I think of that now every time I see a Coke ad. One of my favorite scenes was where the head of the Freedom League scoffs and accuses the aliens of pretending they want to 'Buy the World a Coke'. Caution: It is depressing and the scene at the end with the song made my heart want to break into a million pieces while I silently cried inside, but it is so good. This goes in my Top 10 of the Best Science Fiction shows/movies I've ever seen. The effects for him were mostly make-up and not special effects which I found impressive and made his facial expressions much more realistic looking and expressive. I freaking loved Charles Dance as Karellen. If you're happy and content why change anything? These questions are all discussed in the show and more. Questions arose as to what would be the purpose of life without a way to feel progress? If you are always in one class and there's no going up or down forever, how would that make people feel? If they didn't have to work, would they? Would people go crazy? How would this affect our creativity in terms of art or science? Pain and suffering are necessary parts of the puzzle when driving creativity and efficiency and growth. Right before I watched this I was talking to my friends about the validity of communism. I'm glad the show writers didn't go with what was in the book because it would have made everything laughable. What we know about evolution and diet and adaptation just come together to disprove his theory. I know I might catch some flak for that but I'm sorry fanboys. The reasons why the children evolved in the book are stupid and make no sense. Presumably this was because Clarke wasn't very good with the ladies and didn't care much for romance nor feelings and was more of a technical details kind of guy. The emotional mining and discovery that Ricky did about himself and his feelings over his ex were incredibly intense and well done and not delved into in the book. They had Ricky be a humble farmer instead of a big shot diplomat because it would make him seem more like a Jesus like character. (Most of the negative reviews are from those who read the book.) Once I heard of the changes I realized why they occurred. I have never read the book and I think that's why I liked the show so much.

This mini-series by the SyFy channel is from the book Childhood's End by Author C.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke