Syfy, or what we can look forward to

A dear friend and I often lament the fall of Sci-fi. Televised sci-fi, that is. Now that Stargate has ended (sob) there dosen't really seem to be anything left in that genre. The shadow kings of the entertainment industry managed to kill star trek with a single season of Enterprise, and Josh Wheddon's Firefly was forced to use alternative media options, like comic books and movies. Even Heroes, which was more syfy than sci-fi, was helped, limping, off air a few years ago. Where have all the good plots gone?

Well, the same friend has emalied me a list of possible upcoming T.V. shows, and I thought I might use it to show the world that hope might not be that far under the couch cushions. Out of the seventeen shows listed, I thought five of them sounded like fun. Not necessarily "Where have you been all my life," but at least "I'd like to watch your pilot and see if you're as nutty as you sound."

Once Upon a Time

This show sounds like Eureka. Only with fairies. That's right, faries. I'm a little shocked by how many of the shows mentioned on the list featured fairies. They're not like witches, vampires, or zombies - edgy and badcore in mass-marketable ways. They're, well, they're fairies. I'm wondering if this show (and the other shows that plan on featuring them, like Grimm) will be using fairies from fae, or fairies á la Eion Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. At any rate, I'm not really interested in watching this show. Eureka was fun, but it's format was too limiting for any ground breaking plot. Once Upon a Time will probably also  have a new catastrophe every week, but at least it will have to be creative when it does. Eureka could call on aliens, hidden nukes, and clones whenever it needed some excitement. What is Once Upon a Time going to do, delve into necromancy?*

17th Precinct

      Again with the fantasy. Here Civil Servants, of some sort, will have to operate in a world where magic trumps science. But this comes from someone well steeped in Sci-fi, Ronald D. Moore: Klingon specialist and Battlestar Galactica re-imaginist. . . .  Re-imaginer. . . .

Developer.

Though I've never watched Battlestar Galactica myself, I've been coerced taught to respect it. It's deep people – that's what I've heard. So even though I'm so over the whole police thing I'm really curious about this show. May Mr. Moore follow the example of Diane Wynne Jones and make a method for his magic.

REM

    This show looks painful. In a scripted way. But it is actual sci-fi, complete with dimensions. No namby-pamby fantasy creatures here, instead the main character finds himself jumping between two different realities, one in which his son is dead and the other in which his wife is, well, dead. Talk about a rock and a hard place. I can't really see myself watching this all they way through, because I like sunshine and rainbows in my cup of tea, but I'm assuming that this show is actually going somewhere. You know, plot-wise.

Locke & Key

      Definitely the winner of the Cute Tittle award, according to blastr the main characters in this show are a coupe of siblings. Add in an uncle, an old house, and the discovery of  a few "special doorways" and I'm thinking this one might actualy hold my attention for a whole season. Maybe it's just my age, but I love stories with kids in them, and I don't think there are enough of them on T.V., unless you count youth programing, which of course I don't. The doorways sound hopeful, but I do have to wonder if this show will be Narnia or Bridge to Terabethia. That is, knowing the kids have gone through some ordeal, can we really assume these doorways are real?

Touch
     I guess, technically, this would be categorized as sci-fi.  Clairvoyance goes either way, but since in this case the prophet is an autistic child, fake science seems to be in play. With the dad as a peon for an airport, I'm not sure how the writers are going to pursue the inevitable "imminent demise of the planet/ country" plot-line successfully, but I'm sure they have a plan. My hope is that this show will be better than Dead Zone, which managed to keep it's psychic visions modest until near the third or fourth season. I wish directors would realize that once apocalypse begins nothing else really seems important (i.e. we no longer care about the drama with your girlfriend,  the fact that your cat has gone missing, the death of the local baker, etc.). If the characters are going to be in a panic over a perceived threat for half a season it had better be really scary-bad, with long-lasting results, if it's going to happen at all. An apocalypse that no one seems to remember next season is going to be forgotten by viewers too. Or worse, they'll remember enough that they won't care when the next one comes round.



There, those are the pilots I would watch. I'd like to note, again, that only two of these even remotely resemble a really good sci-fi show. And those were the major sci-fi players out of a list of seventeen. It would be equivalent to wishing for a pony if I hoped for a show as well done as Babylon 5 – which was novel in that it had a well-developed plot which spanned multiple seasons, but was beautiful because it gracefully folded itself away when the plot ended –  I'd be happy with a second Voyager at this rate. I don't know guys, you read the list and then tell me what shows you think will pan out. Better yet, tell me what sci-fi shows you've enjoyed watching in the past. If the networks decide not to carry anything decent we might be stuck with reruns this fall.



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*That sounds disturbingly close to werewolf/vampire/witches to me, though, and they better not mix those with fairies. Let's keep our unrealities separate, okay?