Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By John J. Joex

Even though the Olympics wrapped up, most of the Science Fiction and Fantasy shows delivered only repeats or took a break this last week. Chuck returned to Monday night with a new episode and boosted that show’s numbers a bit from its last outing with a new episode, delivering a 2.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Lost, on the other hand, took a tumble on Tuesday night, dropping down to a 4.0 rating in the 18-49 demo. This is the lowest the show has seen this season and I’m not certain if this indicates some fan disillusionment or just the one week impact of a big episode of American Idol which FOX has competing with it.  On Friday, Ghost Whisper and Medium returned with new episodes though both were down a bit from their season to date averages.

Here is the full breakdown of the numbers for all of the Science Fiction and Fantasy shows that aired on the broadcast networks this past week:

Source: TV by the Numbers

Previous Results: Slow Ratings Week for Sci Fi

For more on the Cancellation Alert for each show, see our Cancellation Watch column

Alice in Wonderland delivers a visually stunning, though artistically vapid film apparently calculated to launch a new fantasy franchise.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

At first blush, one might think that for an updated version of Lewis Carroll’s beloved Alice in Wonderland what better pairing than dilettante of the eccentric Tim Burton as director and typecast bucking, superstar Johnny Depp in the lead role (that’s as the Mad Hatter, not Alice).  The two have paired up on multiple occasions and delivered some spectacular films including the all-time classic Edward Scissorhands (their first team-up).  And on their rendition of Alice in Wonderland they manage to deliver a visually compelling story that revitalizes the world that Carroll imagined for 21st century movie-going audiences, though it seems to lack some of the depth and soul that you might expect of a Burton/Depp collaboration.

The story of the girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit hole has actually been adapted over a dozen times worldwide on film and for television (including a previous Disney animated version in 1951), so wisely Burton chose to make this movie as a sequel of sorts to the original book (which had its own sequel in print by Carroll titled Through the Looking Glass).  Alice is twenty now and she does not remember her previous adventures in the “curiouser and curiouser” world except as a vague recollection from a dream.  She finds that her mother has arranged for her to marry a wealthy nobleman whom she does not particularly care for.  When he asks for her hand (in front of a large audience) she runs off in pursuit of the white rabbit she had seen lurking around previously and falls down a rabbit hole (didn’t catch if she swallowed a red pill, though).  Here, she experiences the same situation upon her first arrival that readers of the original book are familiar with.  However, we quickly find that she has made a return trip to “Underland” (I do not recall if they ever provided an explanation of the name change beyond stating that Alice had mispronounced it previously; probably just did it because they can trademark the altered name).

Alice meets this new world’s colorful collection of characters whom she does not remember and who are unsure whether she is the “real” Alice.  In short order, she hooks up with the Mad Hatter (Depp) and the story of her return to Wonderland (er, Underland) is off an rolling.  Sort of.

As a feast for the eyes, this movie soars.  Tim Burton applies his mastery of visual story-telling to create a stunning, bizarre setting that really captures the spirit Carroll’s book.  Again, though, he does that on a visual level.  Unfortunately, the script strays from the twists of logic, conundrums, and nonsense that made the book a classic of fantastical literature.  In fact, it instead delivers a fairly straightforward fantasy story.  You see, the Red Queen has subjugated the land and keeps it under her yoke employing the  Jabberwocky (who as it turns out in this movie is just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill dragon) as her strong-arm.  But a magical scroll has prophesized that Alice will return to the land and use the Vorpal Sword to slay the beast.  That’s it.  That’s the story.  A standard, by-the-numbers fantasy plot with some colorful, eccentric characters thrown into the mix to tie it back to its source material.  Oh, and Alice’s experiences in Underland ,which help her she decide that she will not let others tell her what to do (even though she ends up letting them tell her what to do), relate back to the real world and change her when she returns.

So ultimately this Alice fails to deliver the madcap antics and the celebration of eccentricity that you would expect from Burton and Depp and also never demonstrates the heart and soul of their better work.  And that puts this movie very much in the same camp as Avatar: a visual masterpiece that lacks a story to equal its technical accomplishments.  And I’m guessing this is more the result of corporate decisions trumping artistic direction.  By all appearances, Disney certainly seems to be setting this up as franchise that they hope will remain viable for years to come.  So I can see where they may have pushed for a “safer” story for the movie that will pilot the series.  And sure, I can see where Disney would embrace eccentricity and imagination, but only so far as it enhances the saleability of the product.  And much like corporate decisions pushed Burton’s remake of the Planet of the Apes out of his control in the interest of the franchise it would create, I have to believe that similar forces guided the final product here (otherwise I have to finally give in and admit that Tim Burton has lost his touch, and I’m not ready to do that yet).  With Planet of the Apes, though, the tinkering from above ultimately destroyed the movie and any chance of sequels.  With Alice in Wonderland, it appears they delivered just what the studio brass would want: a sequel-friendly movie with general appeal even though it may be artistically vapid.

So while Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland may not be the disaster that was the Planet of the Apes, it also falls well short of the best work of his career like Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Big Fish, and A Nightmare Before Christmas.  It does have the potential to grow on you, though, sort of like the last film mentioned did.  It’s worth seeing for its technical accomplishments alone, much like Avatar, just don’t go in expecting another Burton masterpiece and you will not be too disappointed.

You can check showtimes in your area and buy tickets online for Alice in Wonderland and other movies now playing at Fandango.com:

The Crazies, both new and old, delivers an interesting enough twist on the Zombie movie genre.

By John J. Joex

Rating:

Original: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

Remake: 3 out of 5 Stars

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

Those people familiar with director George A. Romero most likely know him for the zombie franchise he kicked off with the seminal Night of the Living Dead and also look on him as the godfather to that particular sub-genre.  He also did a movie in the 1973 called The Crazies that offered a twist of sorts on the zombie-flick but which never gained quite as much notoriety.  For me, that movie flew under the radar and I was not even aware of its existence until the announcement last year of the recent remake, which opened in theaters last week.   So just this last weekend I picked up a copy of the original and then this week I caught the updated version in the theater giving me a good opportunity to compare the two while still fresh in my memory.

Both movies follow a very similar plotline: the government has been experimenting with bio-weapons and a virus from these experiments gets loose and infects a small town.  This virus causes dementia in its victims, essentially turning them into homicidal zombies, though not the undead variety.  The government tries to contain the outbreak through severe methods but a small group of people breaks away from their quarantine and flees from trigger-happy military personal as well as their friends and neighbors afflicted by varying degrees of dementia.

The original movie follows a very direct approach to the story.  The military shows up almost immediately and there is no question as to what the townspeople suffer from.  However, a lack of trust in the ill-prepared military personnel leads to the decision to break free from their yoke.  This movie develops its tension and suspense in the central characters’ flight to safety along with their inability to trust or feel secure with anybody they meet or even themselves as they start to see the virus manifest itself.  The 70’s version is a low budget affair with bargain-basement actors which requires that you get past the cheese-factor in order to enjoy it.  But ultimately it delivers a satisfying, if not spectacular, science fiction yarn steeped in government conspiracy (a precursor of sorts to The X-Files).

The remake follows a similar story to the original but develops a bit more slowly and keeps the viewer in the dark longer about what has inflicted the town (assuming, of course, they have not seen the original).  It also adopts the vernacular of the horror movies that followed the 1973 version, from Jaws to Halloween to Friday the 13th to A Nightmare on Elmstreet, and delivers the in-your-face, jump-out-at-the-screen moments of horror that the original eschewed (it even has its own version of the mayor from Jaws who is determined not to ruin the season, though fortunately this time around the sheriff just ignores him).  This approach provides more of a rollercoaster ride and more of the thrills that modern-day audiences expect, but it also too often descends into the predictable and contrived.  Still, the remake delivers an enjoyable movie if maybe a bit less satisfying than the original (depending of course on your capacity to tolerate cheesiness over predictability).  Both movies wrap up with fairly grim endings, though the current movie makes the leap to the extreme scenario that the original just suggested.  And both movies leave us with the expected setup for a sequel.  That never surfaced with the original, but the updated movie has seen a decent take at the Box Office so far and will almost certainly make its way back to the big screen with additional installments.

Ultimately, both movies manage to deliver a decent enough distraction and elevate themselves a notch or two above the average.  Neither would rank as a classic in Science Fiction or Horror, but they also avoid disgracing their genres and are definitely worth a look.

But the Original Movie on DVD from Amazon.com:

Survivors gives us an interesting post-apocalyptic scenario, though it’s not as gripping as it could be.

By John J. Joex

BBC America, Saturdays 8 PM EST

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars (after 4 episodes)

Way back in 1975, a series premiered on BBC called Survivors about a group of people who managed to survive a virulent plague that wiped out 99% of the Earth’s population.  This series was created by Doctor Who scribe Terry Nation who previously had the honor of creating the Daleks, one of the most famous nefarious races in all of Science Fiction.  He also went on to create the well regarded series Blake’s 7 later in the 70’s.  And while Survivors had its fans and lasted thee seasons (totaling 38 episodes), that show never attracted as much attention as Nation’s work on either Doctor Who or Blake’s 7.

Recently, with remake-fever heavy in the air, the BBC decided to give the concept another go and the new version has just recently made its way to the States on BBC America.  I never saw the original, but I am a big fan of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre so I decided to check the new one out.  It follows a similar storyline to the original, as a deadly virus starts to attack the population in Europe then quickly begins to spread throughout the world.  By the end of the first episode it has wiped out all but a few people who have a natural immunity to the virus (the show’s central character actually caught the virus and recovered which is different from what we have seen from the other survivors).  As the second episode picks up, we follow a small group of people still alive who at first wander aimlessly until they all meet up.  They travel together for a short while then most decide to go their separate ways until one woman with them, Abbey, delivers a speech that convinces them that they must stay together.  This sets up the basic premise for the show as the group finds a place to act as base camp then sets off foraging for food and supplies and in the process encounters other survivors as well.  We also see glimpses of a side-story about a research facility that has maintained its isolation from the rest of the world and seems to know something about the origins of the virus.

So far, Survivors has established its post-plague setting and the basic template of a small group of people trying to start over from amidst the devastation, though it has done it somewhat slowly and has yet to really grab me the way I would expect.  The main characters have not behaved quite the way I would expect people in their situation to act.  When they realized that other survivors in the area had gone native and decided to follow the survival of the fittest route, I would expect our main band of survivors to react differently.  It seems like they would to try and secure their base camp and arm themselves, even if they would try their hardest not to resort to violence (though seeing as one of the main characters has a past as a murderer, he should have no incentive to follow a pacifist route).  Now I do admit that I am looking at this from more of a cowboy American perspective and that countries like England have (or had in this case) stronger gun control laws.  So trying to arm themselves may not be as feasible or the more natural thought process for this group.  Still I have the feeling that the core characters are acting less like people who survived a holocaust and more like people in a television series about surviving a holocaust.  Meaning that their actions seem more in tune with carrying forward the story than with the natural reactions of people actually living though this devastating situation.  You could write off some of this to post-traumatic shock, though, because that would definitely be gripping these survivors.  We will see how the writers carry the story forward, but I would like my suspension of disbelief to be stretched less often by this series.

Survivors has already completed two six-episode seasons in Britain and a third is in production.  I assume that BBC America plans on running all twelve of the completed episodes and will eventually carry the next season as well.  It is a decent show and worth a look, but I would not count it as a top notch show just yet.  It has the potential to get there, though.

Go to TV.com for more info on the Survivors including Episode guides and Cast bios

Pre-Order Both the Original and the New Series from Amazon.com:

By John J. Joex

6 Issue Mini-Series from Wildstorm

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars (after 2 issues)

For the uninitiated, the CW’s television series Supernatural follows brothers Sam and Dean Winchester who are “hunters” caught up in a war against demonic forces who seek to control the human world.  The series, which delivers an enjoyable tale with an occult twist, is now in its fifth season and the network just recently announced its renewal for a sixth season.  Fans of the show, as well as those looking to jump onboard, will take great delight in Supernatural Beginning’s End, a six issue mini-series that acts as a prequel to the show and covers the events that lead up to Sam’s decision to exit from the “family business” and attend college at Stanford (prior to where the series kicks off at the beginning of Season 1).

The comic book series starts off with Dean and a reluctant Sam accompanying their father to New York City where they hope to locate a master of black magic (whom their dad previously thought was dead) because they believe he might have some information on the identity of the demon that killed boys’ mother.  They break into the man’s house and are attacked by a strange creature which eventually results in them hooking up with the “army” of hunters who protect New York from otherworldly threats.  This group agrees to help Sam and Dean and their father, but Sam feels like this is a lost cause and after an argument with his father he decides to go his own way.  This leads to him stumbling across a group of outcasts who live beneath the city and who are suffering from a plague of occult origins.

The first two issues have moved along with a brisk pace and embrace the feel of the television show while also expanding on it and taking the story in directions that the show’s limited budget would not allow.  What it also does is suggest some new possibilities for the franchise.  The New York army gives us a new twist on the hunters from what we have previously seen on the show, and I’d love to see this fleshed out more.  And the underworld people add yet another dimension to this possible new direction.  To tell the truth, I would be more interested in seeing a spin-off series in this vein next season instead of a sixth season of Supernatural seeing as series creator Eric Krikpe had wanted to wrap up the story at the end of the current season anyway (which means that next season could lead to the same drop in quality that we saw in other shows like the X-Files that the networks dragged out too long).  I realize, however, that the television spin-off is unlikely but they could continue the story of the New York hunters in another comic book, which I’m sure would pique the interest of many Supernatural fans.

The comic book comes to us from television series writers Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin with artwork by Diego Olmos.  The visuals for the book are quite good though I have to admit that the artist has not captured the likeness of the actors who play Sam and Dean very well (unlike, say, the Jericho comic book which delivers perfectly illustrated facsimiles of the actors).  Perhaps that’s intentional, and perhaps the actors did not allow their images to be reproduced, and really it’s not too much of a distraction.  In any case, the series has delivered across its first two issues and looks to give us a decent extension of the series across its six issue run that delves further into Sam and Dean’s back-story.

Catch up with Supernatural Seasons 1 through 4 on DVD:

Defying Gravity may be part soap opera, but it ultimately gives us a strong, character-driven science fiction tale.

By John J. Joex

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

Way back in August, 2009 I ran a review of ABC’s Summer replacement series Defying Gravity in which I noted that its mixture of soap opera elements with realistic space travel gave us an interesting show that did not always quite work because of the disparate genres it tried to fuse.  I wrote that review after having seen four episodes of the show but then found that my opinion of the show improved as it progressed.  However, ABC yanked the series from its schedule after its eighth episode (claiming that to be its “season finale”) and American audiences did not get a chance to see how the show’s first season really ended.  Now Defying Gravity has made it to DVD, though, and with the chance to view the entire run I can see this series ultimately managed to soar and unfortunately was cut short before it could provide a more satisfying conclusion.

As I mentioned in my first review, the show gave us a heavy dose of soap opera early on as it alternated between the space mission that provided the core story and flashbacks to the training program the astronauts participated in which led to the selection of the final eight crew members.  However, the series focus began to shift as it progressed, and the writers began to work more science fiction elements (including the story of the mysterious Beta) into the mix.   In fact, it really started to pick up steam right as ABC lost faith in it and pulled the show off the air, and the story from Episode 8 (the last to air in the United States) to the series finale gave us a truly excellent and at times thought-provoking piece of science fiction.  In fact, we find out that some of the side-stories introduced early on that look like just soap opera asides to justify throwing in some gratuitous sex scenes actually provided an integral part of the bigger story (particularly Zoe’s abortion and how Gamma used that as a driving force to get her to complete her mission on Venus).

So yes, the writers threw in a lot of soap opera elements, and yes that was probably designed to boost the ratings (didn’t work, though), but ultimately they masterfully worked many of these into the over-arching storyline which leaned heavily toward science fiction (or you could even say speculative fiction).  And personally, I could deal with the soap opera elements.  They came a bit heavy early on, but then the writers started to balance out that and the science fiction elements as the series progressed.  And you have to admit that they gave us a very believable look at how we might explore the solar system in the near future both on a technological and personal level (if you are going to put men and women in confined quarters for an extended period of time, you have to address the implications of their biological urges).   And if you think about it, we have had very few television shows that give us anything approaching a hard science take on how space travel would happen (Ronald Moore’s failed pilot from last year, Virtuality, took a similar stab at the concept but also went nowhere with the networks).

In truth, this show was not a good fit for the broadcast networks.  Even though it was pitched as “Grey’s Anatomy in space” (with GA as one of ABC’s tentpole shows), it’s a bit difficult for the average viewer to digest.  And the soap opera elements probably turned off many science fiction fans, especially since they played up that angle more heavily at the onset.  This probably would have been a good fit for Syfy, though.  That channel does not demand the higher ratings numbers that the broadcast networks expect and with their recent rebranding they have been trying to court a larger female audience.  This one could have lured that demographic if given the time it needed to establish itself and grow.  That never happened on ABC, though, and the series did poorly in its international broadcasts as well thus dooming it to a single season that truncated the story it had just started to get rolling.

I highly recommend this DVD set to science fiction fans.  While you may struggle through the early episodes, stick with it and you will be rewarded.  And my rating above is based more heavily on the later episodes, as well as the general impression the series left with me.  True, this one strays into soap opera at times, but count that as the tariff for the excellent core story that delivers a strong, character-driven science fiction tale.

Buy Defying Gravity on DVD from Amazon.com:

By John J. Joex

Rating:

Pilot: 3 out of 5 Stars
Series Potential: 4 out of 5 Stars

Gene Roddenberry is of course most closely associated with the Star Trek franchise that he created and shepherded across multiple platforms including television, movies, books, and comics.  He also tried to kick off other several other science fiction properties in the 1970’s with television pilots that never took off.  Recently, Roddenberry productions announced that they would revive one of these failed projects, The Questor Tapes, and try again to create a series from that idea.  I looked at the original Questor Tapes pilot two weeks ago to assess whether it would have made a good television show, then last week I looked at Genesis II and Planet Earth to judge the potential they had.  Now it’s time to look at the last of Gene Roddenberry’s pilots from the 70’s, Spectre, which aired in 1977 and strayed from the science fiction elements more characteristic of his work.

With this movie, Roddenberry dabbled in the occult as he brought us two paranormal investigators who gave us a modern day take on the Holmes and Watson partnership with a supernatural twist.  Robert Culp took on the Holmes position as the criminologist William Sebastian who had taken up the studying and investigating of supernatural activities.  Gig Young stepped in as Dr. Hamilton (“Ham”), the Watson-like straight-man to Sebastian’s more eccentric personality.  As the pilot begins, we find that these two had worked together previously on more straight-forward criminal investigations, but that Sebastian had gone off on his own to explore the world of the occult.  Now he needed Hamilton to assist him with a case he had been asked to consult on.  In addition to Hamilton’s assistance in procedural affairs, Sebestian needed him in his capacity as a doctor because he suffers from a heart problem apparently afflicted on him through voodoo magic.

Sebastian and Ham must go to England where wealthy British heiress Anitra Cyon (Ann Bell) fears that her brother Geoffrey (James Villiers) has fallen under the spell of a nefarious cult.  Once there, they find that both Geoffrey and her other brother Mitri (played by John Hurt) had discovered some Druidic ruins and in the process unearthed an ancient evil being known as Asmodeus.  Unfortunately, the story starts to get murky as it progresses and eventually nearly descends into high camp (and the super-cheesy special effects only made it worse).  However, the excellent performances by Culp and Young and the rest of the supporting cast (including Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as Sebastian’s assistant) keep the movie afloat, though.  Perhaps Roddenberry strayed too far from his sci fi roots with this one and had yet managed to find himself in the arena of supernatural story-telling.  That might explain the movie’s detours into the absurd and its somewhat unsatisfying resolution.  But despite that, the concept definitely showed promise and Roddenberry had a good crew onboard to help guide this into a decent series (and perhaps they could have even arranged a team-up with Carl Kolchak).  Unfortunately the series never took off as the pilot did not generate much ratings magic and it quickly disappeared from the public eye (though it did have a European theatrical release that added in some nudity to the sacrificial revelry toward the end).

And while the original pilot could have branched out into a promising franchise (upon which I based my Series Potential rating above), does the concept still deserve attention today?  I would say that it could prove fruitful if they managed to get actors who fit the roles of Sebastian and Ham as well as Culp and Young.  This one would live and die by the actors in those principal roles because television shows about occult investigators have become a well tread commodity since this movie first aired.  A current day revival of The Questor Tapes and/or Genesis II interests me more than this one, but I am sorry that the Spectre from the 70’s never went beyond the pilot because Robert Culp could have had a field day with the lead role.  Unfortunately, like The Questor Tapes, this one has not made it to DVD yet, though hopefully it will get a release before too long.  Genesis II and Planet Earth are available from Warner Home Video, so you can at least check out those two.

You can read more about Spectre at Wikipedia.  Also, check out TVParty.com’s entry on the Roddenberry pilots.

Also see my reviews of The Questor Tapes along with Genesis II and Planet Earth.

Buy or Download the Gene Roddenberry Pilots Genesis II and Planet Earth on DVD from the Warner Bros. Store:

In its 6th and final Season, Lost has managed to re-invent itself once again and remain vital.

By John J. Joex

ABC, Tuesdays 9 PM EST

Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars (After 5 Episodes)

WARNING:  THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!

Lost has been appointment television for myself and millions of other viewers since the show first debuted in 2004.  The series about a group of survivors from a plane crash that find themselves on a mysterious island that has many secrets grabbed the public’s attention when it first debuted and has since done something few other shows can boast: it has continued to re-invent itself each season.  I remember when I wrote a review for the show after its first four episodes I commented that I could not see how the creative team could keep the series viable for more than a season or two.  Of course I did not realize the amount of vision and planning they had put into the idea that would continue to keep the series vital and engaging into its sixth year (or, as an alternate explanation, they are really, really good at winging it and riding by the seat of their pants).  I do admit that Lost as strayed at times (parts of Season 3 and some of the time travel stuff last season), but it has never veered completely off course like, say, Heroes.  And now, with the planned sixth and final season, the show has re-invented itself yet again and has my head spinning through its first five episodes.

At the end of Season 5, Jack Shepherd convinced his fellow time travelers, who were stuck with him in the 70’s (and era anybody would want to escape from), that they needed to detonate the nuclear bomb on the island to change future events and keep their plane from ever crashing.  The others with him reluctantly agree to go along with this plan and, after at first seeming to fail in this endeavor, the fifth season finale ended with Juliet at the bottom of a pit pounding on the bomb until it exploded.  Fade to white.  Wait until the Season 6 premiere.

And as the current season resumed, we find Jack and the others still alive (though Sayid and Juliet are barely hanging on) and they have returned to the present day, though they are still on the island.  Their plan of changing the timeline and the fate of Oceanic 815 appears to have failed (though Miles later gets a message from the grave that “it worked”).  But then there’s another story to tell that begins with a flashback to the airplane just as its hits the turbulence that ripped it apart and sent it plummeting to the island.  Only, this time around the turbulence passes and the plane is still intact.  Huh?  What happened?

Welcome to Lost’s newest story-telling technique: the flash-sideways (Parallel-Flash? Lat-Flash? Alt-Flash?  I’ve seen any of a number of suggestions on the Internet).  Apparently setting off the bomb did do something, and now as each episode tracks the goings-on at the island, we also get a glimpse of the main characters in this new alternate reality.  So get ready for your head to spin out of control and be sure to have your quick-reference Lost encyclopedia handy!

At first, I thought the flash-sideways were showing us what would have happened if Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed.  But the fact that Desmond sat down next to Jack during the season premiere should have clued me in that something was afoot (I totally spaced that until a few days later because I had become so accustomed to his presence with the other characters).  As the episodes have progressed, we find that this alternate reality was different even before Oceanic 815 ever left Sydney.  Entire timelines have changed including Shannon not coming back to America with Boone and Locke being engaged to marry Helen Norwood and Jack having a son.  And this alternate reality is peppered with characters that we have seen throughout the show’s first five seasons including Others and characters who appeared in previous flash-backs (or flash-forwards or flash-diagonals or whatever).  Basically, almost every person who shows up on the screen for more than a minute or two could have previously made an appearance at some point during the show.  Thank goodness for the Lostepedia because after referring to that on multiple occasions I realize how much back-story has drifted from my conscious over the past few years.

So is this new spin that the creators have thrown at us in Season 6 really advancing the story or do they just want our heads spinning so fast that we won’t realize they have pulled a fast one on us to get out of writing a real conclusion to the series?  Hard to say at this point.  I like it so far and believe it is giving us a deeper look at each of the principal characters, though you could argue these glimpses are meaningless because they’re not part of the real world.  Or are they?  On the island, the events relate back to Jacob (now supposedly dead) and his black-clad nemesis and the chess game these two had been playing that seems to involve everybody (and I mean everybody).  I imagine that the alternate reality will play into all of this at some point as well.  If so, this could give us a masterful conclusion to an outstanding series.  And we can only hope that is where the writers are headed and try hard to forget about the bad taste left in our mouths after Battlestar Galactica totally fumbled away its attempts to wrap up its many storylines.

Most importantly, Lost continues to deliver an engaging drama that has avoided the staleness that often permeates television shows that manage to stick around more than a couple of years.  It’s still appointment television and it currently looks like it is building up to a heck of a culmination to its over-arching story when it finally wraps up this season.

Which leads to the question of what’s next?  The ratings for Lost had declined over the last few seasons, though they have still remained respectable.  So far this season, though, the numbers have picked up and I’m guessing the pivotal series-ending episodes will pull in blockbuster numbers.  So does ABC try to continue the story through a spin-off of some sort (or a spin-back or a spin-sideways)?  Hard to say, but they have indicated an interest in keeping the property alive.  We can only hope they decide to leave it alone for now, though, and move on.   After six excellent seasons (assuming this season continues on its current pace), it deserves a rest so that we can reflect back on the good times it brought us.

For the most complete online Lost reference guide, go to Lostpedia.com

Watch episodes of Lost online for free (all the way back to Season 1) at Hulu.com

Buy Lost Season’s 1 – 5 on DVD from Amazon.com at up to 58% Off:

Syfy’s prequel to Battlestar Galactica shows potential but needs to pick up the pace and boost its performances to avoid collapsing under the weight of its own story.

By John J. Joex

Syfy, Fridays 10 PM EST

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars (After the pilot and 3 episodes)

Syfy’s Caprica brings us a prequel to that network’s reboot of the Battlestar Galactica franchise which builds on that universe while giving us a much different type of series.  Whereas BSG delivered the tale of a desperate band of survivors fleeing from the attempt by the robotic Cylons to exterminate humanity, Caprica gives us the tale of a society relishing in its dominance while also standing at the verge of its own, self-inflicted collapse.  The series kicks off 58 years prior to the Cylon attack on the colonies that occurred at the beginning of the BSG story arc and follows two families, the Graystones and the Adamas, both of which become integrally involved in the creation of the Cylons.

Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) is a wealthy industrialist who is currently working on a defense contract to create robot soldiers and has produced a prototype which looks a lot like the “toasters” (non-human in appearance) Cylons that we saw in the Battlestar Galactica series.   Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) is a lawyer of Tauran descent (an amalgam of Jewish, Italian, and Arab ethnic traits) who has ties to the underworld.  The lives of these two become intertwined when both lose members of their immediate family in a terrorist attack (Graystone loses his daughter while Adama loses his wife and daughter).  Graystone becomes obsessed with resurrecting his daughter and Adama’s as well via “avatars” (no link to a recent movie some might have heard about) of their personality caught in a virtual reality world that many people link into as a means of escape (and it’s a pretty hedonistic existence apparently meant to act as a comment on our own excesses expressed through video games, movies, television, etc.).   Graystone is not aware, though, that his daughter Zoe’s avatar has merged with his robotic prototype which did not previously function properly with “standard” AI implants, meaning that she will likely become the first Cylon.

If this synopsis sounds pretty convoluted and dense, then here’s the real rub: I have only just scraped the surface!  Caprica delivers a very intense, intricate tale that it plans to unfold slowly through multiple story arcs.  For fans of Battlestar Galactica, you will find some similarities to that show in the shared universe and the focus on more dramatic stories.  But it also lacks the action elements and intense space battles that BSG delivered.  Caprica is more of a family/political drama with brushes of soap opera and eschews the heavy-hitting action of its sister-series.  And while the pilot did a good job of jump-starting the concept and setting the stage for the story to follow, the series has since bogged down with dense, mostly talky episodes that tend to drag more often than they fly.  Now I can deal with the slow start because in can see the potential in Caprica and I can remember how Babylon 5, another heavily story-arc driven series, also dragged its heals during its first season before really taking off during its second and third.  And the direction the series has taken so far is intentional as they try to branch beyond the more male-skewing audience that BSG drew and appeal to female viewers as well, a demographic that Syfy currently covets (hey guys, how about nabbing ABC’s cancelled Defying Gravity).  Still, the show seems too tedious  and overly cumbersome and has yet to grab us with the more engaging, dramatic storylines that BSG delivered when hitting on all cylinders.

But really, the thing that has bothered me most about this show so far is that most of the performances beyond the two principals have bogged down the series than anything else.  Stoltz and Morales have been nothing short of spectacular in their portrayals of the patriarchs of the Graystones and Adamas, and Sasha Roiz has stood out as Sam Adama and even Sina Najafi has managed to shine as the young William Adama.  But beyond that, most of the other supporting cast have fallen into the background and seem  almost like interchangeable parts of the show’s rather murky storyline so far.  Alessandra Torresani, who has provided the face for Caprica throughout much of the show’s promotional campaign, has yet to set off any onscreen sparks as Zoe Graystone and just seems to coast through her performance with a permanent wtf look etched on her face.  True, she is portraying a cyberspace recreation of the flesh and blood girl, but I’d like to see a little more enthusiasm from her.  Really, from the entire supporting cast for that matter.  In fact, in the most recent episode when it appeared that the life of Amanda Graystone (Paula Malcomson) was threatened, my thought was to go ahead and kill her off so that maybe it would stir up some action.  The cast just needs to come to life and start distinguishing themselves otherwise they will fade into the background of a weighty, multifarious story that will to easily overpower such bland performances.

Perhaps because of the somewhat impenetrable story hampered by lackluster performances, Caprica has yet to show much life in the ratings.  The series debuted to unspectacular numbers and has fallen even further since.  The ratings are not horrid so far, especially for a cable channel, but they are lower than Syfy would like.  The network has indicated their support for the show by saying they are in it for the long term.  And hopefully they mean it and will stick with the show to allow it to build up an audience.  I can see them asking the writers to maybe boost the action a bit to pep up the episodes some, and maybe that would not be a bad direction.  In any case, I see a great deal of potential here and only hope the series manages to realize that before collapsing under the weight of its own story.

Watch Full Episodes of the Caprica Online at Hulu.com

Go to TV.com for more info on the Caprica including Episode guides and Cast bios

Order the Caprica Pilot Movie on DVD from Amazon.com:

By John J. Joex

With the Olympics in full gear this past week, only four Science Fiction and Fantasy shows had new episodes to present as competition. Lost did the best, pulling a 4.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic and just under 10 million viewers. That’s down somewhat from where it has been this season, but it had both the Olympics and America Idol to contend with and should jump back up closer to its previous numbers once the Prime Time landscape resets to normal. Human Target took another hit, dropping to a 2.1 rating and just over 7 million viewers. Sure, they can blame it on the Olympics, but that show is starting to run out of excuses and needs to get its numbers going in the other direction. FOX’s other show with a new episode last week, Past Life, also took a big hit in the ratings, sinking to only a 1.1 rating and three and a half million viewers. If the CW’s Supernatural had not run a repeat in that hour, it might have beat the paranormal crime drama. This, as we previously mentioned, has prompted FOX to pull the show from its schedule. Smallville held steady on Friday night with a new episode that matched the numbers it has seen most of the season.

Here is the full breakdown of the numbers for all of the Science Fiction and Fantasy shows that aired on the broadcast networks this past week:

Source: TV by the Numbers

Previous Results: Past Life Destined to be Past History

For more on the Cancellation Alert for each show, see our Cancellation Watch column