For Your Perusal: Other Sci-Fi/Fantasy Shows Slated for Fall by Pandora

OTHER SCIENCE FICTION SERIES

For Your Perusal: Other Sci-Fi/Fantasy Shows Slated for Fall

POSTED BY: PANDORA
UPDATED: Monday, June 17, 2002 14:27
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Monday, June 10, 2002 12:20 PM

Birds of Prey. (WB) Batman spinoff with a disabled Batgirl, the spawn of Batman and Catwoman, and 'the Black Canary'. I don't make this stuff up, people, I just report it. Based on a couple of one-shot comics and a trade paperback, the show's being produced by the fine folks who brought you Smallville.

http://thewb.com/News/Special/0,8341,52997||,00.html

Dinotopia. (ABC) Based on the ABC miniseries of the same name. Is anyone else reminded of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or is it just me?

http://abc.abcnews.go.com/primetime/movies/dinotopia/index.html

That Was Then. (ABC) One of many shows this season based on nostalgia, one of two based on a grown-up taking over his own teenage body to relive his misspent youth. Oy.

http://abc.abcnews.go.com/primetime/preview/that_was_then.html

John Doe (FOX) An amnesiac knows everything except for who he is. According to the Entertainment Online (i.e., Tonight) blurb, he could be a "government agent, and extraterrestrial, or perhaps just a regular John Doe with a bout of Amnesia." The Pretender? Hmmm...

http://www.fox.com/schedule/schedule_2002.htm

Do Over. (WB) The other show about reliving misspent youth in one's own youthful body. This one's a sitcom instead of an hour long drama. Woo.

Haunted. (UPN) Near death experience allows the oldest brother from Party of Five to see dead people. Hilarity -er- mystery solving- ensues.

http://www.upn.com/shows/fall_preview_2002/haunted.shtml

The Twilight Zone. (UPN) Now this one, I'm actually excited about, despite the fact that it's on UPN. Forest Whitaker, or that big black guy from the Crying Game (also the lion from Zoobilee Zoo) hosts the one hour show, which basically does what the first one did.
http://www.upn.com/shows/fall_preview_2002/twilight_zone.shtml

The Dead Zone (USA) Based on the book by Stephen King, starting nerdy kid from the Breakfast Club (Anthony Michael Hall, if you insist) and Ezri 'the pixie replacement for Jadzia' Dax (drool). Looks like typical USA fare, if that means anything.

http://www.usanetwork.com/series/deadzonenet/dznews.html

Odyssey 5. (SHO) Astronauts go back in time to save Earth from the apocolypse. Starring RoboCop and some other people. It starts on June 21st at 10pm.

http://sho.com/o5/

Night Visions. (SCIFI) Another episodic type show telling scary stories with famous people in them- it premieres this Friday, which is pretty cool. It's hosted by Henry Rollins, which is even cooler, because he's the loveliest of punk/intellectual/poet/hardass dudes!

http://www.scifi.com/nightvisions

That's about it...

If there are any more, let me know! I like to know what's out there...

Pandorissima

"Logic is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't beat actual thought." -Terry Pratchett, the Last Continent

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Monday, June 10, 2002 3:30 PM

ZICSOFT

Quote:
Originally posted by Pandora:
Birds of Prey. (WB) Batman spinoff with a disabled Batgirl, the spawn of Batman and Catwoman, and 'the Black Canary'.

I've nothing against comic books. I own a complete set of Battle Angle Alita, and I'm buying Fray as fast as it comes out. But revisionist Batman????? Somebody needs to get a life!

Quote:

Dinotopia. (ABC) Based on the ABC miniseries of the same name. Is anyone else reminded of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or is it just me?

I don't think the dinosaurs in Lost World knew how to talk!

Quote:

That Was Then. (ABC) One of many shows this season based on nostalgia, one of two based on a grown-up taking over his own teenage body to relive his misspent youth. Oy.

Oy indeed! A psychiatric syndrome as a premise for a TV show!

Quote:

John Doe (FOX) An amnesiac knows everything except for who he is. According to the Entertainment Online (i.e., Tonight) blurb, he could be a "government agent, and extraterrestrial, or perhaps just a regular John Doe with a bout of Amnesia." The Pretender? Hmmm...

I'm not sure of the specific figures, but I suspect there are more amnesiacs populating movies and tv shows than there are in real life!

Quote:
Do Over. (WB) The other show about reliving misspent youth in one's own youthful body. This one's a sitcom instead of an hour long drama. Woo.

Hey, if it's worth doing over, it's worth doing over and over!

Quote:

Haunted. (UPN) Near death experience allows the oldest brother from Party of Five to see dead people. Hilarity -er- mystery solving- ensues.

So is Bruce Willis dead or isn't he?

Quote:

The Twilight Zone. (UPN) Now this one, I'm actually excited about, despite the fact that it's on UPN. Forest Whitaker, or that big black guy from the Crying Game (also the lion from Zoobilee Zoo) hosts the one hour show, which basically does what the first one did.

And the second, and the third.

Quote:

The Dead Zone (USA) Based on the book by Stephen King, starting nerdy kid from the Breakfast Club (Anthony Michael Hall, if you insist) and Ezri 'the pixie replacement for Jadzia' Dax (drool). Looks like typical USA fare, if that means anything.

I find her accent unconvincing. Isn't it ironic that AMH grew up to play the kind of guy that used to beat him up in his teenage movies?

Quote:

Odyssey 5. (SHO) Astronauts go back in time to save Earth from the apocolypse. Starring RoboCop and some other people. It starts on June 21st at 10pm.

To quote our mutual friends: The End of the World? Again? Armageddon sick of it!

Quote:

Night Visions. (SCIFI) Another episodic type show telling scary stories with famous people in them- it premieres this Friday, which is pretty cool. It's hosted by Henry Rollins, which is even cooler, because he's the loveliest of punk/intellectual/poet/hardass dudes!

And any resemblance to Twightlight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Outer Limits, etc., is strictly coincidental!

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 12:18 AM

SHAMUS

Nice overview. Thanks for taking the trouble, Pandora.

Nothings exceeds like excess.

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 2:48 AM

PANDORA

Quote:
Originally posted by shamus:
Nice overview. Thanks for taking the trouble, Pandora.

You're quite welcome... just another product of the experiment to see what happens when you take a chick who's used to being occupied by work and/or nonsense 90% of the time and put her in an environment in which all of her time is free.

This is the result of week 2.

Pandora

"Logic is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't beat actual thought." -Terry Pratchett, the Last Continent

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 6:46 AM

ANNE

FOX is remaking The Time Tunnel - A show about two young government scientists who travel through time.

If you're adding paranormal/speculative/mystery entries onto the list, FOX is also remaking The Witches of Eastwick as a weekly television show.

ABC will offer Miracles which is described as being about the Vatican's investigator of the paranormal who "after spending years debunking supposed miracles begins to losing his faith". (Presumably it will be restored as he comes across genuine miracles from time to time or something.)

NBC has their remake of Lost in Space listed as a potential midseason replacement.

The WB is apparently developing a show (midseason replacement, I think) set in The Land of Oz. The premise seems to be that a 20ish woman gets trapped in Oz and foments rebellion against the Emerald City. I find the entire concept scary.

(Edited because it needed it.)

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 7:47 AM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
Originally posted by Anne:
ABC will offer Miracles which is described as being about the Vatican's investigator of the paranormal who "after spending years debunking supposed miracles begins to losing his faith".

Isn't this just Mysterious Ways with an X-Files twist?

Quote:
NBC has their remake of Lost in Space listed as a potential midseason replacement.

NBC has tried it before with Earth 2. I doubt it'll make it.

Quote:
The WB is apparently developing a show (midseason replacement, I think) set in The Land of Oz. The premise seems to be that a 20ish woman gets trapped in Oz and foments rebellion against the Emerald City. I find the entire concept scary.

This is Flash Gordon.

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 8:14 AM

ANNE

Quote:
Isn't this just Mysterious Ways with an X-Files twist?

In the same way that Mysterious Ways was just Touched By An Angel with an X-Files twist, yes.

Very much so.

On the other hand, I have to say I panned the concept of Mysterious Ways just for that reason before it debuted and found, to my extreme surprise, that MW was original, creative, and very watchable.

I also remember that the network found MW's success difficult to believe. By the time it debuted, they'd already signed a deal with PAX to repeat episodes on PAX and, IIRC, to move the entire show to PAX for first-run before long.

The network kept moving MW around, pulling it from the schedule, and putting it back again while they tried to wrap their brains around the idea that the program was doing two or three times as well as they'd expected.

Even now they seem to have settled it in on the Friday Kiss Of Death schedule, as though once they'd decided it was going to be a failure, they were determined to make it so on way or another.

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 8:16 AM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

That was kinda fun.

Birds of Prey - It's Charlie's Angel for our generation.

Dinotopia - What can I say. Kids love dinosaurs.

That Was Then - Peggy Sue got married, except it's a guy.

John Doe - It's Pretender.

Do Over - Wonder Years with less pathos.

Haunted - All Souls with a cop.

The Twilight Zone - It's the new Outer Limits with no Sci-Fi. Note: anything Twilight Zone is cool in my book.

The Dead Zone - it has Ezri, nuff said.

Odyssey 5. - It's Time Cop with no Van Damn.

Night Visions - The Outher Limits with spooks.

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Tuesday, June 11, 2002 9:47 AM

Thanks for that Pandora - and Anne.

On Anne's list - do you know where I could get more information - cast, creative team - on The Witches of Eastwick? I probably would have no interest in it - and it might just be FOX's version of Charmed, but I might like it.

And is Lost In Space a re-remake of the movie of the show, or a remake of the show that ignores the movie? (Dunno which would be better, but I'm curious.) I never saw the movie though, so I don't know what that would tell me.

On Pandora's list, I'm pretty disappointed. I thought I might be interested in Birds of Prey - had no idea what it was about, really, but it seemed like a possibility - but the network's description had the opposite of the intended effect. Sounds pretty lame. But if they can swing some kind of Burton Goth(ic/am) thing, who knows?

I'm also perplexed that the page for the new TZ wasn't trumpeting some stellar list of writers. A show like that really depends entirely on each and every script. This has been attempted a lot and always results in abysmal failure at worst and an indifferent medium-length run at best. The problem is that you can have a great Outer Limits ep like the one with Michelle Forbes and Amanda Plummer - and dozens of ridiculous cheesy wastes. The quality has to be kept even higher than in TV series because there's no continuity to carry you through slumps. But I'll probably give it a try if there's no scheduling conflict and hope it works.

So that's it - Firefly is the only new spaceship show on network TV this year? Even if it wasn't Joss, I think it would have caught my eye for that fact.

-

I just took a closer look - BOP and TZ are both on Wed@9. Ah well - guess I can tape one until I make up my mind. Probably end up being neither of them.

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Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:30 PM

NOVAGRASS

Quote:
Originally posted by Zicsoft:

I've nothing against comic books. I own a complete set of Battle Angle Alita, and I'm buying Fray as fast as it comes out. But revisionist Batman????? Somebody needs to get a life!

Well... if the comic book is any indication, it's not revisionist at all... however, with the liberties the Smallville crew (whom I loathe) took on the premise, it looks to be a bit too hokey to me. *sigh* And Black Canary, The Huntress, and Oracle are three of the most interesting characters in DC's library... Oracle's story is pretty fascinating, IMO (crippled Barbara Gordon.)

Tim Burton's Batman was very revisionist... as is the current comic book Batman (a revision of the Golden/ Silver Age Batman.) As is the animated series... which was very good, IMO.

The whole Huntress is the daughter of Batman and Catwoman isn't that far from the Earth-2 version of DC Continuity... on Earth-2, Batman and Catwoman married and had Helena, who became the Earth-2 Huntress.

Could it be that I have too much time on my hands? It very well could.

EDITED TO ADD: interesting review of BoP http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=12485

--Dylan Palmer, aka NoVaGrAsS--

... I guess it's a Joss thing...

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Sunday, June 16, 2002 9:36 AM

MILLERNATE

Overall my impressions and how likely I am to watch:

Birds of Prey- I seem to recall that this is up against something I like more so I probably won't be seeing it. If it isn't (i.e. my memory failed me again) I'll probably give it a shot, I mean it *does* have Sherilynn Fenn (Twin Peaks, Rude Awakening) in it so it can't be all bad. Its also being produced by the people who did Smallville, but the one writer that imdb lists for it has no other credits which is marginally frightening.

Dinotopia - didn't care enough to watch the mini-series so I doubt I'll care enough to watch the series.

That Was Then - THis just doesn't sound that appealing (by the way, what the heck is up with ABC's programing decisions lately? There are more dogs than a neighborhood pound :buggrin: ).

John Doe - done by the same people that did the Kevin Costner movie Dragonfly. This is a mix of postive signs and negative signs. On the positive front: It has Meat Loaf in it, Dominc Purcell (who has been okay in what I've seen him in) is the title character, and Mimi Leder who has a lot of experience in TV is one of the executive producers. The Bad: The guys who are the writer/producers were the people behind Dragonfly and they have no other credits, and the premise sounds like a bad melding of Nowhere Man and the Pretender. This is also opposite the new David Morse/Andre Braughner cop drama "Hack". My chance of actually watching this are 50/50.

Do Over - this sounds like it will be either incredibly funny *or* be incredibly stupid. That having been said I'm probably not going to watch it right off. If it catchs on I might give it a shot.

Haunted - There is a chance that this was only greenlighted due to the success of The Sixth Sense. I'm not really a fan of the lead either so...

The Twilight ZOne - contrary to one of the other responses there has only been one revival of the series (1985, which incidently featured an appearance by future Fireflier Ron Glass), unless you count the movie. The writer/Exec. Producer is Pen Densham, who was a written for the Magnificent 7 series and an executive producer for the most recent Outer Limits revival. Jeremy Priven is listed to guest star in the first episode so there's a chance I'll take a look.

Dead Zone - USA has done only 2 series, out of the numerous ones they've attempted, that have been any good (those 2 were The Huntress, and the dark comedy sitcom The War Next Door). This does not seem like one that will be added to that number.

Odyssey 5 - Sounds somewhat promising, its a shame I don't get Showtime.

Night Visions - probably won't be seeing this.

Nathan
"Remember, only you can prevent emoticon abuse"

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Sunday, June 16, 2002 10:47 AM

LAURYN2000

Birds Of Prey/WB

Batman and Catwoman's offsprings
get their own series,can't ask
for anything more than that!

Plus I'm cutting back on my
sci-fi viewing,my plate is pretty full

Summer:
Witchblade
Farscape

Fall:
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Smallville
Firefly
Birds Of Prey

"Words that hate and criticize,open no one's eyes"

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Sunday, June 16, 2002 11:46 AM

ZICSOFT

Quote:
Originally posted by millernate:
...the dark comedy sitcom The War Next Door).

I completely missed that one. Just the title makes me sorry I did.

Think I'll go start another thread: great TV shows nobody saw.

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Monday, June 17, 2002 7:12 AM

MARINO

I wouldn't be too hard on Birds of Prey, guys. I mean, it wasn't too long ago that a TV show was coming out based on a movie called Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which hadn't been all that impressive. [Not that the Smallville people are even close to Joss in talent, but hey...work with me here.]

As for Dead Zone: It was actually pretty decent. Not great, not something that'll redefine TV or anything, but it's worth at least trying out - and seeing if it's your cup o' tea.

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Monday, June 17, 2002 12:29 PM

PANDORA

Quote:
Originally posted by MarinO:

As for Dead Zone: It was actually pretty decent. Not great, not something that'll redefine TV or anything, but it's worth at least trying out - and seeing if it's your cup o' tea.

I agree with you on this one, MarinO. There is potential in this one. Interesting, for the most part decently acted, and overall engagingly done. And of course, there's my penchant for Anthony Michael Hall and all things Brat Pack...

Pandora

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies
and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

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Monday, June 17, 2002 12:29 PM

PANDORA

Quote:
Originally posted by MarinO:

As for Dead Zone: It was actually pretty decent. Not great, not something that'll redefine TV or anything, but it's worth at least trying out - and seeing if it's your cup o' tea.

Pandora

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies
and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

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Monday, June 17, 2002 12:30 PM

PANDORA

Quote:
Originally posted by MarinO:

As for Dead Zone: It was actually pretty decent. Not great, not something that'll redefine TV or anything, but it's worth at least trying out - and seeing if it's your cup o' tea.

Pandora

"Mrs. Krabappel and Principal Skinner were in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies
and the baby looked at me." -Ralph Wiggum

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Monday, June 17, 2002 2:27 PM

KAMLEY

Quote:
ABC will offer Miracles which is described as being about the Vatican's investigator of the paranormal who "after spending years debunking supposed miracles begins to losing his faith". (Presumably it will be restored as he comes across genuine miracles from time to time or something.)

And, don't foget! Miracles' show-runner will be Mr. Kye-rumption himself: David Greenwalt.

-Kamley

A lifetime of things to say, all rushing to be said at the same time... doesn't bode well for my voice.

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