Displaying Category: Tv

I am consistently surprised by the number of people who have never seen an episode of Quantum Leap, one of the best science fiction dramas of the late '80s, early '90s. Well, word on the street is that a Quantum Leap movie is in development. The implication is that the Sam Beckett character will be played by another (younger) actor, but I expect it's possible there will be a different character in the role of the leaper.

I'm a little torn over all this. I loooove the idea of new Quantum Leap anything, but I really don't think a movie would be able to adequately capture the charm of Quantum Leap without making it feel like a two hour special. I would still much rather have a regular series, say, on SyFy. Please?

I was skimming over a list of the all-time worldwide box office takes for movies and realized that the vast majority of the movies listed are either science-fiction or fantasy. So why then does science-fiction and fantasy programs do so poorly on television (with only a few exceptions)? I asked a friend who suggested it basically comes down to budget. Sci-Fi and Fantasy cost more to produce, and if you can't make it convincing, viewers are going to lose interest. Maybe? I don't really buy it. I feel like quality writing, characters, and story are going to trump effects. Is it maybe that a good sci-fi/fantasy series needs time to develop, but often gets pulled too soon by the network when it doesn't perform off-the-bat? I don't know, I'm just asking questions here, but it does seem like an interesting contradiction worthy of at least some discussion.

Or in this case, everything you've seen in television is a green screen effect, courtesy of this cool demo video from Stargate Studios.

I finally got around to watching the Caprica pilot last night, so here are some thoughts on it. Folks smoke a lot on Caprica. The story centers on the Graystone family and the Adams (Adama) family as they cope with the terrorist bombing of a train that killed the Graystone daughter, Zoe, and the Adama wife and daughter, Tamara. Caprica, however, is clearly much more complicated than what is evident on the surface. Joseph Adama, a Tauron, is mixed up with what seems like a crime syndicate. He's also having problems connecting with his young son, William (Willy), who we knows grows up to be Admiral Bill Adama in Battlestar Galactica. Daniel Graystone is also trying to cope with the loss of his daughter and becomes obsessed with trying to bring a virtual clone of herself that she created before her death into the real world. Daniel happens to be the head (I assume) of some major technology company that invented the virtuality technology that Zoe used to create her clone as well as a robotics developer currently struggling to get a military contract to produce a cybernetic soldier. The plan, it seems, is to create a cybernetic body for the virtual personality.

Other subjects touched on in the pilot include some racial/social tensions between the various tribes and social classes. Religious tensions between the greater polytheistic society and the burgeoning monotheistic believers currently living mostly underground but striving for acceptance. Questions of terrorism. I am sure there will be issues of life and what constitutes a sentient being. I definitely think there's a lot of meat there, all wrapped inside a retro-futuristic candy shell that reminds us this is all science fiction. In particular, I enjoy the fairly minor touches that lend credibility to the series. I like the application of the household robots. I particularly enjoy the presentation of the city as a place of both older buildings and newer, high-tech looking skyscrapers. It's always bugged me when a "future" city contains nothing but futuristic looking buildings. Cities grow organically; new "futuristic" buildings only get built when the older buildings are torn down. There's no case where an entire city would be all new unless it's built all at once out of nothing (like Dubai, I suppose). So it was cool seeing the old courthouse and diner and schoolhouse and such, mixed with the futuristic maglev train and corporate headquarters building and the skyscrapers and so on. They also smoke a lot.

So yes, I am looking forward to the rest of the series. The only thing that actually bothers me is that I don't know where this series is going. Unlike BSG that had a pre-defined endpoint, Caprica is an almost entirely unknown quantity and that is both exciting and frustrating.

4/5

It looks like Fox is pulling the plug on Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and I can't say this is a surprise to anyone. They should be filling out the rest of the 13 episode season (schedule in the io9 article), which should hopefully give Joss a chance to wrap things up in some semblance of an ending. Yay.

Why am I not excited or sad? Because The Sarah Conner Chronicles really was the better show and we all could tell that Dollhouse wasn't going to make it. Just seems like a bit of a waste.

I was pointed toward an article that explains Comcast's interest in buying a majority stake in video streaming site Hulu and probably changing that over to a pay-for service. Because Comcast and the other cable providers and broadcast networks seem to be clueless, I'll do them a solid and clue them in on how television programming is going to work in the future.

The key point to always remember is that information and media is always free. Not because the world is full of cheapskates or because those young punks just want to buck the system, but because humans transfer information freely between each other. Constantly. Every instance of communication between people is a transfer of information and that can never be universally controlled without leakage. Other forms of media, be they written, recorded audio, recorded video, or live streams, whatever it is, exists in a world only a hairs-breadth from our native forms of communication. The dividing line between them is the medium in which they reside. In the ancient days this media was on bulky cartridges, cassettes, or reels of tape or film that required expensive equipment to view or record and wasn't generally available to the average consumer. As technology matures, access to these media forms naturally grows more and more accessible to just about everyone with access to electricity. And even those without hard line access to electricity can pop out a small solar cell array to recharge their iPod or laptop. Media is everywhere and anyone can access it.

I am not advocating world-wide piracy here, I am simply explaining the world we live in. A world in which, the moment a television program is broadcast over the air or transmitted by cable to a residence, someone is on the other end recording it. Once that program is recorded it can and will be encoded into some format that can be transmitted digitally to anywhere in the world. There is no protection possible that can prevent this. So the question is, Mr. Cable Company, do you bury your head in the sand and pretend none of this is real, or do you accept the world we now live in and get creative with your business plan?

Here's how the future of media distribution is going to go down: First, everything will be available on the Web. For free. The living room television will no longer care about over the air signals or digital cable or any of that nonsense. Instead, the TV will be a media portal to web sources. Users will subscribe to these sources (think something like Hulu, but set up for access in the living room similar to Windows Media Center or MythTV or Miro) to get show updates and reminders or set up personalized schedules and playlists. For most users these services will be free and ad-supported. Users will be able to sign up for paid subscriptions to view programs ad-free and get access to whatever interesting premium services the portals can come up with.

If you're thinking ahead, then you've probably realized this means the death of any other service that provides these videos. The broadcast networks will cease to broadcast in traditional terms. They will certainly continue to produce programming, which they will then sell to the portals. So in effect, the portals are the direct customers, the subscribers to the service. The networks are no longer making money on advertising, they make money instead on selling their program to services that then do the distribution for them.

This will also mean the death of traditional cable television. Cable providers will become simple broadband providers and by this time, broadband will be CHEAP and also regulated by governments the world over to guarantee minimum service quality following in the footsteps first laid down by countries like Finland. I expect the cable providers will either have large stakes in these media portals, or just own them outright. I can see it now, the "Comcast Network" is now just a site on the web where people go to get the content they used to access through their set-top boxes and DVRs.

The most significant benefits to the end user should be obvious. Generally free ad-supported access to any program in the world including live news feeds. Access through your television to your personal audio repository that exists out in the cloud somewhere. These would be tracks you have purchased through services like iTunes or Amazon music that get tagged for you to use and access anywhere, be it your TV, your phone, your portable audio device, whatever. They'll all be able to access your personal media stores. This also means asynchronous viewing of programs. No longer do you have to consider a broadcast schedule and be forced to watch at that time... Of course, many of us abandoned this long ago with the introduction of DVRs, but in the future you won't even have to worry about programming those things. You just subscribe to a program and it becomes available to you as soon as it gets posted. The only schedule you have to consider is the release schedule of each program you subscribe to. Of course, you still have to consider live feeds, but those probably run 24/7, think CNN, C-SPAN, BBC News, and so on.

Clearly this isn't all going to happen tomorrow, but I would say it would be a pretty safe bet to develop over the next 10 to 15 years. In the meantime, I have no doubt broadcast and cable networks are going to continue to try and charge everyone for oxygen ignoring the fact that we can pretty much get oxygen anywhere just by inhaling.

Update (2009-10-21): Just found an article about something called Keychest being developed by Disney: "The technology would allow consumers to pay a single price for permanent access to a movie or TV show across multiple digital platforms and devices—from the Web, to mobile gadgets like iPhones and cable services that allow on-demand viewing. It could also facilitate other services such as online movie subscriptions."

I'm watching the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries, which is basically a show capitalizing on the whole Twilight "phenomena," and there's a scene in which one of the vampires is reading one of the Twilight books and commenting on how loopy Bella is and how the book gets vampires all wrong...

Okay, I know this series is corny, but I find tie-ins like that just wicked hilarious slash awesome.

A one hour dramedy based on the 1987 movie The Witches of Eastwick starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon. This time around, we've got Paul Gross in Nicholson's place as the Devil (I think it was). And the witches are played by Rebecca Romijn, Lindsey Price, and Jaime Ray Newman, all of whom I sincerely love watching, and not just because they're beautiful... I've seen them all in other shows and they are funny and just a pleasure to watch. The writing on the show is intelligent and even a little more colorful than I was expecting. My honest expectation is that this show won't last more than a few episodes, maybe six tops, which is a shame, because I really think it's got legs. Really really sexy legs.

Look for it on Wednesday nights on ABC.

Hey look, angsty, broken, vampires in high school played by 20-something actors. Sound familiar? So yes, it's like Twilight, only it doesn't turn my stomach to watch it. Of course, it's exactly what you expect it to be, but it's still watchable and at this point, I'm half-way through my second episode (I missed the pilot) and I want to see more. We'll see how this goes...

Find it Thursday nights on the CW.

A half-hour sitcom about a lawyer forced to return to college after being disbarred for faking his credentials. The lawyer is played by Joel McHale and the show is made entirely of funny. Like, How I Met Your Mother funny, or possibly funnier. I'm not really the sort to laugh out loud when watching something alone, but god, I just can't help it! I just like me some clever writing... It's on Thursdays on NBC at 21:30 and I highly recommend you check it out.