Fox goes back to Alcatraz,  and Press+1's Katie Nohr goes along for the ride

Written By Katie Nohr

The advertisements for Fox’s new thriller Alcatraz have been very vague. They contain flashes of action and lines of dialogue that sound ominous, but tell the viewer little about the show’s premise. The show was clearly about inmates from the old San Francisco prison returning, as indicated by the line “They’re coming back” in the previews. However, it was not made clear where these people had gone or for what reason they were coming back. The show’s pilot created more questions than it answered. It seems there will probably be a season long - possibly series long - puzzle in this show.

The premise of Alcatraz, as explained during the pilot, is that the prison did not close in 1963 for any of the reasons known to the public. Rather, it was shut down after everyone inside it disappeared suddenly and without explanation. In the present day, those vanished convicts are popping up again, not having aged a day since ’63, and returning to their old criminal patterns. Whether there has been an instance of time travel, or some sort of mysterious experiment occurred to stop the aging of the inmates, is unknown at this point. This is why the premise was so difficult to deduce from the previews of the show, there was no indication that it would have any elements of science fiction.

Although it is unclear how or why any of this is happening, it is clear that the government authority in charge of the investigation, represented by Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), knows more than it is willing to share with the protagonists. The main characters are a young detective named Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) and Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia), often called ‘Doc’, who has written books on Alcatraz. Detective Madsen stumbles onto the conspiracy while involving herself in an investigation she was told to stay out of and which Doc was helping her with. The two of them are then brought on to work for Hauser tracking down these criminals from the ‘60s.

The impression given by the premiere of Alcatraz is that we will have to be comfortable with being unsure about some things and confused about others in order to enjoy it. This is not a negative quality. The show promises to be suspenseful and the multitude of things currently unknown will make for quite the mystery. However, individual viewers will have to weigh out whether that mystery is intriguing enough to keep their attention in spite of the confusion that comes with it.

Written by :

Katie_N