Sci-Fi Storm

BBC has finally announced the cast of the Doctor Who spinoff Class, which was announced last October, which was only surprising because they just started filming the 8 episode series today…

The show will star Katherine Kelly as a teacher at the Coal Hill School, where Clara Oswald was most recently employed but is also where Doctor Who got it’s start back in 1963. And apparently all that time traveling around it has caused the very walls of space and time to become thin. There’s something pressing in on the other side, something waiting for its chance to kill everyone and everything, to bring us all into Shadow.

Kelly most recently starred in Happy Valley, as well as Mr. Selfridge and Coronation Street.

Joining Kelly as students at the school are Greg Austin (Mr. Selfridge), Fady Elsayed (My Brother the Devil), Sophie Hopkins (The Meeting Place) and newcomer Vivian Oparah.

With the focus on the young adult audience, each of the students is described as having “hidden secrets and desires. They are facing their own worst fears, navigating a life of friends, parents, school work, sex, sorrow — and possibly the end of existence.”

Jessica Henwick, who was Nymeria Sand in the last season of Game of Thrones and Jess Testor in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, will play Colleen Wing, the female lead in the upcoming Marvel series Iron Fist for Netflix.

Colleen Wing is the daughter of a professor of Asian history in New York, but after the death of her mother at a young age is brought up by her maternal grandfather in the mountains of Honshu, Japan, and trained in the ways of the samurai. Her father learns that Iron Fist (Finn Jones, who was also in Game of Thrones as Loras Tyrell) would return from another dimension to exact revenge on his father’s killer, and sends Colleen to meet him. The two them became allies.

Actor/producer Noah Wyle, who has been working year-to-year as a recurring character on The Librarians (which he also produces) while he works on broadening his experience behind the scenes, will return to his role of Head Librarian Flynn Carson on the show for 7 episodes out of the 10 scheduled. He will also direct two episodes and write one.

After playing Carson in the lead role in three TV movies (two of which he produced), he joined Dean Devlin to produce the series, which focused more on three new Librarians and a new Guardian. Wyle took a supporting role while he also worked on Falling Skies, in which he starred and also produced. He started directing with an episode of each series under his belt now, and has taken up writing as well, also penning a spec script called Art Of War about the world of art forgery.

No April Fools…the official title for the fourth installment in the Syfy and The Asylum Sharknado franchise will be Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, a play on the most recent Star Wars movie…and two hour original movie will premiere in four months, on Sunday, July 31st at 8PM ET/PT on Syfy.

The fourth installment of the Sharknado franchise will take place five years after the East Coast was ravaged in last summer’s Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!. Fin (Ian Ziering), his family and the cosmos have been blissfully sharknado-free in the intervening years, but now sharks – and ‘nados! – are being whipped up in places (and ways) least expected.

Tara Reid is also set to return as April Wexler to reveal the outcome of the fan-voted #AprilLives or #AprilDies social campaign. David Hasselhoff (as Gil Shepard) and Ryan Newman (as Claudia Shepard) will also reprise their Sharknado 3 roles. New additions to the Sharknado: The 4th Awakens cast include Gary Busey, Tommy Davidson, Imani Hakim, Cody Linley, Masiela Lusha and Cheryl Tiegs (with more to be announced soon!).

Sharknado: The 4th Awakens is a production of The Asylum. Anthony C. Ferrante returns to direct an original screenplay written by Thunder Levin.

[Minor spoilers ahead] So the big crossover episode of Supergirl aired on Monday, while we await word of renewal. Did The Flash give it a good enough boost? Time will tell, as there has been no announcement yet, but it definitely had an effect on the ratings. Overall viewers were up 21% and the all-important 18-49 demo was up 31% over last week, to see how the DC television universe would handle this network-and-multiverse-crossing episode. It also had the highest rating for any scripted show that night.

So, how did they handle the crossover, given that Flash’s Earth seems to have no awareness of Kara or her better known cousin or other aliens, while Kara’s version has no metahumans? Simple – the comic multiverse, DC-style.

The Flash has already established the multi-Earth concept, with the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, coming to Barry Allen’s Earth-One, and Barry going to Jay’s Earth-Two. So to expand a bit, Barry does something (to be explained in The Flash‘s Tuesday episode) back home that results in him arriving on Kara’s version of Earth, where he helps out and then Kara gives him a boost – literally – to get back. This now opened up a myriad of possibilities in storytelling with other DC characters, in such a way that they can be independent of shows or even the movies – we already know that a movie version of Barry Allen’s Flash will be played by Ezra Miller instead of Grant Gustin. So it sets op independent franchises that in some ways can lean on each other occasionally.

It also provides a gimmick that can unfortunately be used as an end-around to any intractable situation, so let’s hope they keep this trick in the back pocket unless it actually helps with the story.

Per Deadline, Samuel Barnett (Jupiter Ascending, Bright Star) has been cast in the title role of BBC America’s adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency novels. The late Adams is best known for his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books and various adaptations.

Robert Cooper, who led the Stargate franchise for MGM, will be showrunner. Max Landis (Chronicle) is writing, and Dean Parisot (Galaxy Quest) will direct the first two episodes.

Dirk Gently is a serialized comedic thriller that follows the bizarre adventures of eccentric “holistic” detective Dirk Gently and his reluctant assistant Todd, as they wend their way through one big, seemingly insane mystery, crossing unlikely paths with a bevy of wild and sometimes dangerous characters, each episode landing them a few random steps closer to uncovering the truth. BBC America gave a straight-to-series order for 8 one-hour episodes in January, with it expected to debut this Fall.

CBS announced a whole slew of renewals yesterday…but left off all of their freshman shows, including Supergirl. So what does it mean?

Well, first thing, it’s among good company. None of the freshman shows have been named yet, Limitless, Code Black and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, which are generally believe to be getting renewed but haven’t been mentioned yet. However, all three of those shows are fully or co-owned by the network, whereas Supergirl comes from Warner Bros. TV. CBS also hasn’t made an announcement on flagship show Criminal Minds either, which is still solid but after 11 years the pricetag on another season is pretty high. But it at least shows that all the decision making is not done yet.

Numbers-wise, Supergirl is a step above its older DC siblings over on The CW – The Flash and Arrow, who are already renewed. The most recent episode for Supergirl was just shy of 6 million viewers, compared to 3 million for The Flash and 2.14 million for Arrow. Normally this would be great – but a show on CBS is different than on The CW…the latter tends to hold on to shows more as they have been struggling to find viewers in general – they are a distant fifth among the five primary broadcast networks, and those numbers are generally good for them. 6 million is OK, but not great for one of the Big Three. In addition, after a super-solid debut of 13 million viewers, Supergirl has been shedding viewers, with the last four continually dropping.

Les Moonves had already indicated that they had plans to renew their freshman shows earlier this month. Perhaps CBS is just waiting to see what happens over the final three episodes, which includes a crossover stunt with The Flash airing this Monday.

So hopefully we will hear soon – and hopefully it will be positive.

This is never a good sign…Spike TV’s production of Red Mars is now on hold after showrunner Peter Noah exited, according to Deadline – and just a couple weeks after announcing Greg Yaitanes as director. One can’t help wonder if that played into the decision, with the standard “creative differences” between Noah and Spike being cited.

We were surprised to learn that Noah was in the lead position, as we last heard that J. Michael Straczynski was shepherding the show as well as writing, but apparently he opted out leaving it to Noah.

Spike TV is still working with Skydance on moving forward, but this will likely delay the release from the expected January 2017 date.

JR Bourne (Teen Wolf) and Toby Hemingway (Black Swan) have joined the Syfy pilot Prototype as regulars, joining Jack Davenport (Smash), Cote de Pablo (NCIS), and Annabelle Dexter-Jones (Holy Motors). Written by Tony Basgallop (24: Live Another Day), Prototype centers on three unlikely cohorts who inadvertently stumble upon an invention that challenges the very nature of quantum physics – a discovery which in turn puts their lives in grave danger.

Davenport and de Pablo play two of the three central characters. Davenport is Edward “Eddy” Conway, an aging playboy and former Silicon Valley wunderkind who has retreated from the tech world to return to UCLA as a physics professor. Eddy’s lack of self-control, be it with coeds or sports cars, has made him familiar with some unsavory characters, but his latest project might prove to be his most dangerous endeavor to date.

de Pablo is Laura Kale, a driven, extremely intelligent mother of two. Excited about a potentially world-changing machine being developed by herself and two partners, she is certain that she is on the brink of something history-making. Propelled by a shot at glory, she is not about to give up despite numerous setbacks.

Bourne will play Ethan, Laura’s husband. Frustrated by Laura’s long hours and split focus, he doesn’t believe in Laura’s time-consuming, after-hours project. Readers of this site may also remember Bourne for the recurring character Martouf of the Tok-Ra in Stargate SG-1.

Dexter-Jones is Donna Neuring, a young coder and math whiz whose help has been enlisted to bring a potentially momentous invention to life. But while Donna may be the key to getting a working prototype, her home life is anything but functional. Hemingway is Forde, a model-actor and Donna’s abusive live-in boyfriend.

“Prototype is a purely original idea from a talented writer with a unique vision,” said Bill McGoldrick, Executive Vice President, Scripted Content, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. “We can’t wait to see this original idea come to life in this pilot for Syfy.”

Oscar nominee Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Esposados) will direct. Escape Artists Productions (Southpaw, The Pursuit of Happyness) will serve as executive producers along with Fresnadillo and Basgallop. Taylor Latham (Freeheld) will be co-executive producer.

CBS has chosen the next MacGyver…Lucas Till, who plays Havok in the X-Men franchise, has been tapped for the pilot of the rebooted TV series.

Till will play a twenty-something version of the character as he’s first recruited to work for the Phoenix Foundation. Also announced is Joshua Boone (Fan Girl) as Gunner, MacGyver’s best friend.

The pilot is being written by Paul Downs Colaizzo and Brett Mahoney and directed by David Von Ancken, with James Wan executive producing. Other executive producers include Colaizzo, Mahoney and Ancken, along with original creator David Lee Zlotoff and original producer Henry Winkler, and Michael Clear.