I have a free week of STARZ network and started watching this book adaptation to TV of "The Rook" -- a cross-genre story involving spies/gov including agents with supernatural powers and mixing that all with the "lead character has amnesia" loop.
The pilot was okay. Interesting, kind of derivative, a bit detached. I had wanted to watch the series for awhile. There are only 8 episodes because STARZ discontinued it last year, oh well. There are two book in the series, though.
Okay, so I watched half the episodes (4 out of 8). I also got a copy of the first book, since that seems worth reading.
I can see why the show got canceled, though. it seems to have jettisoned the quirkier / more interesting parts of the book for a very bland, boring "you've seen it better in a few other shows" spy drama with a bit of superpowers. Except you barely ever see superpowers. I wondering whether it was the sensibility of the showrunner that tamped this down or just not having the budget to want to film actual stuff involving special effects. The only powers shown are things that barely register as otherworldly.
Except for the Gestalt. This is fascinating and I love all of their scenes. Basically it is one mind in four bodies -- two are identical twins, two are fraternal twins, but all the same "character." One is female, the rest male. What breaks the trope is how it is handled -- they were forced to compartmentalize at a young age so they could operate as if they were four separate people (with one mind) but they're really just one mind. So the compartmentalization is what is unnatural and a bit painful for them, and when they are alone they don't interact with each other, even while they are all regularly together -- as if they were one person, that just happened to be in four bodies all doing the same thing at home. It's eerie. Because they are together, but they don't interact like four housemates, they just all do the same things together without speaking -- just like ONE person who lived alone wouldn't interact with anything either.
Aside from the gimmicky stuff where they will talk simultaneously sometimes, it's got cooler stuff like when one sees something and the one twenty feet away in a conversation will bring it as if they just saw it. Or imagine an agent who can perfectly coordinate four bodies in an action sequence because it is really just one person / one mind. They can also coordinate other things perfectly while one plays a distraction because the others are the same mind and perfectly in sync.
Also, when they (singular they) have a crush or are attracted to someone, they all are. As singular people, we see four of them and wondering which one had the affair -- but here we can't tell which body was involved because all four are just one mind. I'm still not sure which body hooked up with so-and-so.
Anyway, the trope normally acts like it's the "bonding" that is forced on the characters to make them a hive mind and they have to learn how to regain their independence and that is a good thing; here, Gestalt is actually one person unnaturally forced to be four sometimes, and THAT is the stressful/bad thing, and they really just want to be a singular them that happens to be in four bodies.
