| Congratulations to the cast and crew of Stargate: Atlantis for garnering five Gemini Awards. The so-called "Canadian Emmys" nominations were announced on August 25, 2009 and the awards ceremonies will be held in Calgary, Alberta on November 14, 2009. SG:A gained recognition for their work in Writing, Costume Design, Makeup, and Visual Effects. Series co-creator and executive producer Brad Wright was cited for his work in writing the episode "The Shrine." In addition to the SG:A notices, star Amanda Tapping has extra reason to celebrate. Sanctuary, her current project, soon to debut its second season on SyFy Channel in the U.S., was recognized in six categories: Directing, Visual Effects and three Acting categories. Cited in the nominations are recognitions for the acting work by stars Robin Dunne, Amanda Tapping and supporting actor Christopher Heyerdahl. Here's the Stargate: Atlantis and Sanctuary nominations: Stargate Atlantis Best Writing in a Dramatic Series Brad Wright Stargate Atlantis The Shrine Best Costume Design Valerie Halverson Stargate Atlantis The Queen Best Achievement in Make-Up Todd Masters, Leah Ehman, Holland Miller, Brad Proctor, Kyla Rose Tremblay Stargate Atlantis Vegas Best Visual Effects Mark Savela, Brenda Campbell, Natalia Diaz, Carina Dielissen Hunt, Shannon Gurney, Paul Hegg, Vivian Jim, Chandra Juhasz, Kodie MacKenzie, Alex McClymont Stargate Atlantis Enemy At The Gate Mark Savela, Jason Gross, Paul Hegg, Brandon Hines, Jamie Yukio Kawano, Alex McClymont, Krista McLean, James Rorick, Luke Vallee Stargate Atlantis First Contact Sanctuary Best Direction in a Dramatic Series Steven Adelson Sanctuary Instinct Best Visual Effects Lee Wilson, Caleb Ashmore, Matthew Belbin, Sebastien Bergeron, Ken Lee, Lionel Lim, Mladen Miholjcic, Les Quinn, Lisa Sepp-Wilson, Philippe Thibault Sanctuary The Five Lee Wilson, Caleb Ashmore, Matthew Belbin, Sebastien Bergeron, Ken Lee, Lionel Lim, Mladen Miholjcic, Les Quinn, Lisa Sepp-Wilson, Philippe Thibault Sanctuary Sanctuary For All P1 Best Performance by an Actor in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role Robin Dunne Sanctuary Requiem Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role Amanda Tapping Sanctuary Requiem Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Series Christopher Heyerdahl Sanctuary The Five / Revelations P2 |
Monday, August 31, 2009
Stargate Atlantis noms for 5 Canadian Gemini Awards
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
SFTV 1990-2004 book reviews here
Two website-based reviews for the Science Fiction Television Series 1990-2004 book are available here:
SF Crowsnest
http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/books/2009/nz13743.php
Sci-Fi Pulse
http://scifipulse.net/?p=6313
SF Crowsnest
http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/books/2009/nz13743.php
Sci-Fi Pulse
http://scifipulse.net/?p=6313
Thursday, March 5, 2009
SFTV series on DVD
It’s encouraging and exciting to see that boxsets of TV shows on DVD are popular and plentiful. It’s a route for all of us to re-live our childhood memories of favorite shows we watched as a kid. TV show boxsets are also great for more recent shows just to get all the episodes and enjoy the high-quality and extra value that DVDs brings.
As a last-minute feature, we added to 33 chapters of our second book, information on the status of their DVD releases. With 58 series titles covered in the book, that’s just 56% coverage which is great. But so many more titles should be released.
Among the titles that deserves to be on DVD includes a complete series for the revived Outer Limits (now only as season 1), Jeremiah season 2, and a whole spate of one-season shows that should get a good audience outside of TV broadcasting: Mann & Machine, Mercy Point, Night Visions, Sleepwalkers, Space Rangers, Welcome to Paradox. Short-lived shows, in a funny way, are good for DVDs because they often don’t require a lot of discs and can be sold in one small box due to the low number of episodes. Quite a few one-seasoners have already been released such as Crusade, Earth 2, Firefly, Harsh Realm, Odyssey 5 and Starhunter.
One title in particular that has gained attention on the Internet is Bryce Zabel and Brent V. Friedman’s NBC production of Dark Skies. It’s a one-season show that has a strong cult following and Zabel has just created a Facebook page, encouraging devoted fans to sign up and show their support. The page is here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2385296013
At this writing there were 93 members joined up.
One of the recent releases that also serves as an indicator of how a one-season show can be marketed to today’s audience, was the SF comedy Quark starring Richard Benjamin. It would be fascinating to see the sales figures of a DVD release such as this, to learn if there is an audience out there for such a show from 1977, produced in the era of the Star Wars phenomenon. Saturday morning TV genre fare such as Ark II, Space Academy and Land of the Lost were also finally resurrected for DVDs.
But the costs of releasing DVDs can be extensive. According to Gord Lacey, webmaster of the excellent newszine, TVShowsOnDVD.com, the success of a DVD release is difficult to estimate. “Each set has a different ‘breaking point’ when it comes to profitability, since every show and season have different costs,” explains Lacey. “An example of some costs would be music clearances, and profit participation. Do the stars make money off the DVDs? What about the producers? So it's hard to say ‘20,000 copies of a set and it reaches profitability,’ because it may be 5,000 for one show and 50,000 for another. Studios don't release their sales numbers, and even if they did you couldn't use them to determine whether the set was profitable or not. Frustrating, isn't it?”
In the past year quite a few series from our first volume, which covers the era of 1959-1989, have had DVD releases. They include: The Incredible Hulk, The Invaders, Night Gallery, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In a future blog, I’ll discuss a complete list of all 1959-1989 SFTV titles that are currently available on DVD.
It has also been announced that the first season of Earth: Final Conflict (1997-2002) will see an official DVD release complete with extras.
In today’s robust online video community, DVD is not just the only outlet where fans can see or purchase “old” SFTV. There’s also commercial Internet services like Hulu, NetFlix, Joost, AOL Video and iTunes (where 33 SFTV series from the 1990-2004 era are available). The diversification of how we consume our entertainment, thanks to iPods, Internet and other technologies, are giving us something truly wonderful. We are enjoying our favorite shows of yesteryear today and in formats of our choice. The only problem is that Hollywood often takes their time in picking and choosing from their libraries the titles they consider as marketable. However, there are also extenuating circumstances where certain series are unable to be released on DVD due to legal entanglements like 1966’s Batman and Max Headroom. In the case of Roswell, they had to rescore the songs before appearing on DVDs due to rights issues.
Recently it occurred to me that movie-of-the-week titles from the 1970s are really buried. It’s not likely that everything will be released. But as long as consumers demand their favorites, it can happen. It took PBS/WNET decades to release on VHS/DVD, after pent-up demand by dedicated fans, their 1980 production of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven starring Bruce Davison and Kevin Conway. So -- it can happen. But you, the viewer, have to be empowered and demand for it.
As a last-minute feature, we added to 33 chapters of our second book, information on the status of their DVD releases. With 58 series titles covered in the book, that’s just 56% coverage which is great. But so many more titles should be released.
Among the titles that deserves to be on DVD includes a complete series for the revived Outer Limits (now only as season 1), Jeremiah season 2, and a whole spate of one-season shows that should get a good audience outside of TV broadcasting: Mann & Machine, Mercy Point, Night Visions, Sleepwalkers, Space Rangers, Welcome to Paradox. Short-lived shows, in a funny way, are good for DVDs because they often don’t require a lot of discs and can be sold in one small box due to the low number of episodes. Quite a few one-seasoners have already been released such as Crusade, Earth 2, Firefly, Harsh Realm, Odyssey 5 and Starhunter.
One title in particular that has gained attention on the Internet is Bryce Zabel and Brent V. Friedman’s NBC production of Dark Skies. It’s a one-season show that has a strong cult following and Zabel has just created a Facebook page, encouraging devoted fans to sign up and show their support. The page is here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2385296013
At this writing there were 93 members joined up.
One of the recent releases that also serves as an indicator of how a one-season show can be marketed to today’s audience, was the SF comedy Quark starring Richard Benjamin. It would be fascinating to see the sales figures of a DVD release such as this, to learn if there is an audience out there for such a show from 1977, produced in the era of the Star Wars phenomenon. Saturday morning TV genre fare such as Ark II, Space Academy and Land of the Lost were also finally resurrected for DVDs.
But the costs of releasing DVDs can be extensive. According to Gord Lacey, webmaster of the excellent newszine, TVShowsOnDVD.com, the success of a DVD release is difficult to estimate. “Each set has a different ‘breaking point’ when it comes to profitability, since every show and season have different costs,” explains Lacey. “An example of some costs would be music clearances, and profit participation. Do the stars make money off the DVDs? What about the producers? So it's hard to say ‘20,000 copies of a set and it reaches profitability,’ because it may be 5,000 for one show and 50,000 for another. Studios don't release their sales numbers, and even if they did you couldn't use them to determine whether the set was profitable or not. Frustrating, isn't it?”
In the past year quite a few series from our first volume, which covers the era of 1959-1989, have had DVD releases. They include: The Incredible Hulk, The Invaders, Night Gallery, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In a future blog, I’ll discuss a complete list of all 1959-1989 SFTV titles that are currently available on DVD.
It has also been announced that the first season of Earth: Final Conflict (1997-2002) will see an official DVD release complete with extras.
In today’s robust online video community, DVD is not just the only outlet where fans can see or purchase “old” SFTV. There’s also commercial Internet services like Hulu, NetFlix, Joost, AOL Video and iTunes (where 33 SFTV series from the 1990-2004 era are available). The diversification of how we consume our entertainment, thanks to iPods, Internet and other technologies, are giving us something truly wonderful. We are enjoying our favorite shows of yesteryear today and in formats of our choice. The only problem is that Hollywood often takes their time in picking and choosing from their libraries the titles they consider as marketable. However, there are also extenuating circumstances where certain series are unable to be released on DVD due to legal entanglements like 1966’s Batman and Max Headroom. In the case of Roswell, they had to rescore the songs before appearing on DVDs due to rights issues.
Recently it occurred to me that movie-of-the-week titles from the 1970s are really buried. It’s not likely that everything will be released. But as long as consumers demand their favorites, it can happen. It took PBS/WNET decades to release on VHS/DVD, after pent-up demand by dedicated fans, their 1980 production of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven starring Bruce Davison and Kevin Conway. So -- it can happen. But you, the viewer, have to be empowered and demand for it.
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Kill Switch
This is a topic I could have added to the Introduction of our second book, devoted to SF shows from 1990-2004, but that was already a long essay. And so it is just as well that it is used here, as a blog entry.
One of the facts of life in any television series, whether it be a comedy or drama series, is that necessary evil: Cancellation. There are actually three kinds of cancellation and all of them have been rendered upon our SF genre shows.
The first type is cancellation on the producer’s terms. This is the most coveted by creative types and is a prize when captured. On just about every season J. Michael Straczynski struggled with making sure that his space epic Babylon 5 lived on for the planned five years. He very nearly lost the show at the end of its fourth season, necessitating that the series’ final episode was filmed ... just in case. But a fifth season reprieve allowed them to put that story “on the shelf” for a year. Interestingly, JMS is quite probably the only TV series creator to envision a five-year epic by design. He’s the only one who mapped out, beforehand, a conclusion on paper.
In a similar vein, Battlestar Galactica, executive producer Ronald D. Moore’s remake of Glen A. Larson’s one-season wonder from the 1970s, sent themselves into oblivion in four compact seasons. Perhaps learning lessons from other shows, executive producers and writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, of ABC’s intricately engrossing puzzle Lost also arranged for a limited set of episodes to properly map out the storytelling without padding the show. In this case, an ending was needed to be set so that the pieces could be laid down for an endgame.
The second type of being hit is being cancelled by the network, who don’t support the show. Ignobly, networks can be fierce with their programming, dropping shows after airing just a handful of episodes, as it happened to Century City, Harsh Realm, Mercy Point, Strange World, Sleepwalkers and Timecop. Despite initial efforts NBC “tried out” seaQuest for three seasons, before pulling the plug. Inexplicably, Fox TV aired Firefly’s initial 2-hour pilot film as...its last episode before ending the series. Too often we’ve watched how networks shabbily treat their expensive investments. Even after a show is cancelled, with leftover unaired episodes remaining on the shelf, a network will occasionally “burn off” the episodes at a later time in an effort to recoup some expenses as was done by UPN with Mercy Point (the last four episodes) and by Showtime with Odyssey 5 who aired the last six remaining episodes as two-hour movies over a three week period...25 months later! Straczynski’s Jeremiah, which ran for two seasons experienced a similar phenomenon. It’s final eight episodes were “burned off” eight months after the series’ initial run. The worst circumstance is when the network doesn’t even want the show at all and tries to sabotage the show’s life, as TNT had done with the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade.
The third type of cancellation is the most typical: A verdict rendered by the audience. It’s when the ratings are so low the network realizes there is no audience for a program and kills it.
A show can also be stopped for reasons other than the above. Code Name: Eternity was a series that filmed 26 episodes before being sold to the United States broadcasting market and the production apparatus was already dissolved. With Odyssey 5 and Jeremiah, the network sat on the shows for a long time, preventing further adventures.
Sometimes a show can run longer than anyone has expected (Stargate SG-1) or frustratingly shorter than expected (Crusade and Firefly).
Watching SFTV series is great fun but always remember there’s an ending down the road. The only question is who is going to make that call and how will that call affect the life and death of the series?
One of the facts of life in any television series, whether it be a comedy or drama series, is that necessary evil: Cancellation. There are actually three kinds of cancellation and all of them have been rendered upon our SF genre shows.
The first type is cancellation on the producer’s terms. This is the most coveted by creative types and is a prize when captured. On just about every season J. Michael Straczynski struggled with making sure that his space epic Babylon 5 lived on for the planned five years. He very nearly lost the show at the end of its fourth season, necessitating that the series’ final episode was filmed ... just in case. But a fifth season reprieve allowed them to put that story “on the shelf” for a year. Interestingly, JMS is quite probably the only TV series creator to envision a five-year epic by design. He’s the only one who mapped out, beforehand, a conclusion on paper.
In a similar vein, Battlestar Galactica, executive producer Ronald D. Moore’s remake of Glen A. Larson’s one-season wonder from the 1970s, sent themselves into oblivion in four compact seasons. Perhaps learning lessons from other shows, executive producers and writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, of ABC’s intricately engrossing puzzle Lost also arranged for a limited set of episodes to properly map out the storytelling without padding the show. In this case, an ending was needed to be set so that the pieces could be laid down for an endgame.
The second type of being hit is being cancelled by the network, who don’t support the show. Ignobly, networks can be fierce with their programming, dropping shows after airing just a handful of episodes, as it happened to Century City, Harsh Realm, Mercy Point, Strange World, Sleepwalkers and Timecop. Despite initial efforts NBC “tried out” seaQuest for three seasons, before pulling the plug. Inexplicably, Fox TV aired Firefly’s initial 2-hour pilot film as...its last episode before ending the series. Too often we’ve watched how networks shabbily treat their expensive investments. Even after a show is cancelled, with leftover unaired episodes remaining on the shelf, a network will occasionally “burn off” the episodes at a later time in an effort to recoup some expenses as was done by UPN with Mercy Point (the last four episodes) and by Showtime with Odyssey 5 who aired the last six remaining episodes as two-hour movies over a three week period...25 months later! Straczynski’s Jeremiah, which ran for two seasons experienced a similar phenomenon. It’s final eight episodes were “burned off” eight months after the series’ initial run. The worst circumstance is when the network doesn’t even want the show at all and tries to sabotage the show’s life, as TNT had done with the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade.
The third type of cancellation is the most typical: A verdict rendered by the audience. It’s when the ratings are so low the network realizes there is no audience for a program and kills it.
A show can also be stopped for reasons other than the above. Code Name: Eternity was a series that filmed 26 episodes before being sold to the United States broadcasting market and the production apparatus was already dissolved. With Odyssey 5 and Jeremiah, the network sat on the shows for a long time, preventing further adventures.
Sometimes a show can run longer than anyone has expected (Stargate SG-1) or frustratingly shorter than expected (Crusade and Firefly).
Watching SFTV series is great fun but always remember there’s an ending down the road. The only question is who is going to make that call and how will that call affect the life and death of the series?
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Linking to the HiSciFi interview
To get a direct link to the HiSciFi interview, go to http://www.hiscifi.com/ and look for the story titled:
HiSciFi - Frank Garcia, Darwin & Dollhouse Part 1
Although the duration runs for 76 minutes, the interview begins about 4 minutes into the program. Enjoy.
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