By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
I was recently made aware of just how many movies and television shows the younger generation have never heard of, never mind seen. So to that end, we look back at some characters you really need to see before you kick the bucket.
In another universe I wouldn’t have to be writing about Odyssey 5. It would have been on all our lips like Quantum Leap. My first view of it was on a late night slot on television and by the end of the hour and a half I was hooked. very few shows have caught my attention in the first episode like this for example X Files and The Walking Dead but Odyssey 5 was a trailblazer for other shows today. It had swearing, full frontal nudity all wrapped up in a sci fi coat.
The characters were flawed; three dimensional good and bad in all their glory. To get the show’s premise you should click on the video above which is the show’s intro and gives you everything you need to know. What is beautiful about odyssey 5 written and created by the late Manny Coto, was that it played with our expectations of time travel in the same way as it did the characters. They all know what is going to happen in their lives and the world so all they need to do is live it again and look for signs of the mystery of what caused the Earth to explode and stop it. However this is not the case as their very investigations begin to change the future within months. These themes were also explored in the series Travellers. The Odyssey was the name of the shuttle they were all on when the Earth died. The titular 5 refers to the occupants of the shuttle. Three of them are astronauts Chuck Taggart (Peter Weller), his son Neil (Christopher Gorham), scientist Kurt Mendel (Sebastian Roche), astronaut and senator’s daughter Angela (Tamara Craig Thomas) and reporter Sarah Forbes (Leslie Silva).
Kurt Mendel is an arrogant, self centred, opinionated, woman mad, hard drinking asshole who spends his life pissing people off. But when you are a Nobel Peace prize winner, genius and respected all through the scientific world, you can behave badly or at least that’s Kurt’s excuse.
The first thing Kurt thinks is when he is sent back with the others to the past is that he has the opportunity to make a fortune. He is an opportunist with a quick tongue and sarcastic manner. To this end he picks out a girl singer that is going to be a huge deal and tries to promote her to stardom before it actually happened in the original timeline. However her gangster friends discover Kurt can predict the winners of sports events. They threaten him, forcing him to make them money. However the original winning scores suddenly start to change. Kurt is shocked but it is the first indication that the Odyssey crew’s presence can change the history they knew.
Kurt will have sex with anyone and loves a good time but as we progress through the series it is revealed he behaves this way because he is still in love with Angela, his fellow time traveller and astronaut. In the episode The Choices We Made, Kurt and Angela get to experience the future they could have had including having a child together. It is easy to see Kurt still cares a lot for Angela and wishes they had stayed together. His wild lifestyle just masks his pain as inwardly he is hurting.
In Time Out of Mind, the crew begin to lose their memories of their mission and revert to the selves they were in the original timeline. It’s almost like a Invasion of the Body Snatchers as Kurt finds himself alone until he too loses his memory. But being the survivor he is, Kurt finds a way round it by leaving his former self a video message explaining everything. he is able then to restore them all.
But the one thing Kurt falls victim to is his own sense of curiosity. He secretly grows a synthetic in order to study it. But it escapes and injures a teenager putting him in a coma. Wracked with guilt Kurt pretends to be one of his teachers from school and forms a friendship with his mother. Having gotten a second chance at life, Kurt is starting to see things with different eyes. He has found a compassion for people and things he either never or rarely displayed in the original timeline. His need to maintain his reputation as a Nobel winning genius has cost another person dearly which ripples out to his loved ones.
He develops a system that can detect synthetics through which he discovers are more abundant in the population than he first thought. Whatever this is, it has been going on for a while and he ls obligated to stop it using every ounce of his talents to do so. Maybe there is a part of him that wants to stop the Sentients and synthetics to add to his public profile with the hero label attached. But it is the comatose teenager that brings him back to his senses. He realises that this is so much more than an ego trip for him. As he sees more and more victims of the synthetics and Sentients, he sees families being ripped apart, something that he secretly wants and will do anything to protect.
When a living prison consumes convicted criminals, it is a sign that these things do not discriminate in order to achieve their goals. Kurt decides that he too must take that stance even if that means he takes risks like growing a synthetic. He even finds himself forming good friendships with the other Odyssey 5 members especially Chuck (Peter Weller). They initially have a love hate relationship which quickly becomes solid. They even develop nicknames for each other, Chucky and Kurttrude. His craziest team up is with Harry Mudd, a geeky synthetic with a great lust for life and Star Trek. He wants to experience everything life as a human has to offer so he and Kurt have a foursome which backfires on Kurt as Harry has the most enormous penis that ladies want. It is one of the few times Kurt feels inadequate in the most hilarious way.
In Dark at the End of the Tunnel, a town is awaiting God. It is a Sentient scheme yet strangely when the Sentient appears and speaks, it has Kurt’s voice. If the show had continued, I’m sure this would have been a plot development.
But as the final episode rolled, things were bleak for Kurt. Angela is kidnapped, a new alien is revealed and the police think Kurt murdered her. When we last see him, he is in handcuffs and unable to tell them the truth. It is frustrating as the writing was superb. Odyssey 5 was much more than a run of the mill sci fi show and Kurt Mendel will forever be a cut above your average hero. A huge loss but Roche would go on to Supernatural, the Vampre Diaries and the Originals for example but every time I see him I can see the brilliant, irrepressible Kurt. By being sent back in time, Kurt became a better man than he was originally, eyes wide open to the bigger picture and the good in the world and himself that had to be saved from destruction.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 