On Riverworld (the Syfy miniseries) and To Your Scattered Bodies Go (the first novel in the Riverworld series)

The Riverworld is a strange place, a place of resurrection, of second chances. The novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Phillip Jose Farmer is a very interesting science fiction book in that it's unlike anything I'd ever encountered before as far as the story goes, I mean, a massive planet containing every human being and ancestor ever born after the split from the Great Apes resurrected on a planet that is one long river valley at the prime age of 25 and no longer age? How weird and novel is that? Also interestingly, Farmer decided to take an historical figure as his protagonist as well as several who would become antagonists. The protagonist? Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer extraordinaire and perhaps most well known for his translating and bringing the Kama Sutra from India back to the West. Burton being a man of charm and vast intelligence quickly rose to prominence, leading a group of people (including a pre-human and a humanoid alien who believes he was responsible for the destruction of Earth in the early 21st Century) through the Riverworld on a boat of their creation.

Eventually after approximately 5 years of sailing upRiver, amassing knowledge, including that you will be resurrected again somewhere else along the River should you die, and encountering many small "nations" of slavers and an equal number of peaceable nations they were finally captured by none other than Hermann Goring, Hitler's number 2, and a Roman whose name I forget. After much planning and plotting Burton and friends mount a prison break of epic proportions, killing Goring and almost all of the rest of the slavers, but they soon discover that everything is not as it seems, as the beings responsible for the creation of the Riverworld and resurrection of humanity (the Ethicals) are searching for Burton for his unique knowledge of having an early awakening, pre-resurrection. A rogue Ethical has conscripted Burton for this knowledge to find the source of the River to stop the Ethicals plans. He is nearly captured on several occasions but is able to escape by riding the "Suicide Express" as many call it, to go somewhere else along the Rivervalley.

The novel ends with Burton being reunited with some of his friends after the Ethicals believe they have wiped his mind of his pre-resurrection memories, though the rogue Ethical stopped that from happening and the group decides to sail upRiver yet again to find the source of the River and confront the Ethicals.

The miniseries is a strange beast. I saw it before I read the novel and had no idea what the novel would be like based on the series. The writers created a brand new character in Matt Ellman chosen by one of The Caretakers to stop a villainous Sir Richard Francis Burton from reaching the source and doing something untoward by "killing" him. Already I have serious problems with this as it has already been established within the series that he will just be resurrected somewhere else along the river. Ellman also claims at this point that he is not a murderer and after being captured by Francisco Pizarro, who is aiding Burton in his quest (chosen by a rogue Caretaker) to destroy the Riverworld. After escaping his cage in Pizarro's fort and meeting with Samuel Clemens (yes, he's here too, in fact, he's the focus of the second novel The Fabulous Riverboat, which I'm currently reading) he proceeds to murder(!) a bunch of guards to rescue his friends. He is soon revisited by the Caretaker that chose him and again told her that he wasn't a killer... ... wait, what? Seriously? You just put an axe into a bunch of people's backs and that doesn't make you a killer? Someone's clearly in denial. At any rate the Caretaker tells him that he must kill him to stop him, despite the big elephant in the room that he'll just be resurrected and that the Caretaker can't help him because it's against their laws to interfere. Matt then gets capture by a group of rogue Caretakers and is tortured by them... wait what? I thought they couldn't interfere, well, maybe that only applies to the non-rogue Caretakers, but are you telling me that the rogue group is so vast that you can't even uphold your own laws? If that's what you're telling me then why aren't you the rogue group seeing that you're the minority and can't even carry out your authority?

At any rate, Matt gets rescued and I'm pretty sure he snaps a rogue Caretakers neck... but he's still not a killer... whatever. Matt also suffers from flashbacks to a time in some unnamed (I think) probably East European Bloc country with his cameraman buddy while he reports on some civilian killing or some such nonsense that is pretty forgettable. Matt and crew finally get to the source with the help of an airship built by the man who built or designed the Hindenburg as Burton stole Sam's boat. Matt and his Japanese lady samurai friend Tomoe head in and kill some people and once again Matt still isn't a killer... Tomoe is killed and Matt continues on alone to confront Burton and is finally reunited with Jessie, his girlfriend before they died and then it is revealed that while in that unnamed country he SPOILERS killed a little girl by running her over in a truck while saving his friends life. So he really was in denial, even after killing a bunch of people on screen. Anyway, Burton destroys some Caretaker ship that appears to be loosely based on a ship written about in the novel and Matt and friends are reunited on Sam's boat after 7 years of searching for everyone. The miniseries ends with Burton and Jessie waking up in their version of the pre-resurrection room from the novel with the rogue Caretaker smiling for some reason.

I'm really not sure why the miniseries decided to not make any sense, but it doesn't make any sense. There are a few serious problems, mainly how by killing Burton, Matt can save Riverworld, despite real death not existing; it's only a stop-gap, a stalemate, like an unrelenting foe who will show up somewhere else entirely on a planet with a river 20 million miles long if you kill him. It just seems like a really dumb idea. I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot more before I read the novel and you can definitely enjoy it if you don't pay any attention to what's going on, but without a second installment to wrap up the stupid, confusing last scene there's no reason to watch it, but the novel is a much more worthwhile investment of time.