AMC is getting a new drama miniseries about Jack Parsons, the early twentieth century occultist rocket genius, with Ridley Scott attached as producer. It's called Strange Angel. Mark Heyman, who wrote Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and recent indie favorite The Skeleton Twins, is set to write the series, and it looks like there will be more than enough material to keep a miniseries going.
Strange Angel, based on the book Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life Of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons, tells the story of Parsons, who invented the solid-fuel rocket and cofounded NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He later dabbled in Marxism and converted to the occultist religion Thelema, ultimately jeopardizing his work in rocketry and suffering an early death in a freak home explosion.
Parsons was instrumental in paving the way for rocket science. And many Thelemites cite him as the most significant practitioners of the religion in North America. After a falling out with close friend and fellow Thelemite L. Ron Hubbard, who would go on to found the Church of Scientology, Parsons left the religion to pursue work in rocketry, leading him to Israel as a consultant for the young nation's rocket program. Accused of espionage during the height of McCarthyism, Parsons was left without work. He died at the age of 37 in what the police ruled an accident, but many believed to have been an assassination.
Not too long ago, AMC was riding high, with original series like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead hailed as some of the best shows on television. But with one of those hits now completed and the other two ending soon, the network has struggled to recreate the magic—more recent shows like Halt and Catch Fire have failed to catch on. We don't know much about Strange Angel yet, but Ridley Scott, rockets and the occult? We can get down with that.
