Stitchers, Season 1 (2015)

 

Kirsten Clark is a brilliant but emotionally closed off Caltech student. Her seemingly cold demeanour is a symptom of her medical condition: temporal dysplasia. This (invented for the show) condition makes a person unable to sense the passing of time. This hinders Kirtsen's ability to form emotional relationships with others, as she does not seem to have normal reactions to events.  An example Kirsten herself gives in the show is that when she was told her foster father was dead, then to her he had been dead forever. 

Kirsten's medical condition is important because it makes her an ideal candidate for a secret government agency that employs a highly experimental process known as "stitching".  This technology allows the subject to view the slowly fragmenting memories of a recently deceased person.  The process is dangerous and can be unreliable, but it makes it possible to find the answers to mysteries that would otherwise go unsolved.

Of course, the government doesn't invest huge amounts of money into a process just to solve a few crimes.  Nor is Kirsten's suitability for the process a mere coincidence.  But you'll have to watch the show to learn the deeper secrets at play here: and you will also need to prepare yourself for not all those questions being answered, because the show as cancelled on a cliffhanger after three seasons.

The real question then is, is the journey good enough to survive the lack of an ending? 

Well.  There are a number of restaurants near my old house, many of which I visited while I was living there. At some of them I had great meals, at some the meal was a disappointment ... but the one that is relevant to this review is the one that was reliably 'alright'. I never had a bad meal there, but I also never walked out thinking 'I need to recommend this place to people'. It was the definition of 'adequate'.

Stitchers is that restaurant's TV show equivalent. The cast are likeable, the episode plots are fine, there's a longer arc at play that - although moving a little slowly, is at least recognisably moving - and I never once shouted at the TV in frustration. But it also never really rises above "an okay way to pass the time".

Let's start with the cast, which includes Alison Scoglietti of Warehouse 13 and Salli Richardson-Whitfield of Eureka. They're both solid hands and I wish they'd been given a little more to do: Richardson-Whitfield is just the tightly buttoned boss lady, while Scagliotti is largely just playing a slightly more sexual version of her Warehouse 13 character.

"I wish they'd been given more to do" is actually a problem all of the actors face with their roles.  The characters in general are a little 'flat' and lacking in much depth. They are mostly a set of plot points in human form.

As for the plots, well like I said, they're fairly solid and there's an over-arching story that is slowly unfolding.  The "stitching" concept is of course pure science fiction plot device, but I'll give the writers some credit here: they're relatively consistent with how their made-up technology works within the fiction.  I've seen plenty of shows where the capabilities and limitations of technology fluctuate wildly to meet an immediate narrative need: I appreciate it when I see a bit more effort expended, as it has been here.

 

Ultimately, though, the show doesn't quite have enough to draw me into watching more - particularly since I know it won't get a tidy conclusion.

 

One last note if you do choose to watch this show: episode "11" of this season is a Halloween episode.  It is actually set before episode 10.  So I suggest you watch it after episode 9, but before 10. Then watch 10 as the season finale - because that is what it is.

Also be aware that that the Halloween episode is quite a change of tone for the show and feels a little out of place in general.  A case I think of forcing a concept onto a show to which it was not especially well-suited.