Threshold
Creator Brannon Braga reveals how the team would have fought to save the world — if his show had survived.
I admit that the way we ended Threshold was much too hasty. For a show that was about an alien race’s long-range plans to alter human DNA to make us more like them, we had to wrap up quickly. So in the last of the 12 episodes we shot — only eight of which aired in America — we had this dream sequence with Dr. Molly Caffrey (Carla Gugino). She was the one who had come up with the strategy to deal with an alien invasion of Earth. In the dream, the first alien-human child born comes to her and tells her, “Your plan will work and you will not live to see it.” With only one day to come up with something, that was our lame-ass conclusion.
Fans will get to see all 12 episodes in the DVD collection we’re releasing, but we had tons of other
read more
TV's Blade, Batman Begins
In Part 1 of our Q&A with David S. Goyer, the producer/writer detailed the differences and similarities between Spike TV's Blade: The Series (Wednesdays at 10 pm/ET) and its big-screen begetter. Here he shares the scoop on which other Blade characters will surface on TV, status reports on The Flash, Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider and the Batman Begins follow-up, and the sad truth about why shows such as
read more
Kirk "Sticky Fingaz" Jones is TV's Blade.
Producer/writer David S. Goyer is hotter than a solar flash on the big screen these days. While the veteran comic-book (Justice Society of America) and sci-fi/horror-film scribe (Batman Begins, Dark City) is currently working on, among other projects, big-screen takes on The Flash and Ghost Rider, it'
read more
Question: I have a comment on a topic that I've never seen you address, and I could be the only one who feels this way. With so many new shows in the fall, it's really hard sometimes to keep them all straight, and the names of the shows often make this more difficult. They're not very distinctive! Last season, there were three sci-fi shows premiering, and they all had one-word names: Invasion, Threshold and Surface. I could never keep straight which one was on which network, and even though I had read your reviews and knew that you endorsed one especially, I could never remember which one. For this coming fall I've counted eight new series with one-word titles, and none of them are very distinguishable (Vanished, Standoff, Justice, Smith, Jericho, Shark, Traveler, Kidnapped). Just a note to the networks: If I need a visual aid to remember which shows I want to check out, I'm not likely to watch — unless they become hits and the name is repeated enough to remind me. Not a very good ...
read more
Question: Why should anyone watch any of the new network sci-fi shows when their record of cancellation is so predictable? Why should I get myself involved in the plot and characters when there's a 90-percent certainty that the network(s) will dump any new show? And why do the networks continue to produce new shows of this sort if they don't intend to support them? I was a huge fan of Invasion and Surface. We Surface fans even dared to hope there would be more episodes when the last show stated it was the "season" finale, not the "series" finale. I and all of my friends are highly disgusted with network TV. The only reason Stargate SG-1 endured was because Showtime premiered it and stuck by it. Thanks for listening.
Answer: I'm guessing this is a retroactive question, because there are almost no new network series that play into the sci-fi/fantasy arena (NBC's Heroes is the most notable exception). If you're wondering why anyone last season bothered watching any of the networks' genre
...
read more
Patrick Dempsey of Grey's Anatomy, Matt LeBlanc of Joey
Put a fork in the 2005-06 TV season. For the fourth straight year, CBS was crowned the most watched network, with an average of 12.6 million viewers per week. Fox was able to crow as well — for the second year in a row it was No. 1 among viewers ages 18 to 49, the group most coveted by advertisers. ABC didn't come up with a new hit, but its audience grew as Grey's Anatomy, Lost and Desperate Housewives remained hot, and Dancing with the Stars
read more
Hugh Laurie, House
Put a fork in the recent TV season — it officially ended on May 24, so now it's time to tally the results. For the fourth straight year, CBS was crowned the most-watched network, with an average of 12.6 million viewers per week. While the network didn't score any smash hits, new shows such as Criminal Minds, The Unit and Ghost Whisperer were solid ratings performers.
Fox was able to crow as well: for the second year in a row it was No. 1 among viewers aged 18 to 49, the group most coveted by advertisers. But this year the network won the demo race wi
read more
BJ and Tyler, The Amazing Race
Question: I read the CBS upfront news about moving Amazing Race to Sundays at 8 pm/ET. I don't care that they moved the night — again — but why Sunday night? It will be constantly overrun by football games that go long. People who record the show will get to see half of 60 Minutes and miss the end of Race, and I'm afraid it'll begin to lose its audience. This doesn't seem like a good move to me, but maybe I'm worrying prematurely. It is only May, after all. What are your initial thoughts about the new time slot?
Answer: My biggest concern isn't the football overruns, which have been a factor in CBS' Sunday lineup for years. People are used to this and should be able to adjust accordingly — as in: set extra time on the VCR or manually set the DVR, or (here's a thought) watch it live. The biggest hurdle is that Race will be going head-to-head against another powerful reality series already established in the time period, ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which, like Race, is quite
...
read more
Reunion, Love Monkey and Commander in Chief
Reunion. Threshold. E-Ring. Invasion. Emily's Reasons Why Not. Love Monkey. Commander in Chief. Heist.
What do these shows have in common? They all debuted at some point during this soon-to-wrap TV season, yet each saw their run either cut surprisingly short or handicapped by irregular scheduling. Was 2005-06 the worst year ever to sample a new show? Were the networks especially hasty in deciding the fate of freshman series? TVGuide.com consulted a panel of experts with unique points of view to examine this strange little season gone by.
Are New Shows Getting Short Shrift?Jeff Bader, executive vice president of ABC entertainment programming and scheduling, dismisses the suggestion that prime time is a crueler-than-ever proving ground for new series. "
read more
Question: First of all, great to see Alias back in (in my opinion) top form. I still care about these characters, and I can't wait to see how it all wraps up. Likewise, another great episode of Invasion. The story keeps moving along, with quite a bit revealed each episode — certainly more than I expected when I got into it in the first place. I've been particularly impressed with Evan Peters as Jesse; I've loved the "kids return to school" aspect of the show, and Jesse has really become a centerpiece to all of the aspects of the show. His drunken shooting practice at the end of the episode was wonderfully acted — muted and subtle instead of over-the-top (as it could very easily have been). What I'm really excited about, though, is May 3, which — if my calculations are correct — will be what I've been waiting for for nearly a year: consecutive new episodes of Alias, Lost and Invasion. What a great night of television: three shows with different stories, characters, styles and even color ...
read more
