Stargatin!

VERY COOL.  One of the best things for me, personally, to come out of the Toronto Screenwriting Conference this past weekend was a quick chance to chat with Robert C. Cooper, one of the co-Creators & Executive Producers of SGU Stargate Universe.

I was lucky enough to freelance an episode of this show early last year, and it finally airs this Friday on Syfy in the USA (Space in Canada).  Here's the promo for FAITH:




I've really been enjoying SGU, especially as it's gone on and the characters deepened. The last two shows, culminating with "Divided" last week, really shows the political complications of this group of people out there on this ship all alone.

As a freelancer, of course, my script was heavily rewritten, first by Carl Binder, and then I'm guessing by Cooper & Brad Wright -- but I was very pleased to see when I read the final script that my story survived, except, of course, everybody had made it MUCH MORE AWESOME.

I'll have more to say about the funny world of the freelancer later in the week -- but for now the best news was Cooper telling me that the show turned out REALLY, REALLY WELL.  I'm psyched to see it!

One other massive piece of trivia that came out of Cooper's Q&A with Karen Hill yesterday -- did you know that Stargate, after 15 years and 3 shows, has just about hit the milestone of generating a BILLION DOLLARS for the Canadian economy?

That's billion with a B.

Wow.

That and the Blue Jays home opener tonight = good mood for Daddy.

Things That Make Me Laugh

I'M ON A bunch of email lists at the various Canadian networks.  I'm regularly shovelled press releases, 90% of them for shows that I have zero interest in. (Have I *ever* written about The Bachelor? No? Precedent set, then.) 


But I do get them.  And sometimes they're on point.  And most of the time, at the very least if they manage to get the time and channel right (not always a given in the Canadian media game) they can be useful.  


So it was that I half-remember receiving a press release about a new Doctor Who special airing on the SPACE channel here sometime in the next few weeks...


...Hang on, if I'm going to blog this I guess I should do the plug.  Okay. There.  

January 2nd at 8pm, after a full day of a Doctor Who marathon, the SPACE channel will have the Canadian premiere of David Tennant's last Doctor Who appearance, Doctor Two: End of Time.  

There we go. Plug over.


Anyway, the release isn't the funny part. The funny part is the follow up received this morning.  And I don't know if you're going to find it funny or not. But see, I worked at the Space channel for years, and had many many interactions with those lovable Sci-fi fans, and especially the very -- how are we going to put this -- particular Doctor Who diehards.


And so, for whatever reason, I found this funny:

So, there you go, citizens.  I've blocked out the publicist's name out of sheer human decency, but I'm sure that she (or he) is now resting comfortably at Ivan Fecan's Cottage Country chalet-bunker, contemplating his (or her) return to civilian life under a new identity.


That is all.

She Sells Sanctuary

AH, AMANDA TAPPING. Sigh.

I thought I was done for the weekend but I've been remiss. You with your RSS readers and obsessive web checking should keep an eye out for another Canadian series Season Premiere tonight.

SANCTUARY's Season 2 bows on SPACE in Canada and SYFY (sighfi?) in about 90 mins.

All hail the Canadian-created (w. SG:U) 2 hour friday night genre block!)

Seriously -- all of the talent behind both shows is CanCon. This isn't like Defying Gravity, which CTV claimed was CanCon through loopholes, but had above the line creative more or less completely out of the USA -- these are 10/10 homegrown productions!

Love them! Watch them!

Alex Essays Ron Moore From Banff

THINGS ARE ABOUT to get pretty hairy for me at work. Second Draft due, and the first flurry of big prep meetings, so I don't imagine I'll be able to do too much blogging this week. So in the meantime, I'll vamp.

Here's a wonderful entry -- my friend and colleague Alex Epstein transcribed a lot of the Ronald Moore Masterclass at Banff.

Moore had covered a lot of the same ground in the session he did with the Showrunners earlier in the day, but I can't write that up as the session was screens down. Still, Alex gives you a lot of the flavour for what this extremely open, affable, and transparent creator has to say about his process.

Why J.J.'s Trek Prospers

LIKE ROUGHLY A jillion people across North America, I saw the new Star Trek this weekend, and loved it.

[SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE FOLLOW]

But it took the kung fu of John Rogers to point out how the movie also kicks most of what you know about heroic storytelling on its ass:

Captain James T. Kirk, the protagonist of the movie, does not have the development executive's beloved "character arc." He has no arc at all.

He starts as an arrogant sonovabitch, and becomes a slightly more motivated arrogant sonovabitch. He does not learn to sacrifice, he does not learn to work well with others -- he takes over the goddam ship. He's right all the time, he never doubts he's right, and the only obstacle he occasionally faces is when other people aren't sharp enough to see how frikkin' awesome -- and right -- he is as quickly as they should.

He never has an end-of-Act-Two "low point." Being stranded on the ice planet? Please. He spends those few minutes dictating a memo about bringing Spock up on charges when -- not if, when -- he rejoins the fleet. Oh yes, and then not one but two deus ex machina's get him back to the ship in time.

Does he learn Spock's precious lesson about fear? No. Does he learn what it was like for his father to willingly stare death in the face and sacrifice himself? FUCK no, that's Spock in the starship in the end, making the kamikaze run.

The rest is well, well worth your time.

The Plane's Not Coming

SERIOUSLY DOOD, first McGoohan, and now this?

Ricardo Montalban, the suave leading man who was one of the first Mexican-born actors to make it big in Hollywood and who was best known for his role as Mr. Roarke on ABC's "Fantasy Island," has died. He was 88.

Within the entertainment industry, Montalban was widely respected for his efforts to create opportunities for Latinos, although he and others believed that his activism hurt his career. In 1970, he founded the nonprofit Nosotros Foundation to improve the image and increase employment of Latinos in Hollywood.

"He paved the way for being outspoken about the images and roles that Latinos were playing in movies," said Luis Reyes, author of "Hispanics in Hollywood" (2000).

Sci fi fanboys all over the planet are donning the black crepe. That's a lot of black crepe. Who's next? Cheetah?

And yet George Lucas still walks around, figuring out how to screw up our memories further. Life is not fair.

Okay. Deep breath. Let's all say it together, now, sadly, for what may be the last time:








KHHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Bye bye Rico. You were sure Suave. (photo from trekcore.com)

Wherein I Say Bold And Stupid Things And Regret None of It Because Hey, That's Just How I Roll.

I AM A QUOTE WHORE. If you know of, or are starting some sort of twelve step program, I encourage you to send me the literature, with one very important caveat: I renounce and regret nothing. Bwwaah ha ha.

From Saturday's Globe and Mail:

What the frak is going on?
By MARSHA LEDERMAN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
November 16, 2007 at 11:20 PM EST
VANCOUVER — It's a sci-fi drug trafficked by diehard space-show junkies and mainstream viewers alike, and chances are someone you know is already hooked. It takes two words to separate the addicts from the innocent: Battlestar Galactica. The tipoff is a hungry look in their eye, the one that appears with a chance to debate the Cylon wars, and what they symbolize in the post-9/11 world.

That's right, Battlestar Galactica. True, this is a “re-imagined” version of the original 1978 cheese fest, but can a remake of anything that starred Lorne Greene really be called one of the most important television shows of our time?

What the frak is going on?

The contemporary Battlestar Galactica (or BSG to hard-core fans) is indeed based on the original 1978 series (which starred Greene as William Adama), but the re-imagined version has emerged as a critical hit and developed a strong cult following since its debut in 2005, following a 2003 miniseries. It's also a favourite with the intelligentsia, the kind of people who wouldn't necessarily identify themselves as sci-fi fanatics. The program has won a prestigious Peabody Award, been profiled in The New Yorker, been named the best TV show of 2005 by Time Magazine and been called “the smartest and toughest show on TV” in Rolling Stone magazine.

Toronto TV writer and blogger Denis McGrath (heywriterboy.blogspot.com), who helped create the Canadian Space channel, says the show is capital-I Influential – and Important. “Thirty years from now, any scholar looking for a portrait of the mindset of contemporary America in the early 21st century will probably take at least a look at TV shows from our time,” he says. “And if they really want to know what we were thinking and arguing about and fighting our way through, there are two shows that will help them the most. The first is The Sopranos. The second is Battlestar Galactica.”

Feel free to read the rest of the article here. Make special note where I compare BSG fans to heroin addicts. Hi Mom. Aren't you proud?

BSG: Razor airs in Canada on the Space Channel (Shout out to my OG SPACE Peeps: Simon, Michelle, Mark, Khaleel, Gord, Timmy, Irene, Nat (close enough), and Isme too!) November 24 at 9PM. Watch or don't, bitches, we're not esplainin anymore!

Clouds Taste Bionic

IT'S NOT HARD to see the pitch for a new "re-imagining" of The Bionic Woman. (First Step: Lose the 'The'. When we re-imagine, we drop articles entirely.)

NBC-UNIVERSAL is clearly hoping to hit a few demos at once. They're hoping to catch the female viewership that increasingly drives network TeeVee. They're hoping to pick up nostalgia points from grown up geekboys like me, for whom, let's just say, Lyndsey Wagner provided some new, uncomfortable sensations in the tummy back in the day. And then there's the sci-fi and genre fans, who'll watch two episodes of anything they think is vaguely in their wheelhouse. (Note to fanboys: it's time to stop with the letter writing campaign -- Earth2 is not coming back.)

So on a deep level, I was rooting for David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) as he took his shot at making Bionics cool again. Believe me, folks, in the 1970's -- Bionics were the shit. Seriously. The only thing cooler than Bionics was Evil Knievel. Who, come to think of it, had so much metal in him that...

...I digress.

Okay, if you're a spoiler-free person, bail now.

I'd say the pilot for Bionic Woman is competent. (Proviso here: I've seen the same one that's been floating around for months, with Mae Whitman as Jaime Sommers' deaf sister. The part has since been recast and, um, de-deafed) It's got that moody look of everything shot in Vancouver. Michelle Ryan is fine as Jaime Sommers. Her creepy boyfriend who makes her bionic is that great mix of "is he evil/creepy or besotted or both?" Miguel Ferrer shows up playing the Miguel Ferrer part -- the part that Miguel Ferrer has been playing since Twin Peaks. Good thing I like Miguel Ferrer.

And then there's Katee Sackhoff. Ah, Katee.

Katee Sackhoff managed to take the sexist, loudly carping fanboys to the woodshed and beat them around the woodpile with her fearless, brave, funny, awful performance as Kara Thrace on Battlestar Galactica. In Bionic Woman, Sackhoff plays Sarah Corvus, the first Bionic Woman -- the unhinged Bionic Woman. There's a hint, too, of "is she evil or just screwed up?" that makes for delicious speculation.

And Sackhoff isn't the only BSG alumnus that Eick and Co. leaned on. A few others show up in various roles. And right at the end of the pilot, you get the brief appearance of Mark Sheppard -- so memorable as Romo Lampkin in Season 3 of BSG -- as the man who's obviously destined to be Jaime's super-duper nemesis, and potential father-in-law.

The action sequences are okay, if a bit by the numbers. But there's no escaping the fact that what this show has most going for it is leftover goodwill from the first show, and hope for the premise.

Because everybody hopes, I think, that Eick has had a little of that Ronald Moore mojo rub off on him.

The fact is that the potential of this show goes way beyond what the title might suggest -- just like Battlestar Galactica. The reality is: will NBC allow Eick to mine that premise as effectively as Moore did on Galactica?

It's an open question. This isn't cable. It's network. It's not that an ongoing action show with bionic women beating the hell out of each other -- like Alias on Crystal Meth -- wouldn't be fun. It just probably wouldn't be something that held my attention for very long.

What Eick and Moore got really good at on Battlestar Galactica was in sneaking deeper subtext -- even uncomfortable, thought-provoking, dislocating subtext -- under the basic action adventure premise.

How could that find its way into Bionic Woman?

Well, first, I think it bears noting that the original Bionic Woman, as everybody knows, was a spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man. They're even using that show's iconic narration: "Better, Stronger, Faster" as the tagline for the new show.

But no one is trying to revamp or revise The Six Million Dollar Man. And I think there's a good reason for that. Nobody wants to see a Bionic Man.

The Bionic Man has been lapped in our culture. On the one hand, you have Jack Bauer, who's basically a superhero -- a Bionic Man without any of the electronics. You have Jason Bourne, who can do amazing things without relying on technology. Sure, these guys are damaged in other ways -- but they kick ass something fierce. On the other hand, you've got The Terminator and Transformers. Machines are cool, man. Why have to deal with the middleman -- all that fleshy stuff?

No -- and here's where I get into dangerous waters -- the appeal of Jaime Sommers has never been how strong and powerful she is. That's just how you sell it. The appeal is her weakness. And how she struggles with what's inside her -- metaphorically and literally.

In the original series, which was a product of a less enlightened time trying to be better, I'll grant you -- Jaime was forever coming up against foes that fucked her up royally. There's that famous clip floating around YouTube of the fembot fight...where Jaime is overpowered and then jumps from too high a height and screws up her circuitry. There's always something about the wrong arm, or the powers failing her, or the fact that the deck is stacked against her.

The great potential of Bionic Woman in 2007 is not hard to see. Here we are in a culture where women regularly contort their bodies, undergo all manner of surgeries to cheat aging, or conform to a ridiculous cultural ideal. All of these things are presented as empowering -- of giving women choice...but I have a hard time seeing vaginaplasty as a victory for ... um... just about anybody.

On the one hand they're superwomen who can have it all...but no one has figured out, really, how to career track and have a baby... You can do anything, except bust through the glass ceiling.

Now here comes a woman who's stronger than any man...except, um...she was made that way against her will by a boyfriend. She's "improved." But at what cost? And is it really an improvement? And what about Sarah Corvus? She's labeled a runaway, a loose cannon -- but the glimpses we get of other plot elements in the pilot more than hint that there's a more complex backstory there, too. I think -- I hope -- as the series progresses, we'll start to see that Jaime and Sarah have more in common than either one of them ever dreamed.

Battlestar Galactica started as a way to comment on social cohesion and society in a post 9/11 context. It, like the show's Cylons, evolved into something messier and more interesting, when it started down roads of dramatizing occupation, religious fundamentalism, and the notion of what makes a terrorist, and how far does one go when resisting an occupying army? The show took political concepts that divide America, and put them in the mouths of characters you didn't expect to feel that way. And then, every once in a while, they pulled out a good old fashioned mindfuck.

Women -- and Men -- receive some pretty crazy mixed signals in our culture today. If Eick's able to hide and tease out the provocative subtext at the heart of his series, and not just fall back on the action-adventure tropes that the network will push -- then Bionic Woman could be a very interesting show indeed. I'll be rooting for that show. I hope it shows up.

Bionic Woman premieres Sept. 26.

Sci-Fi Podcast Ho!

THIS IS unfortunate, because I really should have plugged this before, and now it seems like I'm just trying to be self-aggrandiz...(Ed: Stop being So Canadian.)

Right. Sorry. Sorry. (Ed: Really, quit it.)

Ahem.

Space: The Imagination Station is Canada's Sci-Fi/Fantasy Channel. I helped get the station off the ground as a Producer almost ten long years ago now, before I started writing professionally. This week, they invited me back to talk about my personal experience on Blood Ties and this posting on this old blog.

John Llyr and Mark Askwith are both friends of mine. Between them, they know just about everything there is to know about Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Star Trek, Comics, and all things genre.

Awhile ago, they started doing the HypaSpace Podcast, as a web complement to HypaSpace Weekly, SPACE's weekly wrapup of Sci-fi news and wackiness.

What's great about this podcast is that it's not just two guys yakking about sci-fi. The podcast runs down the latest news and rumors, to be sure, but it also plays clips from Space interviews with celebrities, artists, performers, writers -- this is stuff that never appears on TV, so it's pretty much exclusive stuff. And it's free.

So you should check it out. And if you check out this week's edition, you get to hear me yak, and then at the end they've even dug up a really cool interview I did with Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) when I was at the station. I think you can even subscribe to the Podcast via RSS and on Itunes.

Thanks to Mark and John for making coming back so easy, and for picking an interview question where I don't sound like a total tool.

And While You're At It, Don't Call Me Bruce, Either.

INTERESTING ARTICLE over at Wired News. Jason Silverman explores the persistent impulse away from labelling something "sci-fi."

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is set during a nuclear winter. Two survivors walk south, breathing toxic air, seeking out the continent's last canned food while ducking bands of flesh-eaters.
Describe it as "post-apocalyptic," as most critics did, or as a masterpiece of dystopian literature. Just don't call McCarthy's novel "science fiction."
Even when clearly appropriate, film studios and publishers avoid the phrase "science fiction." So do the novelists, film directors and editors in their employ. McCarthy's book, which is about to become a blockbuster -- Oprah Winfrey will tout it on an upcoming TV show as part of her book club -- is just another example of how the powers that be dodge the term, especially when it applies to "serious" fiction or cinema.
You won't find the words "science fiction" in Random House's bio of Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author China Miéville. Instead, he's called the "edgiest mythmaker of the day." Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep? It's classified as comedy, drama, romance and fantasy, but not sci-fi, at Amazon.com.

Out in the fan weeds, the reverberations of this impulse have caused a lot of consternation, and their own twisting reactions. Some won't call literary Sci-Fi by that name, preferring "SF."

Others refer to "genre" shows -- which always struck me in its own way as ridiculously broad. I mean, what genre? That's as silly as speculative fiction.

Sci-Fi isn't the only genre that gets to play this silly game with language. Horror on TV goes through a similar kneejerk, for a different reason. Most TV stations that have to think about advertisers and crazy Christian boycotts won't be seen to get behind Horror -- even though you could argue that it's a genre that is enjoying an enormous popular upswing right now. But if you're pitching, you better be pitching a supernatural thriller, kids.

I remember marvelling once when I called something "horror" and a network type corrected me instantly with, "dark fantasy." Boom. Not even a blink.

We have always been at war with Eurasia, you see.

But the sci-fi thing, to me, is particularly problematic. Because the labeling game is causing problems.

First you get a show like Battlestar Galactica. It doesn't matter how many top ten lists it's going to appear on, it doesn't matter that this is a show that you'd appreciate if you love The Wire or The Sopranos -- there's a big portion of the audience that won't tune it in because "that's sci fi. and that title."

There are reviewers that hate sci-fi. There are people who won't go past their prejudices. I've never once seen data that suggests that the kind of person who hates Sci-fi and that label would watch the show if it was called something else.

Moore's BSG is a gutsy show. It's fearless storytelling. It's challenging, it's relevant, and it's provocative. And despite what he says, it is also great sci-fi.

I mean, face it, if something's sci-fi, most people are going to figure that out. If you keep promoting the idea that the sci-fi moniker is something to be shied away from, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're dooming a genre that's always been about critiquing the world we live in now, and ceding it to the fanboys who like to see stuff blow up.

When you lose the clarifying ability of genre -- when you try to hide it, you lose sight, I think, of the mechanics of what you're doing -- and everything becomes softer and more slippery. If you're trying to run away from what kind of show it is, then how can you honestly talk about what needs to be in the show to reach -- never mind the audience that you want to trick into watching -- but the audience who would be predisposed to watch anyway?

In the network hallways, that leads to some frustrating conversations where they buy a sci-fi concept, and then fall over backwards trying to hide the sci-fi in it. You know how hard that is to write? Very.

Because there are certain expectations people have in watching sci-fi product, whether it's called that or not. Can you imagine a soap opera without any sex, either actual or implied? What about a murder mystery where they said, "maybe we should think twice about having a body." But these straitjackets are applied to sci-fi shows all the time. You get notes that just aren't consistent with the genre -- there's no sense making a Six Feet Under observation in a show that's just not built that way. You find yourself getting notes that you can't take -- because you have the wrong premise, the wrong characters, the wrong sets. And all this comes out of the idea that it's okay to buy one kind of show and then say you're going to make another.

Don't get me wrong -- there's a whole lot of problems catering to the built in audience, as well. For one thing, in my experience working for Canada's sci-fi channel, I've found that generally the hardest core fans tend to eschew complexity. They're conservative -- they don't like change. They don't like sex or complex human relationships between men and women. They like to think of themselves as more sophisticated, and smarter than the "average" tv viewer -- when in reality, they're not. But you know what? Maybe that's because all this dancing around what is and what isn't sci-fi has resulted in that being the only sector of the audience who's left willing to put up their hands and call themselves a sci-fi fan. Everyone else has moved on because they don't want dumb, and they don't like confused. There's other places to get your quality fix.

In the end, the reason why a lot of sci-fi product winds up being anemic, dull, or retreaded and bled of creativity is because in that development process, you have the people paying the piper begging writers to run away from the thing that is the very essence of the show.

It's focacta.

Which is why I'm working on a script that is a Dark Thrillo-Comic Serial Standalone Scientific Fantastical Musical Romcom Procedural.

Okay. Time for lunch.

Bite Sized Bits

I don't have the full mojo for a big post, so a couple of observations on unconnected subjects follow:

Dresden Dolls

I caught the premiere of The Dresden Files on the weekend and thought it was kind of spiffy. Paul Blackthorne is very good, the production values were great, and the story was, you know, good old fashioned genre double. I call shows like Dresden Files "peanut butter" because they're never going to win Emmys, but when you're curled up on your couch it's actually nice and diverting. I'll be watching it again. And best of all -- shot in Toronto, so yay for that. (Sci Fi in the USA, Space in Canada, Sundays.)

Brush Up Your Shakespeare

I've been laying aside 2nd season Rome till I had the time to devote to it. I got just enough time to watch the premiere episode last night and found something so great and valuable in it that it actually made me clap my hands in delight. One of the things I'd been wondering was, in the aftermath of the death of Caesar, how would they handle the oration over the body? How do you top "Friends, Romans, Countrymen Lend Me Your Ears, I Come to Bury Caesar, Not to Praise Him?"

Well the answer, of course, is you don't. You go to the aftermath: straight to the scene where Marc Antony negotiates with Brutus to get him out of Rome because the crowd turned on the killers after Antony's oration. Brilliant! You play the fact that EVERYONE KNOWS THIS SPEECH, or at least everyone literate. You're playing on the audience's own knowledge, and engaging them. Then you play a scene from the perspective of the lower classes, recounting the two speeches -- not quoting the speeches, but simply speaking about the emotional content and how it made them feel. Dramatize the effect, because that's what's important for the narrative. Not the cause.

We struggle all the time with: how much does the audience know here? Should they know more? And sometimes we forget that you can actually count on the audience quite a bit. Twenty years ago they didn't trust that you could cut from someone in a car to someone knocking on a door. Now, you can omit the oration speech and play other scenes we haven't seen a hundred times before.

Whenever you can omit the scene we've seen a hundred times before, why wouldn't you do it?

How many of those scenes are in your script. Rip'em out.

Conservative Surprise

I can't figure out our Conservative Government here in Canada. But I am glad they seem to recognize that as screwed up as it is, the TV industry is actually an industry that employs real people. Go read this article in the Globe and Mail, and then read the comments below. That's what we're up against. I swear, it's when I read these comments from the body politic that I think to myself, "what are you doing here? Just take the hit, move south, and let them trade their damn country away." They'll get teary eyed at a beer ad manipulating Canadian pride, but they'll blithely hand over cultural sovereignty when it counts.

Canadians, you are an odd, odd people.