ICE CITY

'Ice City' always gives me a chill when I watch it. Whenever it snows I have an urge to dig out my tapes and watch a few episodes with a hot cup of coco.

Leonard Rekker (played by Winston Keller) is literally following in his great grandfather's footsteps when he travels to the Antarctic. His great grandfather was an explorer whose logs indicate he found a city, frozen in ice.

Years later in 1998, the year the program was broadcast, Leonard has returned to investigate. His team of explorers are stunned when they do indeed find the city only to recognises it as a copy of modern day New York, NY. Well, almost modern day, it appears to be frozen at someone point two years in the future.

Over two seasons Leonard led a team of scientists, trying to establish how a copy of New York, complete with its population could be found frozen in ice hundreds of years before. This copy was soon nick named Ice City.

This mystery was told in parallel with the consequences of the discovery on the current citizens of New York. These were very human dramas as they learnt where they would be in two years and pondered whether they were fated to become frozen along with the city.

The series made good use of New York city and used impressive special effects to create a convincing duplicate in the snowy wastes of the Antarctic. Some times all it took was a blue light to gives shots an icy appearance.

Ice City was often criticised for being slow moving but for the dedicated viewer the program explored some very deep themes. It asked what would be the lasting legacy of our actions by offering a lingering snap shot of a city.

The sense of dread increased in each episode as each story opened and closed with the amount of time left before New York was fated to be frozen and sent back in time.

The final episode showed the inevitable. The final scenes showing the sea rushing in to fill the space left by the city and then Leonard's great grandfather finding the city in the 18th century was certainly memorable.

SELECTED EPISODES:

Destiny
Leonard oversees an attempt to unfreeze one of the people in Ice City. Little do they know that the man in question, school teacher Austin Lockehead, has decided to leave the city with his family to avoid the fate that awaits them.
In the following weeks Austin is deeply unhappy with his surroundings and reluctantly returns to New York, ready to embrace whatever was going to happen.
Meanwhile the unfreezing attempt fails, causing Austin's frozen body to shatter.

The Coldest Case
Police detective Kate O'Reily (played by Emma Bleak) is giving a must perplexing case. Exploration of Ice City has revealed a murder scene and she is assigned to break the case, one year and five months before it happens.
The consequences on the suspects, especially the victim of the murder are soul shattering and lead Kate to question her faith.

Vacant Lot
Mapping Ice City they discover that one building is missing. Kate O'Reily is sent to the building where she discovers a top secret time travel experiment that nears completion.
Is this the cause of Ice City and should she put a stop to their experiment?

TRIVIA:

The program led to a popular range of Ice City lollipops. Miniature models of New York in a variety of fruit flavours including lemon, strawberry and tomato.

Many of the scenes of Ice City were filmed in industrial sized freezers. This nearly led to disaster when the door to one such freezer became stuff and nearly half the cast had to be treated for hypothermia.

A snow storm struck New York in 1999 allowing the makers of the program to get excellent footage of the city under a deep layer of snow.