The Heir Of Time

In the middle of an intergalactic war, a princess struggles with a dark power that she cannot control which propels her through time, offering her insights into a brutal and terrible future that has yet to come to pass.

In The Heir Of Time, we are dropped slap-bang into the middle of a war between a dynasty of space elves and a human federation of colonisers. The Armelion (space elves) are led by King Thallan (Mark), Queen Fiorella (Cameron-Mowat), and their daughter Sel’van (Eddleston), who are arguing amongst themselves about whether to continue the war or to sue for peace. The humans are represented by a young soldier called Zac (Marciano), from a planet called Xalgoria, where the peace treaties can be ratified, but no other real mention of how or why the humans are spread throughout space is ever offered to us.

Much like a lot of the dreadful Star Wars prequels (1999 – 2005), plenty of this space opera focuses on the politics and bureaucracies that go on behind the scenes to propel the theatre of war. This keeps everything very wordy and grand, as we enter into the chambers and halls of the space elves, but it also keeps things very boring and bland as we’re forced to listen to garbled exposition of arguments and beliefs which underpin the reasoning behind the war, which mostly takes place somewhere else.

In amongst all of this supposed intrigue and machination, along with the stock star-crossed lovers side story between elf and human, is Sel’van and her gift. Every so often she is dragged across time into some pretty hairy situations, and only barely makes it back each time to report on what she has seen, remaining vulnerable and mortal as she drifts from one point to another. All of this rests in the centre of some other over-arching plot which is yet to be expanded upon, as what we have in this pilot episode of The Heir Of Time, is just the first instalment of what is to be a full-blown web-series.

The far-reaching narrative that is attempted here from writers, Trent Meacham and Marco Jonathan, should definitely be afforded the credit that is due, as it sprawls across the galaxy and through time to deliver a sci-fi fantasy epic that could, if done right, rival some of the most ambitious space flops of cinema history, such as John Carter (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015). The problem with these vast stories, which is also something that is being seen in the drop off in interest and quality in the Dune sequels (2024-2026), is that past a certain point people begin not to care anymore. Ancient space dynasties that mean nothing to the regular viewer, along with fantasy characters and places that have a litany of silly names, just become too esoteric for most audiences, as they offer no hope of being identified with and feel too disconnected from anything that is real.

Coupling that with the fact that the animation in The Heir Of Time is clunky and stiff, with an ill-advised dance segment and a laughably bad fight sequence where no-one touches each other really showing off the limitations of the Blender generated 3D models, means that what we’re offered at the end of it all is an amateurish cartoon, with Y2K CGI visuals, masquerading as something that is grand and spectacular, when in reality it’s just quite poor.

Thankfully though, The Heir Of Time is a passion project led by a group of over seventy creative volunteers who have surrendered their time and expertise over the space of six years to create this first episode. This means that the quality is not so much of a priority as the actual creation of the vision, and that the real success of the project is the fact that it exists in the first place. For those who are invested in the story of The Heir Of Time there should be a deserved sense of pride in accomplishing this first half-hour of footage, especially considering the workload and timeframe that it has taken to get to this point, but the hard part is then getting anybody else to be interested in that vision, especially when it’s something that is going to take a long time to tell.

What is offered in The Heir of Time is the first part of a lengthy epic, which in all reality may never see its conclusion. The introductions to the characters and scenarios in this first act are fairly impenetrable without further knowledge of what’s going on, or what has already happened to get us to this point, and there’s no guarantee that the threads that are left for us to follow will ever get the opportunity to be tied up. This makes jumping into The Heir Of Time a tricky and perhaps unsatisfying prospect, as at this rate, for a regular eight episode series, any audience member will have to be willing to wait another forty years to see it through.