bullions27

I had my suspicions and doubts when I saw that the writers from "Schlock Raider: Flaunt Angelina Jolie's Mountains" were behind this series. After enduring the first two episodes painfully, my fears were clearly, without a doubt, warranted. All characters in the show are cliches. Yes. You heard me. Each and every one of them; generic, stereotypcial cliches. You could debate whether they are truly characters, or just blocks of wood regurgitating whatever crayon-written dribble the writers had for them but in anycase... badly drawn up and acted characters also equal to a comical storyline.

The Zonds are a family of adventurers (except for the reluctant rebel teenage son of course) and they prance around the world with their crew of Indiana Jones misfits to hunt for lost treasure. Oh yes, there's also a secret U.S. government faction that is closely monitoring and getting in the way of their work. Somewhere along the way, the wife bites it. The son blames dad and so on and so forth. Predictable stuff. Even though this could spawn a decent enough character building subplot, the show does a horrible job handling it.

Now the supporting cast... wait there's none to speak of. Arnold Vosloo is relegated to the mystical zen master role (hilarious) with about 3 lines of ridiculous dialogue per episode. The one with the beard plays the usual geek and comedy relief. The girl screams cliche. I can't figure how they managed to pick one of the absolute worst actors for the lead role, and the whining kid is just plain annoying. He either whines about how his life sucks and his dad sucks, or he somehow bails out the entire crew with his amazing deus ex machina powers. Does that justify for him being in the series?

Veritas is a mistake, unlike its other sister-show Miracles which features far better acting and writing. ABC should be lucky they also debuted Dragnet this season to counter this monstrosity.

It definitely is a vast improvement over the last installment (I still think they were tailoring to the Barney and the Power Rangers demographic but who knows what Berman and Braga were thinking), but nevertheless, this movie was dull and bland. Similar to Die Another Day, it attempts to be different, unique from the series formula and it fails miserably. I can sum up the entire plot of the movie with these two lines.

Hero A: I have a twin. He is evil, and I am good, or is it that I am part of that evil, and he is part good? Villain B: I, too, feel the same way.

Data and Picard and their respective counterparts can be interchangeable with any of these characters. How ridiculous is that? Eventually, Berman needs to pull that stick out of his you-know-what and realize his horrendous ideas, like Voyager and Enterprise, and this monstrosity are insults to Roddenberry. Bet he's spinning in his grave right now.

5/10