I, for one thought that they should have borrowed more from 'Alias' or made it more sci-fi (à la Eraser), but it's still Joss' (and Eliza's) show.

They needed an overarching conspiracy. An outfit like the Dollhouse probably wouldn't just settle for piece-work if they could warp reality by manufacturing not only 'leaders' but die-hard intelligence moles. Perhaps that was the goal with the internal counter-programmer, but they really should have just started pulling people off the street and turning them into other people, just to populate some alternate power-structure and overturn American -- or World -- civilization.

Several weeks (or was it months?) ago, I remember seeing an item about Jeph John and several of the other writer-producers had been cut loose. It's been encouraging to see Fuller's name back in the credits.

Claudia Black -- interesting choice. As a fan from her Aeryn Sun days on Farscape, I could see it working.

Might I suggest a further progression? What about a DKR-type slant -- as a slightly older, independent woman trying to allay here childlessness in her secret identity, which may or may not be an issue in her _real_ life.

The 4th and 5th decades in women's lives seem to be missing from popular culture. It need not be gritty, just convincing.

Ditto on Tafy's comment -- Would the new Diana Prince then be from 'the hood' or some Will Smith analogue from Bel-Aire?

If you're going to create those kinds of distortions to serve an actress, you might as well just create a brand-new character and franchise. An afro-centric Wonder Woman/Diana Prince would pretty much suck.

One-liners about the bling of her arm-bands might make the first draft, but would become cringe-worthy once the words started coming out of people's mouths.

(I might add that a show that gives audiences access to those creators' ideas would help create new audiences for science-fiction.)

It's widely known that Kring had no love of comic books before he started the show, which places him at a greater disadvantage as show-runner, allowing people like Loeb to shovel tired clichés into the franchise.

Kring ought to have had a 5-season arc worked out before he started the show -- instead, he's been forced to choke down 70 years of American comic book history and craft an original storyline for his ever-expanding cast.

The one way for Kring to save this show would be to return to the elements which made the first season strong -- the Bennett Family and an intimate exploration of the Petrellis. This almost even warrants a prequel -- who were the super-powered people of the previous generation, what did they do and how did they get their powers? A season or two in 'prequel' mode might help correct the show's course, but only if Kring is capable of hiring people like Vaughan and Straczynski to work out the story-beats ahead of time.

A pre-/post-'Watchmen'adaptation of this show, illustrating the limits and excesses of Silver Age heroes could only help this show, even as we ready for what we hope will be Zach Snyder's successful adaptation of Alan Moore's ultimate deconstruction. But Kring first has to understand and appreciate what Moore did with 'Watchmen'.

'Watchmen' and 'Unbreakable' are the cornerstone of Heroes' success, but there's nothing on the show that give me an impression that ANY of the creative staff understand either of those two precedents.

@Charlie Jane Anders:"But that kind of churn among consumers of escapist entertainment isn't happening the way it used to."

Marvel at least gave up on the younger demographic more than 20 years ago. At least as little as 5 years ago, it was recognized that the average comic buyer was in his or her mid- to late-thirties. As an adherent in their early 40's, I'd say that their demographic work is pretty accurate.

But I read Marvel and not DC, except with the runs of certain creators (John Byrne, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore) and often in spite of them DC always hit the reset button at the end of every issue. Despite Crisis Batman and Superman really haven't grown that much over my lifetime.

Perhaps the difference between the two companies is most easily seen in their approach to their movie franchises -- as a branch of Time-Warner, DC has always been in a position to self-finace their movies, from Burton's Batman to Nolan's and theDonner and Singer Supermen. Until recently, Marvel has had to partner with outside studios to bring their characters to the silver screen, resulting in clusterf^cks like X-Men 3 and the Fantastic Four movies -- the unreleased Roger Corman version, along with the two Jessica Alba versions.

But cinema and publishing are really the two separate media here. If you're looking for continuity, then look to the books and graphic novels because DC and Marvel both have leagues of editors working full-time jobs to keep those universes consistent, while the movie studios are always only one flop away from a management change.

There's a reason why Alan Moore is always happier with the printed versions of his stories, rather than the filmed adaptations of them.

Marvel also has alternate universes, but they make a concerted effort to keep them COMPLETLY separate, save for an occaisional crossover here and there amid its more marginal titles.

Skiffy keeps creating shows that their executives seem to *LOVE* but can't seem to find an audience. That should be their first clue -- their executives, have terrible taste. The unfortunate thing is that many of these same executive ALSO serve as Executive Producers on their schlocky monster-of-the-week specials.

Is Skiffy supposed to be making entertainment for its Executives or the hypothetical home audience that watches its commercialls?

I predict that this will be a disaster as is much of Skiffy's top-down descision-making. Stop green-lighting back-door pilots without broadcasting the back-door pilots!

They'll get a better idea of who's interested in watching those (un-asked-for) shows that way.

I wrote a longish review of it here:

[cineblog.us]

There's an article in this month's Wiredabout the future of English -- or rather, the future of English as it becomes inflected by non-native speakers who happen to be Chinese. Check it out here.

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Und... | Wired 16.7

Theoretically, this should have been a slam-dunk, with period references like muscle-cars, wife-beater tees and 'Baretta' references, but I guess Kelley couldn't be bothered. (He also apparenlty couldn't be bothered to pick a better city than L.A. to stage it in; change-resistant Philadelphia would have been ideal.)

There is a spirited discussion of the thing over here.

When Warners and PTEN greenlit B5, Paramount was suddenly interested in a space-station show.

Pretty much. I'm not sure I'd trust Kelley with this show, given the triple-dose of gritty retro-urbanism. sci-fi premise and accidental comedy. While 'Boston Public' and 'Boston Legal' are both 2/3rds of that equation.

Someone line Pushing Daisies' Bryan Fuller or Eureka's Andrew Cosby might be able to pull this off, but the show's premise is so intractably British -- a show that implicitly makes fun of itself and the period that it represents -- I'm not sure that it would work here, given that people here in the US are still on bended-knee about Saint Reagan and his Cowboy warmongering challenges to the 'Evil Empire'. Most Brits recognize that Thatcher her xenophobia and arrest of social services were the wrong way to go. In the US, not so much.

ABC ought to just licence the original show and have done with it. If NBC (the SciFi Channel), the CBC and Discovery can licence the show from the BBC and turn a profit, ABC should be able to catch on. People who 'don't get' the accents just don't have to watch.

From the Victoriana details to the odd surrealism, Director Euros Lyn and Moffat seem to be transcribing passages at a time from the old Grant Morrison/Richard Case playbook. It is remarkable to see this stuff on the small screen.

And Amenabar's film is pretty much just that -- a creepy art movie. I know that Spain isn't well-known for it's science-fiction movies, but this definitely qualifies.