ReVisiting ReGenesis

With the recent coronavirus outbreak I had been thinking a lot about one of my all time favourite television series, ReGenesis, and how I wanted to revisit the show. Unfortunately for me, despite the show being Canadian, there was no way to actually watch the show up here beyond the first season which was released on DVD. I knew the series was released on blu-ray internationally an every once and a while would check Amazon to see if the prices had gone down. The other week I went to Amazon to check prices and was excited to discover that the series is now available to stream here in Canada via Amazon Prime Video (sadly, with only the third season in HD). Having now almost finished the third season I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this incredible show, and what makes it stand out even today during the so called “golden age” of television.

Created by Christina Jennings and produced by Shaftesbury Films, the show followed a group os scientists trying to unravel scientific mysteries. According to the Prime Video description:

Geneticist David Sandstrom is the chief scientist at the prestigious North American Biotechnology Advisory Commission. The virology/micro-biology NorBAC laboratory is a joint enterprise between the USA, Canada and Mexico that investigates problems of a scientific nature, such as bio-terrorism, mysterious disease and radical environmental changes.

The show was structured like a procedural, where each week the scientists would attempt to solve scientific mysteries, including deadly outbreaks that threatened humanity (I always enjoy a show with high stakes). It was smart, it was political, it was incredibly entertaining, and it was also the show that introduced me (and many others) to Elliot Page, years before Juno would skyrocket them to stardom. One of the things I loved most about the series was that it didn’t treat its audience as idiots. This was smart television, which at the time was becoming increasingly rare.

ReGenesis was actually pretty ahead of its time. You have to remember what the television landscape was in 2004. We were still 3 years away from Mad Men, a show that many considered to kick off today’s "golden age of television”. In fact, in 2004 HBO was pretty much the only game in town for “premium” television (Showtime had put out a few series like the groundbreaking Queer as Folk and The L Word, but breakout shows like Dexter, Weeds, and Californication were still a few years away.) So when Canadian pay-TV stations The Movie Network and Movie Central partnered up to create their own original “premium” television series, it was a pretty unique moment.

The series was also ahead of its time in terms of its scientific accuracy; Aled Edwards, a prominent Canadian molecular biologist served as the series “scientific consultant” and following the broadcast each week a white paper was posted to the show’s website detailing just what science was real, what was theoretical, and what was just the brains of the writers. This at a time when C.S.I. was considered to be the most “scientific” series on the air. It was also a rare show that was unashamed in its Canadianism. This wasn’t Toronto doubling for New York or Chicago. NorBAC was headquartered in Toronto (though the building’s exterior was in reality Hamilton’s city hall), and the show featured prominent Toronto locations; a fact I grew to love when I subsequently moved to Toronto a couple years into the series run. And then there was the politics; the show debuted at the tail-end of George W. Bush’s first term as President, and ended months before Obama would be elected to office. The show was highly critical of U.S. Politics, something that likely affected its international ratings and resulted in it’s short four-season run.

Visually the show was also pretty unique. It frequently made use of split-screens and featured a unique “rewind” device (similar to that introduced in the Prince of Persia video game series) where the show would finish a scene, rewind to earlier in the scene and then follow characters to a different conversation. I had never seen a show do anything like this, and it only further contributed to the unique nature of the series.

L to R: Dmitry Chepovetsky, Greg Bryk, Maxim Roy, Peter Outerbridge, Conrad Pla, Mayko Nguyen, and Sarah Strange

Another distinctly Canadian element was the series’ cast. While we’re still debating the lack of diversity in mainstream television today, ReGenesis actually was surprisingly diverse in its casting, especially for 2004. Sure, the series lead was a white male with anger issues (Peter Outerbridge), but it also featured a Mexican born, HIV-positive homosexual geneticist (Conrad Pla), a Vietnamese-Canadian bioinformatics researcher (Mayko Tran), and a Russian born genius with Asperger syndrome (portrayed brilliantly and sympathetically by Dmitry Chepovetsky). The lab was also headed up by a woman, Caroline Morrison (Maxim Roy), who speaks at least four languages. NorBAC’s employees reflected the diverse nature of Canada, and each character brought something different to the story. To this day, these characters remain some of my favourites of any television series and I savour every moment I get to spend with them on screen, especially those that didn’t last the entire series (I’m still very upset that Sarah Strange didn’t return after season two).

I fell in love with the show almost immediately; its serialized narrative (each episode had a “mystery of the week” they would solve, while also uncovering the larger season-long arc) had me eagerly awaiting the next episode each time the credits began to roll, and I instantly fell in love with its fully fleshed, diverse cast of fascinating characters.

But perhaps the thing I loved most of all debuted during the second season: the show’s “alternate reality game”. While they never really caught on as a marketing tool (likely due to the complexities and costs involved), perhaps the best known ARG was the one created for the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, but once again, ReGenesis was way ahead of the curve. Each week following the broadcast of the episode, viewers were invited to visit the show’s website ReGenesistv.com (now defunct) where they would find themselves being greeted by one of the characters from the show and would undertake a series of tasks. Sometimes that would involve solving simple Flash-game puzzles, other times it required hunting down clues on other various websites created for the series. Towards the end of the season viewers were told to visit an IRC chat-room where they communicated with an underground group to uncover clues to what would happen in the season finale. One of my favourite moments was getting a phone call on my cell phone from Dr. Sandström to give me my next task. All of this really enhanced the viewing experience, bringing audience members deeper into the world of the show, engaging even further into the story, and adding additional story elements that the show otherwise didn’t have time to cover.

Another element that was rather groundbreaking for its time was the ReGenesis Remixed podcast. Today a podcast dedicated to a tv series is hardly unique, with HBO now putting out official companion podcasts to their shows. But in 2004, when podcasts were only just in their infancy, this was pretty much unheard of. The podcast itself was actually dedicated to the music of the series, and featured the show’s music supervisors discussing the music featured in the show, both Tom Third’s score, and the needle-drops throughout the series first two seasons.

Unfortunately seeing as the podcast is nearly 15 years old, the original feed is dead, and the files are no longer hosted online. This means any new fans discovering the show today are unable to hear this unique companion to the series. However, I luckily archived the a copy of the Podcast many years ago and have made it available online for those who wish to listen.

As someone who absolutely loved the music used in the series the Podcast was a God-send, allowing me to hear more of the stuff I adored from the show. You have to remember, this was in an era before streaming services, and because so much of the music was from local Canadian artists it wasn’t exactly easy to track this stuff down (and certainly, as a 17-year old high school student I couldn’t afford to buy it all even if I could find it). However, Shaftesbury clearly was keen on the music as well, and actually released an official soundtrack album to the show which was promoted on the Podcast.

For years I hunted that soundtrack, constantly trying to get my hands on a copy, to no avail. Finally, in university shortly after the official DVD release of the first season, I managed to track down a contact at Shaftesbury and inquire about the disc. I begged to get a copy, and they graciously sent one to my dorm.

Knowing just how impossible it was for me to get my hands on a copy, I’ve made it available online as well for any fans discovering the show today. Despite being labelled Volume 1, as far as I know no follow up releases were made.

As excited as I was to finally get my hands on the soundtrack itself, I was a bit upset to discover that it was mostly the needle-drops from the show, and only contained a few tracks from Tom Third’s incredible score. This was especially upsetting because it was this music that I loved so much from the show, and was hoping to get my hands on more of it. Thankfully, by this time social media was becoming more and more prevalent and so on a whim I headed over to Twitter and Facebook in an attempt to track Tom down. Eventually I managed to do so and asked if there was any way he might be able to point me in the direction of some more of the cues from the series. He told me he was in the process of updating his website and planned to get some more music from the show online, but in the meantime he very graciously emailed me a few of the cues from the series.

Since then, every few years I would check out Tom’s website and SoundCloud account in hopes there would be more music posted. And sure enough, every once in a while there would be a few more tracks. And since then I’ve managed to collect just over 20 cues, which I compiled into my own “ReGenesis Score” album.

Unfortunately, ReGenesis only lasted four seasons, and the show went a little off the rails in its final season. Despite this it remains one of my favourite shows all these years later. Even in today’s “golden age of television” rarely do I find a show that I find as equally compelling, entertaining, and thought provoking. Certainly I’ve never seen another show that has been so immersive. Revisiting it over ten years later it’s remarkable how well it has held up (though some elements, like the Prince of Persia rewind feature, and the overall look and feel are a bit more dated), and makes me yearn for more shows like this. This was science fiction in the truest sense, and the closest any show has come to it was last year’s mini-series The Hot Zone which didn’t quite live up to its source material. I still live in hope that some day the producers will announce a re-boot or at the very least a continuation (that ret-cons out the more absurd elements of the fourth season). In the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying spending time with this incredible cast of characters once again.

ReGenesis

Created by: Christina Jennings
Executive Producers: Christina Jennings and Tom Chehak
Production Company: Shaftesbury Films

Starring:
Peter Outerbridge – David Sandström (S01-04)
Greg Bryk – Weston Field (S01-04)
Dmitry Chepovetsky – Bob Melnikov (S01-04)
Wendy Crewson – Rachel Woods (S03-04)
Mayko Nguyen – Mayko Tran (S01-04)
Conrad Pla – Carlos Serrano (S01-04)
Geraint Wyn Davies– Carleton Riddlemeyer (S03-04)
Maxim Roy – Caroline Morrison (S01-02)
Sarah Strange – Jill Langston (S01-02)

Featuring:
Elliot Page – Lilith Sandstöm (S01)
Victor Garber – Olivier Roth (S03-04)
Mark Randall – Mick Sloane (S01)
Michael Seater – Owen (S02-03)
Marc Strange – Toumas Sandstöm (S02-03)