Minority Report - S1E1 - Pilot

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Hello everyone! It’s your friendly neighborhood recapper Shanna here. I’ll be covering Minority Report this season which I’m really excited about because it combines a few of my favorite things; sci-fi, black female lead, cool tech … Wilmer Valderama in a suit … so let’s dive right in, shall we?

Homicide detective Lara Vega (Meagan Good), via voiceover, gives us a rundown of the movie and how the PreCrime division started and ended. Scientists learned about precogs Dash (Stark Sands), his twin Arthur, and their older sister Agatha, and their abilities. They were dumped in a milk bath to get visions and promptly left on a farm in the middle of nowhere when the PreCrime program was abolished. Subsequently, Dash’s people skills leave much to be desired.

 

The show hammers home that Dash doesn’t get the full picture of what he sees, so enter Vega, who became a police officer to be a part of the pre-crime division but graduated the academy right as it was disbanded. She’s salty about having to clean up deaths rather than stopping them and has something to prove though we don’t know why. Is it cause she’s a woman? A woman of color? Slept with a superior? Bungled a case? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Dash rushes to save a woman’s life but misses a few crucial details and ends up in the building across from where the woman dies. He does catch a glimpse of Det. Vega bringing out the woman’s niece who was hiding in the kitchen and senses a kindred spirit in the detective. He tries to pass along information to her and ends up leaving his murder notebook behind because he knows how to leave a first impression.

 

The murder notebook gives Vega a lead, which her superior officer, Will Blake (Wilmer Valderama) snakes and uses to locate the murderer. After lots of feats of acrobatics, Blake and crew end up in the abandoned refinery (?) where the killer is waiting. Lara shows up intending to rightfully make her collar, but the killer has already planned his exit via suicide by giant steel beam. Of course, Blake considers it case closed, but Vega thinks murder-notebook having Dash must be an accomplice or a creep who likes to watch murderers so the chase continues.

 

After tracking down Dash through some kid’s selfie drone, Vega and Dash team up to save the real intended victim, a mayoral candidate who was the former head of the pre-crime division. The rest of the episode brings to light a few important points. One, Dash was considered the weakest of the three precogs because Agatha got completed visions, Arthur got names, and Dash only received bits and pieces that filled in the blanks. So Dash really does have something to prove. Two, the public and Vega have a very sanitized vision of what the pre-crime division was. They think the precogs signed up for the program and that the visions were pre-destined and infallible. Three, Dash’s twin brother Arthur has been missing and may have been taken.

[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”#4A7097″ class=”” size=””]“Don’t you want to save just one?”[/pullquote]

Dash and Vega are able to bond in their desire to finally save one person before they die and they do succeed. Although the actual killer was fairly obvious to me, they spend the rest of the episode investigating and getting to know each other. We learn Dash doesn’t understand sarcasm, but has great taste in music. Vega has a past with Will Blake, and her father was killed saving her from a drive-by shooting.

The episode ends with an agitated Arthur attempting to contact Dash for help.

It’s a solid pilot episode that marries classic police procedural tropes with some nice futuristic tech. I’d love to see the actors get a bit more comfortable with manipulating these green screen effects. One of the cool aspects of the film was how at ease Tom Cruise seemed with screen manipulation and it grounded the film in that reality.

Good and Valderama still seem a bit stiff. There are some cool things like selfie drones and recording lenses and little Easter eggs that help with the worldbuilding. The fashion is also really good. Slightly updated, lots of leather and wool. Whatever Vega is saving on rent by living with her mom, she spends on jackets. The biggest clash should be between Vega’s idea of what the pre-crime division was and Dash’s actual experience of it. Even though you didn’t need a precog to figure out who the killer was, most police procedurals telegraph the killer before the ending so that’s not something that should detract from the story from week to week. Overall, it’s a strong opening with lots of potential.