The American version of Life on Mars is getting no such grace period. (more…)

No Sign of Intelligent Life on Mars

Now that we’ve all recovered from the powerful case of apathy brought on by the new fall shows, it’s time to check in with a few returning ones. After all, there’ve got to be some shows worth getting excited about, right? Now that I’m currently taking a long break from teaching, I’m starting to feel the itch to judge something based on entirely random criteria — it’s time to grade the returning shows!

For the next few weeks, or until I have have reviewed each show and/or grown tired of this exercise, I’ll be evaluating the returning show based on how they measure up to previous seasons, how the returning characters are faring, how interesting the new characters are, and whether the new stories show promise. Up first: Heroes.

1. Compared to the previous season. Heroes was a well-documented disaster in its second season, so I think it’s fair to say that expectations were rather low going into its third season premiere. Most people were likely just hoping not to be bored anymore. And, if we use last season as a barometer for quality, I can happily say that this season is extremely well-executed and quite entertaining. Of course, that’s rather like saying that, compared to American Pie: Band Camp, American Wedding is a marvel of complex characterizations. The bar ain’t set that high, is all I’m saying.

Three episodes into this season, and the best I can say is that the show isn’t nearly as boring as it was last year. I haven’t found myself nodding off once (though I do tend to leave the room during Parkman’s storyline, which is the only way to deal with that particular plot). We haven’t been force-fed any painfully dull new characters. No one has been killed, only to be brought back to life with unsatisfying ease. In that way, it’s much, much better.  Mark: C+

2. Returning characters. Fortunately, the writers are helped quite a bit by some of the cast. The strongest and most charismatic actors on the show still do a good job, and during their scenes everything seems to be back on track. The minute Jack Coleman and his morally flexible Noah Bennet are on screen, I absolutely love the show. Adrian Pasdar’s Nathan may be redefined by the writers every other week, but the actor still brings consistency and depth to the character. I’m not quite sure why they decided to bring back Ali Larter, though. Can’t anyone just stay dead on this show? Mark: B-

3. New characters. The show’s new characters are a mixed bag. Hiro’s brand new nemesis was clearly meant to be “sassy and clever” but somehow translates as “annoying and pointless.” On the other hand, the new villain Knox shows tremendous promise — mainly because he’s played by Jamie Hector, who kicked ass as Marlo in The Wire. On the plus side, there is no one that even approaches the annoyance factor of last year’s Emo Wonder Twins. Mark: C

4. Current plots. The show was at its best in season one when it allowed the characters to interact and their stories to intersect. After all, if we like Claire and we like Peter, won’t we like the scenes with both of them even more? Why, yes, we will! Season two fractured the group that season one had so carefully built, sticking each character in their own story with someone new — and someone that we didn’t like at all, whether it was an Irish barmaid or a horny teenage boy. It plain didn’t work.

Although this season is trying to get back a bit more to what made the first season successful, by incorporating more of what Tim Kring calls the “primal questions” and relying on more archetypal characters, it’s still keeping the characters separated in their own stories, with little clear overlap between them. Because there is no obvious link between the stories, the end result is that the viewer is only invested in the show during the handful of plots that interest them, and feels free to ignore the others. The show gives them no reason to view each scene as equally important.

Plus, this season we have the “Spirit Walk” segment. Note to all writers, everywhere: spirit walks and dream journeys and anything in which white westerners decide to co-opt alternate belief systems in order to give their plots some sense of authentic primal spirituality NEVER work. Don’t do them. Truly, I wish I’d been present in the writers’ room when the Parkman “spirit walk” storyline was pitched. “Yeah, okay, here’s what’ll happen. He’ll be teleported to Africa for no reason that we’ll bother to explain. But it won’t be dull like Hiro’s whole Japanese plot, because we won’t get him involved in any feudal wars or introduce him to super-hot David Anders or anything silly like that. No, he’s gonna meet a magical man. A black man! A magical black man! No one’s ever seen that before. And then Parkman will WALK, and he’ll whine a bit about what he’s doing there. It’s just what we need to get the show back on track!” It’s things like this that cause me to lack faith in the writers. Mark: D

For the moment, there are just enough stories that interest me to keep me watching for a bit longer — but Heroes is hovering on the brink of joining other shows on my fall cleaning pile.

Overall grade: C.

What do you think of season 3 so far? Is the show back on track, or has it derailed itself completely?

They Can Be Heroes

As part of my fall cleaning efforts, I am viewing every returning show with a critical eye: should this show stay on my very crowded television schedule? It was with that attitude that I went into last night’s episode of Pushing Daisies. Forty-two highly stylized minutes later, I have my answer, and it is a very firm “I don’t know.”

Really, there is no other show on television about which I feel so divided as this one. I know that, for most people, it falls into the love-it-or-hate-it camp, and most PV readers seem to be quite firmly on the “love it” side, but I just can’t ever commit to one camp or another. I am firmly straddling the Daisies fence. Does that sound dirty to anyone else?

Last night’s return was everything we’ve come to expect from Pushing Daisies. Every quirky trick they’ve got up their sleeve, it was in this episode. If ever there was a time to judge an episode as representative of an entire series, this was it. And yet, I still can’t decide if I should keep watching.

My indecision is frustrating. This is not a show that I like in some ways or dislike in others. No, I either love it or hate it, and my reaction can change in seconds.

The sets, for instance, are breathtaking. They are cinematic in scope, fantastic and beautiful and unlike anything I’ve ever seen on TV. But, just as I’m starting to get caught up the glorious world created by the set designers, the damn voiceover kicks in, with so many self-conscious tics that it qualifies as the narrative version of epilepsy. Every time the storyteller announces the exact time, down to the second, or reminds us that Chuck is “aka someone else,” I visibly wince. It completely takes me out of the moment.

The plots don’t help the matter. I have no problem with the always silly mystery of the week, and always enjoy the way that each new mystery provides a new world to explore. The newly created Betty’s Bees, for instance, was an absolute visual treat. I have fewer kind words for the B-plots, however, which range from frustrating to downright asinine. The show is piling secret on top of secret, asking the viewer to not only keep track of each newly revealed hidden truth but also to care about them, and I just don’t. I don’t understand why half these things need to be secrets at all. Considering that Olive already thinks Chuck faked her death, is there any reason why Chuck couldn’t come up with a good cover story that would work for her aunts as well? Every week, she, Ned and Chuck whip up preposterous covers for their mystery solving, but they can’t think up a way to reunite her with her aunts? Really? The secrets aren’t compelling, and so I plain don’t care what happens, and begin to wonder if I should even bother tuning in next week.

Then, just as I’m reaching the frayed end of my patience, Emerson Cod opens his mouth, expressing all the frustration I’m feeling with his trademark deadpan snark, and I’m in love again. Ned sits awkwardly on a bench like an adorable, oversized puppy, and my heart thaws a bit. Olive…well, Olive appears onscreen, and everything is a little brighter. And then, for a few minutes, I love this show, and understand why everyone else can’t get enough.

At least, I do until the damn narrator opens his mouth again.

What did you think of the show’s second season premiere? Are you in the love it or hate it camp?

Revisiting Pushing Daisies

When people find out that I’m a TV blogger, the first question, sadly, is never, “Wow! How did you get so lucky? That’s what I always wanted to be when I grew up.” No, nine times out of ten they cock their head to the side, look at me as if I’m a bit simple and say, “Huh. You must watch a lot of TV, then.”

Well, yes. It is rather part of the job description, and I still feel as if I’m only watching about a third of the shows I’d like to write about. It’s worse now that the fall season has kicked off, since I constantly have several episodes waiting to be viewed. Right now, Weeds and House are still sitting on my hard drive, hoping I find some time this week to pay them a visit. Of course, by the time I do, I’ll be days late on writing about them, and then there will be brand new shows demanding my attention, and clearly, no matter how much TV I watch, I will never be caught up.

I have, however, developed a system. Sadly, it doesn’t work on shows like House, which I actually want to sit down and enjoy, but it’s rather effective with a surprising number of shows. Basically, I multitask like a mother. I cook dinner during America’s Next Top Model, do sit-ups during Prison Break, and knit scarves for my entire family during Greek. The more predictable or poorly written a show is, the more I can accomplish. Hell, I finished reading War and Peace during last season’s American Idol. It’s become my personal litmus test for quality: if I actually sit on my sofa for the entire hour, it’s pretty good. If I feel a sudden need to vacuum — not so much.

It also helps me discover my percentage shows — the ones where I only care about a certain percentage of the stories. During season 2 of Heroes, I’d do the dishes during anything with an Emo Wonder Twin, stopping to watch when Noah come on screen. I’d try to stay in the room during the terrible Irish story, but that was only on the off-chance that Peter took his shirt off.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles is another percentage show. If they’re all sitting around arguing, I’m writing email, only pausing when Cameron starts kicking ass. During Grey’s Anatomy, I might still care about Christina, but I’ll be taking out the garbage the minute Izzy appears onscreen. These days, Prison Break is basically a 3% show, one which I have on in the background. I remember what happens only through the psychic link I share with my TV.

Yesterday, I watched the second episode of Fringe, and I’m sorry to say that this one is already a percentage show for me. For all the hype that surrounded its premiere, it is, sadly, not that good. The show’s tone is far too serious for its ludicrous plots, the lead female character is dull and forgettable (seriously, I don’t even remember her name), and I refuse to get drawn into another JJ Abrams conspiracy that features a lot of nouns with definite articles (i.e., The Pattern). I saw where that went with Alias, thank you, and I won’t make that mistake again.

And yet, Dr. Walter Bishop is simply awesome. I did not realize how much TV was in need of a mad scientist before he appeared on my screen, and now I want an entire Dr. Walter show. He could have a talk show, solving people’s problems through random non sequiteurs, or a game show, where he mocked people’s mundane knowledge (”No, no, no. The answer is that people live for SIX hours after death. What are they teaching in schools these days?”). I’d watch him milk the cow, or argue with his son, or just talk to himself for the better part of an hour, and quite happily, too.

Unfortunately, Dr. Walter is only on screen for, maybe, 25% of the time, and so Fringe has quickly fallen into the category of “Shows that help me keep a clean house.” It’s not a terrible show, and I feel it’s one I need to watch to be a well-informed TV blogger — I just can’t be bothered to watch all of it.

Has Fringe grabbed 100% of your attention? And what are your percentage shows?

On the Fringe of Quality TV

It’s lovely, this initial rush. I’m willing to overlook all the show’s faults and just focus on the way it makes me feel, the way it takes me along for a ride I’ve not been on before. It ticks enough boxes on my “must have” list that I can’t be bothered that it fails on a few superficial elements. Yes, I’m dating True Blood, and I’m rather hopeful that we’re in it for the long haul.

In fact, this is the only new show I’ve seen that has inspired such blind love. I know it’s not perfect, but I plain don’t care. From the minute the opening credits kicked off with Jace Everett’s slinky “Bad Things,” I was a goner. Fortunately, it helps that I really like the story, as well.

True Blood imagines a world in which vampires not only live among us, but are a recognized part of society. With the invention of artificial blood, they’ve been able to “come out of the coffin” and are now fighting for basic human rights, despite the fact that they’re not actually human. Still, this is no urban fantasy; the story takes place in a small Louisiana town where you can’t swing a stick without hitting a redneck.

This small town setting separates the show from the traditional vampire tale, which tends to rely on the anonymity found in large cities. Here, we get a small community, offering the same sort of charm found in the Elmo of Men in Trees or the Stars Hallow of Gilmore Girls — though, with its heavy coating of southern gothic, this charm is far less wholesome. Plus, being on HBO, people in this town take off their clothes a whole lot more. Still, the appeal is the same, in that each week I get to visit a whole town full of people I enjoy spending an hour with.

Despite being an unabashed lover of the fantasy genre, mine is not a blind love. I thought Moonlight was really rather dreadful, and Blood Ties never sucked me in. (Come on, I can’t write an entire post about True Blood without at least one bad vampire pun, can I?) This one, however, works for me. It helps that the lead vamp, played by Stephen Moyer, doesn’t look like he was cast primarily for his flowing locks or his ability to quickly remove his shirt. The man has a quiet depth, making him a character I actually want to know. Still, the real star is Anna Paquin, who is an absolute delight as the cheerful, kind-hearted and extremely telepathic Sookie. She nails the portrayal of the sugar sweet, tough as nails southern woman, and the chemistry between her and Moyer is damn near irresistible.

Sure, the show has a few rough spots to work out. It’s a complicated blend of fantasy, horror, murder mystery, and small town soap opera, and right now it’s not a seamless blend. However, with Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) at the helm, odds are good it will find its way. I know I’ll be following it every step of the way. I’m too enamored not to.

Did you watch the premiere of True Blood? Was anyone else as smitten as I was?

True Love for True Blood

With the new television season about to start, the buzz about some high profile shows is kicking into high gear, and few shows are buzzing quite as loudly as Fringe, the new sci-fi drama by J.J. Abrams. It was the only new show screened at last weekend’s Edinburgh TV festival, a screening that came complete with its own six-page prequel comic book. The show was heavily promoted at Comic Con, and fan sites have popped up before the first episode has even aired. Does Fringe have a hope of living up to the hype?

I’m happy to report that it is, in fact, a good show, though it suffers from the rough edges so often seen in pilot episodes. For the moment, let’s call it 75% good, with the potential for higher marks down the road.

Since you can’t have a J.J. Abrams show without some sort of conspiracy, the basic premise of the show involves government-backed hyper-intelligent pseudo-scientists who specialize in fringe science – astral projection, telepathy, etc. – who are pitted against a corporation run by another hyper-intelligent pseudo-scientist who appears to have malevolent intentions, up to and including experimenting on the human race for kicks. You know, that old story.

Of course it’s a silly premise, but where the show succeeds is the way it embraces the silliness while still telling a dramatic story, The real stars of the show are the two good guy scientists, the father and son team of Walter and Peter Bishop (played by John Noble and Joshua Jackson, respectively). Their incessant bickering allows the show to poke a bit of fun at the preposterous “science” (when they take a cue from The Princess Bride by including a “mostly dead” corpse, you know we’re not dealing with anything approximating facts). The viewer can laugh along with them instead of rolling their eyes. Noble is an absolute delight as the mostly crazy Walter, and Jackson is a big old walking pile of charisma. I have no idea why his career stalled a bit in the last few years, but it’s good to have him back on weekly television. He is able to deliver some truly bad dialogue with honesty and style, a skill he likely picked up after several seasons on Dawson’s Creek. If it was the Walter & Peter Show, I’d happily give it a 95% mark.

However, the other characters need to step it up a bit if they want to hang with the Bishops. The ostensible lead, Olivia Dunham (played by Anna Torv) basically spends the pilot rushing around, trying to save her lover. She’s also a government do-gooder determined to bring down the bad guys. Still, desperate and determined do not a three-dimensional character make, and she’s got a long ways to go before I actually start to care about her. Lance Reddick (The Wire) is also on board as Olivia’s superior, and though we see very little of him, he brings a strong sense of authority and gravitas to the role. Hopefully, the character will be given more to do in future episodes than argue with Olivia.

The overall look of the show is sleek and stylish, of course, with the saturated hues of Alias or Lost, Abrams’ previous shows, replaced with the dark, washed out look of a city in winter. It works, in this case, by grounding the unreal plots in a grubby, believable setting. Although the first episode does little more than gather the key characters together and establish the show’s premise, the stylized editing moves the plot swiftly along. Fringe grabs the viewer and whisks them along, rarely giving them time to dwell on the show’s weaknesses. The show may look dark, but it feels like a really fun ride — one I plan to take again.

Notes from the Fringe

“I’m going to be saying ‘I’m not telling you’ a lot,” warns Steven Moffat, the newly appointed showrunner of Doctor Who. He may be happy to participate in a “conversation” at the Edinburgh TV festival (he was unwilling to use the festival’s preferred term of “master class”), but that doesn’t mean he’s going to tell us anything about what’s coming up on the series.

What can we expect from the next companion? Not telling. Which villains will we see? Not telling. Will David Tennant be returning? Definitely not telling. After a very entertaining hour spent with Moffat, the crowd leaves smiling, but hardly well-informed. That’s the way Moffat likes it.

He initially tries to evade all question by insisting that answering them in detail “would mean there’s some cognitive content [in the session], and I’m trying to avoid that.” Pressed, he gets a bit more specific, explaining that he thinks spoilers damage the show. He refers to the end of the recent episode “The Stolen Earth,” when the Doctor appeared to regenerate, a powerful cliff-hanger that would have lost its impact if we knew Tennant was contracted for two more seasons. Turning to face the audience, he begs us, “Shut up! Don’t give it away!” He’s well aware that it’s a public show, filmed on the streets of Cardiff, and spoilers are available if someone looks hard enough for them. Those that tell such secrets, however, are compared to “the whining boor in the pub who gives away the punch line” the second before the joke teller does.

It’s clear that the audience, quite rightly, loves David Tennant in the role and wants to know how much longer we get to keep him. Moffat gives nothing away. He compares the Doctor to James Bond, another character with a rotating crew of actors. Whether we like it or not, we know there will be a new Doctor someday, and Tennant is no different. He just won’t tell us when someday is.

What will he tell us? The schedule, at least, isn’t a state secret. Although 2009 has been reported as a Doctor Who gap year, it’s anything but. In addition to the usual Christmas episode, there will be four more specials over the course of the year, and the series will resume its normal schedule in 2010. “So stop complaining!” he laughs.

He also confirms that the Daleks “will always return to Doctor Who,” despite some reports that he planned to do away with them. He has no idea how that particular rumor got started. “Even if you were a drunk Russian with a memory problem, you would never have heard those words come out of my mouth.” The Daleks are a part of Who history, and Moffat is as interested in what came before as in creating something new. It’s that mix of old and new that partly explains the show’s appeal. Everyone, regardless of age, has memories of their Doctor and their villains.

When asked whether the show’s tone will be slightly darker, based on Moffat’s own episodes (”Blink”, “The Empty Child”, “Silence in the Library”), he shrugs. “I like Doctor Who being scary,” he admits, but also disagrees with the idea that he’s the “dark” writer, citing Russell T. Davies work on “Midnight”, an episode in which “people are fundamentally vile,” and the relationship Davies created between the Doctor and the Master. He also mentions his own work on “The Girl in the Fireplace,” a relatively light-hearted episode. Besides, he points out, you can’t take the show too seriously. “If your main character lives in a telephone box that’s bigger on the inside, you’re going to have to put some jokes in.”

He’s already written the first episode and has a plan for the entire series but – you guessed it – he’s not telling us what that is.

He’ll speak a bit about what came before, but even then he equivocates. He refuses to name a favorite Doctor, insisting that it changes every day and, in the end, “there’s only one Doctor and he changes his face from time to time.” He’s a bit more forthcoming on the matter of favorite companion, naming Sarah Jane Smith and Rose. He’s particularly fond of the latter, because she “changed the shape of the show.” Still, he points out that the Doctor/Rose arc had to end, as there really wasn’t a future for a 900-year-old Time Lord and a 19-year-old human. “He’s going to turn into someone else, she’s going to turn into her mother.” A beat. “Actually, that’s most marriages.”

Between his Who duties, Moffat has a few projects lined up. He wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s adaptation of Tintin, and was scheduled to write two more before Who came calling and he begged off, preferring to work with the Doctor. He also speaks briefly of a Press Gang reunion show, a project that would make the devoted fans of the British kids’ show ecstatic. “I’ve always thought it would be tremendous fun” to revisit that show, he says, even though he imagines the current version would feature a “middle-aged and saggy” cast. He speaks of getting very drunk at the Jekyll wrap party and pitching the reunion idea. He doesn’t much remember the pitch, but apparently it was successful. Whether or not it will ever go into production is another matter. Right now, his focus is all on Who, and even the prospect of a Who film doesn’t get much of a response. He admits that it would be fun, but refuses to do anything that would take away from the show.

He readily admits that “of course there’s pressure” that comes with the job, not just from the fans, but from himself as well. “At age 45, you’re offered the job you wanted when you were 7,” he points out. Like David Tennant, Moffat is a huge fan of the show and considered not taking the position for that very reason. “I hope I don’t break it.” Despite his misgivings, Moffat was unable to turn down what is “literally the best job in television. Except for David’s. He gets to pretend to be Doctor, while I have to do it at home alone at night.”

Related posts:

• Tim Kring talks about Heroes
• Fringe screened at the Edinburgh TV festival

Steven Moffat Talks about the Doctor. Sort Of.

Tim Kring has words for fans of Heroes. Passionate. Obsessive, perhaps. And very, very demanding. “Our relationship with the audience is extremely tenuous,” he admits, before answering, yet again, the barrage of questions about exactly what went wrong in season two.

It’s day two of the Edinburgh TV festival, and Kring is sitting at the front of a packed room full of industry types who want to know the secret to the most successful international show currently filming. It’s also full of fans who want an explanation for what happened to their favorite show.

He’s a tall, slim man, decked out in denim and wearing a truly impressive mustache. He looks more like an aging hippy than a powerful Hollywood showrunner. He’s not an especially funny man. Unlike Steven Moffat, who followed him and seemed unable to speak in anything but highly quotable one-liners, he’s a thoughtful, careful speaker. It is immediately apparent that, whatever you thought of the last season of Heroes, he has applied that same level of thought and care to his series. He just didn’t always get it right, a fact he readily admits.

“Looking back…what I tried to do was duplicate season one’s idea of a slow build of storylines that would converge,” he explains. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on what the fans wanted. They’d become used to “the adrenaline and pace of the third act and didn’t want to go back.” He also figured this out too late.

The writers only took four days off between seasons one and two, and they thought everything was just fine. “For us,” he says, working with the same writers, on the same stories, “there was a continuum.” For the fans, not so much.

Kring is well aware of the importance of the show’s devoted fans. He speaks with wonder of the show’s premiere at the 2006 Comic Con, when thousands of people piled into the screening room, buzzing with excitement about the show’s premise. He spends time on message boards and generally speaks warmly of those that helped make the show so successful. He listens to people’s opinions and appears to take their ideas on board. At the same time, he admits that “this relationship [with the fans] has been very complicated for our show to deal with.”

Part of this is due to the simple logistics of shooting the series. At any time, they’re at least ten episodes ahead of what is currently airing, making it impossible to make quick adjustments. No matter how much “violent anger” he encountered on the Internet, the most he could do was tweak future episodes and hope that the eps already shot would be enough to appease the Internet hordes. Unfortunately, with the writers’ strike, he was never able to make those tweaks.

Will he be able to do so for the third season? The signs are good. His history as a television writer should work for him. This is a man who got his start writing one of the most infamous episodes of Knight Rider ever – the one when KITT becomes possessed by a voodoo queen. He was hired to write the script for Teen Wolf 2 and given a week and a half to churn it out. Quality work? Not so much. It did, however, provide an unexpected skill set. “I took any job that came my way. My view of working as a writer was trying to adapt to what anybody needed.” At the same time, this journeyman’s approach to the craft ensured that he developed something of a short attention span, which is reflected in his own shows. The downside of this is the constant influx of new characters (sadly, even when faced with such frank and honest answers, no one dared to ask what he was thinking when he brought in the Emo Wonder Twins). The upside, however, is the ability to switch gears quickly and make adjustments to the show.

The volume structure of the series is key to doing just that. It gives the show a chance to wrap up old storylines and invites new viewers to jump on board. Plus, it allows them to avoid the question of whether or not there’s an ending, an issue which has at times frustrated viewers of other high concept shows like Lost or Alias. With eight separate storylines occurring at the same time, Kring is confident that they can give at least one answer a week, insisting that “no question is so precious we can’t tell you the answer.” If he made the viewers wait two and a half years for an answer, it wouldn’t matter how big the question is. People are going to be disappointed. He is determined to avoid that.

Does this mean a more focused volume III, then? Kring seems to think so. The strike gave him time to reevaluate the show and figure out what worked in the first season. The early episodes were based on “primal questions” of identity and community, which were soon replaced with plot questions that lacked the same resonance for viewers. Volume III will return to the broader questions, bringing in issues of free will and predisposition. “Core characters are confronted with a fork in the road. Are they good or are they evil?” Sadly, I don’t think this fork is literal, as I would dearly love to see Sylar receive a deadly fork to the brain, but it does bode well for greater moral ambiguity for the main characters. Who doesn’t love a bit of morally gray storytelling?

Kring would love to move down to fewer episodes a year, as Lost has done, in order to avoid dealing with “the art of the stall” in the middle episodes. Unable to get NBC to agree to that (since there is no way NBC would give up a single episode of the hit show), he’s instead planning separate volumes. Volume III, Villains, premieres September 22, and will be followed by the fourth volume, Fugitives.

Whether the kinks have been ironed out is yet to be seen, but the trailer for season 3 (see sidebar) is about as shiny and pretty as I could have hoped, and I’ll definitely be tuning in to see what happens next. I may be one of those very demanding fans, but Kring convinced me: this show deserves another chance.

What about you? Will you be returning in September to see what happens to your favorite — and less favorite — heroes?

Related posts:

• Steven Moffat talks about Doctor Who
• Fringe screened at the Edinburgh TV festival

Tim Kring Speaks: The Future of Heroes

Guest poster Shelly had far too much to say about the women of BSG to limit it to a blurb in another post. Here, then, are some of the reasons the women of BSG are worth talking about.

On Tuesday, Marcia posted about the lack of strong female characters in movies, especially compared to the abundance of strong women on television. She listed a few women as an example: “Buffy, Scully, Bones, Betty Suarez, Roslin and Starbuck,” and later Xena. Did anybody else notice how many of those women were in science fiction shows? Poor science fiction has a similar image problem to that of television: it’s thought of as a waste of time, and many don’t see art in the genre.

Science fiction is a wonderland for strong female characters. Setting a story in the future, or on another planet, gives a creator of science fiction the license to ignore contemporary gender roles. The two strongest cinematic women I can think of are both from sci-fi films: Ellen Ripley from the Aliens franchise, and Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 (I specify 2 because she’s a wimp in Terminator). Ripley is possibly the most well drawn female action hero ever to be seen in a movie (at least one that didn’t originate as a television show, with all of the history of a TV series, like Serenity)—she is tough as nails (without caring about breaking them), she’s fiercely smart, and she’s in a position of power that isn’t “Mother.” Granted, it’s not like there are many other female action heroes with which to compare Ripley, but she’s pretty fantastic.

Ripley also goes back for the cat. Some may see this as a feminine weakness, but for me it is a note of grace brought to the typical action hero role. Going back for the cat is a crucial part of Ripley’s character, one layer that is uniquely female.

As great as Ripley was, when it comes to character, television still does it way better. There are plenty of awesome female characters on television these days (or in the recent past, when 75% of them were created by Joss Whedon), and one of the best examples is Battlestar Galactica.

BSG treats gender as if it informs but never defines a character. In BSG, women are aggressive soldiers, icy presidents, and violent revolutionaries at the same time they are caring mothers, manipulative seductresses, and neglected wives. They also use the same bathrooms as the men. I am often surprised when the show messes with my own gender expectations—like when I look back at how I thought Roslin was trying to save the fleet after the Cylons first attacked out of pure compassion when really, she was playing a numbers game, and saving the human race came far above saving individuals in her estimation.

It’s obvious from day one that the women of BSG never exist as a pure object of conflict between two men, a simple moral compass, or in any other way as secondary to the men of the cast. Let’s look at how the BSG women bring their ovaries to the roles without ever becoming caricatures of what it means to be a woman. In other words, how do they “save the cat”?

Boomer/Athena/Eights
The Eights come closest in the series to having a fatal flaw that is stereotypically feminine: They base most of their behavior in their emotions, specifically in their love for individuals. Athena proves herself to be a little higher minded than that when she tries to commit herself to duty and honor above all else, but even then she ends up shooting Natalie when she’s afraid of having her child stolen. She betrays duty, her superior officers, and potentially the human race, all because her worry for her daughter overrides everything else. Athena also left her birth race and served in the human military purely out of love for Helo rather than any strong conviction about the rightness of either side. It seems likely that Boomer sided against the rest of the Eights due to love for Cavil as much as her sense of isolation in the fleet (because she initially thought she was human). I’m not going to argue whether this love of the individual above all else is good or bad, but it does seem like a particularly feminine trait for someone who is also a soldier.

Because I tend to set up cage-matches in my head, I have to ask: Who would win in a fight between an Eight and Ripley? I’m afraid that Ripley would kick an Eight’s ass, unless Ripley happened to threaten the Eight’s baby or boyfriend.

Caprica Six/Natalie/Other Sixes
At first, it seems like the Sixes aren’t too far off from the Eights in their basic motivation. Caprica Six, especially, seems obsessed with her love for Baltar. It turns out that the Sixes are driven more by social concerns than anything else, which you can see as early as the pilot, when Caprica Six snaps a baby’s neck, with tears in her eyes, just before the coming nuclear holocaust. She already understands the wrongness of the Cylons’ plan, and it doesn’t take long before she’s spreading the word among her race and trying to find common ground with the humans. This switch—from a focus on love to a larger focus—is one of the ways the Sixes mess with our gender expectations. This is not to say that fomenting social dissent is a particularly gendered activity, but the way we were misguided as to her basic nature at first says something about the Six’s overt sexuality and our assumptions about a woman who looks like that. These are assumptions that the BSG creators seem to share, given how Gina (the first truly revolutionary Six) and Natalie (the leader of one side of the Cylon civil war) are transformed into comparatively modest brunettes.

In a Ripley/Six showdown, who would win? The Six, sort of. She would’ve set up a bomb beforehand, but she’d also sacrifice herself to take Ripley out.

President Roslin
Roslin is the trickiest female on BSG, as far as her gender goes. She starts out with the label of “little schoolteacher” (she’s the Secretary of Education who is suddenly promoted to President) and immediately saves the lives of thousands by insisting that they flee rather than fight. As I mentioned earlier, we expect a “little schoolteacher” to do something like that out of compassion, rather than practicality, but she fools us. President Airlock is ruthless, and she and Adama switch roles as time goes on, until Adama is the one letting people he loves (such as Starbuck) get away with things they perhaps shouldn’t, while Roslin would shoot Starbuck just to make sure they all stay safe. She is almost the opposite of the Eights in that she’s lost her affection for the individual in order, she thinks, to keep the human race alive.

Ripley and Roslin wouldn’t fight. They’d have tea, and it would end with Ripley joining Roslin’s side. Winner: the President.

Kara “Starbuck” Thrace
When we first see the exquisitely hot Kara Thrace, she’s chomping on a cigar, drinking liquor, and playing cards with other soldiers. She ends up in a fight with her XO and is thrown into the brig. If you had the presence of mind to think about it—I didn’t, I was too busy being awed—you might’ve thought that Starbuck was just a male character with boobs.

Kara’s femininity shows up in her history, when she lets Zak Adama get his pilot’s license even though he failed his flight test, a display of tenderness that I can’t imagine seeing in the current-day Starbuck. She’s also a highly sexualized character—a typical way to weaken a woman on television or in movies by pandering to male fantasies—but she’s sexual in a very dominant, dismissive way, which turns our expectations around.

Who would win if Starbuck and Ripley got in a fight? Starbuck—while she’s got a feminine side, she would never go back for a cat.

Shelly obsesses over science fiction in Durham, NC, where she lives with her partner and their, uh, several cats.

More Great TV Women: Battlestar Galactica

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