Sci-Fi Storm

During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring “the Martian” home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney’s safe return. Based on a best-selling novel, and helmed by master director Ridley Scott, The Martian features a star studded cast that includes Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Kate Mara, Michael Peña, Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Donald Glover.

In theaters November 2015

Stichers is the new SF procedural drama from ABC family, and features a couple of faces familiar to fans of this site – Salli Richardson-Whitfield, who played Allison Blake on Eureka, and Allison Scagliotti, who played Claudia Donovan on Warehouse 13. It debuted last week, and episode 2 airs tomorrow night at 9/8c.

The show follows Kirsten Clark (Emma Ishta), a Caltech student who has temporal dysplasia, which causes her to have no sense of time. She is at odds with her roommate, Camille (Scagliotti), another Caltech student who is a computer systems expert and is trying to kick her out. Kirsten encounters Maggie Baptiste (Richardson-Whitfield), who leads the Stitchers program – a covert government project (the agency we are not given) which has developed the capability to insert or “stitch” a person into a recently deceased victim’s memory for a limited time, with the hope that they might discover the truth about the person’s death. Kirsten’s affliction makes her perfect to become a Stitcher.

Helping on the team is Cameron Goodkin (Kyle Harris, The Carrie Diaries), a brilliant neuroscientist and acts as a guide while Kirsten travels through memories; and Linus Ahluwalia (Ritesh Rajan, Campus Life), a bioelectric engineer.

The first episode was extremely fast-paced – perhaps a bit too much, as there is a lot to follow for an introductory episode, but that doesn’t prevent the characters from coming through. And their interactions allow for a good amount of humor to lighten up the intensity, especially the banter between Kirsten, Cameron and Linus. It will be interesting to see how this translates in the long run.

Of course I had to wonder about the length of the “exit password” that Kirsten needs to type in to exit the memories…I tweeted about the fact that something you’d need to type in quickly should be much shorter…almost instantly I got a reply from executive producer/creator Jeff Schechter, who said, “It used to be ‘iheartjeffreyalanschechter’, but my wife objected.” OK, everyone involved is fun to deal with…

Check out some introductory videos below on each of the Stitchers.
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