Does the Halo TV Show Appeal to Those That Never Played the Game? Who is This Show For?
It is clear now the showrunners for Halo were not interested in appealing to those that loved the video game. Many have asked why anyone would take an existing IP with a built in fan base and make no effort to appeal to that fan base. We will set aside that question for now. The questions for today are: if this isn’t for lovers of the game, who is it for? Is the show appealing to this mysterious audience?
First, who is the target audience, if it isn’t the fans of the games? The likely target audience is the larger general audience who enjoy sci-fi/fantasy action such as Star Wars and Marvel TV shows. These aren’t hardcore fans or gamers, but normal viewers who like action and science fiction just more casually. They are much less reliable and won’t spend the time and money on a franchise the way a fanatic would.
So, what are this casual audience’s expectations for a sci-fi action show about a future war against an alien race? Action would be one obvious one. This show is about a war, so one would expect combat sequences and scenes of forces moving about the galaxy in preparation for battle.
Since the show takes place centuries in the future, you would also expect incredible futuristic landscapes, technology, and aliens. With such an enormous time difference, you expect everything and everyone to look much different than people today. The aesthetic is futuristic, alien, and maybe a little weird.
There are plenty of military sci-fi shows to use as examples and for comparison. There is Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Babylon 5, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Andromeda. There is plenty of precedent and plenty of examples of success. Most of these shows started with some kind of built in fan base or an existing franchise but not all of them. Shows like The Expanse and Andromeda, for example, did not have big fan bases to start with.
So what about Halo? We are 4 episodes in, so we don’t have a complete data set to analyze but we’ve now seen almost half of the season. That is good enough to get a feel for the show.
On Action. There has been one battle in four episodes. It was in the first 20 minutes of the first episode of the show. There was an action sequence involving the Blessed One taking over a UNSC with space worms but that is it. We have over 200 minutes of content to date and 2 action sequences adding up to about 20 minutes or 10 percent of running time.
The first battle was a great first step. There were some odd elements to it, such as the strange defenses of the Madrigal settlement, the suspiciously 20th century feel of the colonial weapons, and the questions about the Covenant’s tactics in attacking a planet. Why only send a few dozen elites? Who knows. Still, it was enjoyable and showed us the Spartans in action.
For a TV show about a futuristic war, there isn’t much focus on the war itself. The focus has been on Master Chief’s personal journey, Doctor Halsey’s personal ambitions to advance her work, and Kwan’s story. Of the three, only Halsey’s touches on the war, and it is tangential at best. She wants her research projects green lit but doesn’t really talk about changing the course of the war or winning. It seems her motivation is more in funding and gaining power and influence over military policy. It is all about short term objectives.
On action, what we have seen looks pretty good. The problem is, we’ve seen very little of it.
What Does the Future Look Like? We’ve seen some cool weapons from time to time, in particular the Covenant weapons. We’ve seen a few ships as well, although not in action. The scenes taking place in space and on the planet Reach look good, even if a little derivative. Still, the show has given us a few interesting glimpses of our future. Some of it looks pretty cool.
On the other side, we’ve seen a desert planet that looks suspiciously like Arrakis. Poor impoverished colonists bearing a striking resemblance to characters in countless other shows and movies. There are rifles that look like AK-47s, vehicles that are clearly Chevy Suburbans with added skins, and ship interiors that are indistinguishable from ships seen in Marvel movies and The Mandolorian.
For such a big budget, the visuals are on the pedestrian side.
Now let’s look at the basics for any television drama:
The Characters. Characters are obviously a key basic building block of any show. They need to be compelling, interesting, deep, and likable. In particular, the protagonists need to be likable. Ask yourself, are any of the characters in Halo compelling, interesting, deep or likable? It’s been 4 episodes so you don’t expect every character to be fully-fleshed out but you’d think at least one or two would be by now. Is Master Chief compelling? Is Halsey?
Master Chief is compelling at moments but other times walks around like a robot. Halsey is a sociopath and seems incapable of emoting, other than what looks like a forced smile produced by botox injections. Kwan and Dr. Keyes are obnoxious brats who insult and belittle nearly everyone around them. The other Spartans don’t get much screen time but have potential.
The Blessed One, or Makee, is still a mystery. Other than being a devoted follower of the Covenant faith (which decrees the eradication of humanity), we don’t know anything about her as a person. Rather than develop the character, the show has shown us a glimpse of her origin and her nude body. Not exactly textbook character development.
The Plot. Master Chief’s personal journey and the artifact are at the center of the plot. We’ve learned a little of Master Chief’s background and he’s expressed some feelings but he hasn’t changed as a character. Best we can tell, he’s still just a soldier. After four episodes, we still don’t know a whole lot about the artifact or halo itself.
The show seems to be treating the halo as the big revelation of season one. Considering the name of the the show, the game and what is on the cover, that isn’t really gonna be much of a reveal. Everyone knows what is coming. You’re just making us wait.
The Blessed One plot has given us one event: she has left the Covenant home world to look for the artifact. That’s it. The rest has been origin story and some exposition.
The political intrigue around Halsey, her daughter, and the admiral has been exceptionally boring. The family is fighting over funding or support of their research. How is that interesting? Why does it seem very few of the conversations are about the actual war itself? Why is Kwan fixated on freeing Madrigal when it is facing annihilation from an alien threat? Why is she important to the UNSC or anyone else?
Who are the good guys in this show? It doesn’t seem to be the humans.
Four episodes and so many questions. Even if they resolve these by the end of season one, the multiple plots and need for lots of exposition has slowed the show down. For an action sci-fi show, this doesn’t work well. Compared to the shows listed above, Halo is sluggish and on the boring side.
At moments, it feels like the writers were at least indirectly inspired by the pacing and plot of Game of Thrones. Multiple points of view, multiple protagonists, political intrigue, and a de-emphasis of action. The problem is there is only one Game of Thrones. The writing, characters, acting, and dialogue in that show were all masterful (first 5 seasons at least). Unless you can deliver that level of quality, the Game of Thrones model is not going to work. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be a model or template.
Is Halo a terrible show? No. It has some positive moments and it still has potential. However, the potential is fading fast with each new episode failing to meet audience expectations. If you compare the first four episodes of Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Stargate SG-1 with Halo, it doesn’t look good.
It is average at best for the non-gamer audience. For the gamer audience, it is a disaster. Yet, Paramount Plus preemptively renewed it for a second season already. It makes one wonder how Paramount Plus makes decisions given its inexplicable loyalty to Star Trek Discovery, a show with the tiniest of audiences. It’s as if they’re not that interested in making money.