sf/f TV development news - 2013

[Borgminister]

This sounds a bit too much like Touch in a sense. Especially if those powers don't manifest for 7 years. Hm.

[Temis the Vorta]

Borgminister wrote:

---

This sounds a bit too much like Touch in a sense. Especially if those powers don't manifest for 7 years. Hm.

How many viewers are going to have the patience to wait for something that's going to happen seven seasons from now, on the very slim chance that it doesn't get cancelled before then. Why even bother with a premise like this?

So many of the pilots this year sound like insta-flops, very similar to shows that have been flopping this season. You'd think given the depressing ratings situation overall (NBC losing the #4 slot to Univision, The History Channel kicking networks' butt in the demo - just two recent canaries in the coal mine), the networks would be swinging for the fences more, but this year is even more boring and vanilla than last year.

More and more, I hear about people simply not bothering to watch broadcast at all (I've stopped entirely) and planning to see shows that survive long enough to have a full season under their belt. Some network needs to break out of the pack by coming up with some dazzing, very-different premise for a series and then announcing, fuck the Nielsens, we'll show the whole season regardless of what happens.

That alone would break through the clutter and grab some attention. Something similar is a big reason why Netflix got so much attention for House of Cards - simply that it was doing something different, and showing it respected the audience's wishes (to binge or not to binge, the audience had the power,not the network).

Of course the other big fact was that House of Cards was genuinely quite good. So the network that tried this would actually have to deliver. But there's nothing about House of Cards that couldn't have worked just as well under FCC rules. Just tone down the language and sex (which were not vital to the story). Not saying that a political thriller is the way to go, but it needs to be good enough quality to impress people.

[DarthTom]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

More and more, I hear about people simply not bothering to watch broadcast at all (I've stopped entirely) and planning to see shows that survive long enough to have a full season under their belt. Some network needs to break out of the pack by coming up with some dazzing, very-different premise for a series and then announcing, fuck the Nielsens, we'll show the whole season regardless of what happens.

The broadcast networks, and I think they'd agree are to some degree prevented by FCC regulations from producing edgy programming.

Lets use Revolution as a great example. It's a good show IMO with a good premise but because the FCC restricts what NBC can broadcast in terms of content they simply don't have a chance to create a runaway hit as The Wakling Dead has with a very similar premise in terms of an apocalypse occuring.

Edited to add: I'd wager the succes of the HS series The Bible had a lot to do with Christian folks being told it was on at church at to tune in

[Christopher]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

How many viewers are going to have the patience to wait for something that's going to happen seven seasons from now, on the very slim chance that it doesn't get cancelled before then. Why even bother with a premise like this?

Countless TV series over the decades have been about characters pursuing goals that wouldn't be achieved until the very end of the series if at all, because the quests were just excuses to motivate the characters' adventures. Usually it's an open-ended quest -- find the one-armed man, get off the island, get back to Earth/the present/the Alpha Quadrant, find a cure for the Hulk/the invisibility gland, eventually become Superman, etc. But sometimes there's a set time limit that's equivalent to the expected series run -- the Babylon 5 sequel Crusade, for example, had a 5-year deadline to save the Earth (although apparently it wasn't meant to take that long). War of the Worlds: The Series, in its first season, established that a larger alien invasion fleet would arrive in less than five years -- just in time for an epic series finale (though this was abandoned by the retooled second season). The X-Files's mythology arc involved an impending alien invasion in 2012, IIRC -- well beyond the life expectancy of the series.

And then there was the 1965 Run for Your Life, about a man who learned he had no more than 18 months to live and spent the series fulfilling what we'd now call a bucket list. The show ran for three seasons and just ignored the question of how much time had passed. So you don't want to have your series deadline come too early. (See also M*A*S*H, an 11-year series about a 3-year war.)

In this case, it sounds like the focus is not so much on the girl's powers, but on the mission to protect her from those who want to destroy her or use her for their own ends. The storyline might involve the gradual emergence of her powers, something like, perhaps, Olivia's journey on Fringe as she gradually became aware of what she was capable of. Maybe it could have a Smallville-ish vibe too, not in the sense of having active superpowers, but more in the sense of training for/struggling to accept a great destiny.

[Enterprise is Great]

Michael Irby & Mackenzie Crook Join Fox’s Bad Robot Pilot

Michael Irby (The Unit) and Brit Mackenzie Crook (Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise) have been cast in Fox‘s untitled Bad Robot/J.H. Wyman drama pilot (formerly Inhuman). The buddy cop show, from Warner Bros. TV, is set in the near future when all LAPD officers are partnered with highly evolved human-like androids. It centers on one such pairing, cop John Kennex and his android partner Dorian (Michael Ealy). Irby, plays top LAPD Detective Richard Paul who blames Kennex for the death of fellow officers in the tragic mission that casts a pall over the department. Crook will play Rudy Lom, the eccentric and underpaid designer of the LAPD’s robotics squad.

[Temis the Vorta]

The CW has found its tragic alien boyfriend - Matt Lanter. And the CW's latest 30 year old high school student. Maybe aliens mature more quickly?

...the network has tapped series co-star Matt Lanter as the male lead in its pilot Oxygen. The CW brass moved very quickly after the 90210 cancellation to offer Lanter Oxygen, and a deal was closed. The project, written by Meredith Averill and directed by Gary Fleder, centers on Emery (Aimee Teegarden), a teen girl who falls in love with Roman (Lanter), an alien boy, one of nine of his kind integrated into a suburban high school.

He's the voice of Anakin Skywalker so of course he's an alien. Here's hoping that whole romance thing goes better this time around.

[sojourner]

Well, that sounds sooo transparently a Twilight rip-off.

[mos6507]

Christopher wrote:

---

(See also M*A*S*H, an 11-year series about a 3-year war.)

I think Smallville is almost as bad as far as time-warping, if not worse because the characters are supposed to look like kids, not 30-somethings.

[Enterprise is Great]

Seth Gabel Joins ABC’s ‘Gothica’

Gabel will play Roderick Usher, the district attorney and heir to the once-powerful Usher family who is carrying secrets.

[Christopher]

mos6507 wrote:

---

I think Smallville is almost as bad as far as time-warping, if not worse because the characters are supposed to look like kids, not 30-somethings.

That's a different issue. The events of the series were indeed claimed to span ten years. Regardless of the actors' ages, Clark was supposed to be in his mid-teens when the series started and his mid-twenties when it ended. So that's not time compression or inconsistency, just Dawson Casting.

[xortex]

JJ is turning into a litter bug.

I saw something about a show or novel about clones, or robots. Can anyone just tell me about the former, and if there is anything interesting out there lately about the latter?

[Temis the Vorta]

Robots are interesting. Clones are not.

I dunno what it is about clones, but I've yet to see a TV series or movie based on them that I found worthwhile. Even SW: The Clone Wars is interesting for everything but the clones. I just kinda zone out when the episodes focus on them. (Usually still worth watching for the gorgeous artwork anyway. Love those crazy alien worlds!)

[Enterprise is Great]

Melissa George To Star In ABC’s ‘Gothica’, Nicholas Gonzalez Joins ‘The Returned’

[Kegg]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

---

Robots are interesting. Clones are not.

I dunno what it is about clones, but I've yet to see a TV series or movie based on them that I found worthwhile.

Not a Moon fan, huh.

[Temis the Vorta]

Not so much a fan of the plotline but I did like Sam Rockwell's performance. Also liked Jeffrey Combs performance as various Weyoun clones, but that was more for his personality than the fact of him being a clone. The clone thing was invented as an excuse to bring back Combs after they killed him off.

The clone schitck does give a good actor a chance to play two different roles, but an evil-mirror-universe-twin scenario would do the same.

My problem with clones is that they're not very sci fi considering that there are millions running around planet Earth right now, and have been for eons: identical twins.

Waitaminute, I though of one scenario I liked...when Crichton was cloned. That was good. I liked that they didn't designate one of the clones as the "real" one, which implied the real Crichton died.