YouTube is the most amazing dustbin ever created. It is a hypnotic, addictive, infinite browse through the ultimate car boot sale of ideas. Like the very best car boot sales, much of the stuff is true garbage, but every now and then you turn up an absolute nugget, a neglected diamond squatting there amid all the chaos and mental illness.
It says a lot about human nature that one of the initial motivations for setting up the global superpower in the first place was the frustration experienced by a couple of nerds because they couldn’t find images of Janet Jackson’s left boob online.
For the increasing numbers of us who can’t remember anything prior to last Tuesday: Janet was performing with Justin Timberlake on the half time show at the 2004 Superbowl, when she experienced the legendary ‘wardrobe malfunction’ which led to her nipple being exposed to a suitably shocked and confused nation, who genuinely thought it had all been about the football.
Naturally, at the time everyone got worked up into one of those 24 hour frenzies so beloved of ancient media, but the massive unintended consequence was the foundation of arguably the most powerful media engine in the world. Janet’s nip truly launched a trillion searches. Thugs and porn are the engines of history.
What a legacy the most famous ‘nip slip’ in history has left. YouTube is often criticized for what is seen as lax censorship (but really, considering how it started, what do people expect?), but its laissez-faire attitude contributes to what is, like it or not, the most incredible social archive on the planet.
There humanity is in all its mucky glory (largely apart from the porn, of course): bizarre, spectacularly ignorant, often incoherent, boring and even mentally ill, but weirdly mesmerizing all the same.
Time and again, I’ll abandon some worthy plan to watch some virtuous documentary or highly praised new drama on Netflix, and just disappear down the rabbit hole, emerging hours later, tired and confused, yet obscurely entertained. And as mentioned above, sometimes the rabbit hole yields the most unexpected delights.
One such is ‘Pioneer One,’ a free web TV series which aired during 2010 and 2011, and which was apparently funded entirely through donations. I had never heard of it before, and consequently adopted the rather silly, yet very human hypothesis that ‘well, if I’ve never heard of it, then it mustn’t be any good.’
I ended up being hooked. The first episode, reportedly made a at cost of just $6,000, is a testament to how all good drama really needs is energetic writing, tight direction and beautifully composed performances.
I was amazed I’d never heard of any of these people. The show was created by Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith, who have gone on to do other things, but nothing like what this shop window on their talent suggests.
In the first episode, what appears to be a huge meteor comes down over rural Montana and Canada. A terror alert is declared when radiation is detected. The spectre of 9/11 still looming very large, the US office of Homeland Security decides that terrorists have set off a so called ‘dirty bomb.’
With considerable style, and some pitch perfect understated acting – most notably from principals James Rich and Alexandra Blatt (again, where are they now?) – it is revealed that what in fact came down was an old Soviet spacecraft, and there was an occupant on board, a seriously ill young man.
Pioneer One’s ‘Maguffin’ is no more or less improbable than many, vastly more expensive sci fi shows (spoiler alert: it’s about Mars), but the skill with which the show introduces its twists is highly enjoyable.
Repeat: the budget doesn’t matter once all the other things which are supposed to work (and frequently don’t. Avatar, anyone?) do so spectacularly.
One tiny tribute to the skill of those who made Pioneer One is that its innovative opening credit sequence – featuring schematic drawings of the Soyuz spacecraft – were, uh, ‘respectfully referenced’ by the snowflakes, sorry, talented persons who made Star Trek Discovery.
Pioneer One is a wonderful example of what it is possible to do even within severe limits. Personally, I can’t understand how all those involved didn’t end up as billionaires, but then, alas, talent doesn’t always out.
There are six Episodes in all, and things remain remarkably tight until the last ten minutes of Episode Six, when there’s a rather desperate lunge to throw out hope for a sequel.
For whatever reason, that sequel was never made, which is a genuine shame.
jasongill2015 