Dead Zone Review: Shaman

I really like The Dead Zone. Shaman has got to be the trippiest episode so far. Wow. I thought it was great.

Johnnie is out in the country in Maine (beautiful country too, makes me want to go visit the place) and sees a premonition of a huge asteroid strike on a mountainside. He goes into the woods trying to figure out its angle of flight in order to be able to tell an astronomer where it was going to come from. His goal is to prove that the asteroid is coming so that people can evacuate. Along the way he meets an old man in a gas station, an astronomer, and a cop. He sees them disappear. We are led to believe that the coming asteroid strike will kill them and he starts acting like he's trying to save the lives of the people he meets in that areas.

Okay, but here's the science problem: the Earth spins around. Unless his premonition could tell him the exact date and time of the asteroid strike the angle of its incoming path is worthless knowledge. So how was he ever going to figure that out? He'd have to have a digital day/date watch to look at during the premonition.

His search for the asteroid's angle of impact eventually leads him into a forest in Maine walking up a mountain. He falls, becomes seriously injured, and in order to prevent himself from freezing that night (another premonition warns him of course) he makes his way into a cave.

The cave is where it starts to get weird. He picks up an ancient broken bone knife and suddenly sees an Indian Shaman guy from hundreds of years ago as that guy was in the cave way back then. But here's the twist: the Shaman sees him as well. And the Shaman's knife is the newer and unbroken version of the knife that Johnnie found in the cave. As long as they both hold their knives they can see each other.

But this consistency of knife holding to see the Shaman is not maintained. It gets to the point where they are no longer holding knives and they can see each other.

Johnnie says to the Shaman "I was a lousy Eagle Scout when I was a kid". Saying he was a lousy Boy Scout would have been more believeable. To get all the way to Eagle Scout requires accumulation of a large number of skills for dealing with the wilderness. So that line seems like a mistake.

He needs to stay warm. Thru hand motions he gets the Shaman to show him how to build a fire. But how can the small amount of fire wood he has be enough to keep him alive that night?

Another seeming mistake: the Shaman hands him things to hold and as Johnnie holds each one successively he has visions. But how can Johnnie touch things that the Shaman hands him? We already know that Johnnie can't feel the heat from the Shaman's fire. We get other indicators that they can't touch stuff from each other's time periods. But the need for them to touch each other's items is there. The writers just decided to ignore the inconsistency.

Was there another way to solve the need for them to touch the same items as a way to see into each other's lives? For Johnnie this could have been solved by having the Shaman leave various objects in the cave for him to find. Each successive ancient object that Johnnie picked up could have caused premonitions or flashbacks (post-monitions?). Its less clear how the Shaman could have managed to flash into Johnnie's past and futiure without being able to touch Johnnie's cane and hand.

Eventually, with Johnnie holdng the blue bird's egg, we see the Shaman as a kid falling down a hill hitting his head. The Shaman's head injury mirrors Johnnie's. He has the same capability as Johnnie. This idea of an ancient guy who has the same capability and the idea of them seeing other in each other's visions is what makes this episode unique. Its a clever idea.

In the vision Johnnie sees the Shaman as a kid seeing Johnnie in a vision after the Shaman kid suffers a head injury and Johnnie says to the shaman kid "There's still time". This becomes a key phrase that recurs in later scenes. We eventually see other scenes from the Shaman's earlier life when he saw visions of Johnnie. Finally the Shaman is coming to understand what those earlier visions meant.

When the episode nears its climax Johnnie has managed to convince the Shaman to move his tribe across the river. But then the Shaman starts showing up with the ability to speak English:

Shaman: "When we die we all sound the same"

Johnnie: "Who's dying"

Shaman: "You have to go. There's something for you to do. I've seen it."

But if the Shaman isn't dead yet and has just come back from leading his tribe across the river how can he already talk in English? We see him at the end standing at the door as the asteroid blast kills him. I guess its the point where he has gotten his tribe going across the river to flee the asteroid and he decides to return to Johnnie to convince Johnnie to wake up. At that point he's returning to a place that guarantees he'll die from the asteroid blast. So he's made the decision that will kill him and that decision could have been what gave him the ability to talk in English.

Well, he convinces Johnnie to wake and Johnnie wakes to stoke the fire to make the smoke that will cause him to be spotted by a search helicopter.

One final problem: The smoke plume is too large.

Still, a great episode in spite of its inconsistencies and weaknesses.

Posted by Randall Parker at September 16, 2002 12:25 PM