Dark Angel (TV series)

Dark Angel (2000-2002) was a Cyberpunk science fiction television series, created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee. Dark Angel played with many of the same themes as Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner. Cameron's version, however, is told from the point of view of the female replicant (or transgenic Max), rather than that of the bounty hunter (Lydecker). James Cameron also played with similar themes in his films The Terminator (1984) and . In addition, Dark Angel reflected the impact of Girl Power! (i.e. the Spice Girls) upon popular culture during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Setting

In the year 2009, a genetically enhanced female child super-soldier named Max Guevera, also known as X5-452, escapes, along with others like her, from a secret government institution codenamed Manticore where they were made and trained to be soldiers. Months after her escape, terrorists detonate an electromagnetic pulse weapon which destroys the vast majority of computer and communication systems in the US, throwing the country into utter chaos.

Related Topics:
2009 - Genetically enhanced - Manticore - Electromagnetic pulse - Computer - Communication - US

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ten years later, 2019, the series follows the life of the now 19-year-old Max as she struggles to search for her Manticore brothers and sisters living in a post-apocalyptic world (an element that was more or less dropped after 9/11), while trying to live her life, learning to trust and love, and evading capture.

Related Topics:
2019 - Post-apocalyptic - 9/11

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She eventually brings down Manticore, but finds that she has an even more deadly enemy in a millennia-old breeding cult. This has resulted in humans even more formidable than the Manticore-produced transgenics, and now this cult is trying to hunt them all down. It turns out that a renegade from the cult, Sandeman, was largely responsible for Manticore's genesis. The villain Ames White is Sandeman's son, which essentially makes him Max's brother. The series was cancelled before the producers could really play with this dynamic, however.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~