User Reviews

This is one of the better sci-fi series. It involves character development, a few really tensionate moments and reasonable episode scripts. As one other commentator said here, it looked as if it were a mini series, not a full blown series with filler episodes and low budgets.

The problem with the show, which in short is a Godzilla series, is that it started too big, with incredible monsters, fantastic science, then it all boiled down to local Americans doing stuff. Then, the show ended too soon, since the Olympics were coming and hey! a sci-fi show is a sci-fi show, but half naked athletic people running around aimlessly is much more important. So they only did 15 episodes instead of the expected 22. The audience was small, too, as people didn't really caught it on at 20:00. In the end the suits did it. Trust a marketing plan to destroy anything that looks remotely original and promising.

Conclusion: you have a show with good special effects, stuff like huge monsters killing people or destroying boats, then going into genetic engineering, transforming people, human clones, end of the world, tsunamis. Also, the only fillers are scenes with aggressive rednecks or other annoying people being killed for their stupidity. The down-side is that after 15 episodes that prepare something huge, the show ends. No real ending, no closure, just a bitter taste of cloth in one's mouth, as if you just swallowed a piece of suit.

There is no denying it. Sci-fi on TV is difficult. There are so many problems that the genre brings with it. Like the need for a good budget, solid writing, decent acting. Perhaps the budget and the script writing is the departments where i feel most attempts have failed. So does "Surface" succeed? Not completely, but more so than most.

The way i see it, a good sci-fi show doesn't really need a lot of CGI to work, nor does it need a ton of money. What it needs is the capacity to create a larger-than-life feeling. The feeling that there is more than meets the eye, something to make me curious and willing to try and figure out how it's going to end. Adding the pieces of the puzzle and sometimes saying "Aha!" is what makes or breaks a show like this one.

"Surface" had a couple of flaws. First of all it's basic premise is not as exciting as it could have been, nor is the revealed story as exciting (or daring) as i hoped in the beginning. Also the TV-feeling is very present much of the time. All the way from the crappy CGI (that ranges from decent to awful) to the rather shifting quality in the acting department. Also it feels sometimes a bit too family-oriented in that it takes the edge of sometimes and becomes almost cutesy. But aside from these flaws it's an enjoyable show. Maybe not as spectacular as some of the other sci-fi shows out there. But it manages to keep me interested the whole season and it offers a couple of nice cliffhangers between shows as well. The ending for me is not that appealing. I don't like shows that end without ending so to speak, leaving the story unresolved. It's especially unfortunate in this case since the show seems to be canceled after the first season (it is as of yet undecided).

HBO is to me the benchmark for quality television. Their series have the best actors, the best production values and above all the most solid writing. This is not HBO-quality, but it's good for what it is. Good enough to want another season without a doubt.

The 15 episodes of the first, and I wouldn't be surprised only, season of "Surface" worked as involvingly as if it were a mini-series like "Taken." The executive producers, Jonas and Josh Pate, never seemed to be stalling or creating filler but had clear character and story lines and trajectories set from the beginning.

The production values, including of the sea monsters, were very high for a weekly series, so that even if the series is not renewed viewing the DVD as a whole will be very entertaining. An important element in its success was the filming locations in North Carolina which provided more visual variety than we usually see in most series which are routinely filmed on either an L. A. back lot and environs or in the Vancouver area.

While there were tips of the hat to many other sci fi movies and shows of the past (Jay Ferguson's "Rich" certainly seems similarly obsessed as Richard Dreyfuss in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"; the daring duo's extreme adventures under the sea certainly seemed like a tribute to Jules Verne, let alone "The Abyss"; some sort of cryogenics facility seemed a lot like something we'd seen in "Coma;" their nemesis seemed to be borrowed from "The X Files," etc.) but it all came together freshly and with some unexpected twists.

Unusual for sci fi, the female roles were key and interesting. While I at first thought Lake Bell's "Dr. Laura Daughtery" was too young (not to mention impossibly gorgeous in a bathing suit) to be a marine biologist, over the first few episodes her threatened status as a newly minted PhD was dealt with spookily as part of the conspiracy to make her suspicious. Her scientific capabilities were always believable, even if her survival luck was amazing. I remained a little unclear about her personal time line of her life with her son, who she must have had when she was a teenager, and ex-husband (let alone the apparent ex-boyfriend "Jackson" who literally stuck out his neck for her). But her devotion to her son was a sweet recurring theme, even as she kept abandoning him to follow leads and escape henchmen.

Martha Plimpton had a delightful guest starring arc as a quirky, guilt-ridden scientist. And the teen age girls actually had brains and feelings. While the mom was clueless, so was the dad, amidst their extremely upper middle class lifestyle.

The relationships between the brainy females and their guys was always appealing, and their dialog sprightly. "Rich"s practical life skills as a fisherman and insurance agent, and brute physical force, were continually balancing "Laura"s scientific knowledge. I was very impressed that the series kept their relationship as a friendship with loyalty but no exaggerated sexual tension, as he is throughout a devoted family man to the wife and daughters he has had to leave behind on his quest, helping to make this appropriate family entertainment.

Teen Carter Jenkins' "Mile Barnett" was geekily adorable throughout, from his boyish loyalty to an unusual pet and his first crush on a girl who actually appreciates him, to his exploration, and finally embrace, of new found super powers. I particularly liked how the series helped him find his way through his volunteer work at the aquarium, which is shown as not just a commercial show but a serious scientific institution.

The story certainly capitalized on the world's recent experiences with natural disasters to believably surmise how people react, from prejudice to panic. A particularly effective episode incorporated MSNBC news and web coverage into the story line for a cynical commentary on old and new media.

Some of the travel times around the country seemed as unrealistic as in "Alias" as the central duo tracked down clues (and they seemed to get as much sleep as "Jack" in "24").

But the bringing together of the central characters and themes in the finale was convincing and exciting, even as it left open plenty of story lines for a network to capitalize on for a second season. NBC was smart to rerun episodes on the Sci Fi Channel and hopefully that could continue to build up interest in even short term renewal or mini-series conclusion.

What can I say? I got up this morning and turned on sci-fi and watched half of the first season and figured it all out. Strange, unusual, and brilliant. It gives all potential, and to think at first I said this looks stupid. This has got to be the next best thing since X-Files, but as always nothing will ever take down that show in my opinion. I am telling you, it's scary and then suspenseful and then mellow. Towards the end you have Miles as a love puppy with a weird pet that is a new species. You have two people on the run from authorities. And a killer tsunami about to strike! Wow! And did I mention Miles pet is a potential killer(well the rest of his species is). Surface is a brilliant show with spins and twists that delivers it all.

Terrific show extremely well acted by a bunch of unknowns. Great story and special effects and a terrific scenic spot (Wilmington NC). The show had so much promise and it ended with no ending...It should have been continued for at least another year. The oceanographers son in the show was also in Martian Child, and he is a terrific young actor at all of about 6 or 7 years old. I would put this on a par with Invasion but with better and more special effects and shots of the "creatures". The premise of a creature being created by a corporation who was years ahead of the rest of the world in scientific knowledge was not that far out of the realm of possibility. It just ended with no real closure. I have an ulterior motive to having it continue, it was largely filmed right down the street from my house.

This DVD set is the complete widescreen 15-episode run of "Surface", a television show made by Universal in 2006. The full running time is 10 hours and 34 minutes plus a few bonus features (deleted scenes, cast interviews, special effects featurette). This was a relatively high budget show and much of the budget makes it to the screen in the form of quality production design and special effects.

Unfortunately 10+ hours is a lot of time and as typically happens with this type of stuff, the overall quality begins to fall off in the later episodes. I found the first 7 episodes (Discs 1 and 2) extremely engaging and the remainder a disappointment. "Surface" was produced, written and directed by Josh and Jonas Pate; and it appears that they were surprised by the success of the series and unable to cobble together enough good subsequent material as they rushed to fill the order for additional episodes. It even looks like additional writers were brought in for the later episodes because the characters (who were already the weakest part of the series) lack consistency with the way they were played in the early episodes. The series was canceled and although the last episode provides a conclusion of sorts there are still a lot of things left hanging.

It is basically a science fiction story about genetically created dragons; sort of a television blend of "Jurassic Park" and "ET". The story begins as a puzzle as a crew-less Navy sub is found adrift at sea, boaters on a Texas lake are sucked into whirlpool, a lighthouse in Africa is destroyed by a huge monster, etc. etc. And as long as things stay this vague there is a fair amount of tension and suspense. A human element is introduced in the form of three American families, one on each coast and one on the Gulf of Mexico. Laura Daughterty (Lake Bell) is a California marine biologist who discovers a strange creature rising from an undersea thermal vent on the ocean floor. Rich Connelly (Jay R. Ferguson) is diving with his younger brother in the gulf when a similar creature drags his brother away (never to be seen again).

Miles Bennett (Carter Jenkins) is a Wilmington teenager who finds some strange eggs floating in the ocean. He takes one home where it hatches into an "ET" type dragon. He will spend the rest of the series trying to hide his strange pet from his family and from the local authorities. These dragons may look like lizards but they are more like indestructible electric eels, firing electromagnetic pulses, causing lightning strikes, emptying the sea of fish, and reproducing like a bunch of randy rabbits when they find an undersea thermal vent of boiling water. As long as it's uncertain whether or not they're intelligent, extraterrestrial, or harmless the premise is interesting. Once you begin to suspect their origin it all gets very tired and predictable.

Jay R. Ferguson (a staggeringly bad actor in the tradition of David Hasselhoff) essentially plays the Richard Dreyfuss character from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", so you know that with a better actor and a better director it could have been an interesting character. You will grow to hate this character more with each episode. Unfortunately what starts out as three parallel story lines is soon condensed into two as Ferguson and Bell (a low-budget version of Sandra Bullock) are soon paired up and involved in a series of moronic adventures almost as improbable as the stuff "Jason Bourne" gets himself into. You expect plot holes and the need to suspend disbelief in this type of show (that can even be part of the fun) but their adventures are not just totally implausible, they are utterly and completely boring. There are three consecutive episodes that feature Ferguson and Bell together in a submersible that will have you longing for the excitement of an all-day actuarial conference.

Jenkins (Miles) is the strongest member of the cast and the segments with his pet dragon (Nimrod) are inter-cut often enough with the boring Ferguson-Bell stuff to keep you watching. And these segments benefit from the presence of gorgeous Leighton Meester (of recent "Gossip Girl" fame) as his sister Savannah. Apparently the producers picked up on the importance of this to their "teenage boy" target audience and the one positive thing they did with the later episodes of the series was to introduce Linsey Godrey (Caitlin) as a "first love" interest for Miles. So as Savannah's screen time decreases Catlin is gradually phased in.

In retrospect they needed a third storyline to keep viewers sufficiently engaged and it would have been better to limit the adult melodrama in favor of a second group of young actors.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

I just wish they hadn't left us hanging like that! They could have at least made a 1-2 hour extended show to tie the story up or something! I've had 4 different series that I really enjoyed & got into only to have the series stop & leave us, the loyal viewers, wanting more, wanting at least a good ending. I don't see how the TV producers can just stop a really good show, like this one and so many others, without a decent ending! Oh well, I guess we just need to realize that they don't really care about how we, the audience, feel as long as they make their money. Of course I'll keep watching, hoping that the next show I get into will actually follow through.

Once again, there's dastardly government agencies stopping at nothing to prevent public knowledge of some momentous events. In this case, the discovery of a new underwater species that could threaten the planet's ecology. Although the creature is no E.T. he does seem to befriend one youngster, who protects it at all costs, not realising it is but an infant of the species and is going to get a lot bigger – and badder This 2005 series had a lot going for it. It is family drama, sci-fi, thriller with more than a few comedic moments. The characters are believable, well acted and well photographed. The show holds the attention. Of course, as with any sci-fi show, suspension of disbelief has to be achieved. And I think it is here. Alas, the series crashed after season one, so we never get a resolution. Infuriating.. There is a general comment I feel worth making here. Many TV networks and/or film distribution companies cancel, quite arbitrarily, seemingly excellent TV series – particularly intelligent sci-fi ones. Now there may be some very good reasons for this, although the audiences are treated with utmost disdain and rarely told the reasons. This in itself is annoying. What really gets my goat is that, having cancelled the series, they then issue the thing as far as it's got, on DVD, in an obvious attempt to milk the cash cow as far as possible. For previous viewers of the series that's OK, they know what they're in for but … many of these unfinished series end on a cliffhanger. Two that come to mind immediately are "Surface", and "Odyssey 5". If you've heard good things about the series and not seen it you go and buy the blasted DVD and end up with an unresolved plot issue – it makes me very angry!! I enjoyed "Surface" immensely and didn't realise the poor characters would end up in a situation that looked totally untenable – and we'll never know what happened next. I believe that there should be a prominent notice on all such DVD issues, to the effect that the story is unfinished. Nowadays I check on TV series purchases (IMDB is an obvious excellent starting point) to find out whether a 'complete' series is really complete or not. Buyer beware.

I am new at this, so bear with me please. I am a big fan of Surface. I thought the script and the computer graphics were exceptional, as good as any Sci Fi flick I've seen at the theater. In February the TV guide said Season Finale, the announcer for the show said something to the effect of, "...and now for the season finale of Surface." Season Finale, not series finale! I couldn't wait for fall to get here, to see was going to happen next. So fall gets here and it's nowhere to be found! If NBC isn't going to pick it up, what about Sci Fi or USA? It seems to me that Bay Watch didn't last long on ABC & then USA picked it up, and it went gang busters! (I bet ABC was chocking) Ha! If not a series, then at least a mini series, to give all us loyal fans closure. What happened to our guy's trapped in the church steeple? Was the creature in the chaple Nim? Did he have a grouth spert? Does the cloned guy come over to our side? There are so many unanswered questions. Thank's for listening to me babble!

Marine biologist Laura Daughtery (Lake Bell) encounters the new species underwater. Insurance salesman Rich Connelly (Jay R. Ferguson) has a dangerous encounter. Teenager Miles Barnett (Carter Jenkins) actually adopts one as a pet. His sister Savannah (Leighton Meester) is annoyed by him. Meanwhile the government seems to know more than anybody suspects.

It's a great sci-fi concept. It had a lot of potential. Some of it seemed silly and questionable. But it deserved more than 15 episodes. I think they could have worked out its kinks. Although it seems the show was trying to expand the scale beyond its capabilities at the end with the creatures starting to take over.

I love this show. It's truly unique. I was under the impression it was going to have more seasons. In anticipation of series 2, recently I purchased series 1 to re-watch it in order to be refreshed when part 2 started. Now after watching it I was excited and craving more, so I came to the site to see the schedule for the continuation. I am really disappointed to see there no longer are plans for a second series as I was eagerly looking forward to watching more of this story. I think they really dropped the ball on this one. There was plenty of story line left to build on and lots of unanswered questions. I'm now a very unhappy view and I hope that they would reconsider their decision and pick up the story where it left off.

i don't believe it sixty percent of voters voted this show as ten now how the hell is the rating a five point eight it impossible i don't get it, its totally pathetic i mean how. anyway the show is great the story is great and the characters are interesting, definitely a ten out of ten from me i think the creatures are cool they look great and i wish i had a nimrod great show great cgi hope there's a second series as a lot went unanswered in the first season and when is nimrod gonna get any bigger as the rest of the creatures are huge, again why is the rating so low when the votes were so high

10/10

Even with all the stupidity in it, it was interesting show but as usually it ended abruptly so once again i wasted 10h (+/_) and end up without climax.

I loved this series and hated to see it end. Why was it taken off the air? I don't understand why we get good series and they are removed, but we get junk on the air and they stay forever. Please advise. You can't leave us hanging like this!!!!!!! I looked forward to Monday nights so that we could gather around the TV as a family and watch the new stars that we had grown to feel personally involved with from week to week. We would always try to guess what would happen for the next weeks show. I would even have relatives call as soon as the show ended and discuss the plots each week. Can't you do something to help us out here!!!!!????? We really need to have a continuation of this series or make it into a movie to end it well. Think about it. We loved the characters as well. They were excellent in their parts.

Someone asked why it was canceled I tell you why Because "reality" makes money. the show surface was canceled so that they could replace it with a "reality" show, this will haunt NBC, I and about half of my high school, about 1000 people total have vowed to boycott NBC, until they bring this show back. in my area (I don't know about other places) but they had a great thing going with the Sci-Fi channel where the Sci-Fi channel would show last weeks episode at 7:00 and then NBC would show the week's new episode at 8:00 this was great because it gave you a little refresher as to what happened in the last episode. I was so angry when I learned that the show was canceled and they were going to just leave them on top of the church like that!

This show had some interesting ideas related to genetic engineering and ecology. In some ways it was ahead of its time, but it suffered the curse of network television. That is to say, it found the wrong home to explore the premise in. Network TV has a voracious appetite; shows need to aim for producing 20 episodes or so per year. Problem is, the premise just doesn't support that much material, so instead of staying focused on the interesting portions they had to spin up all kinds side stories that weren't remotely interesting to fill the space.

There are four basic plots in the show: a top secret government investigation into a strange and possibly dangerous new species, a researcher who accidentally encounters the species while doing underwater research, a man who loses his brother to one of the creatures while spear fishing, and a kid who finds an egg on the ocean and hatches it at his house, then bonds with the animal when it is born.

Of the four plots, only the first two remain interesting for more than a single episode. The man who loses his brother is the story that runs out of runway first, in my opinion. It quickly just becomes this depressing and extremely predictable breakdown of his family life, a la Close Encounters. They throw in some nutty stuff about visions of his brother but honestly, I stopped caring almost immediately.

The story of the kid raising one of the creatures remained kinda-sorta interesting for a while in an ET kind of way, but even that got old pretty quickly. His family, in particular, were so annoying I started hoping the creature would develop a taste for human. This story completely lost me once there was "creature in the back seat but mom doesn't notice" followed by a "chasing the creature no one else notices through the store" scenes.

The fundamental problem with these last two stories is that they just don't remain interesting for 5 hours, let alone a whole season. How many times can we watch a concerned-wife-looks-concerned-while-her-husband-acts-crazy scene or a kid-hiding-creature-is-almost-discovered-hiding-creature scene?

The only interesting parts were the scientists trying to track down and study the creatures and the mystery about where they came from. If the show had aired on basic cable and had a run of only, say 10 episodes, they might have been able to tighten up the story and keep the focus on the more interesting bits of the show. As it was, I'm not really surprised it got shut down after one season.

I would like if they brought back surface. I really enjoyed the show along with my family. I felt the plot development and storyline were first rate. Like the other person said, it seems that everything gets reduced to the lowest common denominator. Nothing but bland, politically correct junk survives. Just look at the internet to see how many people were watching the show. Also it is not nice to leave us hanging as to what happened the all of the characters on the show. This is the same thing that happened to the time travel show I think was called 8 days but should have been called backstep. Did the Olympics kill surface? I know the writers strike killed another one of my favorite shows years ago called greatest American hero.

About 10 years ago there was a rash of supernatural shows with vampires or Fringe or Warehouse 13 or The Event or a dozen others. This one's pretty good albeit there's some huge plot holes and some of the characters are cartoon evil. But the multithreaded story is a nice approach. There's three different threads that don't have much to do with one another that don't have to converge. But there are huge plot holes like why the evil Navy bad guys obsess on Lake Bell even though hundreds or thousands of people have seen it. Or why old scientist guy is even involved at all because his bosses already know everything and don't need him. Or spearfisher dude is clearly schizophrenic but often he's not. But so what. It's pretty good series and then it's over cancelled and that's it.

It's always frustrating to see a good show cancelled before it's allowed to really pick up steam, or to gather the audience it deserves, but in this case, it was especially disappointing. The writers clearly had a plan already in mind for how the story was going to develop, particularly around the main character himself, and it was a unique enough concept, and an enjoyable enough execution, to have me really excited for more.

Even now, fifteen years later, just this one season of television is enjoyable enough to be worth watching.

I happened to come across "Surface" by sheer random luck at the local DVD thrift shop. The synopsis on the back of the DVD box seemed interesting, so I decided to buy it. Although I had no particular expectations to the series, as I had never heard anything about it prior to finding it in the store.

I must admit that the 15 episodes were watched in a fairly rapid succession, because the series turned out to be fairly interesting. I watched it over five evenings, watching one disc of episodes per evening. While the show wasn't a dazzling jaw-dropper, it still proved entertaining, because it had a good storyline, and it also had some good acting performances.

The story is about a strange breed of massive aquatic creatures that are found roaming the deepest reaches of the ocean. A small group of people have set out to prove the existence of these creatures to the rest of the world, but they face ridicule by the media, and they find themselves face to face with powerful organizations who will stop at nothing to preserve secrets.

Right, well, while the story is fairly generic and straight forward, then it is still entertaining and fun to watch. It is the type of story that you quickly get immersed in, pardon the pun. And you want to watch more and see what happens next.

The characters in the series were good, well-detailed and chiseled out, and equally so put to life on the screen by the actors and actresses cast to play the various roles and characters.

The CGI effects in the show were adequate, and served their purpose quite nicely. However, don't expect to be blown away by dazzling special effects that will leave the rest of Hollywood special effects in its wake.

The 15th episode comes to a rather sudden and abrupt halt, especially since the show wasn't carried on. So the audience is left with a somewhat hollow and unfulfilled sensation, because there are so many unanswered questions.

"Surface" scores six out of ten stars from me. It is watchable and it is entertaining. Just keep in mind that you will not get a conclusion to the series, as it was canceled.

I like the show, but come-on writers, get some action in it! Quit dragging it on and on. You have a great concept and it could be a whole lot more. Miles (Jenkins) is great and performs as a kid that age should act in the situation he finds himself in. Hey, get creative with the creatures, they may have telepathic capabilities or other out-worldly powers. The kid actors in the series are very good and convincing. The parents of Miles do appear to be a little too out-of-sense as to what is going on, but develop this, come on! you have a great seed here and there can be a whole new twist to next season with a lot of new characters and creatures and all kinds of neat sci-fi stuff. If they could make a series on a witch, then you should be able to make one on these creatures and kids.

The writing and direction of the show is horrible. The lead characters are inconsistent, there are at least 6 scenes in each episode that are just plain wrong. The last 3 episodes are the worst of the bunch.

The direction/writing of the last episodes is done so poorly that the characters become silly and laughable.

There are more clichés in the series than I can count. The story as presented is too fragmented with far too much personal interaction between the characters.

In addition there are far too many morons running around with active roles. The lynch mob scene is an excellent example. The lynch mob scene is overdone to the point that the viewer knows nothing will happen so it becomes boring.

This series is filled with excellent examples of what a film writer should NOT do.