Thursday , March 28 2024
Billy Campbell returns for season two of Helix, premiering on Syfy January 16.

Syfy’s ‘Helix’ Season Two Hits the Airwaves

Starring Billy Campbell, Syfy’s virus-scare sci-fi Helix returns tonight for a second season.  The tagline for the new season is “Play God, pay the price.” And, certainly, that’s what the mysterious corporation Ilaria has in mind–to play God.

Over the summer I had a chance to interview series creator Ron D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) and cast members at Comic-Con International (SDCC). They had much to say about the new season, which, when we spoke had not yet begun filming.

If you recall, last season it was revealed that the virus investigated by the CDC was part of a larger experiment by the immortal Dr. Hiroshi Hataki. But the biggest reveal was that Dr. Julia Walker (Kyra Zagorsky) was Hiroshi’s daughter, and shared his unique genetic makeup, which had triggered at the Arctic research outpost, a place she’d had been many years before.Helix_612x380

By the end of the season, bullets and bombs flew and everyone scattered, hiding from both corporate and government baddies. We finally meet up with Allan Farragut (Billy Campbell), his brother Peter (Neil Napier), and Julia in Paris some months later, where (apparently) Julia is the head honcho at the very power hungry Ilaria, the organization that had funded Hiroshi’s research, and clearly up world-domination no-good.

Cue season two. The series in season season two, according to the show’s creator is a reboot. “We’ll be out of the snow and ice.” To say the least. The second season will be set on an Island, about as far from the snow and ice as one can imagine.

There will be a new threat and another time jump. Now that we know there are genetic immortals, we’ll find, said Moore, some of the consequences of living forever. We got a whiff of that last season with Hiroshi’s prisoner, a tortured and chained man–an experimental subject who, for all the torture he’d endured continued to live (although “live” is an overstatement).

We will learn a lot more about Ilaria, whose plans have been hatching for hundreds of years. But this season, Allan and company will be investigating a new pathogen, but by the end of the season, says Moore “everything will connect.”

I asked Moore about one very popular character from last year who’d met her death–Doreen, who was ruthlessly killed by Major Sergio Ballaseros (Mark Ghanime). The show’s creator noted that she’s not necessarily gone for good. “No one is every completely dead,” and there are certainly ways to see characters come back.

One of the new season’s big plot points will revolve around Sara Jordan’s (Jordan Hayes) pregnancy. You may recall that we learned of her pregnancy late last season, and that the baby is Allan’s.

Moore noted that one of the things that really interests him about this show is that Helix is “grounded science fiction.” Viruses are very real, and that makes it all the more scary, because nothing is outside the realm of possibility with them. They are truly this century’s monster in the closet, something that Guillermo del Toro also mentioned to me when I interviewed him for his FX virus scare sci-fi series The Strain.

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About Barbara Barnett

A Jewish mother and (young 🙃) grandmother, Barbara Barnett is an author and professional Hazzan (Cantor). A member of the Conservative Movement's Cantors Assembly and the Jewish Renewal movement's clergy association OHALAH, the clergy association of the Jewish Renewal movement. In her other life, she is a critically acclaimed fantasy/science fiction author as well as the author of a non-fiction exploration of the TV series House, M.D. and contributor to the book Spiritual Pregnancy. She Publisher/Executive Editor of Blogcritics, (blogcritics.org).

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