Alcatraz - net may hold the key if series is cancelled

Note: If you haven't seen the last episode then you may not want to read this article as it will contain spoilers. If you don't want to spoil the ending before you get to see it then skip to a different page. Otherwise, read on


After a disappointing two hour finale that saw some viewers so uninterested they turned off half way through, the series executive producer (who is also one of it's writers) Daniel Pyne has suggested that if a second series doesn't materialise the fans could still get their answer.....thanks to the internet. Pyne mentioned the possibility of revealing the answers to fans in the form of short stories that could be published online in the event that the series is indeed cancelled, a way for fans to get the answers they've been seeking.

Unsure of the shows future he doesn't want to give anything away but he did reveal the obvious, that the gold has gone and that Harlan double crossed the Warden. He also said it was possible that Rebecca has the same unique blood as Tommy, and that the knife wound has activated it but would not confirm or deny it.

While this would provide a convenient way to bring her back from the dead it would make a large hole in the plot. Rebeccas father, Tommys son, could not have the "colloidal silver" in his blood because he was born long before Tommy's blood was tampered with and so, while in theory she could inherit relevant genes from him she could not have the healing silver because this was not part of Tommy's genetic makeup but was instead added to his body much later. For her to be bought back in this way would therefore require having some sort of blood transfusion from Tommy to her or her father, something only possible if Tommy was around during their childhood years.



This would of course also mean that Tommy does not age, and could also be the reason no one gets to see ex con millionaire Harlan...after all, if he doesn't age it would be easier to hide away from public scrutiny than to try explaining his abnormal longevity. Will Alcatraz be cancelled? It seems we'll have to wait a little while before we get an official answer but it seems ever more likely that yes it will in fact be declined a second series.

The problem with Alcatraz is that it offers a fascinating idea, people time travelling into the future en masse at the hands of a mysterious mastermind, but it fails to deliver any real answers. It's all to easy to bring Rebecca back by doing a blood transfusion from one of the captured 63's, so even the shock ending can be reversed, and the series as a whole has gently plodded along with not much revelation of the mystery behind it.

 JJ Abrams biggest success, Lost confused many viewers right until the big reveal in the final episode six years after it started and it feels as if he is trying the same tactic with Alcatraz, dragging out the plot for as long as possible without really knowing what the plot is or where it's headed. Unfortunately Lost left many people feeling a little let down with its big reveal and perhaps as a result of that viewers are less inclined to let a series go on for as long without giving a few concrete answers along the way, something Alcatraz fails to do.

Should it be renewed? Yes, the series has a good cast and a promising story, but it needs to shift up a gear and reveal more. As it stands the big question of how the 63's time travelled could easily be left unanswered until the final episode of a third or even fourth series if before then viewers get to find out why Tommy and Rebecca have been so important, how Hauser knew the missing people would return, what made those responsible carry out the experiment in the first place (was there a previous test subject who time travelled, un noticed, leading the powers behind it all to try again on a larger scale?), why Lucy and the doctor seem to be the only 63 's that haven't been given orders, how the keys could be cut with post 1963 technology, why Tommy stabbed his grand daughter and why Lucy is so important that she will always be a target for the 63's.

Alcatraz could be in a good situation if it plays its cards right. Viewers already know the outcome, that people from the past disappear and reappear fifty years later, what the series can do is take the obvious questions and reveal them over several seasons.

One season could concentrate on why the 63's are worldwide, what happened to the warden, how they knew Tommy was important, maybe tease the existence of a previous test subject (perhaps even Rebecca herself, she could heal from the wound and find a photo of herself in 1960 as a child - after all there seemed to be a girl outside at the house with Tommys son).

Another could reveal the mastermind behind it all, perhaps tie the experiment in to the story of the civil war gold with maybe a civil war soldier being the first test subject and waking up in 1960's alcatraz, etcetera. It has the power to be a gripping long running series IF it sets aside certain issues and addresses them series by series. As it stands there are lots of questions and very few answers, now what's needed is for Fox to take a chance and commission a second series rather than play things by the numbers.