A Farewell to Orphan Black

Just a few of the members of Clone Club from Orphan Black.

Early this past month, a little known Canadian television show which aired on BBC America came to an end after an epic five season run. For most people, August 12th was simply another Saturday night in their lives, but for the members of Clone Club, the 12th was a night they'd always remember as the night they bid a bittersweet farewell to the weird and wonderful little show called Orphan Black. This obscure Sci-fi cult hit may not have been much of a contender in terms of ratings, but what it lacked in mass appeal it more than made up for in a rabid and incredibly loyal fanbase, affectionately dubbed Clone Club. If it's not apparent at this point, Orphan Black is about the lives of, you guessed it, clones, primarily a group of female clones, all played to individual perfection by Tatiana Maslany, who discover each other and set out to uncover the complex hows and whys surrounding their mysterious creation and their purpose in the world. Over the course of five years, Orphan Black took us on a journey into some of the seediest corners of Science, where the line between fact and fiction is often paper thin, along the way calling into question the very concepts of individual identity and body autonomy which we take for granted. At it's heart however, Orphan Black is a story about the struggles of these women to unravel the mystery of their creation and define their own sense of self as more than just lab rats in some experiment.

Before we delve into the ending of this wonderful show, we must go back to the beginning in which we're first introduced to Sarah Manning, a leather jacket clad British street urchin who's just returned to Canada after several years adrift in the world. We first meet Sarah as she's pulling into a train station, presumably somewhere in Canada. Later, on the train platform, while Sarah's on a payphone talking to another woman about seeing someone named Kira, she sees a woman further down the platform in apparent distress. Sarah watches as the woman paces the platform in tears and then slowly removes her shoes and jacket, leaving them on the platform near her purse. As Sarah approaches the woman from behind, she suddenly turns around, bringing Sarah face to face with her own face staring back at her. While Sarah stares in stunned amazement, the woman suddenly throws herself in front of an oncoming train, to Sarah's horror. Right out of the gate, Orphan Black hooks you with this intense opening and takes you on a wild trip into a labyrinthine world of shady corporations, conspiracies and clones.

Over the course of the next couple episodes, Sarah slowly learns that the train jumper, Beth, is not her long lost twin but is in fact only one of several identical copies of her. As season 1 progresses we gradually meet the group of clones who'll come to make up the heart of the show. In addition to Sarah, the scrappy orphan with the sordid past who's trying to sort out her life in order to be there for her daughter Kira, we soon meet Cosima, the show's big hearted resident geek girl and evolutionary biologist who's determined to understand the science behind their creation, Allison Hendrix, the tightly wound suburban housewife with a love of musical theater and an itchy trigger finger, Helena, the bleach blonde Ukranian assassin with a passion for sweets and finally, Rachael Duncan, a self-aware clone since birth who sits at the head of the Dyad Corporation, a shady scientific conglomerate with deep ties to the cloning world. These are only the core group of clones in Orphan Black and along the way we meet at least eight more clones, all portrayed in singular fashion by the chameleonic Maslany.

Once Sarah learns of the existence of her clone sisters, they work together to uncover the reasons behind their conception and learn just how deep the conspiracy to control their bodies and lives really goes. From the start, the show served as a powerful warning not only of the pitfalls of unrestrained scientific experimentation, but also and perhaps more importantly, a compelling statement on the ways in which an individual's sense of identity can be manipulated and controlled by powerful, external forces. Whereas these women once believed themselves to be wholly unique, autonomous beings with the power to define themselves and their lives, they come to learn how their lives have been secretly monitored and controlled since birth with even their genes being patented and owned. Upon discovering that they're little more than lab rats in some elaborate experiment, the sisters take it upon themselves to expose this far reaching scientific conspiracy, one which takes them deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole with each succeeding episode.

The show perfectly married creepy pseudo-science with plenty of pulse pounding action, suspense, intrigue and black humor, but the heart of the show always remained the "sestras", as they became known, and their united quest to free themselves from the frightening control of their numerous makers and masters in order to define their own identities and sense of purpose. Over the course of five years, we watched as they fought against and outmaneuvered their enemies, laughed with them in rare moments of joy and cried with them in the throes of tragedy, shared in their triumphs and suffered their devastating losses, all in their struggle to be free of those who see them as nothing more than property to be controlled and exploited.

Through the magic of television and storytelling as well as Tatiana Maslany's unparalleled ability to fully inhabit these characters and imbue them with distinctive and endearing characteristics, all of us in Clone Club came to love the "sestras" and their extended family as our own. Their myriad struggles held a mirror up to our own desire to be able to cast off restrictive social labels and define ourselves however we want. The show and it's endearing characters reminded us that no one else can tell us who we are, what our value is or what we're able to do. It showed us time and time again that, like the sestras themselves, we are greater than the sum of our individual parts and collectively we make up the full spectrum of human diversity. This is more important than ever in an age when technology has already begun providing us the means as well as the motivation to regulate and control the human body.  Like all great Science Fiction and to a greater extent all great drama, Orphan Black, through it's wonderfully weird prism, succeeded in shining a light upon the fundamental aspects of our own vast humanity.

Although the epic saga of these clone sisters may have come to an end, the legacy of the show lives on in the countless members of clone club who were brought together from so many divergent walks of life by its message of individual identity and shared humanity. This is a testament to the enduring power of this weird little show and the passion and love that went into every second of making it.  Much like the sestras of Orphan Black, bound by their shared experiences, the members of clone club will always be bound by their love for the show and the characters who became like members of a secret little family. For those of us who bought the ticket and took the strange trip through the bizarre and beautiful world of Orphan Black, it's a story that will always hold a special spot in our hearts.