http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118018892.html?categoryid=14&cs=1
A hospital? sounds like part Heroes, X-Men, and part ER.
I'd expect these superheroes rid the city of crime since the guy is from L&O.
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SyFy developing Metadocs series about injured superheroes hospital
- Thread starter jefferiestubes8
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A hospital? sounds like part Heroes, X-Men, and part ER.
I'd expect these superheroes rid the city of crime since the guy is from L&O.
I had an idea a lot like this over a decade ago. Never did anything with it, but it was intriguing to think about. How does such a hospital deal with secret identities? How do they ensure confidentiality and keep their records secure? Do they treat villains as well as heroes? Do the heroes and villains agree to treat the hospital as neutral territory because it's in all their best interests to do so? There are a lot of interesting questions to explore. I look forward to seeing how the show handles them.
More generally, I like the idea of a story that's set in a superhero universe but isn't about the superheroes, and instead is about how people in other walks of life are affected by the existence of superheroes. There was a trace of that in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, but the movie was, well, lousy.
And of course it has obvious appeal for a TV series because you can get by with a more limited budget if you're showing the aftermath of the superbattles rather than the battles themselves. I'm surprised that something like DC's Gotham Central hasn't been done as a TV series yet.
More generally, I like the idea of a story that's set in a superhero universe but isn't about the superheroes, and instead is about how people in other walks of life are affected by the existence of superheroes. There was a trace of that in My Super Ex-Girlfriend, but the movie was, well, lousy.
And of course it has obvious appeal for a TV series because you can get by with a more limited budget if you're showing the aftermath of the superbattles rather than the battles themselves. I'm surprised that something like DC's Gotham Central hasn't been done as a TV series yet.
It's so crazy it could be fun.
Christopher-Have you read The Further Adventures of Batman? There's a great little tale in there by Mike Resnick about a little shop in Gotham that makes things. Special things, for special people. In the story the shop is treated as neutral ground.
This could work. I read a story about a guy (in the anthology Superheroes! who's writing letters back to his mom about being just such a doctor in such a hospital. He talks about the problems he has, day-to-day, and it was hilarious. Like, the Invisible Woman has triplets and the staff spends 6 hours searching for them when some idiot leaves the maternity ward door open...
This could work. I read a story about a guy (in the anthology Superheroes! who's writing letters back to his mom about being just such a doctor in such a hospital. He talks about the problems he has, day-to-day, and it was hilarious. Like, the Invisible Woman has triplets and the staff spends 6 hours searching for them when some idiot leaves the maternity ward door open...
Yeah, ages ago. It was surely an influence on my thinking when I brought up the neutral-ground idea, though I was also thinking of JMS's Spidey story about the tailor who handles heroes and villains on alternate days.
The one thing I hate about this premise is the name. Metadocs? That's ugly. Gotta be something better.
I'm also wondering what a good name for a superhero hospital would be. Good Samaritan seems like an obvious choice, though one would have to take care not to identify it with any real hospital of that name. There are also various saint names that might be fitting. Here's an old thread I started once on another board speculating about who might be the patron saint of superheroes:
http://www.exisle.net/mb/index.php?showtopic=51513
The main location of the show, the hospital?
Um that will work until episode 4 or 5 when just like during the Nielsen Ratings sweeps months of ER the doctors would end up being required to goto the scene of the accident to provide medical attention to the victim. And I can surely see that plot device being reused in a series like this for sweeps months.
I hope they will have nice 2-level sets in the operating rooms with doctor viewing galleries just like Grey's Anatomy. That makes for a great conversation location and also keeps the other superhero characters close to the surgery operation.
Perhaps Metadocs can allow the superhero's confidential friends to view the operations instead of waiting in a waiting room...?
Good question. If we want to stick to a neutral facility that would treat heroes and villains alike, something like Grey Hospital would be appropriate, but I guess it would be off-limits due to the association to the other medical show.
You know, I'd rather they didn't go that route. Superpowered people shouldn't be the only ones who get to have agency in a superhero story. What I like to see are stories where the regular people get to pay the heroes back, show their appreciation. Like the scenes in the first two Spider-Man movies where the ordinary people of New York come to Spidey's defense and stand up to the villain. Or the scene in Superman Returns where the badly injured Superman was taken to the hospital. That was probably my favorite part of that mostly disappointing film.
Doctors and nurses are heroes. They save countless lives. And I think it would be great to show that superpowered crimefighters sometimes need to be saved by ordinary people -- and to show that ordinary people could choose to come to the defense of those crimefighters, rather than just being passive bystanders or pawns in the games of demigods. So I'd much rather see this as something that the staff of a normal hospital chose to undertake on their own initiative, rather than something that had to wait until a superbeing thought of it.
I hope they have a running joke in the pilot where the superhero patients are always telling the doctors, "you're the real hero," and the docs are really, really sick of hearing it.
Sounds like one of those ideas whose time has come. See the "Samaritan X" announcement from March.
Jan
Jan
Maybe a superhero that's now become the Tony Stark/Director of Shield director of the hospital.
I could see a M*A*S*H moment where the best hero(sort of like Superman) dies and the hospital grieves.
Next up, Alien Cop Show and Paranormal Lawyers.
S
Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
Very clever idea. Hopefully the execution doesnt suck balls.
Ambitious idea. They need to create a whole believable society in which superheroes exist - something Heroes never really did - and then just focus on one small subset of that reality, and expand that to fit the larger universe that goes largely untapped except in some writers' bible somewhere.
Dya think skiffy is going to go to all that trouble? Nah. But if/when they don't, we'll know why the show sucks.
Bingo! Let's have a superhero-world story in which the actual superheroes are secondary characters, if that.
Dya think skiffy is going to go to all that trouble? Nah. But if/when they don't, we'll know why the show sucks.
If they try to pitch this to the medical drama crowd, they're going to fail spectacularly. Trying to appeal across genres just results in something that appeals to no one. We already saw a Grey's Anatomy/space opera crossover in Defying Gravity - yuck!
Bingo! Let's have a superhero-world story in which the actual superheroes are secondary characters, if that.
Makes you wonder -- Superman -- a man with skin bullets can't penetrate and fire can't burn ... how do they operate on him, should he come in injured? They cant' cut him open with a knife. And dependong on which incarnation you see, lasers can't get in him either.
Maybe the eye sockets, seeing as how he can cry and lasers can come out of his eyes, so that must be the vulnerable spot on him. Assuming he doesn't crap ;-)
Maybe the eye sockets, seeing as how he can cry and lasers can come out of his eyes, so that must be the vulnerable spot on him. Assuming he doesn't crap ;-)