Seven Days

Premise: Seven Days was a program that I watched on SpikeTV long ago, back in 1998. It had a weird cast of people with this idea of a goofy soldier who could manage the pain inflicted on him as he passed through time-and-space 7 days into the past. If the idea sounds familiar, you might have seen advertisements for a program called Timeless from 2016. Other than the sphere that goes back in time, these two shows are completely different in every way. I vaguely remember a few episodes here and there, all through its three seasons, but I don't recall if there were any major plots that ran through the entire series.

Season 1: The first four episodes of the series were clearly marked as the original pitch to the studio. Frank Parker gets transferred from his insane asylum over to Project Backstep to do is patriotic duty saving whatever national security issue that comes up. He does it for his wife and son that distanced themselves from him years ago, as well as for the government he promised to serve. He is very immature in every way as he constantly flirts with the women in the show and pulls weird stunts on his fellow cast members, but he can become very focused and sincere when the job is on the line. The show takes place in Never Neverland, somewhere in an underground bunker. The show can go two ways - spend most of the time finding out what happened and Frank has to think on his feet to correct the issue, or he has plenty of time to change the timeline when something technical goes wrong. They never really answer the question "what happens to the man when the present man reaches the past," but they do explain how the sphere runs on "alien fuel." One thing for sure: the sphere will be used in every episode.

The thing about the show is they are constantly trying new things. Around Episode 9 you will be hearing featured pop songs in the background. Beginning in Episode 11, you will see global positioning like something from Google Maps. I personally liked Episode 13 inside the submarine. But in this season, they loved throwing around some science mumbo jumbo. Episodes 6 & 7 have evil Parker, Episode 9 deals with another time traveler, Episode 11 Parker regresses back to a child-like mental state, Episode 14 he turns invisible, and Episode 17 introduces some weird shaman time traveler. Then for some reason they shifted for a more X-Files style. Episode 19 had mutated babies from a nuclear fallout. Episode 20 had an autistic genius accidentally working against the government. Episode 21 is the season finale with real aliens from the crash site where they obtained their fuel for the sphere.

Season 2: This is the season where they started pandering to the male group. Episode 1 had a strip club and Episode 2 had goth girls. Episode 3 had people having sex. They had a couple callbacks with the crazy lady coming back in Episode 5 and the alien in Episode 6. There was some sort of alien space phenomenon in Episode 11 and a "time burp" in Episode 14. Surprisingly Episode 15 is perhaps the only episode where he fails in his mission on a space station. Then for some reason we start going the spiritual route with him becoming the pope in Episode 19 (I'm not kidding). I'd probably skip Episode 20 with the three witches and the naked grandma seen from one of the buildings. They added a couple of sexy lesbians in Episode 22. Then in the season finale, they decided to go the I Am Legend route with a cure for cancer killing millions.

Season 3: I was having the hardest time watching this season and the last when it felt like every episode was some sort of lazy writing getting people to watch the show. You can tell when the old scientist leaves the program out of the blue in Episode 4. A new laid-back "hipster" takes his place. Episode 5 is just filled to the brink with fan service when the female scientist dreams of being in a dominatrix outfit and is seen butt-naked in a river. Episode 8 is quite interesting when the terrorists install a tracker inside Frank. Not only do they explain that "the alien technology takes 7 days to regenerate" but it is the only time it gets launched early. Episode 13 has the president's daughter streaking with a bunch of college girls... because I guess we have now hit a low point in the program. Episode 14 has a man show up 7 years from the future (The Doctor from Voyager) to try and take over the world. Episode 15 does a sort of Species route with Olga giving birth to aliens. Episode 16 has a psychic child (Molly from Firefly) help with a case. Episode 17 creates a Mirror Universe episode. Episode 20 introduces a kid with the ability to ignite things on fire with his mind. Then if all of that wasn't bad enough, Episode 22 introduces an old lady who does voodoo magic as the season finale.

Opinion: I now remember why I dropped this show to begin with. There were too many "weird" episodes. Season 1 Episode 21 gave me nightmare fuel and Season 2 Episode 19 made me shake my head in disbelief. It felt like they were trying too hard to keep people's attention through a list of zany and sexy episodes sprinkled into the later seasons. There are a few very interesting episodes where they tried to write a good story, but they are far and few in between. I don't recommend anyone watching this program.

 

1-5-2021