ome famous writer—I forget who—once said that the prices and salaries that seem right are the ones you learned as a child. To me, for example, a comic book costs twelve cents.
In television terms, the equivalent is the development process. When I entered the television business, back around the time Jimmy Carter was president, everything was so orderly, so simple, so right.
There were three networks, and they offered comedies and dramas almost exclusively in prime time. (OK, CBS ran 60 Minutes as a prime-time news hour, but that was about it.) There were perhaps a dozen suppliers who provided shows for those networks. The networks took pitches from these suppliers beginning in late spring and continued to entertain possibilities through summer, at which point scripts based on these concepts would begin to arrive. By Thanksgiving, drama pilot pickups would be made for perhaps a fifth or a quarter of the developed scripts.
Those pilots would be filmed in January and February, completed for delivery to the networks by early April. By early May, the three networks would announce their fall schedules and that would be that.
Now, at the dawn of a new millenium, all is chaos. There are six networks, four major cable channels offering sci-fi and fantasy series, plus a whole raft of syndicated outlets. Development and pickups (and cancellations) take place year round.
Nevertheless, January and February are the time of year when most of your fall programming starts to take shape. So here's what sci-fi viewers can look forward to in the new season:
Television for the new millennium
First, what we won't be seeing on the small screen, or any screen, next fall: Roswell is on its way out, followed by Special Unit 2. X-Files is making a more graceful retirement. Goodbye to The Chronicle and to The Invisible Man.
There are several series whose fate is described, in TV development shorthand, as "on the bubble." Dark Angel, for example.
Showtime's upcoming Jeremiah is a different case. It hasn't aired yet, so it can't be canceled. (Although there have been cases ... well, let's not go into that.)
A number of our favorite shows will be returning, of course: Enterprise has done very well for UPN (now part of the CBS family), Smallville ditto on the WB. Buffy will be back. In syndication, Andromeda returns, with a new leader, Bob Engels, formerly of Twin Peaks and seaQuest DSV.
In new development, ABC, which has a schedule filled with holes, has put several sci-fi and fantasy projects on the fast track: That Was Then, about a man who travels to his past to redo parts of his life; Paranormal Girl, described as "My So-Called Life crossed with X-Files." Both projects are produced by Touchstone Television. Also headed our way ... Dinotopia, a Hallmark production from the James Gurney book, long in development as a miniseries, now scheduled to be a series.
ABC has also bought an intriguing project called Astronauts by Todd Robinson, screenwriter of the feature film White Squall (1996). It deals with the lives of astronauts in Houston. Hmmm.
ABC also has a Stephen King series called The Kingdom, but hasn't put it in the works so far.
(And please be aware that when I describe a project as not picked up, I don't necessarily mean that it's dead for good, or even for long.)
A season full of SF riches
CBS, which has a strong schedule anchored by series like CSI, has fewer needs, and has had a tough time selling sci-fi or fantasy (prosecution offers Wolf Lake as evidence). As far as I can tell, the eye hasn't picked up anything sci-fi-ish. But, then, CBS now has a whole network—UPN—for stuff like that.
UPN, meanwhile, is going back to the CBS playbook, reviving Beauty and the Beast, which aired on the Eye net in the late 1980s. And also taking the unusual step of ordering a pilot called Dark Star from David Milch, the acclaimed creator of NYPD Blue. I don't know how sci-fi-ish Dark Star is going to be—but it will be extremely well written.
Dead Zone, originally announced for the WB last season, still lives. It is now scheduled to be a USA Network series.
NBC, which has some openings on its schedule, is reviving Lost in Space. Well, the idea of a Swiss Family Robinson in space has been kicking around for about 40 years, much like the vampire prime-time soap. One of these days someone will do it right. (It may be obvious, but I am not now and never have been a fan of the original series.)
The same net is also filming Young Arthur, aka Camelot (NBC Studios). Not sci-fi, you say? Come on, what is the King Arthur story if not sword and sorcery? The network was hot to develop a space-themed series last fall, and has reportedly gone into production on Space Station and Voyage to Mars.
FBC has already made a series commitment to Joss Whedon's Firefly, set "500 years in the future" and involving "a band of nine people that live and die" along a "cutthroat border" in space. I have to confess that the writer side of me usually resents these blind series commitments, primarily because I've never gotten one. As a viewer, I find the record to be mixed. Nevertheless, I like Whedon's Buffy and Angel a lot, so I have high hopes for this.
FBC, like NBC, is also going back to the future, winning the contest to redo Time Tunnel. Unlike Lost in Space, this series appealed to me, and seems to have great potential.
What else? Showtime has already picked up Manny Coto's Odyssey Five, about a team of astronauts sent back in time to undo the destruction of planet Earth. In fact, O-5 should be on the air this summer. TNT is doing Purgatory II. SCI FI Channel has Riverworld. WB has Return to Oz (Dorothy leaves Kansas again) and Bird of Prey.
My rough calculations show that there are about 60 drama pilots in production, and a good dozen of these are sci-fi, fantasy or close enough. I can't keep track of them, frankly, and I'm supposed to.
It's chaos. Sometimes I really miss the old orderly process.
But, then, I remember something about the old days.
Sci-fi and fantasy projects rarely got made at all. When they did, they usually weren't very good.
I could get to like this new millenium.
When he's not reading pilots and trolling for gossip, Michael Cassutt is writing scripts for 20th Television and MTV. His new novel, Red Moon (Tor paperback) is currently on sale in bookstores everywhere.
