Recommended Sci Fi TV: Undone (2019)

Recommended Sci Fi TV: Science fiction and fantasy shows from the past decade or so that you may have missed and that we believe are worth checking out.

What Is It?

After a traumatic accident, a woman starts seeing her deceased father and finds herself unstuck in time as he works with her to solve the mystery of his death.

Starring: Rosa Salazar, Bob Odenkirk, Angelique Cabral, Constance Marie

Created By: Greg Daniels

Bottom Line: This series delivers a genre-bending tale that challenges the mind and raises some interesting questions about living in the “real” world.

Why Is It Worth Watching?

This odd and surrealistic animated series comes from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg as well as series scribe Kate Purdy. Some may not count it as sci fi at all, but it uses scientific theories to carry its narrative, and it gets into some pretty heady stuff, so it should certainly appeal to genre fans. A young woman named Alma starts having visions and appears to be unstuck in time following a car accident, and she sees her father who she thought was dead.  But those may only be the symptoms of her head trauma and/or related to her family history of schizophrenia. The story raises those questions and more, and ultimately leaves the answers up to the viewers as the first season comes to an end. Has Alma actually risen to another level of consciousness that allows her to do amazing things with her mind? Or is this all just a hallucination, and should she take her meds to try and live a “normal” life?

As the second season begins, you expect some answers, but the show continues to give just enough to move the narrative forward.  And that is actually a good thing as it preserves the ambiguity and asks the viewer to make the final decision.  Some interesting scientific concepts are explored in the process related to the research her father was carrying out, and we see the potential effects of those, but is this real or all in Alma’s mind?  Ultimately, it does wrap up many of its storylines at the end of the second season, but it still leaves the viewer pondering the nature of reality.

The series delivers some pretty mind-blowing stuff, and that is where the roto-scope animation proves effective as it is employed to creatively bring the story to life. Throw in the wonderful performances by Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel), Bob Odenkirk (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), and the rest of the cast–which are in no way masked by the animation–and you have a unique and intriguing original that stands apart from the crowd.  This one did not get much attention when it was first streaming, and it still hasn’t developed much buzz, but it is certainly worth a look as a unique and challenging sci fi series.  And at sixteen episodes of around 30 minutes each, it is a quick watch.

Cancelled Too Soon?

There was a pretty long wait of two and a half years between the first and second seasons (due to COVID at the time, but pretty common now), and if it had stopped at that point, the show still would have counted as a notable entry because the rather ambiguous ending worked quite well. But it did return and seem to answer some questions while raising plenty more, and it wrapped things up to a degree while still giving viewers plenty to think about. Amazon never made an official announcement on the show’s fate (something that has become all too common these days), but the assumption was that it was done after its second season. However, creators Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg have expressed an interest in continuing the show into a third year, and the roto-scope animation makes it easier to do that because it covers the aging of the actors. Whether we will get more from this one is uncertain at this point, but fans could make some noise on the social networks to try and convince Amazon to greenlight another year.

Where Can You Watch It?

The entire series is still available for streaming on Prime Video, and you can purchase it VOD.  It has not been released on physical media yet.

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