Set on a recently-discovered life-sustaining planet, new space drama Outcasts begins on BBC One next month.
The eight-part series, from the makers of Spooks, Hustle and Life On Mars, is written and created by Ben Richards (Spooks, The Fixer) and tells of the dilemmas, loves and lives of the surviving population from Earth as they set up a new world.
> Order the Series 1 DVD on Amazon.
Alongside Liam Cunningham and Hermione Norris, the cast includes Daniel Mays (Ashes to Ashes), Jamie Bamber (Battlestar Gallactica), Eric Mabius (Resident Evil), Ashley Walters (Small Island), Amy Manson (Desperate Romantics) and Michael Legge (Shameless).
Episode 1
Monday 7th February 2011, 9pm
A diverse group of individuals – led by President Tate (Liam Cunningham) with his core team of Stella (Hermione Norris), Cass (Daniel Mays) and Fleur (Amy Manson) – left their old lives behind in extraordinary circumstances. Promised a second chance at life, they created a society far away from their home, friends and family … and their pasts. They took charge and settled here first alongside Expeditionaries Mitchell (Jamie Bamber) and Jack (Ashley Walters).
Settled in the town of Forthaven on Carpathia, they are passionate about their jobs, confident of their ideals and optimistic about the future. They work hard to preserve what they’ve built on this planet they now call home, having embraced all the challenges that come with forging a new beginning. The planet offers the possibility for both corruption and redemption; while they try to avoid the mistakes made on Earth, inevitably the heroes cannot escape the human pitfalls of love, greed, lust, loss and a longing for those they’ve left behind.
As they continue to work and live together they come to realise this is no ordinary planet. Is there a bigger purpose at work? Mystery lurks around them and threatens to risk the fragile peace of Forthaven.
Viewers meet the characters at a moment of incredible anticipation. They’ve lost all contact with Earth but the arrival of the last known transporter signals fresh hopes and dreams. Will Stella’s husband and daughter, who she heartbreakingly left behind, be on board? Why does Tate seem anxious about one particular passenger, Julius Berger (Eric Mabius)? And, most nerve-wracking of all, will it land safely and bring a fresh perspective on the new world with it?
Episode 2
Tuesday 8th February 2011, 9pm
Reports of a survival shuttle landing far outside the settlement, possibly with Stella’s daughter, Lily, on board, reaches Forthaven. Cass, Fleur and Jack set out to find Lily but the rescue party is ambushed by a group of ACs, a mysterious group of humans led by a man called Rudi. He has taken Lily hostage and will only release her if his sick baby is taken back and treated in Forthaven. Cass and Jack stay behind with Lily while Fleur returns with Rudi and the baby.
Back in Forthaven, Fleur discovers that in the settlement’s early days Tate traced the deadly C23 virus, responsible for the deaths of his children, to Rudi and the other ACs. Tate tells Fleur who the ACs are: a group of genetically modified humans that had been built to increase survivability. Tate ordered Mitchell to execute them but he refused to go through with it and instead let the ACs survive in the wilds of Carpathia.
Back in Forthaven, Julius Berger is accused of murder by Aisling, a young woman from the transporter. Stella takes on Aisling’s cause but when Aisling tries to kill Berger, Stella realises that her relationship with Berger is even more fraught than she first thought.
The AC baby is healed but the hostage hand-over goes wrong: Jack thinks Rudi is ordering his men to kill the human hostages. In the subsequent fight, the humans keep the baby and Cass kills one of the ACs. Tate’s AC secret is exposed to Fleur and Cass and the ACs are left outside the settlement, armed and resentful.
Episode 3
Reports predict that a super whiteout of unprecedented strength could hit Forthaven. Stella draws on Tipper’s mathematical ability to predict exactly when the whiteout will strike and Tate begins to lock down Forthaven. Fleur, unaware of the whiteout threat, takes the AC baby back to Rudi.
Cass runs into an old flame, Trix, who is getting married the following day. Her fiancé, Leon, is sent out to secure the Earth Beacon before the storm breaks. Leon’s workmate suffers an accident and gets stuck under a piece of falling metal. Leon is unwilling to leave him, despite the whiteout gaining in strength around them. Trix begs Cass to go out and find her fiancé and he agrees.
The whiteout hits and Tate and Stella fear for Cass’s safety. Berger undermines Tate’s authority by seizing the opportunity to speak directly to the people, against Tate’s wishes. However, Tate realises it is safer to keep Berger on the inside of his government, rather than allowing him to build up a power base from the outside.
Episode 4
Tuesday 15th February 2011, 9pm
Tate is woken up by his children whispering to him – even though they’ve been dead for nine years. Unsure if he’s been dreaming or not, Tate is snapped out of it by news of an AC called Elijah who’s stumbled into Forthaven after the whiteout.
Elijah is taken to a secure unit until Tate can work out what to do with him. Scared by his confinement, Elijah escapes. Disorientated, he lashes out at a Forthaven citizen who’s trying to help him and ends up on the run.
Desperate to avoid panic or a bloodbath on the streets, Stella and Tate instruct Cass and Fleur to find Elijah and bring him in before the XPs can get to him. But, spurred on by Berger, the XPs start a manhunt for Elijah.
With Tate under extreme pressure to deal with the Elijah situation, Cass puts his loyalty to Tate first, forcing him to betray Fleur’s trust. Lily leaks private government information about Elijah to Tipper who broadcasts this over the radio. Stella is furious with her daughter, and also with Jack, whose involvement in the Elijah situation only makes matters worse.
In an attempt to make amends, Jack produces a human-like fossil he found outside the perimeter. Stella is shocked – does this mean humans have lived on Carpathia before?
Episode 5
Monday 21st February 2011, 9pm
A man shows up in a bar in Forthaven with a fistful of diamonds and stories of “bodies” outside the settlement, as the blockbuster sci-fi series continues. The man claims to live by Carpathia’s ocean, which seems impossible as it’s been marked as a radiation hotspot, uninhabitable by human life. A bar-room brawl follows and Cass and Fleur are called in. Intrigued, they follow the man, who they come to know as Pak, out of the city gates and into the wilds of Carpathia.
Back in Forthaven, Stella soon realises that the man in the bar was none other than Patrick Baxter, an old XP and the first man to set foot on Carpathia, who went mad and killed his Commanding Officer. Her wish to see the ocean, the cradle of life, and potentially find more fossils, and the anxiety of knowing that her team are outside the fence with a murdering psychopath, drives Stella out of Forthaven, with Jack for support.
Cass and Fleur discover that the man they’ve entrusted their lives to is Baxter. They are now alone, lost and unarmed on a planet that they know very little about. Hot on their heels, Stella and Jack must deal with an AC ambush, which results in the death of Jack’s tracker and an alarming insect attack.
Berger, keen to seize any opportunity to cement his influence, encourages a gold rush by publicising the existence of diamonds outside the settlement. Forthaven’s workforce begins to abscond, forcing Tate to lock down the fence.
Cass and Fleur arrive at the ocean – Pak has found a path through the radiation hotspots. The sea sparkles with diamonds; Carpathia has a diamond tide. Pak tells Cass and Fleur how he survived for 11 years away from humanity: he was cared for by his old golden retriever from Earth. Cass and Fleur write this off as the ramblings of a crazy old man, but is there something more at work on this planet? Back in Forthaven, who is Berger communicating with through a transmitter?
Episode 6
Sunday 27th February 2011, 10.25pm
Three expeditionaries go missing outside the settlement for two days. As hope of finding them dwindles one of them, Josie Hunter, walks back into the settlement. Josie is reunited with her family and Forthaven celebrates her return. However, she is different – her children can’t communicate with her and reports of her attack on a fellow XP outside the perimeter start to filter through.
Josie is arrested and detained in PAS, but when Stella receives a distress signal from Josie outside the settlement, she and Tate begin to question who the Josie Hunter in their PAS cells really is.
After finding out that the XPs planned to kill him, Rudi sends two of his men to take their revenge on Forthaven by attacking the power plant. The electricity goes down and Forthaven goes into blackout.
Marie Docherty, meanwhile, the last woman to fall pregnant in Forthaven and the wife of one of the missing XPs, is experiencing a complicated labour. The power cut puts both her life and the life of her baby in danger.
The power cut releases the prison doors in PAS and Josie is able to walk free. Cass is sent to find her, but soon realises that she has taken her children from her home and disappeared. But, just as dawn rises, Cass sees Josie walk back into the settlement, without her children, bruised and battered. Josie is arrested, but knows nothing about what’s been going on in Forthaven or where her children have gone. Cass begins to wonder if there are two Josie Hunters. Tate is now convinced that there is something far greater at work on Carpathia, too.
Episode 7
Sunday 6th March 2011, 10.25pm
Tate is now convinced that there is a superior host force on Carpathia and Stella is determined to work out a way to communicate with it. Cass finds a note threatening to expose his true identity. Confused and desperate, he flees PAS and his burgeoning flirtation with Fleur and heads for the bar. Drunk, he picks up a woman and takes her home. The next morning he finds her going through his things, opening the box that holds his witness protection documents. Assuming that it was her who sent the note, he tries to detain her – but she takes his gun and runs.
Cass sheepishly comes back into PAS having stood up Fleur and lost his gun. Reports come in of a missing woman, Carla Shapiro. James Shapiro, Carla’s husband, comes to PAS with a photo of his wife and a story of her affair with another man. When James shows Cass and Fleur the picture of his wife, Cass is horrified to see that this is the woman he slept with last night. Shaken, he doesn’t tell Stella or Fleur of his connection with her.
Fleur is told of a sighting of Carla that morning, coming out of a house on the other side of town. Fleur is shocked to find that the house is Cass’s, and that Carla’s blood is on his floor. Cass is arrested and when Fleur goes through his possessions, she finds the witness protection letter confirming Cass lives under a false identity. Fleur confronts Cass, who is unable to speak, shaken and ashamed.
Tate realises that the only person who can help him communicate with the host force is Rudi – but when he begs for help, Rudi dismisses him, saying that it is only humans who are at risk. Meanwhile, Stella, with the help of Tipper, manages to record what might be the language of the host force.
Episode 8
Sunday 13th March 2011, 10.25pm
When a new, deadly virus hits Forthaven, Tate and Stella fear that it’s the host force answering their attempts at communication. Berger blames the virus on the ACs and, after revealing a devastating secret about Fleur, sets about bringing down Tate’s government and introducing a new order.
When Berger finds out about The Omega Project, a niche AC project on Earth, he demands to see Fleur’s file. He exposes her true identity and discovers that she has been protected by Tate for years.
Stella takes Fleur to her home for safety but, as more details of her past are revealed by Tate, a shocked Fleur runs into the streets, followed by Cass. XPs fire on them and they run to Tipper’s home, where they find Lily, who has also been infected with C24.
Cass takes Fleur to meet Rudi and, as they wait for him to arrive, he tells her about his past. She is able to forgive him and they share one moment together before being parted by Rudi’s arrival.
Meanwhile, Tate refuses to give up Fleur’s whereabouts when Berger demands it and instead resigns, passing the presidency to Jack. Stella and Tate decide that the only way to protect Forthaven from C24 is to build a sonic ceiling over the city. Later, as Cass awaits news of Fleur, he witnesses the arrival of CT10 – perhaps the final transporter from Earth. It remains to be seen who is on board…