It definitely sounds interesting. Has quite the promise if they can deliver on it.
Untitled Robert Hewitt Wolfe project - Possible new show on SyFy
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I'm not all that familiar with with transhumans. Could someone recommend some good novels dealing with that?
Basically mutants. Like the ones in Dark Angel or X-Men.
Here's some non-fiction literature on transhumanism. Here's a lot of novels.
Transhumanism =/= mutants. Mutants can be transhuman, but cyborgs and people uploaded into different bodies (whether organic or in-organic) are also transhumanism.
In fact, I'd question whether mutants in the Marvel sense would even qualify as transhumans. To me, transhumanism implies the modification/enhancement of humanity through deliberate technological enhancement or genetic engineering rather than through accidental mutation. Though maybe that's too narrow a definition.
Andromeda dealt with transhumans to a degree, though it didn't use the term. All the human characters except Harper were genetically engineered to some degree or other -- Tyr and the Nietzscheans had engineered themselves into a different species (so maybe they were posthumans instead), Dylan was unusually strong because his mother was genetically engineered for heavy-gravity worlds, Beka had enhanced reflexes that made her a great pilot, etc. And while Harper's genes were unmodified, he had an implanted jack for connecting his brain to computer systems (I guess they don't have wi-fi 3000 years in the future). So pretty much the entire cast was either transhuman or nonhuman.
Andromeda dealt with transhumans to a degree, though it didn't use the term. All the human characters except Harper were genetically engineered to some degree or other -- Tyr and the Nietzscheans had engineered themselves into a different species (so maybe they were posthumans instead), Dylan was unusually strong because his mother was genetically engineered for heavy-gravity worlds, Beka had enhanced reflexes that made her a great pilot, etc. And while Harper's genes were unmodified, he had an implanted jack for connecting his brain to computer systems (I guess they don't have wi-fi 3000 years in the future). So pretty much the entire cast was either transhuman or nonhuman.
How do I get the computer to clean my room? Cause it looks like my interest in transhumanism has left it a mess.
Wow, thanks, Bullethead. tons of reading there. So sci-fi writer's are gonna point the direction for real science to go in? Like Hubbard's dyannetics? Trial and error like. Nobody knows what's going to happen until they do it? And if it can, someone will? That is the final frontier especially when we do something with a singularty black or white rabbit hole and go too far and can't get back or reverse or undo it. We can't rebuild some things that we destroy to understand them. Artists usually go too far for dramatic or comedic purposes but at least know how to get back. A scientist might not. This is why you can't trust an artist.
I was especially impressed with David Zindell's Neverness and the end of homo sapiens trilogy series. He spoks at my H.S. commencement. He was from my home town. Who knew?
You know something, this sounds like the Magnificent seven in space. Superheroes fighting space aliens and stuff with a touch of the Rifleman thrown in.
Well it's better than JJ's A-team, MI, James Bond, XXX in space.
Chris, are they veering into your territory with your new novel or Dennis' Transhuman Authority?
Wow, thanks, Bullethead. tons of reading there. So sci-fi writer's are gonna point the direction for real science to go in? Like Hubbard's dyannetics? Trial and error like. Nobody knows what's going to happen until they do it? And if it can, someone will? That is the final frontier especially when we do something with a singularty black or white rabbit hole and go too far and can't get back or reverse or undo it. We can't rebuild some things that we destroy to understand them. Artists usually go too far for dramatic or comedic purposes but at least know how to get back. A scientist might not. This is why you can't trust an artist.
I was especially impressed with David Zindell's Neverness and the end of homo sapiens trilogy series. He spoks at my H.S. commencement. He was from my home town. Who knew?
You know something, this sounds like the Magnificent seven in space. Superheroes fighting space aliens and stuff with a touch of the Rifleman thrown in.
Well it's better than JJ's A-team, MI, James Bond, XXX in space.
Chris, are they veering into your territory with your new novel or Dennis' Transhuman Authority?
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I don't know, I'm weary of SyFys' shows anymore. I'm really not in the mood for another dreary SGU.
I do want another real space based science fiction show though.
And plus I'm weary of how long the show will last. Syfy has a penchant for cancelling shows when they're quite popular among the fans.
I do want another real space based science fiction show though.
And plus I'm weary of how long the show will last. Syfy has a penchant for cancelling shows when they're quite popular among the fans.
Mutation also can be accidental. Transhumanism usually implies change by design.
I'm rarely in the mood for anything Stargate (I never watched more than a few minutes of either spinoff, honestly) but it's Robert Hewitt Wolfe. His work on DS9 was often great - off the top of my head I'd easily call "The Wire" one of the series best episodes.
And as flawed as Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda was, more of that had to do with issues in execution then it did with RHW's writing and premise. If he was given a BSG-ish budget and Ron Moore's leeway there's a pretty decent chance of a reasonably good space opera TV show.
Battlestar Galactica lasted for four seasons and has merited a number of telefilms and spinoff attempts. Farscape got four seasons and got a miniseries. I'd be pretty happy with four years, really.
Yea, SG-1 and Atlantis both got 5 Seasons. Sanctuary is on it's 4th Season, Eureka will have a 5th (Or 6th?) season.
SyFy may make some blunders with Marketing a show, and shifting stuff around to an inappropriate time slot, but, they make their living off advertising, and if the ratings aren't there, nothing they can do but cancel a show and move on.
I'm interested in seeing what develops on this, as many have said his work on DS9 was great, and it's been too long since we've had a new Space Opera to feast upon.
It's a crying shame that Caprica, became excellent by the end of S1 and that it was too late. Likewise, SGU floundered as far as entertaining me for 1 1/2 seasons, before it really became good. But, I can't blame SyFy for cancelling either of these shows, as much as I would've liked to see them both continue
SyFy may make some blunders with Marketing a show, and shifting stuff around to an inappropriate time slot, but, they make their living off advertising, and if the ratings aren't there, nothing they can do but cancel a show and move on.
I'm interested in seeing what develops on this, as many have said his work on DS9 was great, and it's been too long since we've had a new Space Opera to feast upon.
It's a crying shame that Caprica, became excellent by the end of S1 and that it was too late. Likewise, SGU floundered as far as entertaining me for 1 1/2 seasons, before it really became good. But, I can't blame SyFy for cancelling either of these shows, as much as I would've liked to see them both continue
Fifth. The season that recently finished airing was the fourth, though the third and fourth production seasons have been split across two summers each, so it's taken them six years to air those four seasons, creating some confusion. (Though to be fair, the 3rd and 4th seasons were longer than the others.) Another source of confusion is that Syfy briefly announced plans to renew the show for a 6th season, then reversed them and announced the cancellation just days later.
There's also Warehouse 13, which just completed its third season (not counting the upcoming Christmas episode) and has been renewed for a fourth, and Haven, which has completed two seasons (not counting the Xmas episode) and been renewed for a third. In fact, I think Syfy has renewed every one of this past year's original scripted shows except SGU. True, there were a few years back there when very little other than Stargate and Eureka seemed to be lasting beyond a season, but at the moment, they seem to have settled into a groove where they're happy with most of their scripted shows and willing to keep making them.
And like you, I will happily watch vs the current situation, which is bubkis.
So I'm not inclined to be fussy about this show, but...if RHW wants to cast anyone but the Standard White Male in the lead role, he gets bonus points from me.
Not sure if the approach will be "corny." Even with that premise, it could be dark and gritty and all that. But my hunch is that RHW would be smart to keep things morally simpler than nuBSG and throw some engaging characters and action at us, hitting somewhere on the spectrum between corny and self-hating, obnoxiously overdone angst. Seems like a wide enough target.
SGU was an outlier for Skiffy. Their usual thing is light & fluffy, along the lines of Haven, Eureka and Warehouse 13 - that style of show gets strong ratings. And given SGU's sorry performance, they'd be more likely to push the show in the light & fluffy direction vs anything else, although I hope they have the sense to keep their hands off entirely (haw!)
Both those shows got cancelled because they were boring and drove the audience away. Caprica was "my kind of boring" - a show I'd stick with despite its lack of entertainment value - but there was a very good reason why it failed, and there's no reason RHW needs to repeat either of those shows' mistakes.
So, RHW trying YET AGAIN to get his "StarWolf" concept on the air?
I think RHW has enough of an established body of work by now that we can get a sense for the tone he'd probably go for. His work usually has both dark edges and irreverent humor, and tends to be about flawed but largely well-meaning characters dealing with complex problems and progressively deeper storyline complications.
Alphas is hardly light & fluffy. It's an Ira Steven Behr show, after all, or at least it was this season. Although it had plenty of character humor, its tone and its world were a lot more serious and grounded from the start than Eureka or W13. (Syfy made them do a crossover with Lindsay Wagner's W13 character, but they just don't fit in the same reality, and the Alphas episode she was in didn't overtly acknowledge anything about W13.)
And really, there's no way you could watch W13's recent season finale and still believe it's a "light and fluffy" show. They went very, very dark and it was extremely powerful and emotionally wrenching.
As for Haven, I stopped watching it after the first couple of episodes, but seeing as how it's based on Stephen King's work, it's got to be kind of a dark and scary thing, hasn't it?
Huh? Star Wolf is David Gerrold's concept.
I don't care where it comes from, it's space opera!!! Gift horses and mouths and all that.
nuBSG and Caprica weren't all that long ago. Both were ambitious and far from cookie-cutter.
It's not time to panic yet. I'll tell yall when it's time to panic.
I only saw the first episode and found it too lightweight. Maybe it's changed but since I didn't like the cast, I'm out. That always kills a show for me.
I bailed on that one, too. Not interested in the episodic approach.
I watched several episodes before giving up on it as mindless fluff. Just because a series has "scary things" doesn't absolve it from being fluff.
What I mean is this: The Vampire Diaries is fluff; The Walking Dead is not. The former has plenty of dark and dire elements, but it doesn't break out from being a certain type of show - young, angsty vampires in love - into feeling like the real world. It sticks to a certain formula and never pushes its characters out of certain bounds. It doesn't make me feel that "if there really were vampires, this is what would happen" the way TWD makes me feel that, yes, a zombie apocalypse really might go down exactly in that way.
In short, a show is not fluff if it convinces me of its basic reality. Any corny or formulaic elements will kill that for me. If I recognize a show as a type - and Alphas, Warehouse 13 and Haven are all recognizable types - then I can't believe in its reality. Granted, I'm probably way harsher on shows than most folks. I find almost everything on TV unwatchable.
I spend more time talking about shows than actually watching them (for one thing, it's way more fun.)
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Space opera is hard to keep grounded in reality. Aliens are always a face palm and have to be written much more carefully than Humans and not taken for granted and kept seperate from the Human strand of thread that runs through it that connects it to Earth, else it becomes corrupted and turns into the media salvation for the internally inept. It's very tricky keeping them seperate. The reality shouldn't become nonreality and pull the viewer out of a suspension of disbelief just as the unreality shouldn't interefere with the reality of what's plausibly possible. Aliens definitely fall into the latter catagory. Else it becomes a mish mash and might as well be a Star Wars or Star Trek rip off.
Not really. SGU and Caprica weren't popular among fans, and that's why they were cancelled. BSG essentially ended of its own accord. SG-1 was becoming too expensive to continue. Stargate Atlantis is a rather muddled issue which I won't comment on. That just leaves Farscape as the one show which was pulled "before its time." And besides, most of those shows got 4 or 5 seasons and maybe its better that a show end while its fanbase still enjoys it rather than let it last until the fans turn against it and bitch and moan about how its glory days are behind, the show is a pale imitation of its former self, slanderous comments about the producers, and so on in that order.
I think Sy Fy has a fairly good recent track record that shows that get decent ratings will be given 5 years and then cancelled when they get too expensive. If this show can get the ratings of Eureka, Warehouse 13, or Haven it will probably be given its 5 year run too. Hopefully RHW understands this and either plans for a 5 year run, or locks in contracts early to keep costs in line for years 6+.