Sci Fi TV Week in Review: Johnny Jay’s irreverent, snarky, and caffeine-fueled look back at the past week in sci fi TV in five minutes or less.
I am back with another recap of the sci fi TV news from the past week and this time I have a game for you to play along with as you read. Count the number of times that I use the word reboot and see if you get the same number I do at the bottom!
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HBO is planning to blow some minds with a television series reboot of David Cronenberg’s 1981 cult-classic film Scanners. Following is the official synopsis for the show:
[The new series is] set in the mind-bending world of David Cronenberg’s seminal film. Pursued by relentless agents with unimaginable powers, two women living on the fringes of modern society must learn to work together to topple a vast conspiracy determined to bring them to heel.
William Bridges (Black Mirror, Stranger Things) will be the writer and showrunner with Yann Demange (Lovecraft Country) onboard as director and executive producer. The premium cable service has ordered a pilot and will use that to make the determination on whether it will go to series. The original film about people with pyschic powers is infamous for its head-exploding scene and received mixed reviews when it first came out, but it has since been recognized as an important sci fi entry from its time.
A recent Twitter post from Stargirl star Brec Bessinger is teasing a crossover between her CW series and the HBO Titans show. That of course raises all sorts of questions about which version of Earth these shows take place on. The Stargirl Earth and the Titans Earth are supposed to be different and the Arrow-verse takes place on yet a different set of Earths. But John Wesley Shipp showed up as the Jay Garrick Flash on Stargirl, the same character he played on the Arrow-verse. (And to confuse you just a bit more, he played the Barry Allen version of the character way back in 1990’s The Flash). The Crisis on Infinite Earths event was supposed to clean up the television DC multi-verse, but I think we still need a scorecard to keep track of who is on what Earth.
J. Michael Straczynski is still stumping for his reboot of Babylon 5 and he enlisted help from fans this past week. The updating of the show is still in the development queue at The CW despite the change of ownership, and apparently a decision on whether to go forward with it is due at the end of the month. JMS put out a tweet encouraging fans to let the network know that they support the show and that got Babylon 5 trending across social media. He followed that up a few days later with a tweet saying that “the message has been received” and that now “we wait for the future to reveal itself”. The new CW that will be focusing on “wholesome” programming does not seem like the best landing place for the reboot (of course, the old CW wasn’t ideal either), but we will see how things move forward. You can read more about the reboot at this link.
NBC’s Quantum Leap reboot debuted this past Monday and pulled decent if not spectacular numbers for its premiere. It had a 0.47 rating based on the same-day viewing for the 18-49 demographic with 3.3 million total viewers. It lost 30% of its lead-in from The Voice, but its viewership for the 10 PM EST timeslot is not bad. The first episode certainly triggered the curious-onlooker effect, so we will have to see how many people keep watching the show in the coming weeks. More on the streaming and linear ratings for sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
In schedule announcements, Netflix’s upcoming Addams Family reboot Wednesday has received a premiere date of November 23rd. Tim Burton is onboard as executive producer of that show. Next week brings the return of The Walking Dead on AMC on Sunday for its final eight episodes, and that one will be joined by the new series Interview With The Vampire (a reboot of the franchise). Also next week, La Brea (NBC, Tuesday) and Ghosts (CBS, Thursday) will be back for their second seasons. You can see all the premieres for September and beyond at this link and you can see the Weekly Listings here.
Final score: I used the word reboot eight times (not including that one) pertaining to five different shows. Do you think that maybe the entertainment industry is running out of new ideas?
Did I miss anything? Probably because I am still tyring to get caught up with the Summer shows so that I can start watching the streaming sci fi and fantasy shows from this Fall which are already kicking off, so let me know in the comments below.
Be sure to keep up with the news during the week with This Week in Sci Fi TV and r/SciFiTV.
SciFiTVSite.com: Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
CancelledSciFi.com: Keep up with the status updates of all the currently airing sci fi and fantasy shows with our Cancellation Watch posts. And be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates.
