If you haven't watched the series yet, you might not want to read this review. I basically tell what happened, but there is so much more to the show than a skeletal outline.
The physicist Stephen Hawkings once said about alien life, “A civilization...could be billions of years ahead of us. If so they will be vastly more powerful and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria...” It's a good idea to keep Hawkings' statement in mind while watching this series.
In sum, the show is about aliens who take over earth. They do it in a way I've never seen before, in any movie, or television show. This is a stealth invasion, in which aliens use a twenty-first-century Trojan Horse. By the time the threat is recognized, the aliens are almost completely successful--though not quite. The essential conflict of the series resides in the fact that the invaders have not conquered 100% of earth's population.
As Episode 1 opens we see a group of scientists who are excited because they have intercepted a signal from outer space. The signal is obviously meaningful. It has a definite sequence and one of the scientists is certain he knows what that sequence means. Researchers set to work deciphering the intention of those distant beings who sent the signal from 600 light years away.
After many months of experimentation, with countless animals and a great number of lab workers, a scientist casually remarks that the signal seems to encode for a lysogenic virus.
Eagerly pressing forward with their research, the scientists don't stop to think what such a virus could mean to earth. They don't question the wisdom of continuing with their research. (Oh, Stephen Hawkings, if only you had been in that laboratory.)
In fact, the virus turns out to be the Trojan Horse. Quoting from the website GenSciypt: "...the lysogenic process is characterized by integrating the viral genome into the host cell's genome." In other words, the viral genome invades the host genome and hijacks it. This is exactly what happens in Pluribus.
As the scientists work with the virus they have constructed at the direction of a signal from space, they are making way for an alien entity to take over the human race. Sure enough, there's a lab accident and the virus escapes. It rapidly invades. It hijacks the human genome, and makes humans into beings that act like zombie ants.
Zombie ants were discovered long ago in earth's tropical forests. Infected with a fungus or a parasite, the ant becomes a host whose sole purpose is propagation of its invader. The ant has no will of its own but behaves exactly as the invader directs.
In Pluribus this model is refined as all infected humans become one global consciousness. Humans lose their individuality. The title of the series is telling, Pluribus, a Latin word meaning 'of many'. Every person across the world (everyone infected with the virus) is one with every other person. They share thoughts, desires, will, purpose. There is no individual desire. Everything is done with a single purpose that reflects the will of whatever entity it is that is driving the people.
Transmission occurs with something as simple as contact with saliva.
I wrote in the second paragraph of this blog that the invasion was almost 100% effective. It is the few remaining, uninfected humans who pose a challenge to the invader--one uninfected in particular, a romance novelist named Carol Sturka.
The series is shot from Carol's perspective. After the invasion, she is alone. There are no humans around her, just zombies. These zombies may look and act like people she has known all her life, but they are alien entities. On top of everything else that's wrong, Carol suffers from profound loneliness.
The zombies are not hostile, at least not overtly. They are quite clear that their intention is to hijack Carol, to infect her genome, but they cannot use violence to achieve this goal. With such an overwhelming, virulent virus, the authors who wrote this series had to give something to the resistance, to the surviving humans. These survivors have at least one, powerful, defensive weapon: the zombies are not allowed to deliberately harm them.
As a matter of fact, the invader cannot deliberately kill at all. This curious aspect of the invasion not only serves Carol in the first season, but no doubt will become significant in the second. Many questions are left unanswered as the first season ends.
While the zombies appear to be benign, even gentle, clues are offered about their potentially sinister purpose. For one thing, this is definitely an invasion. Active measures are taken to spread the virus to unwilling and unknowing victims.
When the first lab worker is infected, that worker steadfastly spreads the virus by kissing unsuspecting colleagues and by licking donuts that are freely offered to arriving lab workers. Planes fly overhead and spray wide areas so that the virus is disbursed through the air. Once infected, zombies immediately seek to infect anyone in their presence.
Despite her loneliness, Carol resists infection. She is befriended by a zombie who looks familiar. The zombie seduces Carol and the two go on a romantic jaunt together. It is on the vacation that the dark motivation behind the zombie's seduction becomes starkly evident.
Carol is being lulled into a trusting state. She cannot be forced to submit to the invasion, but her compliance would make conversion easier. The only way she can be infected is if she volunteers to given the zombies her stem cells, or if they somehow can gain possession of those cells. With her seduction, the zombies are hoping she will volunteer. Lacking that participation, though, they have a backdoor.
Previously, Carol had frozen some of her eggs in the hope that she would eventually have children. The zombies have found her eggs and are working to extract the stem cells. She is told she has weeks, at most months, before she loses herself and becomes part of the group consciousness.
Carol realizes at that moment, on her vacation with her seducer, that she is truly faced with a hostile enemy. She understands the fate of the human race may rest with her. Actually, it may rest with her and maybe one other person. She had earlier managed to make contact with an uninfected from Latin America. This person is stronger than Carol. He has never taken anything from the aliens because he does not want to be compromised, and he does not want to be their puppet.
As the show closes, we are left with questions, and some answers. The aliens can't lie, and they can't overtly harm humans. However, they are dedicated to proliferation of their genome. They are harnessing humans, and all of the expendable energy on earth, to beam their signal into space. They obviously hope that other species, in other galaxies, will be infected.
What do the aliens want from humans, besides assistance in propagation? We have a few hints. All human bodies (the dead) are collected. During the invasion millions of people were 'accidentally' killed. Their remains, and the remains of subsequently deceased humans, are stored in a warehouse. There they are processed into a grain-like substance, which is converted into something labeled 'milk'. This milk--liquified human remains--is the sole nutrition of the zombies.
We are given another valuable clue: the zombie state is reversible. In this fact rests the hope of Carol and her Latin American ally as they begin to plot their resistance to the alien invasion.
This series is less a whodunnit, than it is an exploration of how and why it was done. That last question, why, hangs ominously over the show as the first season concludes.
I have my idea about why, and I take my answer from earth's zombie ants. The zombie ant's primary function is to spread the invading species. The ant's secondary function is to nourish, to serve as food.
What a show. This may be one of the best I've seen and it not surprisingly is the brainchild of Vince Gilligan. He was the creative force behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
I really can't wait for season two.
Lead Actors (From IMDB):
Rhea Seehorn-- Carol Sturka
Karolina Wydra-- Zosia
Carlos-Manuel Vesga-- Manousos Oviedo
