In Greek mythology, a girl named Pandora unwisely opens a box near the beginning of time and inadvertently unleashes all the world’s troubles and ills.
As such, The CW has named this show well. Open it up, and you’re bound to suffer. Mightily.
Let’s start with the series’ titular character—even though the character is actually named Jax, or perhaps Joan. (I’m assuming Joan’s her given name, and Jax—written in all caps in the CW’s official marketing flotsam—is her nickname, but we’ve got more serious problems to deal with, so let’s move on.)
Jax/JAX/Joan/Pandora is an orphan. Her whole family was killed in a mysterious attack on their home colony of New Portland while Jax was out jogging one day (proving that exercising really can prolong your life), and she’s naturally still suffering emotionally in the aftermath of that tragedy. Jax has since been shuffled off to her aloof, mysterious uncle Donovan Osborne; he teaches at Earth’s Space Training Academy, where Jax has just enrolled. She’s majoring in, um, space training, I guess.
Jax makes friends quickly there, despite her habit of glowering at everyone as a form of greeting. Her best friend is a purple-haired clone named Atria Nine (whom, we learn, enrolled in the Academy shortly after murdering her master). Everyone else in Jax’s relational circle—from the doctor-in-training, Greg Li; to the David Bowie-like alien, Ralen; to the teacher’s assistant-slash-undercover cop, Xander Duvall; to, perhaps, Atria’s own telepathic boyfriend, Tom—seems to be perhaps a future love interest for Jax. But why stop there? The pilot episode strongly hints that Jax is bisexual, so a relationship with Atria herself is not out of the question.
But perhaps it’s not fair to call Jax bisexual given that she is not even human. (Would that make her bi-speciel?) Seems she shares many DNA characteristics with the alien species that may or may not have attacked New Portland. And Jax may or may not be the unknowing conduit through which Earth might or might not discover what this strange extraterrestrial race has planned for Earth and its confederation of planets. If these aliens have plans, that is.
Personally, I hope they do. Because it’d be nice to think that someone involved with this show might know what they are doing.
Jax and her friends hang out at a trendy bar called The Black Hole. About 15 minutes into the pilot episode, though, I was hoping a real one would appear—a black hole, not a bar—thus sucking this entire show into the mercifully quiet vacuum of interdimensional space.
What I’m saying is that Pandora is bad. The best I can say in this review is that in terms of problematic content, at least, it’s perhaps not quite as bad as it could be.
CW is gearing Pandora toward a tween-‘n’-teen audience, which means that it does its best to titillate young fans without outright shocking their parents. The violence and action we see here are pretty bloodless: When shot by laser blasters, humans slump to the ground as if they were in a 1950s Western. Aliens do our species one better, literally disappearing into dust. Bad language, while present, doesn’t seem to be pervasive.
Sexual content seems to be another matter. Even this early in the show’s run, it’s pretty obvious that the sci-fi mystery in play here is really just a backdrop for a variety of romances and steamy encounters. Characters wear a variety of flattering and often revealing outfits—and sometimes, the show suggests that characters are wearing nothing at all. (The pilot offers a particularly gratuitous shower scene, where we spy Jax’s body in a revealing, but not technically fleshy, silhouette.)
In Greek mythology, Pandora released something else with all those troubles: hope. And that hope allows humanity to deal with all the gunk that the girl released into the world.
CW’s Pandora is young yet, so perhaps we too might hold out hope that it might get better. But that’s a small hope indeed.
After losing her family in a mysterious alien attack, Jax tries to move on by moving in with her polite-but-jerky uncle. She also enrolls in the Earth’s Space Training Academy (where her dead mother taught and her live uncle teaches) and meets a bevy of friends. And when she learns that the government is closing down any investigation of the attack that killed her family, she and her new pals steal an Academy spaceship to fly to the burnt-out colony and search for answers on their own.
Once there, Jax and others get involved in a massive blaster battle that kills several humans and disintegrates aliens, too. One alien body that isn’t vaporized is taken back for experimentation. Early on, we see the attack that killed Jax’s family. And during some sort of holographic lesson about World War I (in which Jax and her friends slink about in period-correct uniforms on a nondescript battlefield), Jax has a debilitating flashback to the tragedy that killed her family. We learn that one of Jax’s friends (a clone) killed her previous master to gain her freedom. Another friend of hers hails from a hostile alien race, making him the subject of much (racist) suspicion.
Jax takes a shower, and we see a fairly graphic silhouette of her body (though its details are obscured by some sort of visual shielding technology). She and other young women wear short skirts and revealing clothing, and she exchanges some double entendres with possible love interests. We hear that Jax dated someone’s sister, too, implying that she’s likely bisexual. Jax’s clone friend, Atria, is described by the CW’s press notes as “gender fluid.” She kisses a guard on the cheek by way of distraction.
Jax disturbs her cyborg-like roommate when she’s in the process of downloading information—a process that the roomie prefers to call “meditation.” Another friend of Jax’s has telepathic abilities. We see Jax and her friends order and drink a variety of exotic, presumably alcoholic beverages. (She helps someone order a drink, telling him that drinking alone is called alcoholism.)
Characters say “a–” about three times. People lie frequently, and someone mentions that his father was imprisoned for cheating at cards.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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