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.
NBC’s Quantum Leap revival has its premiere this Monday (September 19th) but don’t be expecting longtime leaper Samuel Beckett to make an appearance. The new show takes place thirty years after the original as a different scientist (played by Raymond Lee) starts leaping into people’s lives in the past. But Scott Bakula has made it clear that he will not return to the revival: “I have no connection with the new show, either in front of the camera or behind it”. He was offered the chance to join original creator Donald Bellisario and participate in the new series but decided to pass. Bakula does have availability seeing as his previous show NCIS: New Orleans has ended and the pilot he starred in Unbroken was not picked up. So he could make an appearance as Beckett at some point in the future (or the past). But don’t expect him to be involved at this point.
HBO Max will no longer be giving us the J.J. Abrams-produced Constantine series without Matt Ryan that nobody wanted and Warner Bros. will instead be doing a sequel that nobody wants to the 2005 film with Keanu Reeves that not many people liked. With the series not going forward at HBO Max, it will be shopped around to other venues (along with companion show Madame X) and it is unclear if this means that the linked Justice League Dark series may not be going forward. This certainly seems like the perfect opportunity for fans of the 2014 series to start stumping for Matt Ryan to return to the role. The Bruce Timm animated series Batman: caped Crusader is also being shopped around with Netflix, Amazon, and Apple all showing an interest.
If anybody still pays attention to the Emmys, sci fi and fantasy shows got very little love from those awards this year (like usual). No genre entries received any wins during the main ceremony and only a couple of shows even got nominations (Stranger Things, What We Do in the Shadows). A few genre entries received wins from the Creative Arts Emmys, most notably Arcane winning Outstanding Animated Program and Love Death + Robots winning Outstanding Short Form Animated Program.
The Replicants from Blade Runner may have only had a short time to live, but the franchise itself seems to be going on and on and on. The previously announced live-action TV series has received the greenlight from Amazon and will be titled Blade Runner 2099. There is not much information on what the new series will be about other than it will be a follow-up to the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049. Ridley Scott (who is getting up there in years) will be onboard as executive producer and Silka Luisa (Shining Girls) wrote the pilot script. The animated series Blade Runner: Black Lotus premiered on Adult Swim in 2021, but appears to have ended after one season.
In ratings news, Netflix’s The Sandman topped the Nielsen Streaming Rankings for a second week in a row and had an estimated 946 million minutes of viewing. That still may not be good enough for the streamer because they sunk a lot of money into the show, but fans are starting to push for a second season by getting #RenewSandman trending on social media. In the Netflix Top 10, the sci fi/horror series The Imperfects debuted at Number 3 with 24 million hours viewed. We will have to see how it trends in the coming weeks to get a better idea of whether it could stick around for a second season (all the time knowing that the Netflix Red Queen may cut it down no matter what). More on the streaming and linear ratings for sci fi TV shows at CancelledSciFi.com.
Next week brings two more sci fi TV Fall premieres. NBC’s Quantum Leap revival will bow at 10 PM EST on Monday, and Disney+’s Andor will release its first episode on Wednesday. You can see all the premieres for September and beyond at this link and you can see the Weekly Listings here. Last weekend, Disney+ announced premiere dates and released trailers for Tales of the Jedi, The Mandalorian Season 3, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and more during D23. Among the schedule announcements was the fact that Star Wars: The Bad Batch Season 2 will be moving to a January 4, 2023 premiere. You can see the trailers at this link.
Did I miss anything? Probably because I keep having to revise my preview of the streaming sci fi and fantasy shows this Fall since the streamers keep dropping new premiere dates, 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 keep up with what is airing/streaming each week with our Weekly Listings.
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.
