In the new Black Mirror-esque sci-fi anthology Tomorrow + I, the technology of a near-future society intersects and butts heads with Thai culture and traditions. Sounds a little bleak and dystopian, doesn’t it? But the first episode showed that the show also gives viewers at least a little bit of hope.
Opening Shot: Robot arm drills whirr around.
The Gist: In the first episode, “Black Sheep,” we open with Noon (Waruntorn Paonil), an astronaut on an ISA space station, celebrating after perfecting her 3D-printed artificial heart, which she knew could be created in the weightlessness of space. She’s at the end of her three-year mission, and in a holographic call with her husband Nont (Pakorn Chatborrirak), she thanks him for letting her pursue her dream, and for how much she can be herself around him.
On the shuttle back to Earth, though, there is an accident and Noon is killed. Nont, of course, is distraught, and two months later, knowing that Noon’s body is being cryogenically preserved during her family’s 100 days of mourning before she’s cremated, he gets an idea. He goes to Noon’s best friend, Dr. Vee (Treechada Hongsyok), who clones family pets, and asks her to clone Noon. Vee at first objects, because human cloning is illegal. But Nont cites the “doctor and criminal” conundrum that Noon gave when she presented her idea to print organ replacements. To him, restoring her knowledge and memories is better for the greater good than the moral and legal quagmire of cloning humans.
First, though, he needs to retrieve Noon’s brain so it contents can be transferred to the clone. He has to steal her head from the cryo chamber, because her family objected to it. As the transfer happens, Vee runs into inconsistencies that the algorithm tells her needs human intervention to resolve. But one huge inconsistency comes up, involving Noon’s sense of identity, that may not be solvable.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tomorrow + I is very much in the genre that Black Mirror has dominated in the past decade or so.
Our Take: What we appreciated about “Black Sheep”, the first episode of Tomorrow + I, is that, while it was over 80 minutes long, it needed that time to take its story where it needed to go. Director and co-creator Paween Purjitpanya isn’t trying to shoehorn story into a particular length; the episodes run from 69 to 81 minutes, which means that the stories go as long as they need to.
The big twist in Nont’s quest to clone his wife Noon is actually earned, because it’s discovered during Vee’s operation to transfer her memories from her old brain to her new one. And when we examine the memories Noon has around that twist, especially ones that involve her loving but rigid father.
The care to structure the story in a way that supported the big twist made the conclusion all the more satisfying. We’re not sure if the other three episodes will be like that, but at least the first — and longest — of the four gives us hope.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but there might be sex and nudity in other episodes.
Parting Shot: A picture Nont made of a wood-frame house on the moon is shown hanging in a lunar colonist’s house.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the little dog who plays Nont and Noon’s pet Harvey, as well as Harvey’s clone.
Most Pilot-y Line: Out of frustration, Nont questions the religious imagery Noon’s family gives him about how she’s in a “better place.” “What century are we in?” he asks angrily.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While the near-future shown in Tomorrow + I might be a little dystopian, it’s far from bleak, and that little sliver of hope is always welcome in a show like this.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.