Sci Fi Alert

Last summer, several people behind the Stargate series, including Amanda Tapping, came together to create a great web-only series called Sanctuary.  It was the first broadcast quality, HD series created specifically for the web.  The basic premise of the series has Dr. Helen Magnus, who happens to be a couple hundred years old, working with her daughter and a young protege to track down and aid odd creatures that walk the earth.  Oh, it also feature an immortal Jack the Ripper.
Besides being developed specifically for the Internet, the series featured backdrops and sets that were almost completely CGI created.  At first, I wondered how it would affect the quality, and while you can certainly tell some of the sets are CGI created I was pleasantly surprised at just how good the series looked.  Moreover, the writing was good and the acting top-notch.
Now, it looks like Sci Fi has become interested enough to option 13 hour-long episodes with filming to begin in a couple of months.  The cast will remain intact, which makes me wonder what this will mean for Amanda Tapping’s role on Stargate: Atlantis.  She’s finally starting to seem like a real member of the team and taking her away will be a little strange.  Who’ll replace her?  Weir? Doubt it.  John? Can’t see that.  Maybe they can work it out so she can be on both series.  Either way, having viewed all 8 episodes of the web series I’m looking forward to what the network version can offer.
UPDATE:  According to SyFy Portal, Tapping will be leaving Stargate: Atlantis at the end of the current season and will only return for a few guest star episodes.  That’s s shame.  Tapping really added something new the Atlantis and I hate to see her leave.

Sam Raimi, the man who gave us Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warror Princess, has signed a deal with ABC Studios to bring the first book in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, Wizard’s First Rule, to the small screen as an hour-long series.  I’m of two minds on this.  First, I gave up on Goodkind’s series after book 4 because it was little more than a poor man’s version of Robert Jordan’s far superior Wheel of Time series.  Second, I was a huge fan of Xena, Hercules I could take or leave, but the hallmark of both series is the low budget.  Granted, with Xena you could easily overlook that low budget simply because of the fun writing and the great Lucy Lawless, but Wizard’s First Rule is not something that can be made on the cheap.  Raimi and ABC have committed to 22 hour long episodes so I guess we’ll see.

Yahoo Movies has the official teaser trailer up for Star Trek XI and while it’s not much it is kind of cool to see.

TV Squad is reporting that the lack of new scripts might prompt Sci Fi, or one of NBC Universal’s many television subsidiaries, to film the Caprica prequel movie that’s been in development hell for two years.  Well, if this is the one good thing to come out of this strike I say, “Hooray!”  I’ve been wishing Sci Fi would pull their collective head out of their collective ass and get moving on this project.  If the webisodes shown prior to the ”Razor” tele-movie are any indication of what Caprica might be like, it could be a lot of fun too watch.
Of course, it would be a different kind of beast.  Probably less space battles or more politics and family drama, which might not make it a good fix for Sci Fi but some of best science fiction out there isn’t about space battles and aliens.  The potential to see how the Adama family came to the point they are at now would be interesting enough to me, not to mention to development of the Cylons from machines to human-form.

AOL/Moviefone has the first picture of the new Enterprise in Star Trek XI.  Looks like like they’ve stayed rather faithful to the original series ship.
Via TrekMovie.com.

One of the best things about the first few seasons of Angel was Julie Benz.  Her portrayal of Darla started out as this evil, menacing character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and grew to be a three dimensional being that was more interesting than most of the characters on Angel, including the title character.  Julie Benz was always one hell of an actress on that series, but her career never really took off.  Besides a major role in Taken and a few little-seen movies on Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel her career was kind of non-existent until she was cast in Showtimes great series, Dexter, but on that show she is underused.  Recently, Benz has seen a movie career begin taking off with supporting roles in the unnecessary and poorly titled Rambo sequel, Rambo, and now in the Punisher reboot, War Zone.  Hopefully Benz will see a boost to her career because she has too much potential to remain in these little TV roles.

One of the main quibbles I’ve had with the last few Harry Potter films is the writers have had to cut so much out just to get the film to a managable length; this was most evident in Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix.  Of course, there are some scenes and characters that could be trimmed to make the films more viewable, but in the case these last two films it was just too much.  Currently, Half-Blood Prince is being filmed as one motion picture and depending on how it’s written I see that working just fine.  However, Deathly Hallows is a different beast.  There is a lot of story crammed between the covers of this novel and a lot of minor characters step forward to have their moment in the sun.  There’s currently a rumor that Warner Brothers could break Deathly Hallows into two films.  I think that could work.  There is so much leading up to the climactic end and the Battle of Hogwarts alone could be an entire film.  There is so much that needs to make it into this film:  the truth about Dumbledore’s death, the redemption of Severus Snape, the attacks on members of the Order, and the balls to the wall battle between Voldemort and the Hogwarts instructors.  I mean, who doesn’t want to see Minerva McGonagall kick ass!  Warner Brothers may be doing this to make more money, who would blame them, but it makes sense.  Moreover, it postions the Harry Potter franchise to go out with a bang and possibly and Oscar for best picture.

Moonlight is one of those shows that wrote off from the day it was announced for the CBS schedule mostly because it sounded like a rip-off of Angel.  However, I still checked out and actually found it interesting with a lot of potential.  All season the show has been a slow build as the writers developed their version of the vampire mythology and the main character of Mick St. John and as I kept watching it slowing turned into a better and better series.  To me, “Love Lasts Forever” was a culmination of all the world-building.  It was an excellent episode that really pushed the characters beyond their limits.  All season I’ve been going back and forth about the relationship between Mick and Beth in no small part because Alex O’Loughlin and Sophia Myles didn’t seem to have the necessary chemistry to maintain these characters.  That’s been improving and really came together in this episode.  If this series can maintain the quality I think it could become a really great series and an excellent addition to the myriad of vampire incarnations.
If I have one quibble with this series it’s the character of Coraline.  She is just not that interesting.  A big part of that is the fact that Shannyn Sossamon, a very good actress whose career has really gone nowhere, is just not that great in the role.  Next week features the return of Coraline and possibly a revelation about he she returned to human form. Boring. Of course, we know Mick’s not going to turn back into a human being, that would defeat the purpose of the show.  I know the writers and producers are trying help the viewer understand how difficult being a vampire has been for Mick, but it’s just not working.  If they beheaded Coraline and concentrated more on Mick and Beth the show would be a lot better.

As I’ve said before, I’d just about given up on Flash Gordon, but with a very good episode last week followed an equally entertaining episode this week I’m actually getting interested in this series.  The biggest improvement has been the focus on Mongo, where it needs to be, and the upping of the ante with Flash’s role as a possible savior for the people of Mongo.  Along with the focus on Mongo the development — finally! — of Ming is actually making the character very interesting to watch.  Let’s hope the writers can maintain this improvement.

As I’ve said before, I’d just about given up on Flash Gordon, but with a very good episode last week followed an equally entertaining episode this week I’m actually getting interested in this series.  The biggest improvement has been the focus on Mongo, where it needs to be, and the upping of the ante with Flash’s role as a possible savior for the people of Mongo.  Along with the focus on Mongo the development — finally! — of Ming is actually making the character very interesting to watch.  Let’s hope the writers can maintain this improvement.

Several years ago the Science Fiction Book Club was offering Triplanetary, the forst novel in E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series.  I’m always interested in reading the classics of science fiction and Smith considered to be the father of the “space opera” genre of science fiction.  When I received the novel I eagerly began reading, but quickly became bored.  I could nevere get into the novel and sat on my book shelf for years before I finally sold it in a yard sale.  I went back several times and tried to re-read the novel because it’s not unusual for me to dislike a book at first but really get into later (the Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire series are two examples of that), but I could never get into this book.
Well, it looks like Unviersal and Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard’s company) are look to option the first book and turn it into blockbuster film.  This could work.  Because a film has to cut out some of the excess and get right into the meat of a story it can a boring novel into something very entertaining.  Maybe they can do the same thing with Triplanetary.

We finally have a definite premiere date for the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica,  April 4 which returns the series to its original broadcast night of Friday.  Finally, a good decision by the suits at Sci Fi.  Moving the second half of season three to Sunday nights was a disaster with BSG’s already falter ratings taking a dive.  I don’t know what the suits as Sci Fi were thinking putting BSG up against a group of network shows that collectively draw nearly 40 million viewers.  Here’s hoping viewers return for this final season so BSG can go out with a bang.
 (Of course, with NBC Universal in no hurry to negotiate with striking writers the final season of BSG will probably go into 2009).

Stargate: Atlantis walked away with the People’s Choice Award for best sci-fi show during last night’s awards show.  It’s a shame this couldn’t have been announced during a normal airing of the People’s Choice, when the writers’ strike was keeping stars away, because the award show usually draws upwards of 12+ million viewers and that’s about 11 million more than normally watch Atantis.  As it was, only about half the normal audience tuned in, but that’s still six million viewers who may not have heard of the show before.  Hopefully, the series will see a little bounce in the ratings because of it.

The people over at Entertainment Weekly’s Popwatch have written an open letter to the Sci Fi Channel.  They make some valid points, some of the very same points I’ve been making since I started this blog.  Namely, Sci Fi has so many opportunities to make great science fiction, but instead what we get more often than not is crap like Ghost Hunters (and I don’t give a damn how successful it is, that show is not science fiction), Who Wants To Be a Superhero, and silly, beyond stupid movies on Saturday night that give B-movie creature-features a bad name.  As they point out, genre teleivsion and movies have made a major resurgence in the last decade, especially in the last five years with shows like Lost and Heroes, but Sci Fi still gives us crap series that should never see the light of day (Painkiller Jane anyone?). 
I do disagree with them on a few points.  I certainly don’t think Stargate has gone stale.  Sure, it was time for SG-1 to move on, but Atlantis has had a creative resurgence this season.  I also think the idea of sci-fi soap opera is beyond stupid.  Otherwise, they make very good points about creating BBC-style short-run series by some of the modern greats in the science fiction/fantasy genre.  If they’d had a brain in their head they would have snatched up George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, but HBO beat them to it.  Or even Charlain Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse vampire series, oh wait, HBO once again.  Why aren’t they grabbing up Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson’s continuation of the Dune universe?  The three-book Buterlian Jihad series would make a phenominal set of mini-series.  Or even Kevin J. Anderson’s great space opera Saga of the Seven Suns.  If they truly wanted to make Sci Fi destination television they would be contacting the widow of James Rigney (aka Robert Jordan) about turning The Wheel of Time into weekly, long-form series.
Why doesn’t Sci Fi do this?  It’s quite simple:  money.  I read an article several years ago about Sci Fi’s general plan for purchasing television movies and commissioning original content.  The reason they buy these crappy B-movies is because they are cheap and they draw a million or two viewers, which more than makes up for their cost and helps Sci Fi draw in the coveted 18-49 group advertisers love so much.  Yet, if Sci Fi aired fewer of these crappy creature-features and put their money towards so quality movies and mini-series they would see an overall increase in viewership and give themselves a platform to advertise their other series.  But I don’t expect anything to change.

When Sci Fi announced it would be airing a remake of Flash Gordon I was actually quite excited at the idea; Flash Gordon was ripe for an update.  Unfortunately, what we got was nothing very spectacular.  My biggest gripe with the series was that most of the action took place on Earth instead of Mongo.  In addition, I hated how the relationship between Dale and Flash was being written.  I stopped watching Flash Gordon about halfway through the first part of the season, but with the writers strike there is little else on television, so I thought I’d take a chance and check the series out one more time.  I have to say I really liked the episode.  The action took place on Mongo and the writers have done a good job of developing all the major characters, chief among them the underused Ming.  There’s still the problem that Dale is often left behind on Earth, but it was still an improvement.  I will definitely check the series out again.  If they can maintain the quality I saw in this one episode there may be hope for Flash Gordon.  Of course, the minute I get invested in the series Sci Fi will cancel it after only one season.