Strange World is a short-lived American television program about military investigations into criminal abuses of science and technology. ABC commissioned thirteen episodes, of which only three aired in March, 1999, before they cancelled the program. By the time ABC officially axed the show, the producers were finalizing the last episode. The remaining ten episodes subsequently premiered on SciFi in the Spring of 2002.

The series was created by former X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel producer Howard Gordon and Tim Kring, creator of Crossing Jordan and Heroes.

In a webchat during the 2002 run on SciFi, co-creator Howard Gordon stated that, since the producers knew ABC was not going to support the show before the premiere of the first episode, they had the opportunity to write a conclusion to the story. Thus, he asserts the show is best considered as a completed miniseries rather than a cancelled television program.^[1]

Plot [link]

USAMRIID was created in 1970 to counter the threat of chemical and biological weapons.

Section 44 of the charter permits it to investigate criminal abuses of science.

—Text at the beginning of the pilot episode.

The main character, Captain Paul Turner (Tim Guinee), is a doctor for USAMRIID suffering from a rare form of aplastic anemia as a result of exposure to chemical weapon during the Persian Gulf War. USAMRIID, The United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, lures him out of his sickbed with the opportunity to bring justice to others suffering from unethical uses of scientific discoveries and resulting technologies. Unknown to his superiors, he is given a temporary cure for the symptoms of his disease by a mysterious woman who is an agent of a shadowy organization that may be trying to thwart the goals of USAMRIID. He requires periodic doses of the cure to remain functional, a weakness that the shadowy organization occasionally uses to control him. Both the machinations of the "shadowy organization" and Turner's dependency on the "cure" are ultimately resolved in the final episode of the series.

Title sequence [link]

The opening titles were noteworthy for their graphic innovation, drawing the attention of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The sequence was added to AIGA's permanent collection^[2] in 1999. It was created by Imaginary Forces, a firm also responsible for the Comedy Central and Lifetime network rebrandings and the 102 Dalmatians titles along with its famous trailer in 2000, the Arlington Road titles in 1999, and various other AIGA-recognized advertisements and logos.

Episodes [link]

See also [link]

Doomwatch

Footnotes [link]

External links [link]

• Strange World Scifi site - (Internet Archive)
• Strange World at the Internet Movie Database
• Strange World at TV.com