Sci-Fi Storm

Just a friendly reminder of the genre shows premiering this week, all times Eastern: Tonight (Tuesday 9/24) you’ve got Buffy the Vampire Slayer at 8pm (UPN) and then the new Haunted (UPN) dukes it out with Smallville (WB) at 9pm. On Friday (9/27) a man goes back to his childhood in That Was Then (ABC 9pm). And don’t forget that next week the syndicated series’ Andromeda and Mutant X premiere – check your local listings.

Your friendly service reminder: Enterprise kicks off its second season this Wednesday at 8pm ET on UPN with the conclusion to the season-ending cliffhander “Shockwave”, and the new Joss Whedon creation Firefly takes off this Friday on FOX at 8pm ET.

Update: Oops…forgot UPN’s version of The Twilight Zone, this Wednesday after Enterprise.

A&E debuted their new adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s classic Lathe of Heaven last night (4 times, no less). If you missed it, fret not – check your listings because it will be shown several more times. Having not read the story or seen the 1980 PBS production, I was pretty impressed in general, if a bit confused. But I’m hearing on various mailing lists and such that quite a bit was left out. What was your opinion?

There is a report and excerpt from a chat log at AICN that SCI FI has executed an out clause of their contract for the 5th season of Farscape, and cancelled the series. There has been no confirmation from SCI FI yet, but it is all over the boards. Note that Season 4 picks up again in January.

Update 9/9:SCI FI has now confirmed it. Its inability to grow its audience and the rising production costs are cited.

I swear I looked there earlier today, but it’s there now (I found out from Bureau42) – SCI FI Wire is reporting that Witchblade has been cancelled. TNT gives reasons in the article, but they seem to say even though the series did what they asked of it, they predict it couldn’t do it again and cancelled it. Maybe they didn’t think Yancy Butler was worth the risk? Or perhaps TNT execs just don’t have a clue – remember Crusade?

hossman writes “The past few years, I’ve found that pazsaz.com is the most
useful site for getting info on the
fall lineup, the
premiere dates, and the
new shows.”

The SCI FI Channel has announced that Stargate SG-1 is its first original series to achieve a 2.0 rating, with its August 23rd Summer Finale (Season 6 will continue in January). It’s averaging a 1.7, and is beating UPN and the WB in several key demographics. Now, I caught a rumor somewhere that the plans for a feature movie had been scrapped because it couldn’t hit 2.0 – I wonder if that has changed?

Update: It appears Avatar Press will be producing a Stargate SG-1 comic, along with several other MGM properties such as Robocop.

Actor Jeff Corey, who Babylon 5 fans will remember as the Shadows’ human spokesman Justin in the episode “Z’ha’dum”, died on August 16th at the age of 88. He also appeared in such movies as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

The official web site for Enterprise has been updated, including a lot of details regarding Season 2 production. In addition, TrekWeb has an online interview with John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox).

Digging into the the old to come up with the new seems to be the current “thing” in Hollywood. Now USA Networks is looking to dig out The Bionic Woman, which aired originally from 1976-1978 and was actually a spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man, and turn it into a new original series, according to The Hollywood Reporter. I wonder if this will complete before the supposed feature film version of the show that spawned it…