The overwhelming success of The X-Files in the early 90s led TV producers to turn their attention to the science fiction genre as a lucrative business. One of the brightest sci-fi products was Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal.
The series was released as part of TV syndication in 1997 and immediately won the prime time of entertainment channels. To avoid direct comparisons to the X-Files, the Canadian company Atlantis Films decided to release the series in a TV show format based on real events. In the first season, each episode consisted of separate plots, interconnected by the comments of the "host", the role of which was played by the famous Dan Aykroyd.
On the edge of science
The main attraction for the audience was the pseudo-scientific nature of the series. All stories were presented from the point of view of modern science, and with a high degree of reliability. If the paranormal was amenable to explanation, it was necessarily voiced by Aykroyd.
To make the plots even more believable, each episode reported that they were all based on documents from the mysterious agency O. S. I. R, whose existence has never been proven to conspiracy theorists.
Meeting specialists, interviewing witnesses, bringing in experts - it was all "real", and the audience loved this game.
Unfortunately, subsequent seasons have lost this zest, and "Psi Factor" began to look more like its main competitor, differing from him by an abundance of special effects, which gave a feeling of cheapness and unnaturalness.
In just four years, 88 episodes of Psi Factor went on the air, after which the TV show fell victim to low ratings.
The cast of the show consisted primarily of Canadian actors. Some of them became full-fledged stars of big cinema - Colin Fox, Barclay Hope, Peter McNeill, Matt Frewer.
Place in history
"The Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal" opened the era of sci-fi TV products, which lasted until the mid-2000s and was supplanted by the fashion for screen realism and everyday stories about the "average citizen." There have been bursts of interest in the unknown in recent years. The outstanding work of J. J. Abrams and the comedy Eureka and Vault 13 are the finest examples of modern sci-fi.
The "Psi Factor" had a huge advantage over them in that, despite all the distortions, it was a pseudo-scientific series and many phenomena - from geopathogenic to psychic anomalies - received a reasonable explanation and did not mislead the audience about the curvature of space and parallel universes.
Fans of the series have repeatedly cheered themselves in the communities with the news that a sequel to the series is being prepared for production, but each time this news has not been confirmed or directly denied. And yet, the niche of science fiction TV shows that claim to be true science is not occupied, and quite a few viewers would like the presence of a team of scientists studying mysterious phenomena on the air.
Perhaps, in the future, TV producers will include such developments, but at the moment the unrestrained imagination of scriptwriters and special effects creators reigns on television screens, and the series "Psi Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal" belongs to the past of world television art.
