SF Signal: Tube Bits For 12/01/2007

Tube Bits For 12/01/2007

The Jalopnik recently got an exclusive look at the new KITT, and fans of the old series, or 3rd Gen Pontiac Trans Am, won't be happy. You see, the new KITT is a Ford Shelby Cobra Mustang. As cool as a Shelby Mustang is, it isn't cheesy enough to be KITT. If they had wanted real muscle in the original series, they wouldn't have used a Trans Am, or David Hasselhoff. (Ba dum crash!)

What do you do when the writers' strike starts impinging on your SF TV? If you're Jason Birdsall, you start your own production company and shoot your on show. Birdsall has enlisted engineering students from Stevens Institute of Technology to work on his show, Venus Risies, with Birdsall as the writer. The show will be released on the internet for all to see, which, I think, is the future of TV and it will be shown on Illusion TV. The website says its supposed to air in November 2007. Looks like they better hurry to reach that goal...

To further emphasize my point about the Internet and SF TV, Sci-Fi Storm points us to a website created to foster interest in a Sci Fi idea for a television show called Barrier. Regardless of what you think about this particular story, I suspect you'll see more of this type of thing, and actual episodes, in the near future.

For all you American Torchwood fans, good news. BBC America will air the second season starting January 29th, at 9PM ET. Considering the writers' strike will most likely still be going strong, here is your chance to watch some real SF on television. To our British readers, will you be watching the second season?

Looks like NBC has replaced iTunes with Netflix? Episodes of The Office, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights will all be available for Netflix subscribers to view the day after airing. This appears, to me, to be a way of pushing the season DVDs for those shows as that will be the only way to catch up with them. I'm not sure how successful this will be.

Re. British readers and Torchwood.

Well, I skipped most of the latter half of the first series through boredom, so I will probably catch an early episode or two of the second series to see if it's improved, but if not, then that's it for me and Torchwood.

It got torn not knowing whether its audience was adult or teenagers, and settled rather uncomfortably on the stereotypical "virgin Star Trek" fanbase, who like their sci fi, but will get easily titillated by some gratuitous sexual bits and pieces, irrespective of how unconvincing and irrelevant they are. At its worse, it was train-wreck tv, and downright embarrassing. Unconvincing as adult drama, inappropriate as kids tv, it managed to fall down the crack in the middle.

Season two will need to improve dramatically to keep me watching.

Posted by Paul Harper on Saturday December 01, 2007 at 2:06 AM

I'm with Paul. The first series dragged in a big way around the middle, after an intriguing start. The characters became too one-dimensional and predictable, the action too obviously titillating and geared towards a teenage demographic. It also suffered the ever-present "look how politically correct we are" syndrome, particularly by giving most of the characters bisexual tendencies. It just wasn't necessary to the story for everyone to be in everyone else's pants.

Still, the last episode was pretty good, and I like to hope that they've looked back on it all and worked out how to improve things this time through. Martha Jones joining could lift it up, but at the end of the day, it's still just passing time until Dr. Who returns around Easter. Unless they show some worthwhile stuff early on I'll probably lose interest.

Posted by Matt Dovey on Saturday December 01, 2007 at 6:24 AM