My Overmind Inspired Review of Childhood’s End

by Scott Creighton

How dare I take a shot at Arthur C. Clarke?! He was knighted by the Queen for God’s sake.

So the hive mind is going to be the end of humanity. The “Golden Age of Man” (peace on earth, goodwill toward men, the end of war, the end of the worship of profits/wealth accumulation and the end of social injustice everywhere) is the ambition and life’s work of this guy:

No, not this guy and his Overmind inspired beatitudes:

And not this guy with his Overlord-led Salt Marches:

And certainly not this guy, who was clearly visited by the Overlord in a dream:

No, according to Sci-fi’s new miniseries “Childhood’s End”, the Golden Age of Man where we pursue greater ambitions than World Domination, Pipelineastan and the enslavement of all those mud-people in Thailand in service to our corporate overlord pretenders, will be ushered in by this guy:

Last night I sat through a rather tedious production of Sci-Fi’s “Childhood’s End” and having read the story many years ago, I at first thought that some of the choices they made to modernize the story were somewhat courageous. That is, until I remembered the whole point of the story.

For example, in the book written back in ’53, one of the few times the Overlords intervened in a national conflict was when they put an end to Apartheid in South Africa. In this version, they erase the wall between Gaza and Israel and suddenly, everyone is hugging and happy. I thought making that connection was interesting, even if you had to know the original story for it to register.

Of course, the overall message of the story puts both Gaza and Apartheid in a different light. But that’s the end of the story. We’ll get to that.

For those of you who neither read the book or saw the movie last night, Childhood’s End is about our first encounter with superior alien technology and the demons that wield it.

At a tense point in human history, these ships appear out of nowhere and park themselves over various cities across the world. It’s basically Independence Day without the explosions.

A single man is chosen to act as the emissary between humans and the new Overlords. In the ’53 version, that guy was the head of the United Nations. In this one, it’s some farm raised do-gooder who negotiated a deal between some Big Business and a little township he lives in. The “blue collar prophet” as he is referred to in the film.

The Overlords usher in a new Golden Age. War is abolished. Poverty ended. Hunger, famine, crime… all gone. The inner cities of desperation and destitution give rise to cultivated urban utopias and the great unwashed are cleansed of the fruits of their misdeeds, given a second chance… and boxes of fresh fruits.

Hell, even the Saudis (who it is very fashionable to hate on these days) are convinced to turn their soiled, oil stained pipelines into new versions of the Great Man-made River (which we blew up several times when Hillary “liberated” Libya). But they still give evil stares across the negotiating table to the mid-west farm-boy prophet.

All in all, things are just about exactly what those evil lefties dream of. The problem is, the film opens on a scene where the last human sits in the wasteland of America and describes to a rather impersonal orb, just how things went so bad so fast.

So in the back of your mind, you’re always waiting for that shoe to drop.

The humans are never allowed to see the Overlord Kerellen and for good reason: he’s the devil.

Eventually, after using the blue collar prophet to expose the rising tide of the business led opposition to our Overlords, Kerellen decides he’s done with the farm boy and says bye-bye to him. Of course, as tree-hugging liberals often do (in the rabid nightmares of the neocons and New Dems) the blue collar prophet (and don’t think for a second there isn’t a real slam here intended for the “blue collar leftists”) can’t bear the idea of losing power so he tries to cling on as long as possible, finally sneaking a picture of the all-knowing, all-seeing devil god of the leftists… without him noticing apparently.

After viewing the image, like all leftists, he realizes the pact he made with the devil, and keeps his mouth shut. As we are all trained to do in the secret Satan worshiping seminars we are forced to attend.

Fifteen years go by. A little kid who was risen up from his wheelchair by Satan for some reason, says he wants to be the first human to travel to the Overlords home-world and we see him waiting with everyone else for the big reveal.

He’ll get his wish and end up sitting in the wasteland talking to an orb.

The population of the world is now clad in various shades of grey, because as we all know, when we stop killing each other for profits, who needs other colors? Individuality is based on self promotion and greed, don’t ya know? Why look any different than anyone else if the invisible hand has been smacked from the cookie jar?

We can’t build anything, we cant create anything. All of our human ambition is now gone. It seems the Big Business guy who was exposed by Kerellen 15 years ago was right. Don’t ya know, those guys rise to the top for a reason?

So as everyone sits back and waits to meet the Overlord for the first time, the Golden Age is at it’s peak. And then, he walks in:

As far as the production quality is concerned, the make-up is outstanding and Charles Dance is wonderful as Kerellen. I’ve always liked him ever since I saw him in that Alien movie (3?)

That aside, one can hardly ignore the message being sent, especially at a time like this. And that’s too say nothing of the implication left with us when we come to understand who is really behind the downing of the separation walls in Palestine. Yes, that’s right… Satan is the root of the anti-occupation and apartheid movement in Gaza and the West Bank.

Cute.

No wonder it got made in Hollywood.

If you haven’t read the book, I’m not going to spoil any of the transparent, easily predictable “twists” that are about to come over the next two days of this miniseries.

Except for one: the Overlords are not something that we have locked in our inherited memories. That’s not why are demons are pictured the way they are. They are simply part of our inherited premonitions. The things that will ultimately end humanity.

I will also give you this little hint: they aren’t masters but rather servants themselves. Servants to a different kind of higher power, one they cannot join themselves (cast out? unable to attain the grace of God? Sound familiar?)

In the end, it will all make perfect sense as will the reason for the production at this particular time.

Back in ’53, the Cold War was heating up. Especially with the Brits. Their particular form of fascism really really hated the Soviet Union and all things communist/socialist. It was, for many British elites, the root of all evil.

(Meanwhile Brits still have slaves all across the world.)

That’s probably why this book hadn’t been turned into a film before this one. The message is childish and asinine kinda like Ayn Rand’s ideology. It didn’t really take at first. Public education saw to that.

But today, we have a new Cold War developing (and charter schools) and the masses need to be re-indoctrinated into the warm fuzzy comfort of “free-markets as democracy” ideology. And thus… bingo, it’s time for Childhood’s End.

So the teachings of Christ, Gandhi and MLK are evil? Ayn Rand thought so. That’s why they are only taught to children.

Ultimately, childhood has to end and we have to see the vision of utopia for what it is, a Satanic pipe-dream which will ultimately lead to us all wearing grey clothes, bums enjoying their lives with free dental care and us being led like monochrome sheep by brainwashed children to the end of humanity.

Needless too say, I probably will not watch the rest of Childhood’s End.

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