Helix: Season 2

The second season of the Syfy original series about a viral outbreak relocates the action, moving from the first season's isolated research facility in the Arctic Circle to a remote Pacific island where a religious commune lives cut-off from the outside world. Members of a special team working for the Center for Disease Control identify the island as the source of a new outbreak, and they discover that renegade Dr. Alan Farragut (Billy Campbell), wanted for the bombing of a government facility (from the season one finale), is posing as a member of the commune in order to investigate the source of the outbreak on his own. A conspiracy is traced back to a corporation with plans to unleash a virus on the world as an extreme measure to alleviate overpopulation, but the source of the virus may be on the island itself. Immortality is also part of the story, as are flashforwards to 30 years in the future, when the residual effects of the virus are still being felt. A rather humorless drama that gets bogged down in jealousy, power plays, and other emotional complications having little to do with the sci-fi premise, Helix was cancelled after this low-rated second season. Compiling all 13 episodes from 2015, extras include deleted scenes and outtakes. Not a necessary purchase. (S. Axmaker)