YMMV / The Tomorrow People (2013)

• Fanon Discontinuity: With the series being cancelled, fans generally prefer to skip the last 5 minutes of the finale where Jedikiah inexplicably turns evil again, and wipes a re-powered John's memory. Instead most stop at the point when Cara and Stephen are settled in Ultra's old headquarters and leading a new group of Tomorrow People, while Astrid and human-John are dating, happy and finally enjoying a peaceful life together.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • John and Astrid are a lot more popular, than the canon John/Cara.
  • There's a certain degree of support for Stephen/Cara as well. Both of the alternate couples have a small presence in canon.
• Fridge Horror: Stephen's mom, a registered nurse no less, allowed Stephen to be subjected to years of needless psychiatric treatments and drugs with the threat of institutionalization hanging over him when she knew all along what was happening to him and that they were completely unnecessary.
• Ho Yay:
  • John giving Stephen CPR really looks like he's kissing him. And it wasn't even just once.
  • Cara also comments at one point that Stephen is developing a "boycrush". OT3 subtext, much?
  • And then. Cara says to herself: "If I am such a great leader, why can't I get them figured out?", to which TIM responds, "Perhaps you enjoy the thrill of being pursued simultaneously by two equally desirable mates." That's OT3 bait, if anything.
  • Next episode, the camera sure took its time with John touching Stephen's shoulder.
  • When John shares his memories of Roger with Stephen, it's hard not to remember that when Cara does that it's treated like an intimate moment.
  • "The Enemy of My Enemy": John makes breakfast for Stephen and they have some fun with the whole "guy making breakfast for another guy" thing. And later, John gets comfortable on Stephen's bed as he mentally chats with Charlotte.
  • And then there's the Russell/John vibe.
  • Also quoted on the funny page: John all but lampshading it, saying, "A three-way."
• Les Yay: Nelly and Cara, mostly one-sided on Nelly's part.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Just in case we're not all on-board with The Founder being irredeemable, we find out that he's used his own daughter as an experimental test subject (to the point of having her thrown in the Citadel to be tortured) and double-crossed his deal with Stephen to let Astrid go.
    • And, oh yeah, his ultimate goal is to kill every Homo Sapiens person on the planet.
  • And just to make sure we know that for all Jedikiah's minor weaknesses, his Knight Templar idée fixe of destroying the Tomorrow People is still alive and well, we see that he allowed Julian, a notorious paranormal criminal, to keep his powers if he will find their headquarters. Along the way, Charlotte is rendered catatonic after a brutal mental attack.
  • Natalie riling the others up into giving Roger to the Founder despite knowing that it means the end of the world for humanity. If that wasn't enough, she actually killed Cara and forced Stephen to hit a Reset Button.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • Some of the Tomorrow People are immature, arrogant, and superior-than-thou about everything. Almost makes Ultra easy to root for.
  • If anything, aspects of John's and Stephen's behavior tend to show a less savory side even of the "good" TP. And then there's Russell's habit of trying to pull a scam everywhere he turns. Which can backfire spectacularly.
  • Not to mention the ones who are legitimate threats to public safety, like the serial rapist or the guy who breaks drug lords out of prison or the one who helps his brother assassinate other people.
  • Averted with Hillary. Her bloodthirstiness and Jedikiah's unsubtle reminders to her about what Ultra thinks of Homo Superiors are reminders of why the Empire is bad. Until you factor in that she's a Homo Superior who was on-board with having a normal civilian girl killed just to advance her career. Then Jedikiah's rebuke to her not only seems justified but welcome, even if it is just another example of Jedikiah's Fantastic Racism and hypocrisy.
  • And killing or depowering Julian would be quite welcome, thank you, which finally does happen. It's mostly down to the Tomorrow People though, after Jedikiah has let him Mind Rape a young girl (who he's planning to experiment on himself once Julian's finished) and tried to deactivate the explosive that killed him, possibly because he's worried Stephen is in the blast area.
• Special Effect Failure: Compared to the 1970s show, rather minor, but you can see the blurring of Jedekiah's tie when Morgan "telekinetically" removes it.
• Strangled by the Red String: John and Astrid are a curious case, since the set-up is there, but after the episodes that show them getting closer it's six episodes before they have any further interaction whatsoever, during which time John is suddenly back happily dating Cara. When their Last-Minute Hookup happened in the penultimate episode, viewers who hadn't been taking notes were a bit puzzled as to where it had come from.
• The Scrappy:
  • Russell's sole purpose in existence seems to be to create problems through a combination of arrogance and carelessness that others have to clean up.
  • Cara is becoming this. The fact that she is acting like a tyrant (and a hypocrite one, chastising people for doing things she used to do back when she wasn't the leader) is definitely not helping her case. She publicly kicked John out for doing pretty much the same thing she used to do when he was the leader — "doing what I think is right". The only difference is that he never punished her at all (although she was never quite so openly dismissive of his authority). And then risking Stephen's family well-being by not only interfering with capturing an accessory to murder, but then hiring him to try and kill Jedikiah when he's the only thing stopping the Founder from killing Astrid (although the latter point is debatable, since Jedikiah and the Founder both flip flop over whether they want Astrid dead or not and once Jedikiah's removed from Ultra nothing actually happens to her).
  • Natalie exists just to cause conflict in the final arc of the series despite knowing the stakes. She spurred her friends into getting the tracer to get to the refuge, which had a kill switch, and openly stated she would prefer humanity wiped out rather than living underground. She even managed to get them to betray Roger just because things weren't going fast enough for her tastes. Then she straight-up kills Cara until Stephen hits the Reset Button.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Jedikiah has been lusting after Homo Superior abilities his entire adult life. He gets them at the end of "Kill Switch" and they're gone within the first five minutes of the next episode. What do we see him do with them? Become a traffic hazard and then take out a few Ultra guards.

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