OT: New shows on Sci-Fi

peter noble · March 31st, 2003, 11:29 PM

From www.cinescape.com

By: PATRICK SAURIOL
By: News Editor
Source: The Sci-Fi Channel

The Sci-Fi Channel has released a list of what new programming it intends to broadcast in the 2004-2005 year. Among the new shows being offered are ongoing series, two new mini-series and a host of special programs for its out-of-this-world audience.

Eight new ongoing series were announced:

STARGATE: ATLANTIS: Perhaps the biggest potential series is this long-rumored spinoff to STARGATE SG-1. You can read all about this series here, in a separate article.

DEAD LAWYERS: Produced by DreamWorks Television, this one-hour series' concept is about -- you guessed it! -- lawyers that return from beyond the grave to "defend everyone they screwed when they were alive -- and it's all pro bono!" (Really, I swear I'm not making this up.)

The show's central character is a deceased defendant named Jimmy Quinn, who, after being run over by a bus, joins a dead lawyer firm in the netherworld. The story was developed by Christopher Murphey and Andy Lieberman and the script was written by Murphey.

THE DIVIDE: A latenight DJ, his dead twin sister, and the local coroner team up to fight crime. High concept enough for you? Produced by Lions Gate, executive produced by Stan Brooks and written by Frank Military and Dean White.

LEGION: A young man who sells his soul to the devil to save his daughter's life and then roams the country to fight evil, able to recognize those who are possessed. Produced by Kudos Film & Television, Ltd., Whoop, Inc. and Tom Leonardis, written by Tony Jordan and executive produced by Whoopi Goldberg, Stephen Garrett and Jane Featherstone.

PAINKILLER JANE: Based on the Event Comics series, this is a 2-hour backdoor pilot. Jane Browning was a young marine officer who is exposed to a biochemical weapon that changes her genetically, endowing her with incredible self-healing powers. The pilot script was written by John Harrison (writer/director of FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE mini-series) and Don Opper. Harrison will also direct the show.

CLIVE BARKER'S THE EVIL ONE: It sounds like this will be more of an anthology series where every week a new chapter in the battle between good and evil will be told...and not every week the good guy wins. The show will be produced by Seraphim, Inc. (Barker's production company) and exec produced Barker as well.

TOTAL ECLIPSE: As described by Sci-Fi: "Jeremy Cross arrives at his new teaching and research position at Greylock, a beautiful and prestigious college, only to discover that the school is a nexus of the otherworldly, arcane, and supernatural. As if tenure wasn't hard enough to get, the faculty's IQ goes up every year, intelligent wolves roam the forests, and the research covers time travel, extrasensory perception, and anything else on the edge of science. Distributed by USACE. Executive produced and written by Steve Aspis."

SUTURE GIRL: Another 2-hour backdoor pilot, this time based on a character from the pages of Todd McFarlane's SPAWN comic book series. A female advertising executive is murdered by a serial killer and then resurrected by gypsies and given supernatural powers to combat evil. The pilot is written by Alan McElroy (writer of the SPAWN movie). McFarelane, Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds and Tracey E. Edmonda will produce.

Also announced were a four-hour mini-series that will re-envision THE THING; a six-night mini-series titled 6 DAYS 'TIL SUNDAY, about a man who discovers proof that he will be murdered in six days; and six reality-based specials including a SURVIVOR-like show called LIFE ON MARS where 12 contestants try to survive inside a simulation of a Martian base.

The channel also announced that their new four-hour BATTLESTAR GALACTICA mini-series (which also serves as a possible pilot) will be broadcast in December 2003.

LordStarFyre · March 31st, 2003, 11:44 PM

..."phasers set for fun"

Yeah, if your idea of fun is repeated projectile vomiting...

KJ · March 31st, 2003, 11:51 PM

Why does LEGION sound like a clone copy of the cancelled Brimstone series?

And why does CLIVE BARKER'S THE EVIL ONE:sound like sci-fi THE HUNGER series from the Scott brothers? (Ridley and Tony)

Originality from Hollywood at it's finest. Sorry must remain open minded, first we must give it a chance right? Where have we heard than one before.

Micheleh · April 1st, 2003, 12:17 AM

Won't mean anything when the new owners of scifi (whoever they may be) take one look at it and say "yeah, right."

michaelfaries · April 1st, 2003, 02:14 AM

Quote:

STARGATE: ATLANTIS: Perhaps the biggest potential series is this long-rumored spinoff to STARGATE SG-1. You can read all about this series here, in a separate article.

I mentioned this one a few months ago on 3dGladiators.com's Stargate SG-1 bboard. I have some mixed reservations about this. Guess which producer/writer :koff: was being considered for a contributing role to the series? That was a rumor from a contact at SCI-FI. I haven't heard specifics since, aside from the fact that Hammer is banking on this spin-off to keep the channel's ratings up.

Michael
:colwar:

LordStarFyre · April 1st, 2003, 02:28 AM

ain't gonna be high up on my viewscreen. Especially with Bonnie "What, another Face Lift" Hammer throwing her sexual pecadillos into the mix...

kingfish · April 1st, 2003, 06:52 AM

They will probably reimagine his character as a woman. Kurt Russell was the first O'Neil and did a great job in the movie.

Thomas P · April 1st, 2003, 08:31 AM

If that's the best they can offer they won't be getting my viewing attention.

jewels · April 1st, 2003, 09:14 AM

Um, once a decade or so, doesn't all of broadcast & cable TV do executive spring cleaning, (they all swap jobs) it might be time to do that again..... Fresh starts to get their creative juices functioning?

LucianG · April 1st, 2003, 09:27 AM

Let's see...with the exception of the new SG, looks mostly like dead people and good versus evil. Could this possibly be a methaphor for the SciFi Channel?

Hito · April 1st, 2003, 09:51 AM

I'd watch Stargate: Atlantas, BSG 03 and The Evil one for sure.
The Evil one will prolly be a take off of Clive's Hellraiser stuff.

Some of the other stuff sounds like it has potential, but most of it seems like drek.

April 1st, 2003, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Hito
I'd watch Stargate: Atlantas, BSG 03 and The Evil one for sure.
The Evil one will prolly be a take off of Clive's Hellraiser stuff.

Some of the other stuff sounds like it has potential, but most of it seems like drek.

I'm not going to comment on the quality of these shows. They may be great for all I know.

But I find it interesting that most of the new dramatic shows on the Sci-Fi Channel are supernatural/fantasy and not science fiction.

Does supernatural *really* do better on TV than science fiction?

And how all these dark shows agree with the "phasers on fun" direction, I'll never know...

Artemis · April 1st, 2003, 12:08 PM

Some of those sound like April fools jokes. Dead Lawyers??

kingfish · April 1st, 2003, 12:49 PM

If they had any sense they would do a B5 movie. I for one wanted to see "To Dream In The City of Sorrows." This book is based on Jeffrey Sinclair's time on Minbar.

Hito · April 1st, 2003, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by coverdale

I'm not going to comment on the quality of these shows. They may be great for all I know.

But I find it interesting that most of the new dramatic shows on the Sci-Fi Channel are supernatural/fantasy and not science fiction.

Does supernatural *really* do better on TV than science fiction?

And how all these dark shows agree with the "phasers on fun" direction, I'll never know...

I guess they figure they can cash in off of the success of Buffy, Angel and Charmed.
Or even Xena & Hercules.
It also seems cheeper to set a series in the real world and add supernatural or science-fiction elemnts than to create an exotic space based reality.

X-Files did both well and for the most part SG1 travles to an alien forest every episode.

sdoziernc1 · April 1st, 2003, 01:21 PM

I wouldn't bank on half of these series seeing the light of day, especially since Universal/SciFi may be changing ownership in the near future. Remember, there was supposed to be a series version of the "Firestarter: Rekindled" miniseries and it never materialized. The only one that I would see myself watching would be "Stargate: Atlantis", and I'm not a regular viewer of "Stargate: SG-1".

I watched the "Farscape" pilot last night night and I was blown away...to think that they cancel actual sci-fi ("Farscape", "The Invisible Man", "First Wave") and then refuse actual quality sci-fi projects (JMS' "Polaris") is just beyond me. This is not a SciFi Channel, not by a long shot - more like a supernatural/monster channel.

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 01:24 PM

I'm with you on the hold Stargate first O'Neil thing and B5 movie deal as well. Seeing the B5 story loose plot threads pan out would be great to do as a sci-fi production alas no, the company is run by a sex depraved remake lover, so no dice.

On the Stargate issue, too bad they won't let Dean Devlin do his originally planned trilogy, bringing back the movie stars to finish the storyarc that started out with the first movie. I discussed this with Dekion last year on how i hoped to see the script to this come out being Dean Devlin has a timetable and when times up, i hope he puts out his originally planned Stargate trilogy out for us to read and enjoy. then their is the issue of the TV stars getting their movie version done?

Too bad Larson with his Pegasus spinoff, Richard Hatch or DeSanto didn't get to produce BG, after a couple of seasons we could be watching a animated spinoff right now? Both The Matrix and Star Wars franchises will be releasing "The Animatrix" and the Star Wars "Clone Wars series" in animated form to expand upon the stories told in their movies to enrich there respected franchises like Stargate is doing with it animated spinoff.

Heh Hito has a funny point being alot of American genre shows use Canada's exotic landscapes as backdrop and eyecandy for their sci-fi TV series, you'd think sooner or later an alien Hockey player, or Lumberjack, Bear or CN Tower would turn up in there somewhere right? Oh Canada!!!!!..........

I'd love to live over there, the health care's good, plenty of gruff wheather, BIG houses! etc and huge foods (makes buffets pale in comparison)

KJ

Hito · April 1st, 2003, 01:54 PM

If iam not mistaken the Devlin& Emricch Stargate trillogy was split up and made into seperate movies.
Stargate & ID4 were 2 of the movies that would have been part of this trollogy.
I can imagine ID4 as being a pretty good sequal to stargate.
Just change the alien destroyers to Pyramid ships...

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 02:18 PM

But he insists he has the unfilmed scripts to the trilogy ready to be filmed if only MGM would let him do it!

Devlin has always said although he finds the TV series SG1 interesting and he respects them. The TV show did and has gone wayyyy off the mark with his planned out trilogy of stories to tell. Ra was only the beginning and i for one, wanted to find out about the R rated original rough cut (around three hours worth of footage and very rare) which was the true version of the story and was to be expanded upon in sequel follow ups!

ID4 is or was going to have it's own follow up! whether or not that too was loosely based on the Stargate story is up to debate.

Hito · April 1st, 2003, 02:22 PM

I remember earlier this year he was having problems with the studio around the upcoming stargate sg1 movie and him still wanting to make more Stargate films.

I like SG1 but i dont like the concept behind the worm symbiotes.
And i'd still like to find out more about the Movie RA and his "people".

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 02:30 PM

Hey Hito

The script only isn't easy to find on the net you know? Possibly the 3 hour version is detailed in the last draft itself and has alot of clues in it leading to the follows planned out by Devlin and co?

Gotta find that damn script though!

kingfish · April 1st, 2003, 02:32 PM

I thought that he was awesome in season 1 as Sinclair.

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 02:38 PM

If you have, then get ready for Season 2 within the next week or so!

B5 Season 2 almost here!

KJ

kingfish · April 1st, 2003, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lord Kingjason
If you have, then get ready for Season 2 within the next week or so!

B5 Season 2 almost here!

KJ

I have the season 1 DVDs. The packaging was pretty bad and I had to return the set because some of the disks were scratched. Good thing I opened the second set because some of the disks were coming out of their holders. I hope they improve the packaging this time around.

Paul

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 02:46 PM

I have the region 1 import (most of my collection of DVD are R1) and it's fine!
Although if anyone could point out the: Version 2 of Back to the Future trilogy boxsets i would be grateful, Universal really messed those up along with re-releasing the Jaws sequels again?

I need an image of the V.2 boxset so i know the difference between the first and second versions?

Hito · April 1st, 2003, 02:58 PM

What about the novelized follow ups to the Stargate movie?
I never got around to picking them up and now i cant find the.
How much did they expand on the movie story if at all?

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 03:17 PM

Sorry can't comment on the novels follow ups!

Would like some one to say i've have the 3 hour rough cut though? It's out there somewhere, time will tell whether i get them or not.

dvo47p · April 1st, 2003, 03:43 PM

Sorry Peter, but did you guys notice that like only two shows, Stargate II & maybe Quantum Leap are real science fiction? Most deal with the dead & fantasy, hell RDM's BSG will be the only space based Scifi show on The Scifi Channel?

JMS was right, The Scifi Channel really does not want space based shows.

KJ · April 1st, 2003, 05:00 PM

Thus it cannot be called the Sci-Fi Channel anymore!

Not when run by horror, sleezy sex, American Idol loving Bonnie Hammer. What ever she done is screwing around with our own sci-fi channel here as well.

Late horror indeed, although the second presenter called Nina (the Asian one) was very tall and sexy though?

KJ