Smallville has the basic story of Clark Kent/Superman down, and it's done a pretty good job of throwing in a lot of details and homages from the comics and filmed works. Sure it's taken a few liberties here and there, but so has every other version of Superman. Even the comics have been reworked and updated.
Well, so far I don't see any respect in which this pilot deviates from WW's comics history as much as Smallville does Supes'.
I'm surprised what a short memory people have. It's only in the past four years or so that Smallville has really embraced the comic-book characters and situations. For the first half of its existence, it was avoiding those things as much as possible and focusing mainly on teen romance, school, and kryptonite mutants. And whether an individual show has been more or less faithful is not the point. The point is that each different production team for each different network is going to have its own different goals and priorities for how to adapt a comic book into a television series. If the CW had commissioned a Wonder Woman show and told its developers to come up with something like Smallville (or like Smallville is now, which is a radically different show from what it was like in its first few seasons), then that's what they would've done. But this WW show is for a different network, from a different showrunner who's well-known for his own distinctive voice, and is coming along in a different media landscape, a full decade after Smallville began. So it stands to reason that they're going to be two very different shows from each other, regardless of their respective fidelity to the comics.
It was, and I understand that it was supposed to be a teen drama first and foremost, but even then, the core concept of Superman's story was there. Clark, raised by the Kents on a farm in Smallville, with a girl at school named Lana Lang. Given that the show was about Clark's formative years, you didn't need much else. If anything a lot of the familiar Superman stuff was brought in earlier than expected. I don't mean to get off topic, I just take issue with the idea that Smallville is some ultra radical departure from all things Superman to the point where it's a completely separate story. Not that you went that far with your comment, but a lot of people do feel that way and I think it's overblown. Anyway, I can see this new Wonder Woman show taking a similar path if it gets a long run. It'll be a David E. Kelley drama that just happens to feature the Wonder Woman character and some of it's supporting material. And should it progress, I can see more and more elements of Wonder Woman lore brought in and brought to the forefront, such as Paradise Island and maybe some more fantastical villains, but done in a more grounded way. It could very well evolve back into "Wonder Woman" as Kelley and the audience become more comfortable with the material.
^That would be a reasonable way of approaching it. But it would still have its own distinct flavor and identity. It's not going to be another Smallville.
I just skipped to the last page of the thread so I don't know if this has been covered yet, but there was a bit about the show in TV Guide, and it says she'll have 3 identities: Diana Prince, Diana Themyscira CEO of Themyscira industries and Wonder Woman. It also says that she's trying to find her way back to Paradise Island. So it sounds like Paradise Island will at least be a part of the backstory, even if it doesn't appear at first.
The more I see of the costume, the more I start to like it. I just realized, if this makes it, it'll be the first comic book superhero(ine) show on one of the big networks in a long time.
Don't write off the first shiny costume so fast, folks... http://spinoff.comicbookresources.c...der-woman-will-wear-three-different-costumes/
They could be like "boy shorts" The first page of images will give you the idea if you don't already know.