TV REVIEW: Space: Above and Beyond (1995–1996, FOX)
My imagination was all over the place as a younger person. I was involved in so much creation for school and private projects, I was taking inspiration and diversion from everywhere — especially science fiction. There were science fiction offerings that were not as sanitized like Star Wars and “Star Trek” or the animated series “StarCOM: the U.S. Space Force”, and they stood out among their peers: the NBC-TV science fiction miniseries “V”, the following TV series of the same name, and the animated series “Exosquad”. Such offerings were few and far between, but when they were found the majority were always on the FOX TV network (at the time, a brand new TV channel). Every season, they gave us new science fiction shows like “Alien Nation” (a TV adaptation of the 1988 science-fiction action movie), “M.A.N.T.I.S.” (a science-fiction/action show with a Black lead), and “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.” (a comedic science-fiction western). In 1995 they gave us something new — a story about a futuristic Earth’s response to many different forms of life…and the people sent to tame those beings on the government’s dime in a thinly veiled 1960’s VietNam War allegory.
The Premise: “Space: Above and Beyond” takes place in 2063, after humanity sent scientists to another planet via wormholes to settle and study. Unknown to them, the planet was already claimed by an alien species called “Chigs” due to their faces resembling chigoes or sand fleas. The Chigs’ black armor-clad humanoid alien soldiers seemingly wipe the entire party out — including Kylie (Australian actress Amanda Douge, Body Melt, Till Human Voices Wake Us), the fiancée of Nathan West (Morgan Weisser, “Stay the Night” [TV movie-ABC]). Nathan wants revenge for his lost lover, so he joins the Space Marines. It is here he meets his fellow principal cast mates in the United States Marine Corps Space Aviator Cavalry 58th Squadron (soon to be known as the “Wild Cards”) to defend humanity as the viewer learns the world’s backstory:
- Vanessa Damphousse (Lanei Chapman, “The Jacksons: An American Dream” [TV miniseries-ABC]), tech specialist and nuclear physicist
- Shane Vansen (Kristen Cloke, Final Destination, Black Christmas [2006], “Millennium” [TV-FOX]), angry young woman bent on revenge for the slaughtering of her parents at the hands of rogue androids called “Silicates”
- Cooper Hawkes (Rodney Rowland, The 6th Day, I Know Who Killed Me), an in-vitro clone trooper that killed his trainer and was sentenced to serve as a Space Marine
- Paul Wang (Joel De La Fuentes, The Adjustment Bureau, “The Man in the High Castle” [TV-Amazon], Red Sparrow [2018]), an enlisted native of Chicago who joined the Space Marines to escape poverty
- 58th Squadron commanding officer T.C. McQueen (James Morrison, Catch Me If You Can, Intersect [2020]), a veteran in-vitro trooper from the AI Wars and lone survivor of the unit to make first contact with the Chigs
- Commodore Ross (Tucker Smallwood, Bio-Dome, Black Dynamite, Contact [1997], Deep Impact [1998], “The Sarah Silverman Program” [TV-Comedy Central]), the straight-talking flag officer commanding the space carrier USS Saratoga — the home base for the 58th Squadron.
The Show: Space: Above and Beyond” rocks my socks, and I don’t say that often. It goes way beyond flying SA-43 Hammerhead fighters in space dogfights, to be sure.
So much of the life as a space-bound Marine in the 58th Squadron was rendered in fine detail, like violent movies censored to prevent on-ship violence (for soldiers sent off to war) and musical choices (this show gave me a new appreciation for The Ramones and Patsy Cline). There’s so much in-story slang and camaraderie developed over the single season of TV that you can’t help but be immersed, like any good military sci-fi story should. The missions are not as varied, as the Wild Cards encounter the Chigs and their tech on desolate alien worlds (some with comparable Earth atmosphere and others without) with many a moral dilemma to be had. There’s even some off-center moments like a comic turn involving a British Major straight out of World War I, and a dark psychedelic moment with an isolated Cooper dreaming of the female personification of Death. But it didn’t stop there: this show dealt with issues carried over from the 20th Century that overlapped each other like Venn diagrams:
- indentured servitude/slavery (against Silicates and in-vitros)
- racism (against in-vitros and Chigs)
- violent armed resistance (from Chigs and Silicates)
— all without using people of color people as repository characters. Instead of leaning into casting POCs, the creative team instead turned it into something that a cis-het White male audience might identify with (heteronormative presenting humanoid aliens and cis-het White people). It’s not the only reason why many remember the show fondly.
The grim and gritty sci-fi also had us explore humanity’s unevolved nature, future failures and greed. To think corporations built AI to be our slaves and screwed that up, so they made in-vitro clones to fight our war against AI…and screwed that up too. It has shades of Star Wars’ Clone Wars (the event itself, not the shows depicting the events of the wars) long before Episode I dropped in 1999. So much of the conflict in the story was completely avoidable: we could not sustain our world without a slave labor force, the human-made programming that caused the Silicate/AI menace was a product of a toxic workplace culture, our military-industrial complex covered up and denied the truth in the face of potential truce with the Chigs, and those same corporations knew the Chigs were out there long before they sent the settlers…and sent the settlers anyway.
The Verdict: From jingoistic jamming out to “Blitzkrieg Bop” in Cooper’s Hammerhead fighter to the quiet final scene in the last episode, I was riveted to the science-fiction drama for the single season. There wasn’t a bad episode, but even I got tired of Nathan’s dependence on Kylie’s final audio recording of “I believe in you” to help him ignore everything around him as he fights a pointless war. It was a masterclass in dystopian military sci-fi, hopefully one that was visually aped or referenced by all the works that have come since then. It was so good that — like clockwork — FOX cancelled it. It wouldn’t be the last good sci-fi program FOX cancelled for nonsensical reasons (looking at you, “Sliders” and “Firefly”), but it will always stand out in my mind as a landmark of science-fiction.
