The Signal

 The Signal is a relatively compact, well-scripted science fiction mini-series.  Comprised of four hour-long episodes, there's little filler in the show and the intricate narrative is presented lucidly, mostly through flashbacks.  This is a German TV show, exquisitely made and photographed, but rather melancholy -- in large part, the program is about grief.  It's continuously compelling and, probably, one of the few shows recently produced for Netflix to feature a quotation from Immanuel Kant.  (And that quote is spoken by someone tripping on LSD at a nighttime amusement park.)  The show is sober and alludes to some of the current catastrophes in the world and, ultimately, has an uplifting, inspirational (if muted) ending.  When the Germans ceased to be a world-historical people (as Hegel might say), they became a race of mourners, hapless witnesses to the indignities and tragedies caused by human folly, error, as it were, that this nation of prosperous, well-meaning bystanders are powerless to prevent.  Everything about The Signal is serious and presented in good faith, even the show's various misdirections and concealments necessary to its serpentine plot.  

The Signal's premise is that a message from outer space has been detected.  The message is known to an Indian billionaire, an entrepreneur similar to Elon Musk (although female) who understands that the aliens are on their way to our world and that it is her mission to greet them.  Indeed, the billionaire is concerned that the space visitors will be murdered by trigger-happy governments and their militaries and, so, she has groomed a courageous lady-astronaut to monitor the message from the stars and keep her informed as to where the aliens intend to land.  The lady-astronaut is Paula, a brilliant scientist but mentally unstable.  Paula is married to Sven, an actor whose thankless role involves mostly gazing at his wife with worshipful eyes -- he looks like a large faithful retriever.  Sven and Paula have a daughter, Charlie, who is preternaturally wise and well-read -- this 9 year old child is a girl-astronaut in the making and an expert in all things intergalactic and interplanetary.  (The part is a shameless cliche -- the child scientist whose sense of wonder and bravery saves the day.)  Little Charlie is completely deaf; she has to wear a cochlear implant to hear what is happening around her.  This plot device allows Sven to communicate with Charlie without anyone else understanding their sign language.  The story begins in media res:  the astronauts who are on the International Space Station return to earth in a fiery capsule but there is something strange about their descent -- Paula seems reluctant to deploy the parachute and, perhaps, is intent on causing the death of the space travelers.  Later, the plane transporting Paula and her sidekick, Hamid, back to Germany crashes under mysterious circumstances, killing all 178 souls on board including the heroine and Hamid.  Recordings from the cockpit suggest that Paula overcame the plane's pilots and caused the fatal crash.  In their post-modern house in the woods (it's like a Nordic mix of Frank Lloyd Wright and Eero Saarinen) near the German Alps, Charlie and Sven are besieged by mourners who demand retribution for the plane crash.  Charlie was in contact with her mother while she was on the ISS and she knows the coordinates of the place where the aliens are planning to land.  This information is the MacGuffin that triggers a complicated chase with government agents pursuing Sven and Charlie, grief-stricken mourners attacking them irrationally, and the Indian billionaire also on the trail and, finally, offering them her protection.  After some unanticipated twists and turns in the plot, the space vessel from which the message has emanated returns to earth and Sven with Charlie are present in the Sahara desert to welcome the visitor from Outer Space.

The Signal's plot contains a number of genuine surprises and, so, I won't spoil the story for those who may want to watch this excellent series.  Since these narrative twists account for a large part of the story's appeal and have been carefully designed to be unanticipated, it would be churlish to explain how things develop and conclude in the series.  It suffices for me to note that there are many interesting and compelling features in the show.  The message from outer space is a child's voice intoning "hello...hello...hello...", a spooky signal from beyond the stars.  The scenes on the ISS are brilliantly realized, characters floating as rigid as ironing boards through the cluttered corridors of the space station -- there's literally no up nor down and the ISS sequences are completely credible.  (For instance, people sleep in hanging cocoons to keep from drifting through the rooms and hallways; when someone gets cut, big globules of blood like tiny crimson planets spin and rotate in the air.)  Paula, apparently, is a fan of acid and she seems to have a flashback to a bad trip that she experienced at the amusement park.  The show keeps us uncertain as to whether Paula is just flashing back to her LSD trip or, in fact, suffering a psychotic break.(Here the concept of a "flashback" is both figurative and literal.) The heroine seems unpredictable and, potentially deranged enough to have sabotaged the flight back from the desert where their capsule landed.  The riddle that the show poses is why Paula would have destroyed the plane and committed suicide.  There are some superbly minor characters including a sinister female doomsday prepper who seems to be channeling Peter Lorre in her performance.  The show's message is equally inspiring and mournful -- human potential for altruism and goodness seems unlimited but the horrors of human malice are just as infinite.