This May and June, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fifth season of The X-Files and the second season of Millennium.
Even when the second season of Millennium doesn’t quite work, it remains a fascinating piece of television.
Siren is the last script written by Glen Morgan and James Wong before they drafted the two-part second season finalé, The Fourth Horseman and The Time is Now. The duo wrote a phenomenal stretch of the second season. They wrote six of the first eight episodes to air; Siren ends another run of four episodes credited to the duo in the middle of the season. Including the two-part finalé, the pair wrote twelve of the season’s twenty-three episodes. That is a phenomenal workload, even discounting the work of producing and re-writing the other eleven teleplays.
Where’s your head at?
Given that the duo were writing what amounts to a full-season order for some modern shows, and producing similar volume of episodes, it seems inevitable that one of their episodes would have to slip. Siren is mess. The script feels like it was stitched together from two different story ideas – each of which might have sustained its own intriguing forty-five minute episode. However, cramming both of those ideas into a single script means that neither feels as developed or as explored as it might be.
At the same time, the careful structuring of the season makes it quite what Siren is trying to do. There are a wealth of interesting ideas here that very clearly and very logically serve the larger arc of the second season. However, it often feels like this weight derives not from Siren itself, but from the outline of Siren created when all the other episodes in the season click together.
Hear him out…
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Filed under: Millennium | Tagged: alternate world, ambiguity, choices, dark night of the soul, frank black, Glen Morgan, It's a Wonderful Life, James Wong, long dark night of the soul, millennium, millennium group, siren, st. john, the last temptation of the christ | Leave a comment »
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