Historical takeovers inform USA's new sci-fi drama 'Colony'

The takeover of an area or country has been not only an element of history, but also a factor in a lot of science fiction.

Those takes on the subject merge in “Colony,” a USA Network sci-fi drama series from executive producers Carlton Cuse (“Lost,” “The Strain”) and creator Ryan Condal that premieres Thursday, Jan. 14. It unfolds in a Los Angeles of the near future, where ex-FBI agent Will Bowman (played by fellow “Lost” alum Josh Holloway) mulls collaborating with those who have invaded, occupied and divided the city in order to get his son back. However, don't discount Will and his wife Katie (Sarah Wayne Callies, “The Walking Dead”) from staging their own crusade to restore freedom once they're on the inside.

“The mystery,” explains Cuse, “is this occupying force ... what do they want, what exactly are they doing here, how are they operating? They've installed this proxy government that's running the colony, and that's what the show's really about.

“We wanted to make sure that we weren't doing another show in the sort of aliens-versus-humans genre. It's really about the experience of colonization. It's a much closer metaphor to Afghanistan, for instance, where we put someone (played by ‘House' alum Peter Jacobson) in power, and then you have one group of people that is sort of in charge of another group of people, and the history of colonization is kind of the history of subjugation. It's really what the focus of our show's about.”

Paul Guilfoyle, Kathy Baker, Carl Weathers, Amanda Righetti and Ally Walker are among other well-known faces in the “Colony” cast. That presumed familiarity could prove unsettling, since what might be expected from them isn't necessarily what transpires.

“In the tradition of working with Carlton Cuse, I don't know anything that's going on,” Holloway muses, “and it's a wonderful discovery what's on the other side of the wall. It's separated into prison blocks, kind of, if you will ... Los Angeles. And we don't know if the world is separated in that way, either. All communications have been cut off. We don't know if there's a New York or anything right now. So everything is a discovery, I think.”

Callies notes that with “Colony's” freedom fighters, “You've got all of these zealots who are trying to fight back and sort of ‘Vive la resistance,' and they don't know Thing One about really what they're doing, so passion and zealotry can be as dangerous as an occupying force. And you've got all of these people in the occupation who are making incredibly cogent arguments about preserving human culture so that we can live in peace and all these things, just the way the Vichy government said, ‘We're preserving Paris.' And they did.”