Chimera

Chimera Inspiration: In April 1987, Omni Magazine published an article asking readers to participate in an experiment to see if they could learn to control their dreams: scientifically called lucid dreaming. I came across this article at the school library, and after discussing it with a group of friends, we all decided we would give it a try. We even discussed meeting together in dreams to show off our new lucid talents. I learned to fly and could see the world from a tranquil distance. But no matter how much I thought I was in control, nightmares always crept in. I would often start transforming into a monster. My teeth and hair would fall out and my skin would break open to reveal a slimy, shadowy beast. As I got older, I eventually lost the ability to control my dreams at all, but this experience helped lead me to pursue a career in perceptual sciences, and particularly psychoacoustics, the study of sound perception. In the pilot of Chimera, Cary seeks to rescue Lucy from her dream world prison by teaming up with a group of kids interested in lucid dreaming. They use actual principles of dream science and sound perception to enter the dream world and develop their powers there. The story opens with Cary, who has just had a nightmare about his dead sister Lucy, heading to his first day at a new school after he was forced to leave his last school because of the accident that killed his sister. He quickly makes a new group of friends: Sandy Davis, a quick-minded rebel with overwhelming empathy. Dakota St. Giles, a dedicated student of the dream arts and sciences and her wild, adventurous partner, Alessandra Guerriero. But not all of the students at school are friendly. When the group meets in the evening to make their first attempt to lucid dreaming, they are interrupted by the school bully and son of the town Mayor, Rex. Rex not only steals their cassette tape with the auditory key to lucid dreaming, but shakes Cary’s confidence badly after he sees Lucy in grave danger. The group agrees to risk their sanity and their lives to try once more and this time, they break Lucy free. But this is not without its cost. They’ve opened a gateway between two dimensions and the dreamworld, which will allow a malevolent force to enter our reality and to slowly overtake Cary. The wall between the conscious and the subconscious is no more. The pilot ends with Lucy waking up in an alternate reality in which Cary has died and she is the survivor. I hope this quickly establishes that we will see this story from a number of perspectives and through a number of iterations of events. One of the important themes will be the examination of good and evil merely as individual perspectives, rather than absolute truths. By the end of a six-to-eight episode first season, Cary would be established as an unintentional villain. Chimera fits comfortably in the world of young adults both coming of age and coming to their powers and relationships - television shows and movies like Tomorrow People, Misfits, and The Craft as well as the nightmarish terrors of Phantasm and A Nightmare on Elm Street. While most stories like this are being told in one-hour formats, I feel like there is truly an opportunity to pack dense, layered storytelling in a shorter thirty-minute format. One reader noted that the pilot contained enough storytelling to be stretched into an entire season if I wanted to take a different approach. I was glad to hear this, as I hope each episode will feel just as rich.