Signal (2016) Review

By Rachel Keenan

‘If you received a radio message from the past, what would you do?’

Time travel is a concept that is frequently reused and recycled in media, both in the modern and in older fiction. Some immediate examples that come to mind include Tenet directed by Christopher Nolan, Kindred by Octavia Butler, This is How We Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone or, one of the first time travel narratives, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. The time travel narrative plots usually have one thing in common, the question, if we change the past can we change or fix the future? This comes from either a selfish standpoint or one that focuses on the betterment of the human race.

These narratives are usually hopeful and show that things can get better by putting the past into a clearer perspective or changing it completely. The better future that the characters aspire to is presented as being achievable in most fiction, with a few exceptions. However, many time travel narratives do not focus on the negative consequences of changing the past have on the future. Furthermore, many of these texts become deeply focused on the future aspect of the narrative rather than the time travel itself.

Signal is technically not a time travel narrative, as the characters do not move between time. Instead, the plot focuses on two detectives, a criminal profiler called Park Hae-Young and a detective called Lee Jae-Han, who are temporally located in 2015 and 1989 respectively. Hae-Young discovers an old police radio that allows him to talk to Jae-Han in the past for a few minutes on an infrequent schedule. These brief discussions help them realise that they are talking to each other through time. At the beginning, both detectives want to use the radio to solve criminal cases, whether that be current cases in Jae-Han’s time or cold cases in Hae-Young’s time. Despite solving cases, both detectives begin to realise that the changes made to the past or present through solving the casesare not all positive, as the consequences often cause as much harm as good. Both detectives eventually decide that they never should have used the radio in the first place.

Despite the series not being a time travel narrative in the normal sense, it still carries many of the same themes such as, the desire to revise mistakes in order to make the future better. However, the series has particular focus on the realities of changing the past as it forces the characters and viewer toweigh up the consequences of the changes made actions. This is made even more powerful through the grounded nature of the show despite it being (arguably) placed in the fantasy genre. The series forces the viewer to consider impossible moral questions regarding who should live and who is allowed to die in order for crimes to be solved. The series further hauntingly grounds itself in morbid reality, with many of the criminal cases explored in the series, being inspired by real infamous South Korean cases from the time. An example of this is the Hwaseong serial murders, which is one of the very first cases presented in the series. In reality, these murder cases were never prosecuted, with the murderer being only convicted for one of the murders. The show grapples with many Korean laws and problematises some of them, such as the statute of limitations, which is demonstrated to be a majorissue for the cold case police team in the show. With almost uncanny foresight, despite the show releasing in 2016, the serial killer admitted his crimes in 2019 but could not be punished as the statute of limitations had expired.

The series itself not only benefits from the incredibly powerful writing by Kim Eun Hee, but it delivers in all other areas too. The direction, cinematography and editing aresuperb. One of my favourite aspects of the show is the way that it differentiates between the scenes in 2015 and the scenes in 1989. In 2015, the viewer is presented with the standard colouring and aspect ratio, but when the episode cuts to 1989 the viewer is presented with a narrower aspect ratio, grainier shots and a darker colouring that is reminiscent of the style of tv series from the period. Furthermore, the acting is incredible, with the main cast displaying an impressive range of emotions that makes the viewer emphasise whole heartedly with their desire to try to ‘fix’ the past despite the knowledge that their actions don’t always have positive consequences.

It is not surprising that this series is one of the highest rated tv dramas in South Korea, with powerful messages about SouthKorean laws at the time delivered through some real-lifescenarios. It also delivers an interesting take on the time travel narrative in a setting so realistic that it almost makes you uncomfortable with the knowledge of what could be or could have been. It presents the consequences of time travel as unpredictable and uncontrollable, even if you have the best of intentions, with the characters frequently stating their regretabout using the radio despite the good that they have achieved.

There is no season two yet, but I still hold out hope that one day I will find a magic radio to the past in order to convince Kim Eun-Hee to write season two… Or maybe this show tells us that changing that past would never truly ‘fix’ the future.

Bibliography

Signal, dir. by Kim Won Suk (tvN, 2016)