The first season of the serialcrime-thriller television series Millennium commenced airing in the United States on October 25, 1996, concluding on May 16, 1997, and consisting of twenty-two episodes. It tells the story of retired FBI Agent Frank Black (Lance Henriksen). Black has moved to Seattle, Washington with his family and has begun working with a mysterious organization known only as the Millennium Group. He investigates cases with members of the Group and the Seattle Police Department, contributing his remarkable capability of relating to the monsters responsible for horrific crimes. He finds that his daughter has inherited the same "gift" that he has, while the cases become increasingly more personal.
Critics received season one well. Although the show got the highest number of viewers for a pilot episode for the Fox Network at the time, it steadily dropped in the ratings, which led to it losing the Sunday slot to its sister show, The X-Files. The main cast of the show were Henriksen as Frank Black and Megan Gallagher as Catherine Black.
Production
Development
The original idea behind Millennium came from an episode of The X-FilesChris Carter had written about a serial killer. The episode got Carter thinking about the "monsters" who lurked in the shadows. Later, he started to flesh out a character which would become Frank Black, but he was busy working with other projects at the time. In the mid-1990s, after the success of The X-Files, the Fox Network asked Carter if he could create another show for them.[1]
Originally, the show was planned to include a new "murder mystery" each week, at the same time having a comprehensive storyline. So Carter created the idea of the new millennium, which could give the show its own "feel". He felt he "could capitalise" and at the same time have a new murder mystery every week with a "millennial" twist to it.[1] He also wanted to explore "evil", not the "scientific approach" which was the psychological explanation of "evil". Carter wanted to explore evil through an "unscientific approach", an exploration where "the Bible" played an important role. While clearly stating that the show was not supposed to be heavily grounded in religious text, he felt in many ways that the Bible explained "things on various levels" and "not just in the modern scientific way."[2]
Casting and characters
Chris Carter had envisioned Lance Henriksen portraying the character of Frank Black, long before he was ever contacted. Although Carter's colleagues responded positively to the selection, the Fox Network wanted someone younger to take the lead part. Fox asked William Hurt to play the lead role, but after finding out that Hurt had no interest in acting on television, Henriksen got the part.[1]
When Henriksen first got the script, he mistook it for a film because of its "powerful" story. He was not fond of the idea of participating in a television project. Henriksen contacted Carter about the character; his first question was "How are you going to make this hero a hero? I mean, it is so dark, how are you going to handle this?" Carter replied saying that Frank was a hero because he was able to "stand-up" against all of this. Henriksen was also worried about the dark "feel" of the show, saying that all shows needs some glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel. According to Carter "The yellow house" was the light, which Henriksen later agreed upon.[1]
Studio executive Ken Horton was very pleased with Megan Gallagher's acting experiences. After winning the audition, she was given a "secret script". Reacting positively towards the script, she later met up with Carter and David Nutter.[1]
The first season was received well by critics. Keith Uhlich of Salon magazine called the season and series "Carter's greatest series", and that, "television work always improves in retrospect; his seemingly haphazard, on-the-fly narratives become more coherent when taken out of the hellish, commercial break-happy context wherein they spawned".[6] Paul Katz of Entertainment Weekly said, "Despite the unapologetic bleakness" of the show, it was Lance Henriksen performance that was the "real killer".[7] Mark Rahner from The Seattle Times said the "X-Files follow-up was uncompromisingly grim, fascinating, cinematically crafted", and that the show was "years ahead" of such "forensic mysteries" as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.[8]USA Today writer Matt Roush said "With nightmare visions of bleeding walls, charred bodies, decapitations and a grisly live burial", the show took a new "grim view" on "drama".[9]
Although the season premiere received good ratings, the series gradually lost viewers as they were reportedly "turned off by the morose and unnerving story lines."[10]
Gruesome remains and other evidence provide Frank Black with a lead to a murderous avenger who persuades ex-cons to do his dirty work. John Hawkes and Marshall Bell guest star.
Shattered faith figures in the motive for the slayings of clerics by a killer, whom Frank tracks with a Group member he worked with on a similar unsolved case.
A reopened murder case takes Frank Black to Missouri, where he winds up on a different mission, pursuing a young girl and her boyfriend as they go on a murderous search for her baby.
In Colorado, Frank Black and an insightful associate track a killer who is driven by sexual neuroses and who uses mood-altering drugs to gain control of his victims.
An enigmatic man obsessed with the Millennium Group haunts Frank on a strange case involving planetary alignments, genetic cloning and Judgment Day. Brad Dourif guest stars.
Black is haunted by a case he worked on twenty years ago involving a serial killer who murdered three FBI agents on a stake-out that he participated in.
The abduction of his sister-in-law embroils Frank Black in an intensely personal case that is linked to a vicious sex offender recently released from an asylum.
In Utah, Frank is hired to render a profile of an admitted killer that will support a death sentence but soon comes to believe that the man's confession was a lie.
An Internet connection with a disturbed doctor leads an amnesiac Frank Black into a murder case linked to experimental drugs that drastically heighten anxiety.
Still reeling from a tragic loss, Frank is swept into a bizarre case of ritualistic slayings that involves an enigmatic lawyer and unearthly occurrences.
Evidence found whilst investigating the vicious murders of domesticated horses in North Dakota leads Black to suspect the genesis of a psychosexual killer, who soon preys upon humans.
In a Russian community in Brooklyn, Frank joins forces with a Moscow cop to investigate gruesome slayings linked to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster—and to biblical prophecy.
