Stargate Theatre - Morlocks
Stargate Theatre
Morlocks
We’re back with Stargate Theatre and Morlocks aka Time Machine: Rise of the Morlocks which was a production for Syfy and released in 2011, it starred David Hewlett and Robert Picardo with Christina Cole and Daniel Caltagirone in supporting roles. The story takes its inspiration from the H.G. Wells Time Machine novel but fails to live upto the excellent 1960 movie starring Rod Taylor but no one would be surprised about that.
The movie has a cold start with a number of US soldiers scanning an area for survivors, we are not told where they are but when they are attacked by strange creatures and only two soldiers escape and make use of a portal to appear moments later in a lab. We then meet James Radnor (Hewlett) who is an author and former scientist, he once worked on a top secret time travel project and after a failure in the project he abandoned his research and left the project. The dead soldiers and two survivors are the result of a further failure which forces the projects leader Colonel Wichita (Picardo) to send James’s ex-wife Angela (Cole) to sweet talk him back. It takes some doing by James finally agrees and along with a squad of soldiers ventures into the future to recover “the latch” the device which anchors the two time zones together making travel possible. Colonel Wichita we learn is operating well beyond his remit, his son is dying from cancer and as he learns that the Morlocks have superior regenerative abilities and is desperate to get DNA samples regardless of the cost even if it means the lives of those under his command. We see that this future world is broken and populated by strange beasts, human civilisation seems to have long gone but the soldiers soon encounter a strange large bird like creature, very aggressive and the soldiers go through their ammunition very quickly. They get unexpected back up from highly camouflaged soldiers who it’s revealed were the last survivors of the initial project failure which caused James to leave thinking he was responsible for their deaths. Together the two teams fight off the beasts and later return to their camp in the remnants of the lab (moved through time but not space). Alas the Morlocks breach the barricades and a bloody firefight erupts, not everyone escapes but they continue to track the latch to an old dam where the Morlocks spend their day resting being nocturnal. Blood once again is spilt in securing the latch and returning to their own time but with an open portal the Morlocks follow forcing humanity to fight for its survival many many years before they were due to vanish from the Earth…
Morlocks took its inspiration from an excellent story and really required a larger budget to do this version some justice. The CGI is perhaps the weakest element of the production followed closely by the main research complex set which however looks far better in the future with so much destroyed. The cast however is very strong, two very competent leads and excellent supporting actors who all deliver and that can make all the difference in getting a viewer to become invested. Overall an average scifi tv movie which is a must watch for fans of David Hewlett or a die hard fan of the genre.
Many thanks for listening to the latest Stargate Theatre and I am always looking for guest to talk Stargate or indeed a Stargate related tv “b” movie so feel free to get in touch if you want to join me on the podcast. We are on social media with twitter being our most busy portal and if you want to rate or review any of our episodes we would appreciate that. Next time well not sure, have yet to decide but I do have some movies in my DVD collection and Prime is a huge resource for “b” movies. Take care, keep watching and sharing all things Stargate.
