So I started watching the trailer for Strange Angel with the sound off.
And I said, Hey. That combination of the name and that rocket imagery: it reminds me of that weird rocket scientist / occultist Jack Parsons. And lo! — it was. CBS All Access is apparently quite eager to serve up rocket explosions and Crowleyian sex magick in a period piece; and, truthfully, who could blame them?
Will it be any good? Good heavens, what kind of question is that? The real question is, how many skin and tantric sex acts can CBS Access think that it can get away with? Because whatever that line is, a production like this will be aiming to go right up to the edge of it. And, to be fair: Jack Parson’s story is easily odd enough for melodrama. Certainly it was odd enough for the Trail of Cthulhu RPG to create a scenario built around him (“The Big Hoodoo,” Out of Time: you get to play Bob Heinlein and other science fiction writers!). It’s just that, for something like this, you can either avoid being exploitative, or else you can embrace exploitative like a lover and ride it all the way to spectacle. I am not confident that CBS will be able to do either.