pring, the poets say, is the time of year when one's fancy turns to love.
Flowers blooming. The return of warmth after a long winter. Hope.
In the television drama business, however, the dominant emotion is not hope,
but fear. Spring is the time of year when pilots are picked up and produced,
to continue their fight for a place on a future network schedule, and when
other shows die, are renewed, or hover in that state between pickup and
cancellation known as "being on the bubble."
It is a time when writers ponder their careers. And begin to complain about
networks that arbitrarily change their "target audience" midway through the
development process. ("We know we told you we wanted a show for teens, but
now we want it for women 18 to 49.") About networks that will buy anything
from a feature writer but won't listen to a pitch if your credits are in
television. About agents and studios that ram "put pilot" deals (film
commitments) down network throats, eliminating dozens of script development
deals.
Oh, hell, it all comes down to the mantra "I hate this business."
(In fact, a good agent I know recently quit the business because he could no
longer cope with the season. "It wasn't the complaints," he said, "but being
powerless to help for the next two months.")
Picture if you will...
To echo the late Rod Serling: Picture if you will a television writer,
veteran of late-night rewrites, daffy network notes, actor rebellions, a
writer busy scanning the trades, working the phones, halfheartedly revising
a new spec script ... grumbling, sweating and scheming. Wondering if
Roswell will be picked up, and if so, where the hell do they go from here?
Praying to God to spare us any more Star Trek. Wishing that Joss Whedon
and the Buffy team would call. Wonder what The Others is all about, and
is it still on? Hoping to run into any or all of the Charmed witches at
the market (or, for those with other tastes, the star of Angel). Kicking
herself for missing out on Farscape or Stargate SG-1, or other syndicated
or cable SF shows that are already in production for their new seasons.
Moving up the time of that first evening drink to late afternoon.
And looking at what SF shows are being made right now for the networks.
Well, some of the networks. ABC, CBS and NBC are, for the most, filming
pilots about police officers, lawyers, cops, journalists, law enforcement
types, doctors and forensic detectives--their usual dips into the deep
pool of human endeavor. Let's face it, you have to turn to UPN, Fox and the
WB for SF possibilities.
Fox's black hole
The network with the biggest needs is Fox, where execs are still ducking
calls torturing them about Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? and
staking out space on the highest ledge at the thought of a schedule without
The X-Files. Losing Mulder and Scully from Sunday night not only hurts Sunday
night, it hurts all those other Fox shows you promo on Sunday night. It's not
just a hole in the schedule, but a black hole, sucking other programs down
with it.
Which is why Fox is fielding a whole brace of candidates to backstop (and
ultimately replace) The X-Files, notably James Cameron's Dark Angel, filming
a two-hour pilot with a guaranteed 12 episodes to follow. Now, Cameron
certainly knows how to produce a quality SF project on a low budget
(Terminator), but I wonder if he can deal with the rigid demands of a
television schedule. Is a new episode of Dark Angel going to be rolling off the assembly line every eight working days?
Cameron's television team--director David Nutter and co-writer Chick Eglee--certainly know the drill. Nutter, with his years of experience on
The X-Files, is quite familiar with the trick of adding three or more days of
second unit production to each episode, essentially cramming 11 days of
filming into that "eight-day" schedule. It showed; The X-Files was one of the
best-looking and -sounding series on television. Eglee is a talented guy who
learned sound habits under Steven Bochco. (We won't talk about the bad
habits he might have picked up from Glenn Caron.)
The drawback is that a team like this operating on an X-Files schedule costs a
lot of money, far more than any freshman drama is likely to justify. But
it's James Cameron. Let's assume that the Fox network and 20th TV will give
him at least as much leeway as other outlets gave Steven Spielberg for
Amazing Stories and seaQuest.
And, hopefully, with better results.
This is all entirely aside from the concept of Dark Angel. Will 10
million people spark to the adventures of a beautiful young woman who happens
to be more than human? Well, I've read the script, which is terrific, and
I've seen Jessica Alba, so I'll be watching. At first.
Everything works if it's tried often enough
Fox is also doing Lone Gunmen with the X-Files cadre of Chris Carter,
Frank Spotniz, Vince Gilligan and John Sheridan. I personally love the
Gunmen and would pay money to see a prime-time series built around three geeks
rather than some typical WB hunk or hottie, but I will be very surprised if
this works.
Two other X-Files/Millennium alumni, Howard Gordon and Chip Johannsen, are
doing Ultraviolet, a soap about vampires, which is a good idea that has
been tried in the past without success. (Remember Kindred? No, I didn't
think so.) Of course, there is a rule in television development that
everything works if it's tried often enough.
Then there's Fearsum, scripted by Gregg Hale and David Goyer, which deals
with--well, imagine The X-Files if Mulder were a twentysomething Florida dude
investigating a slightly different mix of strange stuff. This music-driven,
self-conscious slacker fantasy seems more geared to UPN, especially given
Fox's recent re-direction toward broader, family programming, and doesn't
seem very fresh. See my comment on Ultraviolet.
Over at the WB, Michael Piller, formerly of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is developing
(with his son, Shawn) and producing The Last Train, an adaptation of some
British concept called Day One. It deals with a group of ordinary (well,
maybe not so ordinary) Americans tossed into a bizarre future. What bodes
well for this show is Piller's presence, since ST:TNG seemed to come
together under his helm, and we all know the WB will promote the heck out of
it.
Still, the core idea seems a tad familiar to someone (like me) who remembers
Logan's Run and Fantastic Journey (they're in your TV encyclopedia under "obscure failures").
Finally, we have Gorilla World from Todd McFarlane and UPN. Well, we had
that. It was supposed to be a twisted version of Planet of the Apes; alas,
Todd McFarlane actually said so publicly, which got some lawyers busy
strangling the project in its crib.
I don't hate this business. But there are days when I love it more than
others.
Michael Cassutt has been a writer and/or producer for a
number of SF and fantasy television series, from The Twilight Zone and Max Headroom through Eerie, Indiana, The Outer Limits and, most recently, Seven Days. He is also the author of a number of books on space flight, two dozen science fiction short stories and, most recently, a novel about NASA titled Missing Man (paperback from Tor, March 2000).
