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By Jason Apuzzo. A few weeks ago we posted about NBC’s new series The Event, which seems to feature a variety of narrative elements with political overtones.  Specifically, we analyzed the extended trailer for the series (above), and picked out these prominent elements from it:

• Heroic, charismatic young black President.

• CIA conspiracy involving illegal detainees.

• A secret detention facility in Alaska

• Some sort of 9/11-type event (i.e., world-changing, clash-of-civilizations-type encounter)

• A 9/11-type suicide attack with a plane targeting the President

Since that time, there’s been a considerable amount of on-line speculation on the series.  Much of this has to do with the fact that NBC showed the pilot episode of The Event at Comic-Con. See reviews of the pilot episode here, and a review of the pilot screenplay here.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

The most interesting thing that’s been ‘spoiled’ about the series is that The Event may be another of the many sci fi invasion projects we’ve been posting about here all summer. New York Magazine recently let the cat out of the bag on this one (see here and here). The key element tipping everybody off to the sci-fi component of the series seems to be that the airplane seen hurtling, kamikaze-style toward the President at the end of the trailer above (and at the end of the pilot episode) apparently vanishes into thin air, ostensibly as a result of some advanced/alien sci-fi-type technology. This mid-air vanishing of the plane, however, is not the series’ ‘event’ itself according to the show’s producer, but merely indicative of things to come. For more details, you can find out a lot about the show at a new site called The Event Log.

We’ve been talking all summer here at Libertas about how science fiction projects are currently becoming the ‘accepted’ medium by which filmmakers in both Hollywood and the indie world are dealing with our current wars, and domestic political anxieties. Indeed, I had what I considered to be a very interesting exchange recently on this subject with my friend Patrick Goldstein over at the LA Times. It appears that The Event may be continuing this overall trend of ‘politicized’ sci-fi.

One of the really interesting bits of speculation on the new series concerns the nature of the ‘detainees’ in the series’ Alaska detention center – the same center that our heroic young President fights the CIA in order to open. [I’m trying to image where NBC got that plotline … but I just can’t think of any real world examples. :)] Much of the speculation centers around whether the detainees are either: human visitors from the future, aliens, or human visitors from the future who’ve had contact with aliens.

The leader of this group of detainees is a sober-looking, middle-aged woman named ‘Sophia Macguire’ (played by actress Laura Innes; she’s in the trailer above). Here’s a little insight, from someone who’s written a few screenplays: whenever you have a sober-looking, middle-aged female character named ‘Sophia’ (a name meaning ‘wisdom’) you can rest assured that this character will be used within the storyline to impart some choice nugget of wisdom to the main hero – in this case the President. It’s usually a sure thing in these types of stories.

So expect The Event to present a scenario for its viewers in which the ‘wisest’ character in the show, who knows the most, is a detainee at a secret CIA facility. Well! Isn’t that an interesting plotline in our post-Guantanamo world?

We don’t know many details about this Sophia Macguire character other than what’s in the trailer, but below is a very interesting transcript of a fake, ‘top secret’ document on The Event that some NBC employees (dressed as Secret Service Agents) were handing out at Comic-Con. This is apparently to be considered the ‘official’ backstory for The Event [emphasis below mine]:

TOP SECRET UMBRA

Date: July 21, 2007

To: Agent Simon Lee

From: Blake Sterling, Director

Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Department of State

Subject: Inostranka

The facility at Mount Inostranka remains a top priority to our national security. Recent events surrounding the facility must be remedied immediately.

Handle the first with extreme urgency. A breach of protocol has resulted in the escape of …….. The Agency must seek and extract the escapee to trade for information. The Mission allows for acceptable collateral damage.

Ever since 1944, ……. them, The Agency has maintained complete secrecy surrounding the detainees and the facility;….survivors that were apprehended, one demonstrated to be their leader and is……….. Sophia Macguire can not be allowed to communicate with anyone from outside the facility and must be monitored at all times. She must be questioned about the disappearance of……

Even though we have suspected substantial differences…..the source……have we been able to pinpoint to believe the detainees are…..leads the Agency……but we need further information. For this cause,…….

Valid information is still required to confirm……must not allow any further information to be leaked.

Execute orders immediately. A team led by General Whitman will be joining you in Alaska tomorrow.

No action is to be taken in updating the President. This information is on a need-to-know basis and the President should not be briefed on the existence of the facility. This must remain a matter for the intelligence services, which have been managing this without interference for decades. And as you know, we have our reasons.

These recent developments are all unquestionably related to increased activity among the detainees. The Agency needs you to address this, immediately.

By authority of: Blake Sterling

Signature: B. Sterling

Note that this Sophia character “can not be allowed to communicate with anyone from outside the facility” and “must be questioned about the disappearance of” something/someone. In other words: she knows a lot.

My guess here? Looking beyond the series pilot, my sense is that Sophia Macguire and her fellow detainees, who have apparently been in captivity in Alaska since 1944, are some sort of human time travelers who’ve had alien contact. [I assume they’re human because if they were aliens they presumably wouldn’t let themselves be captive for 60+ years!] As a result of this contact, they have insight into advanced technologies that allow them to do things or comprehend things like … planes vanishing, and perhaps the extending of lifespans.

So what we have here, ultimately, is the following: the mythologizing of people in a CIA detention facility, who might actually be ‘wiser’ than we are, and who are possessed of esoteric insights we cannot fathom – i.e., how planes vaporize in thin air, so to speak. And the heroic Obama stand-in is there on the spot to free them.

What a charming gift NBC’s giving us, just on the heels of the 9/11 anniversary. Thanks, NBC, but I think I’ll be watching V instead.

Posted on September 12th, 2010 at 2:10pm.