January 10-2014
. . . writing scripts
An Iranian-American with a Harvard degree in economics and experience at the World Bank has taken a sharp turn in a new direction, producing a science fiction television show that premiers tonight.
Cameron Porsandeh, who has an Iranian father and an American mother, dreamed up the idea for “Helix,” which will debut on the Syfy cable channel January 10, at 10 p.m. Eastern Time and 9 p.m. Central.
The series follows a team of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who travel to a research facility in the Arctic to investigate a potential outbreak of disease. A SyFy news release says the team members “find themselves pulled into a terrifying life-and-death struggle that may hold the key to mankind’s salvation or total annihilation. However, the lethal threat is just the tip of the iceberg, and as the virus evolves, the chilling truth begins to unravel.”
The concept was developed by Porsandeh, who then submitted it to Sony Pictures, where Lynda Obst revised the idea along with Porsandeh. A major science fiction television writer, Ron D. Moore, joined the production team at Porsandeh’s urging. The pilot script itself was written by Porsandeh and Obst with Moore pitching several key ideas.
Porsandeh said Sony had asked him, “If you could work with anyone on this project, who would you want to do it with?”
Porsandeh immediately said Ron Moore—“sort of like it’s a fantasy, sort of like ‘who would you want to date if you could date anyone,’ and I threw his name out the way you would throw a movie star’s name out. They sent it over to him and he was interested so he got on board. Then, together, we came up with an overarching mythology that would extend over the course of the entire series. Then he and I together pitched it to Syfy.”
The series will have at least 13 weekly episodes.
Porsandeh said a major feature of the series is that each episode represents the events of a single day within the story. Thus the entire 13-episode season covers two weeks.
According to Porsandeh, “Helix” will not make use of flashback scenes to give details about character backstories, the way the sci-fi series ”Lost” did. Instead, a key point is that viral infection will at times make characters feverish and hallucinate—which is a real-life symptom of several infections. Thus, certain characters will at times experience hallucinations, i.e. reliving particularly traumatic past events.
The distinction Porsandeh pointed out is that a flashback is presented as objectively true, while the hallucination scenes in “Helix” are presented from the characters’ feverish hallucinatory states, and thus their unreliable narration will contain errors that do not match events as they actually occurred.
Porsandeh graduated from Harvard with a degree in economics and international development. He worked for both the World Bank and Federal Reserve as well as for cities both in the US and abroad.
Before “Helix,” he had no involvement with the entertainment industry. It is, to say the least, unusual for anyone to start in television by producing his own series.
