9:15 pm EDT, July 19, 2013
'Almost Human' at Comic-Con 2013: Show's goal is to 'make 'Fringe' fans happy'
By Gabrielle Gold
Hypable attended the new Fox show Almost Human's Comic-Con panel which consisted of the pilot and a panel discussion. Beware of spoilers as you read on.
The episode began with Karl Urban's character John Kennex unable to save his human partner as an android police officer abandons them during battle. His partner dead, and Urban's character wounded, he floats in and out of conscious dreaming about his ex-girlfriend Anna. He was in a coma for seventeen months. The series next flashes to Urban under scientific watch as he experiments with a new project. Urban plays a tortured detective who has lost his love and his partner, trying to figure out how to move on.
John is forced to move on and resume his duties to take on the ills of the futuristic city, the big bad of Syndicate. John has lost his leg and instead has a synthetic leg that he has not quite adapted to. His police colleagues are divided on his usefulness as one officer blames him for the loss of John's partner and the other officers involved in the raid. His new android partner, who he is resentful towards, thinks John is hiding something and suffering seizures. John promptly gets rid of the annoying problem.
John is promptly given a defective android partner Dorian (Michael Ealy) who displays more human capabilities than most androids. The two have some adjustment issues in styles but work together to take down the Syndicate who are targeting cops.
The show is reminiscent of Bladerunner and should do well with J.J. Abrams and Bad Robots as executive producers. Urban is beloved from the Lord of the Rings and Star Trek films and should help to bring in a sizeable fan base. The audience roared with applause and shouts after the episode finished.
The panel consisted of Karl Urban, Michael Ealy, Lili Taylor, Minka Kelly, and executive producers J.H. Wyman and Naren Shankar.
Urban started out with a shout out to Star Trek fans while Wyman said his inspiration for the show came from "wanting to make Fringe fans happy." Wyman pointed to the issues that everyone ponders as the similarity between the two shows. "It has a lot of the great things that Fringe had in it. It's going to be something different but something special." He also mentioned that there is an open invitation for the Fringe actors to come on the show.
Urban credited J.J. Abrams and the work of Wyman as inspiration for why he joined the series. Ealy modeled his character Dorian after the characters of Jason Bourne, Robert Patrick in the Terminator 2, and Jeff Bridges as Starman.
Kelly said that fans will see different sides of her character when asked about her trustworthiness. When asked about robot-human romance, Urban responded, "It's J.J. Abrams. Anything's possible. Whatever floats your boat."
Shankar has previously worked on CSI and is happy to go back to his science fiction roots with Farscape and Star Trek in his background. The show will have cases of the week that deal with technology and the future however Shankar emphasized that the relationships between the characters would be key.
Taylor has had a big year with roles in The Conjuring, Hemlock Grove, and now Almost Human.
Almost Human stars Karl Urban, Michael Ealy, Lili Taylor, Leanne Adachi, and Ian Butcher.
Almost Human, a Bad Robot production and airs on Mondays at 8 p.m. eastern on Fox. It premieres on November 4th.
Are you excited for Almost Human?