Minear is awesome. He wrote some of the best episodes of the X-Files, Angel, and Firefly. All had exceptionally good focus on characters.I know nothing about Tim Minear. Hope the guy "gets" Alien Nation.
Whch X-Files episodes did he write?Minear is awesome. He wrote some of the best episodes of the X-Files, Angel, and Firefly. All had exceptionally good focus on characters.I know nothing about Tim Minear. Hope the guy "gets" Alien Nation.
Syfy Creative Director of Original Programming Mark Stern sat with us and talked about the new reboot we're all eagerly awaiting, which is the Tim Minear (Angel, Dollhouse, Firefly) reboot of Alien Nation. And as it turns out, they're still trying to get Quantum Leap back on the air as well.
Ugh. The movie sucked donkey balls. Ken Johnson hated that the movie was just "Miami Vice with coneheads."[FONT=Trebuchet MS]NEWCOMERS AMONG US:[/FONT] What do you see as the difference between what you do with Alien Nation and what Ken Johnson did with Alien Nation?
TIM MINEAR: When Fox 21 approached me and said they had the property, they were really talking about the movie, and so that's what I returned to and concentrated on. Though Ken Johnson was one of those forces in my youth who was sort of quietly influential with things like Hulk and “V”. When I went back and looked at the movie, it just felt to me like the central idea was very clear: oppressed minority. Racism. It seemed to be content to make that point and that was pretty much it, which was fine at the time. And great for my purposes, because in a post 9-11, post War On Terror world, it just felt like here was a concept that could really be used to explore so much more. It felt like there was a compelling reason to revisit this material.
NEWCOMERS AMONG US: So how does that impact Alien Nation?
TIM MINEAR: There is a way to do an alien invasion story that is not Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or gleaming metal ships hovering over cities with laser canons. There’s a way to do an alien invasion story that’s real, and creeping and complex, but totally recognizable. Because it’s happening right now, more so in Europe than in the States. It’s an alien invasion not through hovering space ships and laser beams, but through birth rates and demography. Alien Nation would draw partly from that European clash of civilizations and drop it into the continental US. A French-like ghetto slum in Dallas, or a Gaza Strip in Seattle. The central thematic question is assimilation versus balkanization. To the wary humans, this fast growing alien population threatens to take over via demographics. To the newcomer species that finds itself in an alien world -- the more radical might feel they’re being bullied into assimilating, some feel the larger culture threatens to swallow them whole; to annihilate their identity.
http://darkcommandos.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8354f822a69e2011570ccfeca970c-pi
What the genre element allows us to do is say something -- about the world, about issues, about the human condition. And it also allows us to do what is done best on cable, which is to create a complex but recognizable world. This is the The Wire with aliens. It’s taking elements of the slick, network “paranormal procedural” and dropping it into the streets of The Shield. And at the center of this you have this guy who is alienated from himself, from his life, from his humanity. And it takes an alien to help him start to appreciate his own species. The Sykes-Francisco relationship is the thing they got exactly right. The other thing I told Sci-Fi is the other thing I’m missing on television is a ‘70s cop show. What’s not on television? Starsky and Hutch. It’s not there. Lethal Weapon. It’s not there. I think you can take that sensibility, without it being kitschy, but in a post-modern, Tarantino kind of way and have that be a way in.
As long as the series doesn't end up being xenophobic and isolationist, I'm onboard. Though Minear is certainly bringing in references left and right in this interview (The Wire! The Shield! Starsky and Hutch! Lethal Weapon! Pulp Fiction!), I'm hopeful that he'll craft something coherent. And, though he claims he is coming from the perspective of the movie first, if he's going to focus on racism, etc. it's clear the show will be much closer to the vein of the series.
The original or second concept? I was thinking about that with the talk about the Newcomer population exploding. I saw the original like the Vietnamese boat people, after that initial rush there was not a continued influx of new aliens and their biology made rapid growth unlikely.Wow. I just finished rewatching this series a month ago. I'm interested to see how this is going to turn out. Now... if someone would just remake the War of the Worlds series I'd be really happy.
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