Jonathan Logan
Editor in Chief
Audio drama and motion picture tell a story in two very different forms. The radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” is an audio drama that most people are familiar with, after its airing on CBS Radio in 1938 convinced many listeners Earth was under alien attack. Audio drama’s counterpart, silent films, make do without sound, just as compelling audio drama makes do without visual information.
Both mediums take advantage of sensory deprivation by going without either audio or visual stimuli. Apple TV’s “Calls,” directed by Fede Alvarez, merges both audio and visual drama by withholding exact visual information and restricting the viewer to hear only phone calls between two people. The nine episode series tells the story of an apocalyptic event through a series of phone calls that cross timelines and make viewers scream at their screens as a star-studded cast, including Rosario Dawson and Pedro Pascal, acts out their roles to a tee. The phone calls are played over visceral, synth-style visuals that allow the mind to build its own world.
The show starts out at the end. Time advances at a rate of one second per second for all of us together, but “Calls” wants us to ask questions about our own individual timelines. What if there is always a beginning and an end to our stories that could be accessed not via any direct experience, but by phone calls? Without direct experiences involving their five senses (or however many humans might have) the characters go through the same sensory deprivation we, the viewers, go through. A simple phone call from one character to another turns into a mind-voyage as an unexplained anomaly connects people to other timelines, to their past or future selves and to loved ones. They can only use words to talk to the confused person on another timeline as they both try to make sense of an end-of-times event that they don’t realize they are directly involved in!
Most science fiction stories today treat quantum mechanics and parallel universes like the Staples button (that was easy). When stories need to explain a phenomenon science can’t explain, they throw quantum foam onto an already sloshy ocean in the hopes that we’ll never see deeper than the surface. “Calls” does not do this. Instead of slapping the quantum Staples button and using parallel universe jargon, it asks us to believe in many worlds, in other possibilities. Instead of trying to prove that many worlds exist, the show, via character Dr. Wheating, gives viewers a simple thought experiment: imagine that a person’s entire life exists on another train (world) that left the station (being born) just before your train (your world) left the station. Of course, the same is true for past versions of their life.
“Calls” forces you to tap into a resonant sense you never knew you had in an attempt to make up for the lack of directly experiencing other train rides. The characters’ inability to directly access these other worlds can be explained by not being able to jump from one train to another. Trains can also accelerate, meaning our timelines get out of phase with other timelines. In some episodes, a character will call a loved one or a friend three or four times in the span of just 20 minutes for them, but because worlds can be out of phase, they end up talking to their loved ones or friends for what is to them 20 years or more.
To compensate for the anomaly that is connecting people to their past and future timelines, the Universe kills whomever they talk to. By the last episode, so many people have accessed their other lives via phone calls that the Universe (or Many Worlds, if you believe) becomes chaotic and threatens to eliminate the entire human race for breaking the laws of physics.
But that’s not what this show wants viewers to think. Physics is lame. Instead, it dives into the personal tragedies that lead the characters to make the decisions they do. They are museums of decisions. Their lives are ephemerides of emotion, and when they cross paths with another timeline via phone calls, they simultaneously recognize all of their mistakes while also changing the course of an entire world. Sure, we’re all just drops in an ocean, but “Calls” makes you feel like a ripple.