TV - SciFi Channel

Intro: Dr. StrangeFi or How I Learned to Love the Bombs
SciFi Channel has four new shows. This is dangerous, considering that the only successful SciFi Channel shows seem to be ones transplanted from other channels (like the Stargate franchise) or remakes of previously established hits (Battlestar Galactica). Farscape couldn't grow beyond a cult following, and neither could First Wave, Invisible Man, or the myriad other attempts made at original cable programming. But these new programs--one drama, one reality show, and two comedies--are worth checking out. And if you don't now, you won't get the opportunity later. So here's the rundown.

Eureka
Handled properly, this could be the next, great X-Files. Handled improperly, we could skip straight to the last season of The X-Files. Eureka is a show about a seemingly innocuous town that harbors a big secret: it is the secret testing ground of all major scientific advances in the last fifty years. Everyone who lives there is a mad scientist waiting to happen; week after week, we get to watch as things go terribly wrong. (That, as you all know, is when things get terribly entertaining.) In the most recent episode, "Many Happy Returns," the cast contends with not just a clone of the woman they just buried, but also with the time-displaced ghost of her husband. These are fresh twists with fun (if a little too wry) dialogue and decent acting.

Where the show trip up is with the script and cast; right now, Eureka is pandering to the audience with joke after obvious joke, and the actors are hamming it up just as much. Science-fiction actors are, theoretically, actors first -- I'd like to think that as Eureka matures, we'll actually see growth in the details of each scene. As for the plot, so long as they don't sacrifice their single-episode format to the plot-arc gods, these writers can make anything happen on the show. I say, let them. And about damn time.

Who Wants to Be a Superhero?
Full disclosure? I went to college with one of the contestants, Nitro G. (I use his secret identity for no other reason than that it amuses me to do so.) Fuller disclosure? So what? That's reality TV; anybody can be a contestant. It's both a good and bad thing that he's the second hero eliminated: the show is easily nerds on parade, and the only place these "heroes" are going is on a panel at the next mid-level comic-book or sci-fi convention. It's a bad thing because Who Wants to Be a Superhero is actually a well-written reality show; Nitro G is now a loser on a show that people might watch.

Flamboyant costumes, improbable characters, and simply silly stunts--Who Wants to Be a Superhero flaunts every nuance of why people like reality TV: laughing at other people. (And who can't laugh at Cell Phone Girl, or how seriously Major Victory and Monkey Girl take this?) This is a new low, which, in reality lingo, should be a major high. The one flaw of the show, but an admitted draw for the comic book fans, is that Stan Lee hosts the programming and controls the votes. However, he never actually speaks to the contestants in person, which gives him the feel of a megalomaniacal, hermetically sealed villain: the anti-Donald Trump.

Though the series has the predictable commercial-friendly twists (with big revelations teased right before the break) and all-too reliable confessionals, the challenges--in other words, the scripted portion--are where this reality show excel. In the first episode, one contestant is eliminated before even entering the heroes' lair...by another contestant, Rotiart, who turns out to be a plant. (His name, when read backwards, is Traitor.) Hidden challenges, like this initial morality test, keep things fresh; the question of how serious some of these contestants are provides the rest of the sinful entertainment.

Later in the episode, I get more guilty pleasure at watching all-too-focused superheroes dash right by a crying little girl [another plant]; the real test, of course, is finding out which heroes think "saving" a civilian is more important than the mission itself. And this is the meat of Who Wants to Be a Superhero: as Stan Lee acknowledges, the show really can't test the outer superhero (that would be funny in another--painful--way), and each episode is a little lesson in morality. And who knows? The winner, who will be the superhuman punch line of many jokes, may even get a chuckle out of Nietzsche.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
A documentary by a fictional Stephen King-like character about a fictional show he supposedly wrote, directed, and starred in, in the late 80s for British television couldn't possibly work, could it? Pretentious doesn't begin to cover the bases, but weirdness and originality work in its favor--and there's some invigorating audacity, too.

Unfortunately, the showiness of the format currently overwhelms the humor. The clips from this faux-TV series are flush with enough parody of the genre and era to work solo (in the same way that Soap encompassed its time); the documentary portions, which often interrupt the show-within-a-show's already shaky narrative, are mostly devoid of laughs and don't fit nearly as well. They simply don't need to mine two distinct styles: tacky acting, intentionally awful editing, and painfully funny voice dubbing is where Garth Marenghi's Darkplace triumphs. And that's in the spoof itself, not the analysis of it.

After all, when you've got a hospital called Darkplace built on the bowels of hell, do you really need anything else cluttering the story? The gimmicks--enough blood to make Sam Raimi proud, or low-budget special effects (like throwing a cat into a scene)--are good; the conceit is not.

Amazing Screw On Head
Full disclosure (again)? I'm a huge Mike Mignola fan. His artwork for Hellboy is dark and mysterious, with ominous mythology crammed into every jagged line. The strength of his Dark Horse-published series was enough to make me invest in Amazing Screw On Head, a one-shot that used the same art and supernatural crime-fighting concept for shits and giggles. Not only is the television show drawn in a style similar to Mignolia's own, but the voice-actors (headlined by Paul Giamatti and David Hyde Pierce) understand that it's just for fun.

And really, who doesn't get it? The year is 1868, the country is America, and Screw On Head is a lively head that can screw into various mechanical contraptions. Oh, and he works for Abraham Lincoln. Ah, and he's assisted by his manservant, Mr. Groin. Er, and he's facing the undead army of the gleefully insane Emperor Zombie. Any critic taking this show seriously is seriously in over his or her head.

Suffice to say, Amazing Screw On Head will find its audience in the same devout, cultish fans who loved Duckman and The Tick, two other similarly implausible cartoons. Those who call shenanigans need not watch; the rest of you: hop onboard.

Stargates (SG-1, Atlantis)
Oh, I couldn't resist saying a few words on these returning fan favorites. The only way that a show becomes a fan favorite is by catering to the every whim of a mostly idiotic viewership. After enough seasons, viewers have fallen for the characters, not the plot, and are content to waste hour after hour watching the same (or similar) scenario unfold so long as their "heroes" are killing time with witty banter.

So how does a show survive losing one its main draws? In the case of Stargate SG-1, they transplant characters from another franchise. In this case, it's Ben Browder and Claudia Black from the frakked carcass of Farscape. In order to keep the fan base, Browder and Black play pretty much the same characters as before, but that's fine: all these popular, long-running hits tend to have the same characters anyway.

How else to explain Atlantis? This spin-off basically duplicated every character from SG-1 and placed them in a slightly different location. Last year, the Atlantis team fought the Wraith, and the SG-1 team fought the Ori. To do so, both looked for archaic weapons that had been lost to them and had to deal with the political manipulations of the sinister humans that surrounded them. This year, the battle continues. Big deal. The original seasons felt fresh; each week the SG-1 team would face unique challenges as science itself turned against the protagonists. Now, each year, the Stargate teams face the same stubborn challenges, and science has very little to do with it. (Unless, that is, you count the science performed by the CG artists who litter episode after episode with space battles.)

No wonder I'm so enamored by this new slate of programming; it's different.

Conclusion: It's The End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
This is a hip slate of programming which should provide the solid devotees of Friday's two Stargate series and the new quirky drama Eureka with some great alternative programming. But though it panders to the right demographic, MTV’s Aeon Flux tried (and failed at) the same thing. (The show has belatedly grown into a hit now that the original audience has grown-up and looked through their past for memorabilia.)

There's also the sad truth that of all SciFi Channel's current series, only Battlestar Galactica is a real drama. The rest are sarcastic action meets science shows, and that might lead to some redundancy or resentment among viewers looking for the next Quantum Leap. With the exception of Eureka, these shows have nowhere to grow. They are niche programs, best served as mini-series: future installments promise more of the same, more of the same, and more of the same. Lexx, the most boundary pushing SciFi Channel show yet, had a whole universe to explore; I worry that we've already seen everything these new ones have to offer.