Syfy airlocked Fuller's potential series ''High Moon'', but has scheduled the pilot to air-a rarity these days, on Monday Sept 15 at 9/8pm Central. With a bounty of scripted series in the pipeline, Syfy decided to pass on the project-or was it eclipsed by the newcomers? A 3 minute clip can be viewed at Blastr.
Strange that so many of Fuller's unsuccessful pilots get aired: his Munsters reboot, the Amazing Screw-On Head, this. Offhand, the only other recent producer/creator that comes close to matching his failed pilot airings is probably Ron Moore with Virtuality and Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome.* I'm a huge fan of Fuller's other projects so I'll definitely be checking this out. *Broadcasting aborted series pilots used to be a common practice in television -- especially during the summer months -- but this seems to have fallen out of fashion in the last few decades. I'm curious as to why this is.
I think it's because the concept of the "special" in general has fallen by the wayside. We no longer get TV movies or one-time specials, except on some cable networks. Most everything is just ongoing series.
Has anybody else seen it? I thought it was pretty interesting, if perhaps a bit too cutesy. I didn't expect Fuller to bring so much of his "Pushing Daisies" style to this show. I really liked "Pushing Daisies," but it's a strange fit for a space opera show. Nevertheless, I would have liked to see more of this show - though I can see why Syfy would be unsure about its mainstream appeal. In case you were wondering whether this works as a stand-alone "tv movie"... it doesn't. It's quite clearly an open-ended pilot that doesn't resolve any of its mysteries or character arcs.
I gave up on it after 42 minutes. Fuller didn't script it himself, and the dialogue attempted to mimic his quirky style but just ended up being awkward, forced, and ridiculous. The acting was mediocre, the story meandering, and the treatment of vacuum and gravity was horrible. (So much sound in the total vacuum of the lunar surface! Arrrrgghhhh!! Has nobody seen Gravity? That's how you do sound design in space! Not to mention the ridiculous scene where that British-accented woman was floating weightlessly down the aisle of the 2001-ripoff spaceplane and holding a drink that was very clearly under Earth gravity -- and then she sat down in a chair. What???)
There was a weird mix of artificial gravity and hand waving going on during the whole movie. Christopher, you should have stuck with it. The second half did get some fun stuff in.
Cable splintered the market, so there aren't as many 'dead' periods. And several of the bigger cable networks (USA, TNT, FX, AMC, etc) have had success with slotting in 10-13 episode mini-seasons during the old dead periods (summer, around xmas, feb-april). Networks have started running their own summer shows to compete, so not so many slots to burn off the unwanted pilots. Plus if you decided it wasn't going to be worth going to series, how many 'bad' shows do you want to air? Not going to get views or build an audience, what's the upside?
Ow, my head. I can't fault Syfy for passing on this. The purpose of a pilot film is to make the network interested in picking up the series. The script worked overtime to do just the opposite. Echoing Christopher, they strained to emulate the whimsical of a Pushing Daisies, but everything simply fell flat. I can't see where a regular series would've gone with this. The only characters I cared for were the hands, and just barely at that. An expensive project to take on, but it was a muddled, confusing mess, trying to be fun and hip, and failing at every turn.
The upside is that you at least get some return on the money you spent to make the show. If it gets aired, then it has commercials, and the advertisers pay for that commercial time, which helps offset the cost of production. And it saves you from having to spend more money to make or acquire something else to fill that hour or two of the schedule. These days, though, networks seem to be willing to settle for taking a loss on the expense of a pilot.
I just watched it, wow that was terrible. The whole opening gave me hope, but it was crushed pretty quickly. I'm sorry, the acting was beyond mediocre. Were they reading off cue cards? Because it was beyond amateurish. The story was stupid and meandered. I actually rolled my eyes when the T-Rex showed up. If you read that and now are intrigued, its not worth your time to watch or my time to explain. Hopefully I can forget this sometime soon, I'm dumber for watching it.
I think this was worth watching. There's the usual Fuller-esque touch. I don't think it's perfect, but would have definitely continued watching the pilot. This movie just leaves me wanting to know more about the world. Why in the heck wouldn't China be on the moon, but Brazil/India? There's just so few space-based SciFi.
It was very strange and difficult to follow. I don't think I would enjoy much more of it. When the guy got blown up off the moon and then immediately crashed down onto the moon surface, my husband asked me why I was yelling at the tv....again. I do that a lot actually, but this show just did all sorts of dumb things.