Interesting idea.
sf/f TV development news - 2015
- Thread starter Enterprise is Great
- Start date
Before I read the description in the box, I saw the first line and thought, "Sector General? Cool."
By the way, thanks for always posting these items, Enterprise is Great! There's usually something that piques my interest every time I enter this thread and that's almost entirely due to your updates and news.
By the way, thanks for always posting these items, Enterprise is Great! There's usually something that piques my interest every time I enter this thread and that's almost entirely due to your updates and news.
I second that. I always read this thread and appreciate the info, even if I don't respond. Thank you. 
A bit disappointing to see DeKay going from six years as an FBI agent to... another FBI agent. He's got much more versatility than that.
I do agree with on the FBI thing, but I will still be glad to see Dekay on a weekly basis if the show is good. The show is almost starting to remind me a little bit of the short lived Now and Again starring a pre-24 Dennis Haysbert, and a pre-Without a Trace Eric Close.
The show followed a insurance executive and family man (played by John Goodman) who dies and has his brain transplanted by a scientist (Haysbert) into a new younger body (Close). He then has to go on secret missions for the government.
The show followed a insurance executive and family man (played by John Goodman) who dies and has his brain transplanted by a scientist (Haysbert) into a new younger body (Close). He then has to go on secret missions for the government.
^Yeah, I remember Now and Again. Interesting premise, but I never really got into it. For one thing, it was a waste to get an actor of Goodman's caliber for one episode and then replace him with the blander Close. For another, it was stupid that the guy was told his family would be killed if he contacted them, and then he immediately tried to contact them. And when his keeper found out he'd contacted them, he failed to follow through on his threat to kill them, rendering him ineffectual. And really, if they didn't want him to contact his family, why keep him in the same city? Why not move the experiment to some remote location? So it had some good character drama and humor, but the holes in the premise just sank it for me.
Falling Water sounds like it has potential.
As a huge fan of the Mike Carey comic I was quite looking forward to seeing Lucifer developed for a TV series.
Then I read that he'd be a consultant for the LAPD helping a Homicide Detective solve crimes and punish criminals and my interest suddenly evaporated.
If they make a Pilot, I'll watch as it's not fair to judge something without actually seeing it but the idea that this is going to be a police procedural style show (because there aren't enough of those about as it is) with some "Supernatural" trappings just comes across as disappointing.
I'm not expecting a page by page translation of the comic but the LAPD angle just strikes me as derivative. Or maybe "safe" is a better word. Cop shows do seem to be ever popular so this may be something to get a mainstream audience to watch but this one I feel should have gone to somewhere like HBO or Showtime.
Though I suppose time will tell, and truth be told I didn't have high hopes for Constantine but that (after a rough start) started moving in the right direction. Don't get me wrong it doesn't come close to the source material (I still feel that it would have had a better (re: darker) "vibe" if they'd set it in the UK as we don't have many decent TV-worthy comic protagonists that aren't based solely in America).
I'll try and reserve judgement on the Lucifer series but based on what I've read so far I won't get my hopes up
Then I read that he'd be a consultant for the LAPD helping a Homicide Detective solve crimes and punish criminals and my interest suddenly evaporated.
If they make a Pilot, I'll watch as it's not fair to judge something without actually seeing it but the idea that this is going to be a police procedural style show (because there aren't enough of those about as it is) with some "Supernatural" trappings just comes across as disappointing.
I'm not expecting a page by page translation of the comic but the LAPD angle just strikes me as derivative. Or maybe "safe" is a better word. Cop shows do seem to be ever popular so this may be something to get a mainstream audience to watch but this one I feel should have gone to somewhere like HBO or Showtime.
Though I suppose time will tell, and truth be told I didn't have high hopes for Constantine but that (after a rough start) started moving in the right direction. Don't get me wrong it doesn't come close to the source material (I still feel that it would have had a better (re: darker) "vibe" if they'd set it in the UK as we don't have many decent TV-worthy comic protagonists that aren't based solely in America).
I'll try and reserve judgement on the Lucifer series but based on what I've read so far I won't get my hopes up
Here's the thing, though... There are a lot of series that start out looking like conventional case-of-the-week procedurals, but then evolve into something much more complex and challenging (e.g. Dollhouse or Constantine). So I've formulated this theory that the first few episodes of a show are about selling it to the network suits, camouflaging it as something safe and conventional to reassure them, and that it's only afterward, once it's established itself, that the show starts to ease toward becoming what the creators intended it to be.
I suppose it's as much about the general audience as the network execs, though. Although many of us are drawn to more challenging or offbeat ideas, huge numbers of viewers do prefer more conventional procedurals, cop shows, and the like. That's why such shows are so successful and ubiquitous. So a show often has to start out in a more conventional mold in order to attract that general audience, and then, once the audience is invested in the characters and the world, the writers start easing the audience in to the more complex or daring stuff. So, say, Orphan Black started out with its lead character impersonating a cop so that it would look like a police procedural for the first few weeks, but it soon blew that status quo out the window and never looked back. Or Agents of SHIELD started out as a more "grounded" procedural show about government agents investigating weird phenomena, but now is embracing its comic/superhero roots more openly. And The CW started out with the more "grounded" Arrow, about protagonists without superpowers fighting gangsters and corrupt businessmen, but now has expanded the universe and brought in superpowers and sci-fi concepts with a vengeance in The Flash.
So it's all about starting off safe to avoid scaring off the norms, and then gradually easing them into the fun stuff once they're hooked. Genre shows use that pattern over and over. So when I see a description of a new show that says it's going to be a case-of-the-week procedural, I don't take it too seriously. I expect the showrunners to have deeper plans for it once they've established themselves.
