recall 2070. Although the series is named after the 1990 film Total Recall, which was loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale', it shares no major plot points or characters with that film beyond the Rekall company and virtual vacations. The visual style and plot elements were more strongly influenced by the 1982 film Blade Runner, itself an adaptation of Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Monterastelli stated that a paranoid psychological thriller with a Blade Runner-like visual background suited the limited budget, offered more creative opportunities, and aligned better with Dick's antihero storylines. Dick is not credited in the series' main or end titles. Most filming took place at the Downsview Park studio, a former Canadian Forces Base in north Toronto. The futuristic cityscape was created by John Gajdecki and his company Gajdecki Visual Effects, blending computer-generated images with a live-action soundstage set that included two or three levels of constructed environment.
Distribution
The series was released on DVD in Japan in 1999, featuring both English and Japanese dubs. Its two-hour pilot, "Machine Dreams," came out on region 1 DVD and VHS in Canada and the United States starting in 2000. By 2010, it aired in Italian on Italy's Fantasy channel via Sky pay-TV. On February 22, 2011, Alliance Home Entertainment issued the complete uncut DVD set exclusively in Canada. Since September 2009, all 22 episodes have been streamable in censored US versions, with ads, through Comcast's Hulu-based "FanCast" service, and were previously available on the beta version of Joost.
More in Characters
Elsewhere in Total Recall
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