Melea Tate
Played (in trailer) by Brynn Tucker
Melea is a cold-blooded assassin who kills bad guys for her living. Rough around the edges, she’s quick to speak her mind and is not one to waste words. At times, she can be hard and standoffish, but she can also be very warm and caring to those closest to her. She’s had a tough life, starting with losing her father to suicide when she was only 12. Since then, her every movement has been dictated by her ‘death dreams,’ those unpredictable, violent visions of future mass murders that she’s forced – during sleep – to witness again and again. With each new dream comes the tireless routine of locating the would-be killers and stopping them before they have an opportunity to strike. And despite the mental and oftentimes physical stress Melea endures with each person she has to kill, she continues on, driven by the endless need to save innocent lives.
Sam Tate
Played (in trailer) by Peter Tanner
When Sam Tate, Melea’s father, was alive, he appeared to be completely human. But he was not. As an infant, he was ‘placed’ on this planet as part of an experiment conducted by ‘The Scientists’ – extraterrestrial life forms who were interested in ending mass losses of life on earth. After his death, Sam appears only in Melea’s ‘death dreams.’ In fact, he is the sole reason that she has her ‘gift of vision.’ Before he committed suicide, he was the one who had the dreams; he was the one who had to travel the country hunting down would-be killers; and he was the one killing the bad guys. But despite the darkness of his work when he was alive, he was a friendly and soft spoken man. And when he comes to Melea in her dreams, he carries with him a calmness that is always in direct contrast with the horrifying images that the dreams bring.
Oscar Stone
Oscar manages the covert team of people who help Melea locate, learn about and plan the death of her targets. His allegiance to her started when they met in high school, but their relationship has always been complicated. They started off as good friends, became lovers, then back to friends. But through it all, Oscar has always been supportive and accepting of Melea’s unusual ‘gift.’ In fact, he offered early on to help her hunt down future killers, knowing full well that what they were doing was undeniably illegal. As a former Marines Special Ops soldier, he’s also the one who has trained Melea to be the lethal assassin that she is today.
Stephanie Barlow
Stephanie’s the team's oneirologist – or dream specialist. Growing up with Melea and watching her struggle with the visions drove Stephanie to study neuroscience and oneirology in college. Once she graduated, she convinced Melea to let her study the dreams. Her goal is – and has always been – to find a way to convert the images from Melea’s dreams into viewable images that any person could see. Once that happens, the images could be given to authorities, leaving it up to them to deal with the future mass murderers.
Ben Li
Benjamin (Ben) is, like Oscar, a former Marines Special Ops soldier. He served with Oscar in Iraq until he was injured by an IED, losing both of his legs. Now wheelchair bound, he has maintained his close friendship with Oscar. Shortly after Ben was sent home, he was brought on to Melea’s team as the computer arm of the operation, with a great deal of his work being to keep Melea and the rest of the team off the grid and under the radar, to lessen the chance of any of them ever getting caught.
Lydia Goodman
Lydia Goodman is the team’s forensic psychologist. She primarily helps Melea by getting into the heads of the would-be murderers so she can generate a profile of them – their mannerisms, thought processes, expected behavioral patterns, etc. Melea uses the profiles to help her determine how best to kill the person. But Lydia always has an ulterior motive, often trying to act as Melea's conscience. They butt heads frequently, with Lydia arguing that therapy, rather than killing, is the best way to stop the would-be murderers.
Matthew Montgomery
Matthew (Matt) Montgomery, as director of the Washington DC division of the Department of Defense, is not officially a part of Melea’s team, but aids their effort still the same. Working only with Oscar, he regularly provides information to help identify Melea’s targets and runs interference at the bureau whenever the operation’s at risk of being exposed.
General Viktor Orlov
General Viktor Orlov is leader of the International Intelligence Service (IIS), a secret government arm of the Russian military. He is on the hunt for Melea, with plans of capturing her, returning her to Russia, and using her ‘special talents’ as a weapon again his country’s enemies. In episode one of “Placed,” we learn that he and Melea have a history, as he had held her in captivity a few years prior. He and his entourage of scientists ran multiple experiments on her, forcing her to stay in a state of unconsciousness for days at a time. And they were not only studying her dreams, but were also studying her brain. From these studies, it was revealed that Melea's brain displayed some abnormal characteristics that were inconsistent with the human brain. Oscar was able to rescue her right before Viktor and his crew were about to perform more invasive exploratory brain surgery that ultimately would have killed her.
Granny B
Granny B is not Samuel’s biological mother. In fact, she doesn’t know who his mother was or if he even had a mother. It was a late Sunday night back in 1957. Granny B was only 22 years old at the time and was tragically already a widow. Her husband, Jonathan Tate, while standing in line at the bank in Cortez, CO, was shot and killed during a robbery gone bad. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She and Jonathan had bought a ranch together when they married and that’s where she was on that night in '57. She was out in her truck, doing a routine check for breaks in the barbed wire fencing. She'd lost too many horses to coyotes that year. It was then that she saw it – a large dark object, 50 yards wide as it was long. It hovered above the ground a couple hundred feet away from her truck. As she slowly drove the truck closer, the object darted straight up and disappeared into the night sky without making a sound. Silence for a bit. Then the sound of crickets. Then the sound of something stirring in the field in front of her. That sound was of an only-days-old baby, lying naked in the tall, prickly grass. That is how Samuel came to be Granny B's son, and she never questioned why she was given this baby. She just accepted him as her own. It wasn’t until Samuel was almost 13 years old when the ‘death dreams’ began. And it wasn’t until the news of a mass murder in neighboring Arizona that matched every detail of one of his dreams that made Samuel and Granny B both realize that he had a ‘special gift’ of vision.