Millennium 4C12: “Force Majeure”
The Millennial Abyss | Episodes | Season One
“Force Majeure” (4C12)
Written by Chip Johannessen
Directed by Winrich Kolbe
Edited by G. Richard Potter
Aired February 7, 1997
Summary
An enigmatic character haunts Frank Black and the Millennium Group during a strange case involving planetary alignment, genetic cloning, and a man in an iron lung.
Epigraph
“You can remember, a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones.”
Synopsis
A sudden hail storm sends students at Washington Polytech scrambling for cover. But one of the students, Lauren, wades through the downpour as the hail changes to rain. She approaches a teaching assistant who has taken cover in a breezeway. Lauren reaches for the woman's cigarette-and suddenly bursts into flames.
Frank travels to Washington Polytech where he interviews the teaching assistant. She describes her classmate as "mutant brilliant." The T.A. points out a set of armillary spheres, a model of the seven innermost planets of our solar system rendered in brass. She states that the Millennium Group member who interviewed her previously, Dennis Hoffman, thought he would be interested in the spheres. When Frank exits the room, he meets the mysterious Hoffman. He intones that on May 5, 2000-the day in which the seven innermost planets will align for the first time since the Great Flood — our planet will be ravaged by a cataclysmic event. He also believes the catastrophe will be preceded by abnormal weather patterns.
Watts tells Frank that Hoffman first approached the group years earlier during a cult investigation. He believes Hoffman is somewhat odd but harmless. Watts uncovers evidence proving Lauren is not her parents' biological offspring, yet, there are no papers documenting her adoption.
Cheryl Andrews performs an autopsy on Lauren's body. When traces of an accelerant are discovered, the cause of death is ruled as self-immolation. Andrews discovers an astronomical symbol carved into the flesh on her thigh. The mark is a symbol for conjunction, or alignment. When another girl, Carlin, a dead-ringer for Lauren, commits suicide by diving into a waterfall, Andrews discovers a conjunction symbol carved in her thigh as well. The women, it is determined, are identical twins born seven years apart. Andrews describes a technique used to create identical cattle in which a fertilized egg is divided multiple times in vitro. The technique produces twenty copies. Frank believes that someone, like Noah preparing for the Great Flood, is breeding identical offspring in preparation for May 5, 2000.
A tip from Hoffman leads the Millennium Group to The Atrium at Pocatello, Idaho. Someone had made telephone calls to each of the twenty girls from a secret room in the Atrium's basement. The Group tracks the building's designer to a large remote house, and discovers the girls inside.
Despite Frank's objections, a police lieutenant, fearing a Jonestown-like massacre, places the girls in protective custody and loads them on a bus. Meanwhile, the girls' father, a man confined to an iron lung, explains his reasons for creating perfect children for the next millennium—to preserve what is good about humanity and remake the world in his own image. He reveals that he telephoned Lauren and Carlin and told them he was dying and wouldn't make it to the other side. Shortly thereafter, both girls committed suicide. Later, a power outage stops the iron lung, killing the man.
The bus driver, it is revealed, is also one of the Iron Lung Man's offspring. Police find the bus abandoned. The girls have vanished and Dennis Hoffman with them. Later, Frank realizes the Atrium is built on giant shock absorbers, and is itself a kind of ark. He knows where they will be on May 5, 2000.
Starring
Lance Henriksen as Frank Black
Megan Gallagher as Catherine Black
Brittany Tiplady as Jordan Black
Terry O’Quinn as Peter Watts
Guest Starring
Brad Dourif as Dennis Hoffman
Morgan Woodward as the Iron Lung Man
Timothy Webber as Sheriff Camden
CCH Pounder as Cheryl Andrews
Mitch Kosterman as Lieutenant
Sarah Strange as Maura
Kristi Angus as Lauren/Carlin
Peter Hanlon as Manager
Cindy Girling as Myra
Phillip Mitchell as Uniform #1
Merrilyn Gann as Carlin's Mother
Production Credits
Production #4C12
Music by Mark Snow
Production Designer Mark Freeborn
Director of Photography Robert McLachlan
Associate Producer Jon-Michael Preece
Consulting Producer Ted Mann
Consulting Producer James Wong
Consulting Producer Glen Morgan
Co-Producer Ken Dennis
Co-Producer Chip Johannessen
Co-Producer Frank Spotnitz
Co-Executive Producer Jorge Zamacona
Co-Executive Producer Ken Horton
Co-Executive Producer John Peter Kousakis
Executive Producer Chris Carter
Location
Book Excerpt
“Edmundson suggests there is a point when ‘terror Gothic’ no longer meets the needs of a culture in crisis. When that happens, the genre slips into another mode: ‘Apocalyptic Gothic’... Carter’s series finds its parallel in the first season episode ‘Force Majeure,’ a story that introduces the idea of a ticking clock—a countdown to an impending natural disaster on the scale of the Great Flood. End date: New Year’s Eve 1999.”
—Joseph Maddrey
Back to Frank Black
REVIEWS
“The deterministic elements, religious allusions, melancholy mood and gratuitous gore made me a viewer for life. In addition, themes of human impotence and isolation, underscored by the cold and detached view of Black, endowed the program with an unmatched intellectual flavor. Overall, when the show centers on the main point, the approaching apocalypse, as it has in the new year, it is one of the best programs on television.”
—Kiran Nandalur
The Michigan Daily
“'Force Majeure' is like nothing else we've seen on the show this far. There's no sexually tormented serial killer, although young women do die. There's no ponderous rush of Bible quotes, no debating over the true nature of evil, no cops decrying the sad state of modern morality. For once, we have an episode that's more driven by plot than by theme, and, even better, that plot is sort of kind of pretty much batshit insane... The episode is just odd enough to be distinctive (Carter is wearing his Lynch on his sleeve even more than usual), and, beyond the pleasure of the series finally stretching its legs, it's nice to have a storyline that doesn't just exist to lecture us about how we're all going to Hell... This is absurd, eerie perfection. It doesn't need to make sense. Nightmares rarely do.”
—Zack Handlen
The AV Club
“Force Majeure” print ad.