Okay I'm supposed to be working on my thesis but instead I'm going to pitch a show to anyone who cares to listen. It's a half-reboot, half-reimagining, all wild ride.
(a warning that comes from a place of hindsight: this gets. Long. I think it's J to skip still?)
There was a short lived television program, both commissioned and cancelled in 2001, named Tracker. Tracker was a monster-of-the-week style low-budget sci-fi adventure about an alien sent to Earth to capture runaway fugitives who wanted to make the planet their own special little evil pillow fort.
The show starred Adrian Paul (yes, that one, the Highlander guy) as the Eponymous Tracker, called Cole, and Amy Price-Francis as his human translator and romantic interest, Mel.
The show, in concept, has a lot of pros! Its Monster of the week format allowed for clean, self-contained episodes, while also hinting at larger, seasonal arcs.
There's some variation in the structure of the episodes, too, between chases and battles of wits and brawns, to whodunnits and other varieties of mystery. The main characters have great chemistry, and by keeping the episodes contained, you have the opportunity to keep the core cast small and cycle out a rotating cast of recurring side characters with their own ties to different themes and subplots. I also really liked the "learning to be human" throughline of the show, and the common theme that Mel and Cole shared, which was healing and building a life and a purpose in the face of grief and tragedy (Cole's family has been killed, and Mel's Grandmother has died).
The aliens are formless, and the bad guys take up residence in existing human hosts. This keeps the budget nice and low and means that the effectiveness of the villain relies on lore and storytelling, rather than just special effects. All the aliens can blend into a crowd of people at a glance, but they have their own arrays of strengths and weaknesses that make them interesting opponents. A lot of this is due to the low-budget nature of the show, and the original leans into the cheesy element of this pretty hard.
Another thing about the aliens all being formless is that they canonically exist outside the human gender binary! All aliens are queer by default! I love this!
And the romance between Mel and Cole is actually kind of wholesome, especially for a 2001 network tv couple.
(there aren't a lot of gifs of this show. Probably because it is like. The least relevant IP I could have chosen to spend neurons on.)
HOWEVER. this was a show that ran for one season 20 years ago.
This is because it was a bad show.
(I say the above with love, and also because I mean it with my whole heart)
I'm just going to bullet point the cons really quick* here.
(*Note from the author, I just finished reading this list back after writing it, and it Will Not Be Quick)
His sidekick is a weaselly coward and a regrettably stereotypical embodiment of the "token black comic relief" character
There's not a whole lot of meaningful character growth. Everyone ends the season pretty much where they started it.
Adrian Paul is a professional martial artist, and a physically intimidating specimen, but because of some goofy fucking effects in post, ALL of the fight scenes are somehow the worst fight scene I've ever seen.
Only the bad guys steal real human hosts, so Cole has to get his physical form elsewhere. He manifests his body based on a billboard photo of an underwear model. This wouldn't be a bad thing, except the show uses it as an excuse to play out the same gag of him walking around in briefs and everyone being uncomfortable about a billion times over.
Also it presents questions that genuinely plagued me for all of the 22 episodes. Are the briefs his flesh? Is he wearing them in the (frankly weirdly charged) bath scene where Mel washes his upper body with a sponge? The image was two dimensional, so how does he know what a butt looks like? Was it just a guess?
The weird bath scene deserves its own bullet
The plot writing was a little predictable, which isn't always a bad thing, but matched with the lack of character growth, some episodes are left feeling less than dynamic.
It was the beginning of the aughts, so there's plenty of casual ableism, sexism, racism, and a smattering of transphobia to go around.
The villains, in the spirit of cheesy sci-fi, tend to be kind of flat (almost as flat as Cole should be, given that his only point of reference was two-dimensional and ASSLESS). There are also times where we just have to take the show's word for it that they're guilty and deserve to be in jail.
The non-binary aliens thing is verbally confirmed in Canon, from what I recall, but they don't really... Do anything with it? He still uses gendered words like husband and wife and daughter, and uses gendered terminology and pronouns to refer to the fugitive aliens. I KNOW it was the 2000s, but just from a world builder's perspective, it was a missed opportunity, dude.
Everything was pretty Cole-focused. I think the show could have benefitted from having a few more episodes where the real focus was on other characters and their problems. It would have fleshed everyone out a bit more, and been good for building relationships.
It's a space cop show. Cops in space.
But the real problem is that. In spite of the above diatribe of headaches. I do genuinely have a fondness for this wonderful, terrible piece of television. I think the concept deserves a second chance. And I am going to tell you my plan. (Read: pipe dream)
(If you've made it this far in, you HAVE to stay to the end. Sunk-cost, baby. You've wasted this much of your life on my drivel, why not waste some more?)
First things first, forget the space cops. There's no reason for this to be both a monster of the week and a police procedural. The world has moved past the need for fantastical police procedurals. Make the main character a mercenary/bounty hunter/gun for hire type with his own code of conduct and definition of morality. Make the invasion of earth personal (interested in some dead family, anyone?) or his biggest job to date that then becomes personal(possibly still with some dead family on the side).
Second, keep the monster-of-the-week style, but connect the lore of the worlds and aliens enough to actually start painting a tapestry of who these people are. I wanted to know more about what these people left behind to come to Earth. Also, they kind of touch on the infiltration of the upper class and the exploitation of the working class by the aliens in the original show, and how financial success and influence can be a very effective weapon. I would just say... Lean into that a little more. Let Cole stand up for good people, instead of just hunting down bad ones.
Thirdly, revamp the core and recurring characters. Give Mel a little more agency, and a life outside of Cole and his drama. Give Nestov, Cole's Sidekick, more of a personality than "chronic con artist." Plan subplots and arcs for everyone Cole comes to consider his family. The humanization of Cole and his connection to the people around him through the lens of his grief and loneliness is so under-explored in the original, but when they do touch on it, it's brilliant! Making the people around him more real will make that element feel more real. And just !!!! Human compassion, man!!!! Shows about aliens are so good for creating portraits of humanity from an outsider's perspective!!! Why not paint people as wonderful and complex and strange and kind????
Fourthly, Make It Queer As Hell. Have a masculine presenting, but comfortably he/they protagonist! No one else is doing that yet, and frankly it would be nice to get away from the stereotype that is rapidly developing in certain mindsets of non-binary identities being "girl-lite." Make all the aliens queer, and make most of the humans queer too! Queer people find each other. That's not going to stop at just one species. Also, how much fun could you have with "Alien doesn't understand gender binary?" It's a comedy jackpot! Double also, feeling like you're an outsider to the rest of your species because of your queerness could be really encapsulated in the metaphor of a literal alien being asked to conform to societal expectations that are fundamentally nonsensical to them.
And lastly... I'm actually advocating that we keep the underwear model origin story, if only because it then presents the opportunity for the actual model to make an appearance down the line, and I think the shenanigans we'd get out of that would be too much of a gold mine to pass up.
I don't know if I've sold this, to be honest. It's the wee hours of the morning where I am, and I've spent longer writing this post than I have my thesis today, and I Still do not know if I've put together a coherent thought, either about what the show is or what I want it to have been. I have no idea if my inexplicable enthusiasm for this program has come through at all.
That being said I've thought about it Too Much and ABSOLUTELY built a complete fancast for the core characters. Read on (really, at this point, you have no choice. You kind of just have to keep scrolling until you get past it. This is becoming like 'Do you love the color of the sky' but more niche and sad. I'm so sorry)
I present Rahul Kohli, he/they royalty themself, as Cole. Their work on iZombie shows an awesome sense for lovable comedic timing, and on Midnight Mass, he was a dramatic powerhouse. They can be soft and kind just as well as they can be really imposing and commanding. I think he could easily walk the tightrope between cold-steel heroism and genuine naivete that would really bring Cole's good heart to light. Also, a he/they playing a he/they? Unthinkable!
I nominate Rachel Keller to play Mel. She's another really incredible dramatic actress, and her work on Legion showed an ability to maintain a compelling portrayal of a competent person in the face of utter absurdity that I think would be a good balance for Cole's constant and unending weirdness. She has a very steady energy about her, and I think the vibes are right for a woman trying to run a legacy business while also putting up with alien bullshit at all hours in the apartment upstairs from her bar. Keller's character in Legion also had a really complete and well-rounded feeling to her, which I think is an awesome nuance to be able to bring to Mel, a character that could frankly use some more building out to do her concept justice.
I LOVE Liv Hewson for the role of Nestov. First of all, they'd be a queer actor playing a queer character, so immediate points. But also, Hewson brings such an unorthodox, spunky-yet-deadpan delivery to their characters that I think they'd be a great option to play a streetwise, grifter alien that goes from a minor antagonist to a really key part of Cole's most trusted inner circle. I also think that leaning into Nestov's queerness and his (he goes by he/him in the original show) experience as an alien on earth without the support of the fugitive gang that Cole is hunting could be a great place to bond and a wonderful change for mutual character development.
I think Lolly Adefope would be marvelous as Jess, Mel's overenthusiastic bartender who's constantly looking for a way to make Mel's relic of an establishment into the Next Big Thing. Adefope has such a bubbly, sunny energy about her, and especially as Mel's life gets crazier, she'll need a spot of normalcy. A cheerful, unconditional friend running away from a surprisingly dark English past might be just the breather Mel needs from the impending alien apocalypse. Also, it's just nice for girls to have friends who are girls, independent of men or shared romantic interest. The major change in Jess's character that I'd want is making her less creepily fascinated by Cole. In the original it felt at times like a fox eyeing a deer carcass. Especially when Cole (frequently) stripped down to his maybe-made-of-meat underwear. I'm not saying that I'll except nothing but a joyful femme lesbian, but... No, actually that's exactly it. Make Jess Gay! and use that to subvert the stereotype of the predatory lesbian that's still so prevalent in tv production today. It would also give Cole an example of human queerness to relate to and a human queer friend to build connections with.
I think Jemaine Clement is my ideal Vic Bruno, but. Not necessarily as he appears in the original show. In the original show, for the (many) uninitiated, Vic is Mel's ex, and a police detective. He's all right, but he sort of just serves as a narrative foil for Cole, and isn't good for too much else. This Vic would be more of a mentor figure to Mel, one of her Grandmother's regulars at the bar. He's either a former detective or a detective that's becoming more disillusioned with the abuse of power at his job by the day. He's reluctant to help out at first, and doesn't particularly like Cole, but cares enough about Mel to eventually become invested in Cole's safety by extension. The two end up having kind of a weird, tense-but-ride-or-die friendship. Vic ends up being more of a foil for Nestov's energy than Cole's. In Canon, he'd be the one confirmed token cishet, but he'd be all right in spite of that. Dad Energy.
The last main character I have Thoughts about is Tricia Helfer as Zin. Zin is the show's BBEG, the mastermind behind the fugitives' escape to Earth, and Cole's mentor-figure-turned-traitor. Mastermind is already a sexy energy, but MILF mastermind? Yes Please. I don't really have a good story reason for this decision, her performance in Battlestar Galactica is just a core memory from my childhood and I think she should get to be sexy villains more. I do know that Zin, while in concept such a cool villain, felt really under-utilized in the original show, and in this hypothetical remake I'd want so much more direct conflict between the him (as per gender in the original) and Cole. The betrayal of a trusted quasi-paternal figure is such a tasty morsel of trauma to play with, and it's one that went almost completely unacknowledged. Just like Cole is mourning his family, he's also, in a way, mourning the person he thought Zin was, and having them face off and have to confront their relationship head on would be a very sexy thing to do I think.
So those are. My thoughts.
Tl;Dr: (understandably so, holy SHIT) Im advocating for a queer remake of a shitty alien show from the early aughts. It already had the bones of hokey charm, monster of the week adventures, and misfits making found family. It just needs to re-examine its own biases and get👏 more 👏queer👏 to tell a story that's really unique and special.
