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Defying Gravity cancelled

  • 15-09-2009 12:17am
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭


    Well, sod it anyway. I was enjoying that for a change.
    Fecking dumbing-down audiences. Oh, sure Warehouse 13 and True Blood we'll watch, but if it's neither silly&trite, or t&a, the neilson ratings hit rock bottom and the network pulls it. Gah.
    This is what happened to Firefly dammit...


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Comments

  • Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 17,994 Mod ✭✭✭✭ixoy


    But they kept describing it as "Grey's Anatomy in space" - so it's off putting to sci-fi fans and GA fans.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Did you watch it? Because I watched it from the start, and I didn't see any of gray's anatomy in there, not even a pinky fingernail.
    And any sci-fi fan who sees the lead from Office Space in a spacesuit on a long-duration space mission as the plot for a show and doesn't give it ten minutes.... well, that's not really a sci-fi fan at all.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,045 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    Bollocks
    Bollocks
    Bollocks
    Bollocks
    Bollocks
    Bollocks
    wankstainedcocksuckingbastardsonsofpoxriddledcrackwhores.


    Ok I am pissed off at this more then I was about firefly.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Worse than that Thaedydal, the last-aired show
    (where they end on the cliffhanger of everyone catching their first glimse of beta)
    is where the network drew the season finale line. There are two more episodes apparently filmed, but they won't be aired; and the originally planned season one finale hasn't yet been filmed, if I read the report right :(


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,763 ✭✭✭Jessibelle


    Ah balls to them anyways!! Anything just that little bit different and interesting seems to get cancelled these days. I really enjoyed this one too :(


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    And it gets worse yet:

    From io9:
    Fox Brings Back Space Western... That Isn't Firefly

    Fox is making a science-fiction Western. The bad news is, it's not Firefly. But hey, at least it's original scifi programming. Chuck's executive producer Scott Rosenbaum is working on a "gunslinger stuck in another world" series.

    The show will revolve around "a gunslinger caught between worlds" and will feature a nod to "Planet of the Apes," said Rosenbaum, who is executive producing with Wonderland's McG and Peter Johnson.

    Comics Editor Graeme points out that this plot sounds a lot like the Jonah Hex reboot in the 80s where our mangled gunslinger got rocketed to the future. Then again the trades call is Planet of the Apes-esque, so perhaps the new series is pulling from a number of influences. Still, I'm a bit bitter that Fox is working on a new science fiction Western that isn't a Firefly revival.

    2009-09-14-black-as-pitch-meeting.jpg


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,763 ✭✭✭Jessibelle


    Sparks wrote: »
    Worse than that Thaedydal, the last-aired show
    (where they end on the cliffhanger of everyone catching their first glimse of beta)
    is where the network drew the season finale line. There are two more episodes apparently filmed, but they won't be aired; and the originally planned season one finale hasn't yet been filmed, if I read the report right :(


    Could they do a 'Pushing Daisies' and have them released on the internet or dvd boxset?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,045 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    Sparks wrote: »
    Worse than that Thaedydal, the last-aired show
    (where they end on the cliffhanger of everyone catching their first glimse of beta)
    is where the network drew the season finale line. There are two more episodes apparently filmed, but they won't be aired; and the originally planned season one finale hasn't yet been filmed, if I read the report right :(

    What they are only letting it run to episode 8 and we don't find out what the MacGuffin is? Screw that.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    The two filmed-but-unaired episodes? I don't think they'll stay hidden for long. But that still leaves episode 11 (the season one finale) unfilmed :(


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Thaedydal wrote: »
    What they are only letting it run to episode 8 and we don't find out what the MacGuffin is? Screw that.
    Yup :(
    Really annoyed at this. That show was my current Cowen antidote :mad:
    I mean, I have to watch unintelligent ****e on all the news channels, why can't I have something with a bit more brains on the fiction side of things at least?


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Hmmmm. Conflicting information emerges:
    According to Nicole Marostica, a publicist for the show on ABC, the show has not been canceled, contrary to recent speculation. The show had always been scheduled to appear for eight weeks, with Brothers & Sisters returning to television on September 22nd. The network continues to review its scheduling options for the show. However, the show's future prospects are not exactly bright as it continues to shed viewers, and come in last in the ratings of the four major networks.
    And from elsewhere:
    LOS ANGELES (thefutoncritic.com) -- Let the speculation end: ABC's "Defying Gravity" is still very much alive.

    A network spokesperson has confirmed the Alphabet hasn't pulled the plug on the show and is still mulling scheduling options going forward.

    Due to its late start this summer, ABC didn't have the real estate to air all 13 installments from its first season. "Gravity's" shortened run was made clear from the start: the network announced back on July 22 (read the story), "Brothers & Sisters" would return to its Sunday, 10:00/9:00c slot on September 27, leaving "Gravity" just eight weeks of potential air dates.

    This coming Sunday, ABC will air the 2005 feature "King Kong" rather than put originals against CBS's coverage of the Emmys.

    "Gravity" nevertheless has been a lackluster performer at best - last night's airing drew just 2.52 million viewers (including a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49), making it the least-watched program on the four major networks.

    No indication was given as to when the show will return.
    That last line's not too hot though :(


  • Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 17,994 Mod ✭✭✭✭ixoy


    Sparks wrote: »
    Did you watch it? Because I watched it from the start, and I didn't see any of gray's anatomy in there, not even a pinky fingernail.
    No I didn't because of how it was pitched - even by the show's producers. They made a big screwup there by alienating potential audiences. I was watching a number of other shows and didn't squeeze this one in because it was marketed as something I wasn't interested in (I saw this in numerous articles by the show's producers).
    And any sci-fi fan who sees the lead from Office Space in a spacesuit on a long-duration space mission as the plot for a show and doesn't give it ten minutes.... well, that's not really a sci-fi fan at all.
    Not sure what Office Space has got to do with sci-fi.... Were there staplers onboard? Maybe that's where the stapler went.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    ixoy wrote: »
    No I didn't because of how it was pitched - even by the show's producers. They made a big screwup there by alienating potential audiences.
    Ironically, probably because the description "science fiction" seems to be though of as being slightly less audience-winning than "crock of ****" by the networks :mad:
    Not sure what Office Space has got to do with sci-fi.... Were there staplers onboard? Maybe that's where the stapler went.
    Dude. Wash those fingers. It's Office Space. Some things are sacrosanct.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,136 ✭✭✭TheIrishGrover


    Sparks wrote: »
    Did you watch it? Because I watched it from the start, and I didn't see any of gray's anatomy in there, not even a pinky fingernail.
    And any sci-fi fan who sees the lead from Office Space in a spacesuit on a long-duration space mission as the plot for a show and doesn't give it ten minutes.... well, that's not really a sci-fi fan at all.

    Oh God it was AWFUL! Bad BAD sci-fi (Instantanious communication back to Earth..... Magnetic hairspray?). Every single character suffering some kind of mental trauma. That plinky plinky music whenever the girls talked to eachother on earth. Every single character a cliche: The alcoholic/adict doctor/shrink. The leader who is struggling with a previous descision that lost lives before. The vamp. The girl who gave up everything to be on the programme. The devout Christian whose whole brlief system becomes crazily obsessive because of how she interpits the anomoly. The fat-nerd-like-that-guy-from-that-"Lost"-show. You know that if they had shown next weeks episode it would have gone along the lines of
    "What did you see?"
    "I saw an Angel"
    "I saw hope"
    "I saw doom"
    "Dude, I saw porn" (As he seceretly eyes the cute latina babe. Oh, I HOPE they get together but they are total opposites :rolleyes:)

    Someone mentioned Firefly in the same breath as this show. PLEASE tell me that was sarcasm. PLEASE!!! (BTW, if this whole thread is sarcasm I apologise)


    But that's just IMHO of course


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Oh God it was AWFUL!
    No it wasn't. Slow paced != bad. Blade Runner was slow. Some if not all of the best science fiction is slow paced.
    Instantanious communication back to Earth
    Dramatic device.
    Magnetic hairspray?
    Budget device. Cost of a 20-second throwaway bit of dialog <<<< Cost of filming everything in 20-second chunks on the vomit comet.

    I can forgive small stuff like this. It's the constraint of the medium. Do it in a book and I'll pulp the book; do it in a film and I'll dock you points - but in a TV show, the constraints are tighter so you get more leeway.

    (For example, did anyone go nuts on Moon because they were farming solar deposits of He3 from regolith instead of cloudscooping it from Jupiter where it'd be far easier to collect it? Or point out that the mass requirements for shipping that many clones about in biomass alone would make it cheaper to just ship up ordinary humans instead?)
    Every single character suffering some kind of mental trauma.
    Ever read an autobiograpy of any real astronaut? They're all messed up in the head - and a lot of the common themes running through their autobiographies were worked into the plot in Defying Gravity.
    The leader who is struggling with a previous descision that lost lives before.
    Wrong cliche. You meant "The leader who is struggling with being a leader and taking orders from the guy who made the previous decision that lost lives before, while also giving orders to the other person who was there".
    The vamp. The girl who gave up everything to be on the programme. The devout Christian whose whole brlief system becomes crazily obsessive because of how she interpits the anomoly. The fat-nerd-like-that-guy-from-that-"Lost"-show.
    You're just sad they didn't find Captain Kirk on the ship, aren't you? :D
    Someone mentioned Firefly in the same breath as this show. PLEASE tell me that was sarcasm. PLEASE!!! (BTW, if this whole thread is sarcasm I apologise)
    You do realise that half the stereotypes that you mentioned above are in Firefly?
    The leader who got all his men killed and is now trying to run away from that? The Mad Max 2 female warrior/vamp character? The wacky comic relief pilot? The sage warrior monk who's given up violence but can kick your ass at a moment's notice and who walks the earth flies around the 'verse? The gifted kid? The virgin romantic interest? I mean, I love the show, but don't go saying it didn't ever use a stereotype :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭Badboy1977


    Sparks wrote: »
    No it wasn't. Slow paced != bad. Blade Runner was slow. Some if not all of the best science fiction is slow paced.


    Dramatic device.

    Budget device. Cost of a 20-second throwaway bit of dialog <<<< Cost of filming everything in 20-second chunks on the vomit comet.

    I can forgive small stuff like this. It's the constraint of the medium. Do it in a book and I'll pulp the book; do it in a film and I'll dock you points - but in a TV show, the constraints are tighter so you get more leeway.

    (For example, did anyone go nuts on Moon because they were farming solar deposits of He3 from regolith instead of cloudscooping it from Jupiter where it'd be far easier to collect it? Or point out that the mass requirements for shipping that many clones about in biomass alone would make it cheaper to just ship up ordinary humans instead?)


    Ever read an autobiograpy of any real astronaut? They're all messed up in the head - and a lot of the common themes running through their autobiographies were worked into the plot in Defying Gravity.


    Wrong cliche. You meant "The leader who is struggling with being a leader and taking orders from the guy who made the previous decision that lost lives before, while also giving orders to the other person who was there".


    You're just sad they didn't find Captain Kirk on the ship, aren't you? :D


    You do realise that half the stereotypes that you mentioned above are in Firefly?
    The leader who got all his men killed and is now trying to run away from that? The Mad Max 2 female warrior/vamp character? The wacky comic relief pilot? The sage warrior monk who's given up violence but can kick your ass at a moment's notice and who walks the earth flies around the 'verse? The gifted kid? The virgin romantic interest? I mean, I love the show, but don't go saying it didn't ever use a stereotype :D


    I have a number of questions if someone here could kindly answer me them?

    Is it or is it not cancelled?
    What was the bit about Magnetic hairspray??
    What was or is FireFly?

    Now for my review- I agree with the criticisms about this shows marketing. Sci-Fans are interested in characters but not bed hoppers. Thus Grey's anatomy in Space aint going to fly.
    The voice over stuff has been done to death and its all mawkish stuff they say . Ebony and Ivory..
    The show is badly edited-the flash backs jump in and out too quickly. Was never a LOST fan and only very very occasionally watched Grey's anatonmoy. Am I right in saying this is more Space opera than Sci Fi?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks


    Badboy1977 wrote: »
    I have a number of questions if someone here could kindly answer me them?
    Is it or is it not cancelled?
    Sadly, yes.
    Originally, they stopped airing shows at episode 8 on ABC, but kept showing the full first season in Canada (up to episode 13). But they didn't pick up a second season, and the cast have since been let go and the sets have been destroyed.
    What was the bit about Magnetic hairspray??
    It was a quick blurb near the beginning to explain away why there wasn't much in the way of zero-g footage in the show (they had some serious financial problems it seems).
    What was or is FireFly?
    *choking noises*

    Okay, did you go to see Serenity in the cinema a year or so ago?
    Now for my review- I agree with the criticisms about this shows marketing. Sci-Fans are interested in characters but not bed hoppers. Thus Grey's anatomy in Space aint going to fly.
    Turns out that ABC did a number on the producers, promising all summer to pick up the show but only committing with three weeks to air and thus no time or budget to market it. So the whole marketing angle was shafted from the get go :(
    The voice over stuff has been done to death and its all mawkish stuff they say . Ebony and Ivory..
    The show is badly edited-the flash backs jump in and out too quickly.
    Can't say I agree with that, I never got confused as to what scene was set when.
    Was never a LOST fan
    This wasn't done by the Lost people.
    And it should be noted that the lack of direction in Lost wasn't there in Defying Gravity - there was a three-year storybooked arc. And lots of the stuff in it would have been *very* cool :(
    Nadia, for example, would have been a very interesting character, and I'd love to have seen how twitchy the US audiences would have gotten over her.
    and only very very occasionally watched Grey's anatonmoy. Am I right in saying this is more Space opera than Sci Fi?
    Half-way in between really.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 646 ✭✭✭yogidc26


    Badboy1977 wrote: »
    I have a number of questions if someone here could kindly answer me them?

    What was or is FireFly?
    QUOTE]

    Firefly is an American space western television series created by writer/director Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, under his Mutant Enemy Productions. Its naturalistic[citation needed] future setting, modeled after traditional Western movie motifs, has been praised as an "oddball genre mix".[1] Whedon served as executive producer, along with Tim Minear.

    Firefly premiered in the United States and Canada on the Fox network on September 20, 2002. Despite high expectations for the Joss Whedon-led project, by mid-December 2002 Firefly had averaged only 4.7 million viewers per episode and was 98th in Nielsen Ratings.[2] It was cancelled after only eleven of the fourteen produced episodes were aired. Despite the series' relatively short life span, it received strong sales when it was released on DVD and has large fan support campaigns.[3][4] It won an Emmy in 2003 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series. The post-airing success of the show led Whedon and Universal Pictures to produce a film based on the series, Serenity.[5] The Firefly franchise expanded from the series and film to other media including several comics and a role-playing game.

    The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things".[6]

    The show explores the lives of people who fought on the losing side of a civil war who now make a living on the outskirts of the society, as part of the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system. In addition, it is a future where the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance, resulting in the fusion of the two cultures as well. According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today."[7]


    Taken from Wikipedia its class

    Balls about Defying Gravity I think its been good so far


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭Badboy1977


    Sparks wrote: »
    Sadly, yes.
    Originally, they stopped airing shows at episode 8 on ABC, but kept showing the full first season in Canada (up to episode 13). But they didn't pick up a second season, and the cast have since been let go and the sets have been destroyed.

    It was a quick blurb near the beginning to explain away why there wasn't much in the way of zero-g footage in the show (they had some serious financial problems it seems).


    *choking noises*

    Okay, did you go to see Serenity in the cinema a year or so ago?


    Turns out that ABC did a number on the producers, promising all summer to pick up the show but only committing with three weeks to air and thus no time or budget to market it. So the whole marketing angle was shafted from the get go :(

    Can't say I agree with that, I never got confused as to what scene was set when.

    This wasn't done by the Lost people.
    And it should be noted that the lack of direction in Lost wasn't there in Defying Gravity - there was a three-year storybooked arc. And lots of the stuff in it would have been *very* cool :(
    Nadia, for example, would have been a very interesting character, and I'd love to have seen how twitchy the US audiences would have gotten over her.


    Half-way in between really.


    Not saying I got confused with Flash backs-its just they were just too short and thus broke dramatic pace. You are one minute dealing with something and then a quick 5 second flashback and then back to normal story. 5 seconds does not give you enough time to take it all in. Flashbacks have their place but if you are going to bother doing them give it five minutes at least!

    Can you or anyone recommend a decent Sci Fi series out there. Dropped in and out of Battlestar Galatica -is it worth buying box set or does one of you want to sell it to me?! Was serenity worth seeing? I


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭Badboy1977


    Sorry Error post


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,049 ✭✭✭superfly


    ***Here be Spoilers***


    One of the things that kills me anytime a show I love doesn’t get picked up for additional seasons — or is flat-out canceled mid-season — is dangling storylines. Being that I’m into sci-fi shows, enduring long story arcs is pretty commonplace. So, when word came that Defying Gravity was not only not getting a second season, but it wouldn’t be airing the final handful of episodes in the U.S., it was par for the course. But dammit, I wanted to know what was going to happen next!

    Via powerful, mystical, magical items that I won’t reveal here, for fear the secret will fall into the wrong hands, I was able to watch the final episodes of the first and only season of Defying Gravity. Ivey’s already written about them, the final episode having aired on Canada’s CTV and SPACE channels last weekend. Unlike another sci-fi show that was cut short soon — the U.S. version of Life on Mars — Defying Gravity wasn’t allowed to wrap up its story. In fact, even if it had the time to prepare for it, there’s just no way it could wrap everything up in one season. The season only got better in the latter episodes, which makes the show being gone all the more disappointing.

    Still, I had to know how the show was meant to end. If there was truly no hope that the show would get picked up somewhere else, I had to jump at a chance to find out what was going to happen next. So, I went straight to the source and contacted the show’s creator, James Parriott, to get a reading from the next book from the Defying Gravity bible. And, lordy, did he read.

    First of all, let’s get the basics out of the way. Parriott confirmed to me that the actors have all been released and the sets have been destroyed, so the show is “pretty much dead” — no real hope now of seeing the show get the CPR it needs to continue on into another season or a wrap-up movie.

    So, why did the show not do better in the first place, if it’s as good as I say? As Parriott explained, the show wasn’t officially picked up by ABC until a mere three weeks before the first episode aired, virtually giving them no time to market the show properly. By that time, all ad space they needed for the show to get the awareness it needed was spoken for.

    Getting back to what I said about a show “bible,” Parriott said that in order to sell the show, he had to have the show worked out, and he does indeed have a bible for it. In fact, he has the first three years of the show all worked out, along with how it would ultimately end. Because Parriott has what he said is “a tremendous respect for science fiction and its fans,” he didn’t want to string viewers along too long without anything significant to reveal, which is why Beta was revealed in episode nine and not somewhere in season two; he wasn’t about to leave us with “a big hole in the ground” at the finale. Lost fans know what he’s talking about.

    Speaking of Lost, here’s a fun bit he had to say about the show and how it relates to how he went into putting Defying Gravity together:

    “I love the show [Lost], and Damon [Lindelof] and Carlton [Cuse]. I did a lot with Grey’s Anatomy during the first couple of years of Grey’s, and that first year of Grey’s was the first year of Lost, and I did a lot of dinners with ABC buyers with those two guys and Shonda Rhimes from Grey’s. Carlton is a really bright and funny guy, and he gets up, and the first question out of the foreign buyers’ mouths is ‘where’s it going to go? Do you know where it’s going to go?’, and he said ‘I haven’t a clue.’ And then he sits down across from me at the dinner table, and I remember saying ‘Damon, come on, that’s bull****, right? I mean, you know where it’s going to go.’ And he says, ‘Jim, I haven’t a clue. I’m four episodes out; that’s all I know.’

    “And I just thought to myself, y’know, that’s really dangerous. And then when I got into doing this show, I said I don’t want to do that; I don’t want to be in that position. First of all, I’d have ulcers if I did that, which would just be crazy, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. So I went in pretty much knowing where it was going to go.”

    I’ve often said that having the “Grey’s Anatomy” tag on this show really hurt it. Sci-fi fans ran for the hills when they saw it was going to be Grey’s-in-space, so it never took off. So, I asked Parriott about that.

    “First of all, ABC literally bought the show three weeks before it aired. ABC, I think, in their own way, were trying to kill it. They had been planning to buy the show all summer long, so they had us on a hook. But they wouldn’t commit, wouldn’t commit, wouldn’t commit. While they weren’t committing, they were cutting trailers and were preparing to launch, but they weren’t telling anybody. And then they finally committed three weeks before launch.”

    Essentially, the only people who saw the promos were the 1.5 million viewers through ABC’s summer schedule.

    “[Having the Grey's Anatomy tag] probably hurt the show ultimately. But in terms of trying to sell the show, as sort of a quick pitch … for the buyers, it had to be ‘look, it’s a show in space, but it’s not a space show. This is a space show that’s going to attract women.’ That seemed to be the easiest thing to do. In fact, I don’t think we ever really coined the phrase that it’s Grey’s in space; someone had just said that and we said ‘OK.’”

    So why wasn’t the show pitched instead to Syfy? Couldn’t the show have shined there and gotten the attention it needed and deserved? “You know, it could have. But we were always trying to create a network show and not a cable show. So if you go out and just say “we’re sci-fi,” the networks sort of balk at that. They want to know it’s bigger and the potential audience is broader than a sci-fi audience. However, when it became clear that ABC wasn’t going to give us a big summer launch and not be promoted as well as we wanted, I was encouraging the studio not to sell it and go to Syfy. And in fact they did go to them, but they did it too late and after we already aired two episodes. I said, ‘would you guys buy this if we pulled it from ABC and give it to you for free on rerun and buy us into a second season?’ But then you’ve already aired and you’re taking the wind out of Syfy’s sails, because they can’t promote it as ‘their’ show. And Mark Stern [Syfy Exec VP of Original Content] was very interested in it, but once it aired on ABC you lose your caché. And you’re done. But we could have survived on Syfy and done many seasons.

    If it had been an ABC developed show, believe me, we would have been promoted and been put into a better time slot.”

    Now, let’s get into the answers to some of the unanswered questions from the show. First of all, Parriott won’t yet reveal to me the ending of the show, as he’s still holding onto hopes that something will come out of left field and cause it to be revived again, in one for or another. If, in six months, the show doesn’t see the light of day again, then we may get our answer.

    Let’s go over the characters Parriott and I discussed:
    Nadia — She had quite the odd hallucinations, didn’t she? Who was that man she kept seeing, and why did he look so much like Nadia? As Parriott revealed to me, some fans of the show got it right in their guess that she was, in fact, a hermaphrodite when she was born. The choice was made for her when she was 11, by her parents, which sex she’d ultimately become. So that man we’re seeing is actually what Nadia would have been, had they chosen to raise her — or him — as a man.

    Now, here’s the wild kicker. All those DNA changes that are happening with the crew, caused by Beta and the other artifacts? Well, they would eventually wind up causing Nadia to gradually turn into a man.

    Parrriott also said that it was planned for Nadia to really have a more significant presence in season two. “If you see the way we wrote her, she sort of had that male sexuality about her, that ‘**** ‘em and forget ‘em’ mentality. So we wanted to write her sort of as a male character in a female body.”

    Donner & Zoe – Probably already guessed or assumed by many, but Donner’s reversed vasectomy was part of the DNA change brought upon by Beta. Eventually, toward the very end of the series, the true reason for that happening would be revealed, when Zoe becomes pregnant again on the trip. So yes, even Zoe’s hysterectomy would be “reversed” in order for that to happen.

    “They were all going to be tested. The idea was that they all had points in their lives that, if they could do them all again, then they would have chosen a different path. Beta — the ‘fractal objects’ — were going to put them up against those same situations and stand them up to themselves again, give them a chance to make another decision.”

    Wass — I asked what the Wassenfelder character’s significance was going to turn out to be, since, for the most part, he only seemed to serve as the comic relief for the show. “Dylan [Taylor] sort of has that different gear that we had to exploit, which is sort of that funny gear. And he had a relationship with Paula Garcés the first time we put them together, and we just though that was a relationship we have to mine. That wasn’t the initial plan, but Wass was going to have something like Pervasive Developmental Disorder [similar to Autism] and have a great fear of people touching him and having contact with other people. He was going to become a weirder guy. One reason I didn’t have hallucinations for him was because I didn’t have any for him worked out yet!”

    Arnel Poe — “Yeah, people guessed pretty early on that it’s Arnel’s leg loss that gets Zoe back into the program. At the beginning of the second season, she’s going to be at home, has a job teaching college, she’s going to have another romance, she’s going to have washed her hands of the whole thing. Donner’s going to be going nuts. They’re going to be doing the survival training for the mission and Arnel was going to lose a leg, and Zoe would be called back.”

    Jen — Was she mistakenly put on the mission? Why can’t she see the fractal objects? “No, she was correctly put on the mission. And she can’t see [the objects] because, if you look back at when she was in the isolation tanks, she has a fear of abandonment. Jen seems to always need a man, and she’s very needy that way because she was abandoned as a child. And what the fractal objects were doing was she was going to become extraordinarily lonely in season two, and the bunny was going to **** up the ship and she was going to have to kill that bunny. That’s her thing she was going to have to overcome, that incredible loneliness.”

    Eve — “In season two and season three, and leading into Mars, Eve was going to discover that the flashback she has of Mars, where Ted is yelling ‘go go go’, she’s going to realize that on top of his helmet there it says ‘Antares’ — so she was actually seeing the future. And she’s going to realize she has to go to Mars.”

    Rollie — “Rollie was going to be in jail for his [driving incident] and have to be pulled out and take Eve [to Mars]. And they were going to go up in one of the resupply vessels to Mars.”

    Goss — “Goss would not be the bad guy in the end. Goss would find out that he’s been being duped a little bit, and that it’s bigger than all of them.”

    Beta and the other “fractal objects” — “I was never going to define what they were. I think that’s one of the themes about the whole show, is the theology of it. Is it God? Is it not God? Is it alien? What is the Universe? I do believe in a greater being, a greater thing, and this fractal thing is really an amazing thing. I was reading in The New Yorker how stock market swings follow Pi, the fractal equation. And that’s sort of a scary thing, that it just moves. You can plot the right dips and curves [of the market] that it does indeed move fractally, and that just blows me away. There’s just tons of stuff we don’t know.”

    Other reveals:

    * They would eventually get all of the fractal objects during the course of the show.
    * Arnel, Trevor, Ajay and Claire would have been behind the “true” mission being revealed to the world, eventually. The three would be forced to work with Trevor in a sort-of underground initiative and ally with him when they see that he’s right in that something larger is being hidden. We would find out that Goss is hiding a larger agenda, and then there’s an even larger agenda that even Goss is unaware of.
    * The state of the world — the planet Earth itself — would have been revealed. “We didn’t have the budget to do it the first season — it was struggle enough just to get the ship up and running and do the shows with the quality that we had. We were going to reveal the world at large and, y’know, it’s kinda a ****ed up place.”
    * On that note, I mentioned the scene where Wass says he “could sleep through World War IV,” and Parriott had no idea what I was talking about. He said he’d been through the shows “eight million times” and never remembered seeing that. When I told him the episode and scene (episode 11, Wass at the isolation chambers), he said it must have been another case of Dylan Taylor ad-libbing again, and he totally missed it.
    * “There was horrific stuff we didn’t show that happened on Mars. Sharon and Walker had actually lived a couple of weeks in the habitat on the planet. Half of season three would probably have taken place on Mars or in orbit around Mars, but we hadn’t worked out fully what exactly they were going to find on Mars. But we did talk in the writers’ room about possibly having the two still alive when they arrived.”

    Well, there you have it. As for the remaining episodes not shown yet in the U.S., Parriott tells me not to expect them on network television, though you will see them appear on Hulu and/or iTunes. The full set of episodes should arrive on Blu-ray next January.

    I really want to thank Mr. Parriott for taking the time to talking to me and revealing so much of what many fans were wondering about this show. If only we’d get that sort of resolution with every other killed series. See me again next spring when I try to pry the show bible from Parriott’s hands to find out the rest of the details yet to be revealed.


  • Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 17,994 Mod ✭✭✭✭ixoy


    Can you credit the site where you got this post from?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,038 ✭✭✭✭Sparks




  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,045 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    And Dude please spoilers...


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,049 ✭✭✭superfly


    sorry, i'm off to get my flagellation stick right away ;)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 172 ✭✭Badboy1977


    Not going to bother watching a series that is going to finish after one season.

    Was a bit too soap opera for my tastes anyway. Not Real Sci Fi but space opera.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 43,045 ✭✭✭✭Nevyn


    I have enjoyed the insights to training programs in it and the science in it, I want to know moar about the artifacts.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 834 ✭✭✭jeawan


    Sparks wrote: »
    Did you watch it? Because I watched it from the start, and I didn't see any of gray's anatomy in there, not even a pinky fingernail.
    And any sci-fi fan who sees the lead from Office Space in a spacesuit on a long-duration space mission as the plot for a show and doesn't give it ten minutes.... well, that's not really a sci-fi fan at all.


    it was pretty good at least the Canadians showed the full 13 eps shame it was canceled though


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,020 ✭✭✭BlaasForRafa


    jeawan wrote: »
    it was pretty good at least the Canadians showed the full 13 eps shame it was canceled though

    The last episode was aired last night on BBC2 during the graveyard shift. Once the beeb knew it was cancelled they stopped promoting it and gave it death slots.

    I enjoyed the show, hopefully there will be a dvd/bluray release with commentary from Parrot and directors/actors. Also a continuation in novel form would be interesting.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,269 ✭✭✭✭VinLieger


    The last episode was aired last night on BBC2 during the graveyard shift. Once the beeb knew it was cancelled they stopped promoting it and gave it death slots.

    I enjoyed the show, hopefully there will be a dvd/bluray release with commentary from Parrot and directors/actors. Also a continuation in novel form would be interesting.

    They aired them already on the monday before christmas as a double at 11:30.
    Was a nice end to a good season just was so disappointing to see ABCs general attitude to the show.


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