STATION ELEVEN

January 5th, 2022

STATION ELEVEN is a new post-apocalyptic series on HBO Max based on an award winning SciFi novel of the same name.

I have been captivated by these type of stories since I was a teenager when there was so much I did not understand about the wider world and what dangers might lurk there.  Post-apocalyptic stories were a way for me to explore some of these dangers from the safety of my bedroom.  If I were to look for metaphors of what an apocalypse might be and what follows it I could do worse than to see it as that transition from the stability and comforts of home as a child to being exiled into the unknown territory of adulthood where one must begin to make one’s own way in the world, sink or swim.  It is simultaneously an exhilarating and terrifying prospect that involves finding seemingly radical new ways to adapt.

My transition was extremely bumpy and protracted to the point my mother despaired that I might be that “failure to launch” scenario.  I threw myself into impossible situations to see how I would respond with varying degrees of success and failure.  This included changing my major in college at least three times, changing colleges, dropping out of college and joining the Army during the first Gulf War, ending up in Korea for two years, returning to finish college and then globetrotting for a bit.  I did not lock into a trajectory as such until a decade after graduating from high school when I was accepted to medical school.  At that point I felt I was finally moving into what my metaphor might consider the post post-apocalyptic period.

And STATION ELEVEN hits all the sweet spots for me.  A pandemic sweeps the planet with a one in one thousand survival rate.  I read today that it was developed (and two of the episodes filmed) pre-pandemic so its release has been coincidental to our own pandemic woes, but everything hits so much harder now that we are in the midst of our own.  The characters that emerge are distorted by it just like we are seeing now, bringing out both the best and the worst in us in how we adapt to this new situation.

At the heart of the series is a comic book entitled “STATION ELEVEN” that features a mysterious character in a blue space suit who lives on an abandoned space station and is known as “Dr. Eleven”.  Yesterday I was wearing my PAPRs (powered air-purifying respirator) to see a Covid patient and it struck me that my appearance was not unlike Dr. Eleven.  So, of course, I took a selfie and cosplayed myself into the STATION ELEVEN universe, imagining I’m in one of those stories I love so much.

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