Fox will be running a special pre-season preview of the pilot for Touch this coming week.
Presumably, the network wants to get the show into people’s heads, despite the plan to actually start the series only later this year, so all we get is the first episode until a future, as yet unannounced premier date.
This weekend, Fox released a set of four clips from the pilot to give us a better look at the upcoming show. If you watch any prime-time television on the network, you’ve likely already seen the 30 second spots for the series, but here we get a bit more detail, and a better introduction to the complex relationship between father and son which is at the core of the franchise. I probably don’t need to tell you that spoilers reside within these videos.
The basic premise is this: Jake indirectly communicates with his father via numbers.
Martin, Sutherland’s character, is forced to interpret these numbers from Jake’s actions and figure out what they mean – but the numbers don’t just relate to their lives. Rather, it seems like after the pilot, each episode will depict Martin’s struggle to discover what Jake is trying to tell him. He will then likely use that information to save people from terrible fates.
The formula seems like it will actually be somewhat similar to Person of Interest, where the protagonist is simply given the identity of a person who then struggles to figure out what to do with the information in each episode. Most of the action will be trying to determine what bad event is going to happen so it can be prevented.
We also have these profiles below, which examine the two primary characters and provide us with a better idea of just where they’re coming from at the start of the series.
The special preview event for Touch airs January 24, 2012 at 9pm EST on Fox.
The show’s first season is then planned for the summer, though an official start date has yet to be announced.
