They were promised a second chance, with a clean past, by colonizing an Earth-like planet. Nine days from their destination, the cast is unceremoniously thawed and dumped out of their cryo chambers, into the cold, dark confines of a ship with a mysteriously absent crew. The newly awake passengers need to unravel this mystery while navigating a ship they know nothing about.
Origin is a YouTube sci-fi original series released on November 14, 2018. The first season primarily takes place on a Colony Ship, with frequent flashback cuts to many of the characters’ respective origin stories, which explain how they ended up on the ship to begin with.
Origin contains the following tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Earth has strict laws regulating the development of AI, limiting their intelligence to just below that of an average human. Lee had to flee Earth when she deliberately removed the restrictions on a virtual AI companion so she'd have an intellectual equal to speak to.
- Air Vent Escape: Eric flees into the vents just before Henri can space him.
- Apocalyptic Log: Played about as straight as any video game. Whatever transpired on the ship, the main climax is over.
- Black Dude Dies First: Played with in the beginning, and then horribly straight. Technically, the first onscreen death is a white guy who’s barely developed as a character. The first disease death shown is a black red shirt. When it's clear the series is focusing on just its established cast, all casualties from then on, are black, and the entire black cast is wiped out by the end.
- Body Horror: The alien parasite is able to cause its hosts to contort their limbs into unnatural positions.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: A lot of the characters suffer from this, which the alien exploits with Schmuck Bait.
- Combat Pragmatist: Henri, after getting beat up multiple times by the alien, chooses to space it and an innocent crew member rather than going another round. Shame he only managed to get the latter, while the former fled into the vents.
- Dark Is Evil: Used so extensively, you can pretty much anticipate an alien jump scare each time the ship's Tron Lines go out.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Tons of scenes have shout-outs to other sci-fi horror, like Event Horizon and The Thing (1982). It also has references to Resident Evil and the overall arc feels like a cross between System Shock 2 and Dead Space.
- Heel–Face Turn: The alien, oddly enough. The more it and Shen cooperate (without Shin's knowledge), the more it starts empathizing with humans. At the end, it deliberately gives Shun the gun when it could have killed him.
- Jerkass Has a Point: “We gotta space this thing.” and “Fuck first contact!”
- Late to the Tragedy: The main characters. By the time they wake, they need to sift through the occasional Apocalyptic Log to figure out what happened.
- The Leader: Shun and Lana quickly take charge, both having experience with tense situations. Shun is former Yakuza while Lana is former military turned private security.
- No OSHA Compliance: The central elevator for the ring has a maintenance ladder which is built into the supports, which is available when the elevator isn't in use. However, if the elevator is triggered, the ladder retracts into the supports with no real warning, or delay, to give workers time to get to safety.
- Once More, with Clarity: The final episode has an extended flashback showing how the parasite hid among the crew.
- Orifice Invasion: The alien enters victims through the mouth and then worms its way into their brain.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The alien is a prawn-like creature which enters a host and connects to their brain, taking over all their motor functions. A side effect is that it degrades long-term memory, so the parasite can't coherently access the memories of those it takes over.
- Sequel Hook: A transmission from Thea hints that the aliens have invaded the planet.
- Spot the Imposter:
- Two injured crew members claim the other is either infected by an alien, or violently snapped. They are both strangers to the characters who actually have to decide who to trust.
- The crew discovers that the alien causes damage to long-term memory when it infects a host. Unfortunately, the whole point of the trip to Thea is a clean slate, so no one knows anyone's past and exploiting this is a real issue.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: Henri does this to the alien and a crewmate when fighting it off proves a losing proposition. The alien escapes into a vent hatch in the airlock while the crewmate gets spaced, and Henri doesn't notice because he couldn't bear to watch.
- Too Dumb to Live: The main characters suffer from this periodically.
- Shun and Lana witness some kind of infection force a man to contort unnaturally in Cell 50, then proceed to drag another survivor out with no idea if he may also be infected. Spoiler alert: he is. The only reason they don't die is because Shun was smart enough to set the safety on his gun.
- Lee suspects Lana is the alien and starts questioning her past. She does this without access to a weapon and when Lana is guarding the only exit. This earns her a scalpel to the eye.
- Katie nearly gets herself killed because she smashes the data chip with records on the entire crew solely because she doesn't want them to know about her past, even though it makes her look like she's the alien and screws over everyone else in the process.
- You Wake Up in a Room: The survivors wake from their pods and have to figure out what happened.
