Total Recall 2070
| Total Recall 2070 | |
|---|---|
Total Recall 2070 title card
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| Genre | Science fiction |
| Created by | Art Monterastelli |
| Starring |
Michael Easton Karl Pruner Cynthia Preston Michael Rawlins Judith Krant Matthew Bennett |
| Composer(s) |
Jack Lenz Zoran Borisavljevic |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| No. of episodes | 22 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 44 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network |
OnTV (Canada) Showtime (United States) |
| Audio format | Dolby Surround 2.0 |
| Original release | January 5 – June 8, 1999 |
Total Recall 2070 is a science fiction television series first broadcast in 1999 on the Canadian television channel CHCH-TV and later the same year on the American Showtime channel. It was later syndicated in the United States with some editing to remove scenes of nudity, violence and (in most cases) strong language.
The series is named after the 1990 film Total Recall, loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, but it has been noted as sharing no major plot points or characters with it, other than the Rekall company and the concept of virtual vacations. Instead, a much larger influence in its plot elements and especially visual style has been recognized to be the 1982 film Blade Runner, itself a loose adaptation of Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Series creator Art Monterastelli has admitted the stronger influence of Blade Runner over Total Recall, and explained, he thought doing a paranoid psychological thriller with a strong visual background reminiscent of Blade Runner, would be a better use of their limited budget, provide more creative opportunities to the writers, and even be more in line with the spirit of Dick's antihero storylines as found in his body of work, compared to the Total Recall action film. Despite the influence of his works to the series production, Dick is not credited on the series main or end titles.
The series was filmed in Toronto. It was a Canadian/German co-production. Only one season, consisting of 22 episodes, was produced.
Total Recall 2070 takes place in a dark, crowded, industrial and cosmopolitan setting, with a noir sci-fi aesthetic. The government bureaucracy is heavily influenced by a small number of extremely powerful companies called "the Consortium" (including computer memory and virtual-reality vacation provider Rekall and android manufacturer Uber Braun). David Hume is a senior detective for the Citizens Protection Bureau (CPB), a police agency focused on general public safety. After his partner is killed by self-aware androids, he is partnered against his wishes with Ian Farve, a naive officer new to the department, who is himself secretly an "Alpha Class" android—a model with a more complex psychological nature. Hume and the CPB often have conflicts with the Assessor's Office (the investigative agency that has sole jurisdiction over crimes related to the Consortium) and with the private security forces of Consortium companies. The main story arcs of the series concern the agendas of the Consortium, the mystery of Farve's origins, Hume's wife Olivia, whose memories have been tampered with, and the mysterious manufacturer of Alpha Class androids. Significant plot elements remain unresolved by the end of the series run, due to cancellation; a crucial story arc from the series was the suggestion that the memory expansion used on self-aware androids was part non-human DNA and that a material found by a remote base on Mars could create a hybrid of human and android DNA.
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