We heard from a source who's had meetings with Syfy execs recently, in which they said they were trying to get away from the "genre stereotype" of science fiction. And rather than being interested in developing new science fiction programs, the execs allegedly said they were looking at developing a cooking show and a talk show for the newly renamed network.

So is there any truth to this? Will you soon be seeing a new version of Space Ghost or some kind of cyborg Iron Chef? We asked Syfy, but the company can't comment on programming in development that hasn't been announced yet. But Mark Stern, Syfy's Executive Vice President for Original Content, did have this to say:

In regards to reality, we're developing all sorts of ideas, and there is an opportunity to push the envelope a bit with the new brand; to see where "Imagine Greater" might take us. That said, as with our scripted programming, anything we do needs to fit within a speculative genre, and the idea that we're celebrating the imagination. So, if we were to do a "cooking show", it definitely wouldn't be a normal, conventional cooking show.

So reading between the lines, it does sound as though Syfy is "developing all sorts of ideas" for reality TV, which makes sense given that Ghost Hunters has been such a hit for the channel. But a cooking show that celebrates the imagination?

We talked to Cerra about "Your Face Or Mine," where she got to portray two different characters — Lupo, and Julia, the scientist who turned herself into a duplicate of Lupo. Cerra took on a huge challenge in this episode, tricking the viewers into thinking that there really were two Jo Lupos — as if she'd been duplicated in a transporter accident like Captain Kirk. But even though Jo had a challenging time being in charge, she'll still be brash and confident as ever. "She'll just be a little more cautious."

And Cerra says she'd welcome the challenge of having to play mad scientist, even if it meant she'd have to tackle the tongue-twisting technobabble that people spout on the show. (And now that she's said she dreads using technobabble, she's sure the producers will write her a script where she spouts nothing but.) And she says there have been lots of jokes behind the scenes about whether Jo is really a human being or a robot, since she's so strong. "That would be really fun," she says. So fingers crossed we get to see Mecha Jo at some point!

We also spoke to genre veteran Joe Morton, who plays Henry Deacon. He says being the mayor won't really change anything for Henry. "Henry will always be Henry," and really the mayorship hasn't come into play too much, except for allowing him to reinstate Jack as Sheriff... But the good news is, Henry has a love affair coming up — which may or may not be with a human. And Morton gets to sing a song.

And finally, we talked to Neil Grayston about Fargo breaking out of the "annoying" nerd stereotype and becoming more of a relatable character. The show is about a town full of super geniuses, so Fargo will always be nerdy, and he'll never be swaggering around picking up women with his giant biceps. But he's excited to be exploring Fargo's character a bit more. He also talks about the dangerous stunts he does on the show:

And he talks about the "awful" filming of last weeks' episode, "It's Not Easy Being Green," where he had to be colored green from head to foot. He was in a freezing trailer, half naked, where he got covered with green goop from head to foot. "You have to keep it wet, so I had to be wet in the cold — naked — and I couldn't sit on anything or do anything, or it would get onto it." So basically they had to keep putting more green goop onto his half-naked body. Which has got to be somebody's fetish...

Eureka's on Syfy tonight at 9.

Tonight's two-hour pilot for Warehouse 13 does a pretty good job of introducing its main characters, as well as the show's over-arching premise — although the pilot does suffer a bit from the malady that afflicts most pilots, especially two-hour ones. There are a number of draggy scenes where we learn the same piece of information two or three different ways, and there's a lot of slightly repetitive character-building. But it's mostly pretty entertaining and fun.

Warehouse 13, from Farscape's Rockne O'Bannon, is about the titular building, a giant warehouse in the middle of nowhere that houses all the unexplained items that the United States government has gathered over the years. It's a concept that doesn't need that much explanation, thanks to movies like Raiders Of The Lost Ark: any object with paranomal abilities or strange properties winds up in a box, stacked in endless rows as far as the eye can see. And the warehouse's staff are tasked with going out and collecting more paranormal items as they show up on the warehouse's radar — for some reason, a lot of ancient and powerful toys wind up in the United States.

The show's version of Mulder and Scully are two Secret Service agents, Pete Lattimer and Myka Bering. He's the free-wheeling loose cannon who goes with his gut — and he literally feels "vibes," or intutitions, that let him know when something's wrong. He's carrying around a lot of angst from the one time he ignored his gut, and he's sworn never to ignore it again. Myka, meanwhile, is the uptight, prim, by-the-book hard-ass who clings to logic. At the start of the TV movie, she's running a presidential visit at the Smithsonian museum, and she insists on giving all the agents' stations color-coded names, like Magenta and Emerald. She has her own trauma, related to an operation that went wrong somehow in Denver — although she received a commendation for what she did, she still feels guilty about it.

And then there's Artie (Saul Rubinek), the actual warehouse-keeper, who's the requisite bumbling comic relief as well as the show's version of Yoda. Rounding out the cast is the mysterious Mrs. Frederic (CCH Pounder, somewhat underused) who shows up when she's needed an intimidates pusillanimous bureaucrats. Oh and Lena, the sexy, enigmatic innkeeper at the bed-and-breakfast where Artie puts Paul and Myka up.

I liked Warehouse 13 better than I expected to, to be honest. The concept seemed dreadfully rehashed, and at first blush, the characters seemed a bit canned. But the show has a nice playfulness that won me over, despite my reservations. The dialogue is fun without being especially witty, and the characters actually grow on you over the course of the first episode. The word I keep coming back to is "cute" — it's a cute show. Like, when Pete and Myka first visit the warehouse, they pick up a wishing lamp, and Pete accidentally makes a wish. But it turns out that if you make a wish that's impossible, the lamp gives you a ferret instead. So Pete and Myka get a pet ferret, which keeps turning up for the rest of the episode. There are little odd bits of character development — like, we learn that Myka's dad ran a bookstore called Bering & Sons, but she was his only child. He just called it "& Sons" because it sounded more impressive."

And after spending the first hour or so sniping at each other with occasionally genuinely amusing results, Pete and Myka settle down into a nice chemistry, not unlike Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting. (I have a feeling that the show's writers actually watched a few DVDs of Moonlighting when they were writing this show.) Artie is bouncy and amusing, as he lurches around the warehouse looking for clues to the identity of the latest mystery object, and occasionally gets into trouble as the dreadful objects in the warehouse run out of control.

Oh, and the nifty "steampunk" design of the warehouse bears mentioning — Artie's computer has manual typewriter keys, and there are valves and things all over. The warehouse was first built in 1898, so there are plenty of holdovers, including a huge library card catalog against one wall. Whoever designed the main sets did a bang-up job.

So the first half of the pilot is just introducing the concept — Pete and Myka save the president from an evil Aztec mask at that Smithsonian event, and as a result they're reassigned to this warehouse where their job is to track down more weird objects — and the second half is Pete and Myka's first mission. Myka is frantically trying to get reassigned back to Washington D.C., and Artie and Mrs. Frederic are racing to get her "hooked" on her new assignment before the bureaucratic wheels finish turning and she gets to return to her normal life.

So the first assignment our heroes go on is to a small college town where a student beat up his girlfriend — and he was chanting in Renaissance Italian, the universal language of evil. Pete and Myka have to travel there and find out what happened, and what mysterious object might be responsible. Along the way, they meet a sinister lawyer, a shifty classics professor and the student's evasive girlfriend, and the secret of the abusive boyfriend turns out to revolve around an object that has the potential to unleash a whole army of berzerkers, or something. Judging from this first episode, the show's storylines won't bear much examination, but there will be an object of the week, which is connected to some type of ancient lore and involves a curse, or a demon, or some other supernatural issue. It's sort of a combination mystery/procedural/adventure show, where our heroes go to a town and sort something out, while Artie takes off his glasses and puts them back on again, back at headquarters.

To sum up, the pilot of Warehouse 13 exceeded my admittedly low expectations by quite a bit. It's a fun romp, with characters who grow on you and seem to have just the merest hint of real human complexity behind their typical dramedy veneers, and Saul Rubinek is clearly going to shine as Artie. The artifact-of-the-week storylines promise to be reasonably fun. If you like Eureka, Sanctuary and the various Stargates, you'll probably like this show too. Warehouse 13 premieres tonight at 9 on Syfy.

We spoke to Howe at a special event this morning, celebrating the new spelling of the channel's name, and it's brand new slogan, "Imagine greater." After Howe reassured us the channel wasn't abandoning its core audience of science-fiction fans with its new rebranding, we got a chance to talk about the future of this new Syfy Channel.

Our first question was: What's going to replace Battlestar Galactica? Clearly, Caprica is not the same type of show as BSG, so what's in the pipeline to replace this much-loved space opera? Howe replied that, thanks to Mark Stern and the development team, not only is the channel aiming to greenlight a pilot in the next couple of months for a new series (mums the word on the title) but "we're actively looking into developing the next space opera hopefully for the next year or the year after."

So after Howe dropped this stunner, we hunted down Creative Director of Original Programming, Mark Stern, to find out more about the next big Syfy space opera. Will it have alien puppets?

So you're the guy we want to talk to, the future of what's to come on Scifi. Our readers can't wait to hear from you.

They don't want to come after me with pitchforks?

Science Fiction fans are tough, you know that. They're the best, and they're loyal. I'm sure you've gotten your share of emails?

Indeed I have.

I'm sure this isn't the first time either?

Not at all.

What was worse: rebranding, or canceling Stargate Atlantis?

Canceling Farscape. Which, by the way, I had nothing to do with. That was my first day at the job and all of a sudden it was, "Mark's cancelled Farscape." No, I didn't. I love Farscape!

The fans are loyal.

I love all that, and I'm one of those people, so I get it. I take ownership of all that stuff too. I think the difference with the brand is, there's a fear that they're not going to do the programming. I think as soon as people realize that because we now have a brand that is broader, and not as niche, it allows us to be a little more scifi-specific and it allows to put shows on...I think our big frustration with a show like Battlestar Galactica has been, it's a great show. Because it's on the science fiction channel it's kept people away, that we felt like would come in and love that show. So it's made us a little more hesitant about going too hard scifi. Because hard scifi on the scifi channel is almost like this double whammy. Now that we have a brand that is a little broader and we're embracing a lot of things we're already doing. I think it also gives us a lot of freedom to do more hard scifi.

The next thing that I really want to do is find the next great space opera it's been a long time. And we have Stargate, but that's really not that show. And Caprica isn't really that show. So where's the next Star Trek or Farscape? Let's find one of those.

So what are you looking at to replace the channel's missing space opera?

You know it's so early days, I don't have anything really specific. We're talking to a lot of people that we already work with, about ideas. We don't want to do something that is the same old. You don't want it to feel recycled. So that's the challenge of doing that. I'm a huge fan of Firefly, and shows that take that idea and take that part of the genre and reinvent it in a whole new way. I'd love to find our version of, not specifically Firefly, but similar to what Joss [Whedon] tried to do with that in terms of, "lets recast the Western in space." Love that idea, and I love that show. What's another way to approach that? We're talking to a number of people about that, but at this point honestly it's about getting Warehouse 13 on its feet, getting Caprica on its feet, getting Stargate Universe going. This is a really big time for us, we haven't really had time to think about next year.

I have to say Impact's greatest achievement was making me appreciate The Core anew. Not that I need much help to do that, since The Core, starring Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank, deserves a high place of honor among right-thinking global-disaster movie fans everywhere. But Impact was basically like The Core, only much cheaper and much slower. People have been comparing it to Armageddon and Deep Impact, but The Core is really the greatest point of comparison, in my book. Weird global disasters, birds flying upside down, communities in ruins, people freaking out, and worse disasters on the way. So a group of flawed, messed up scientists has to make it right. The difference is, The Core is zippy and totally loony in its logic-avoidance, and it features Swank and Eckhart tunneling into the center of the Earth (seeing massive diamonds along the way) pretty early on. Impact, meanwhile, sort of drags along and weaves in tons of soap-operatic plots.

Okay, I'll stop rhapsodizing about The Core and actually talk about last night's steaming pile of brown matter... sorry, brown dwarf.

So Impact, famously, was supposed to be a Syfy Channel miniseries, but ABC outbid Syfy for the rights to air it. Based on part one, I'd say they should have had a bidding war to decide who was forced to run this thing. That said, the parts where CG asteroids hurtle through the sky and crash into the Earth and the Moon are pretty great, and I liked all the stuff where scientists stand around and talk seriously about how unprecedented this all is, and how the Moon is now in an elliptical orbit.

The parts that were tooth-pulling unbearable, though, were all of the long stretches where the miniseries tried to make us care about its characters, who just got more and more hateful the better we got to know them.

So in a nutshell, there's a huge meteor shower, and everybody around the world is watching in excitement. But unbeknownst to the watching masses, a brown dwarf is hiding in the meteor shower, and it has a huge mass and magnetic attraction. (But somehow it manages to avoid disturbing any of the other planets in the solar system, or otherwise announcing its presence.) The impact causes huge flaming asteroids to come rocketing down to Earth, smashing people. But then it gets worse — somehow the Moon gets into an elliptical orbit away from Earth and then towards it, and whenever it comes closer to Earth, there are freak gravity effects and electrical storms — see the totally awesome clip above — and everything goes hellzapoppin.

And at the end of all this horror, we discover that actually, the Moon's elliptical orbit is going to bring it closer and closer to Earth, faster and faster, until it finally crashes into us and obliterates the planet.

But as I said, by the time the spectre of global annihilation has reared its brown dwarfy head, we've already had two hours of wishing all of these people would die. Especially since this elite squad of science geeks is supposedly our only hope of avoiding total decimation, and all they ever do is sit around drinking wine, and whiskey and various other spirits, and talking about how science has been proved wrong lately. There are a hundred discussions that go roughly like this: "I used to believe in science, but in the past few days, science has totally been called into question." "But it's only by questioning science that we get science." "But what if science is wrong?" I found myself wanting to operate the remote control with my cranium, since ether fast-forwarding through this drek or giving myself brain damage would be an acceptable response to what I was seeing.

I brown-dwarf you not, there are two separate scenes where a very serious military person looks very seriously at the camera and says the same line: "You can't hide from gravity!!"

But meanwhile, every one of our hard-drinking, Newton-questioning science types has an incredibly annoying personal life. There's Natasha Henstridge's character, who for some reason was married to this totally douchey reporter with a soul patch, who keeps chasing her around wanting to get the inside scoop on the brown dwarf thing. David James Elliott plays Alex Kinter, an astrophysicist who's helping his two kids get through the death of their mom by calling them "Buddy" a lot, and by keeping them around their brain-damaged, agoraphobic grandpa (James Cromwell, utterly wasted in both senses of the word.) And then Roland the Euro-git (Benjamin Sadler) has a pregnant fiancee, who cares about flowers and wedding catering the exact same way he cares about science and saving the planet. Yee Jee Tso (from the Doctor Who TV movie) plays Jared, who has issues too, but we don't really find out what they are. I think they have something to do with Jesus.

Their Hallmark-channel storylines are utterly cloying and dull, and they drag the space-rocks action to a grinding halt, forcing us to pay attention to these whiny, narcissistic characters. Why won't grandpa go outside? Will little Sadie keep believing in the man in the moon? What about little Jake, will he keep hitting home runs in the face of armageddon? And will Martina understand that Roland the Euro-git has to put saving the planet from a lunar impact before planning their wedding? Blah blah blah, and who the fuck cares?

That said, I'll probably watch the second half this coming Sunday, just hoping against hope that all of these people get blasted out of space by the brown dwarf, leaving what's left of the planet totally pristine and lovely for some sympathetic aliens to come along and reclaim in a million years or so.

Anyway, it's a good thing this tripe got pummeled in the ratings, losing out to golf and 60 Minutes, so ABC will never try to beat the Syfy Channel at its own game again.

The District 9 website goes some way towards selling you on the movie's concept, of a dark future where aliens come to Earth in friendship, only to be locked up in camps. The site's front page forbids non-humans from entering the site, and once inside, you're greeted with a panoramic display of a wasteland with an alien sillhouette practice target covered with bullet holes. There are links to some of the movie's viral sites, including the evil corporation MNU and an anti-MNU site. Plus wallpapers (see above.)

The Warehouse 13 site is a bit more fun — you can "chat" with the Warehouse's keeper, Artie (Saul Rubinek) who pops up via a video. And there are a bunch of index cards with names of weird artifacts stored in the warehouse, like Dillinger's Pistol, which you can learn about. More excitingly, you can type in the name of a random artifact you've found, and Artie will tell you if it belongs in the warehouse. I typed in, "Space dildo," and Artie hemmed and hawed, and finally said he didn't really have anything about that in his files.

Apparently Syfy is promoting this site by having weird tags attached to items at flea markets in Brooklyn and L.A., saying that the items may belong in the warehouse and you need to check on the website. Also, some items on eBay will have digital versions of the tag, which is sort of a nifty kind of viral marketing.

Eureka returns to your screens on July 10. Too bad it's on Friday nights.

Sexy!

We already appreciated the immense sassiness of Udo last week, with a clip from Uwe Boll's Far Cry. And that inspired me to dig up this supremely sassy Udo webcam show.

It comes from the TV movie Ice, which aired on the Syfy Channel a couple years ago and remains my favorite Syfy Original Movie. As its name suggests, Ice is about a new age, which turns L.A. into a replica of the North Pole... and soon, only the equatorial regions of the globe will even be habitable. Nobody listens to Kier's sexy, sexy webcam warnings, until it's too late, of course.

The main character of Ice is actually a cop, who has to get his ex-wife and son out of L.A., but first he has to contend with his wife's dickish new husband, who's a stuck up architect. Here he is taking a swim in his outdoor pol, even though it's a billion degrees below outside:

Can you tell I loved this film? It was so awesomely cheesy, even besides the Kier-cam action. And here's one final clip. The cop springs a convict out of jail, rather than just letting him freeze to death there. And they stop by the convict's neighborhood, which has been totally buried in snow. Check out the telephone poles and rooftops sticking out:

Their first collaboration is a TV movie called Unfinished Business, and focuses in on a cop who can see the memories of the deceased. It will air as a two-hour movie, and it could lead to an ongoing series.

Smith's company Overbrook Entertainment is producing the feature, and Mikael Salomon from the fantastic Band of Brothers will be directing.

Oh, and if you're wondering when the name change for Sci Fi will be official, it's July 7th.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Honestly, my heart sank when I saw the announcement, because it foregrounds Syfy's planned Alice In Wonderland miniseries. Presumably it'll be "dark" and in the style of the channel's Wizard Of Oz reinvention, Tin Man. But some things just ought to be left alone, and the idea of a more "character-driven" Alice makes me feel slightly ill.

Oh, and here's Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat, just to seal the deal:

Aren't you excited now?

There's also a four-hour miniseries based on The Phantom, which Syfy promises will be in the vein of the Batman Begins and Iron Man movies. (I'm guessing it'll be similar to the Flash Gordon series.)

But really, the only thing that gives me hope is the idea of a four-hour Riverworld miniseries, which could turn into an ongoing show. Of all the science fiction book series you could imagine turning into an open-ended TV show, Riverworld is probably the best idea. In Farmer's novels, everyone who's ever lived on Earth wakes up - naked - along the banks of an endless river, with no idea how they got there. Historical figures and random oddities rub shoulders as they try to figure out the mystery of the Riverworld.

Oh, and I just realized the Sci Fi Channel already did an adaptation of Riverworld some years ago - but it sounds like this new version is not a continuation. Rather, it's a reboot or a fresh remake, judging from VP Mark Stern's comments in the Hollywood Reporter interview. Explains Stern:

"Riverworld," about a photojournalist transported to a mysterious world occupied by everyone who has ever lived on Earth, could have the most series potential if producers pull off the novel's tricky combination mixing a modern protagonist with reborn historical figures.

Characters in the story's world will be portrayed by actors in their 20s, so somebody like Napoleon wouldn't be "a balding man with his hand in his coat."

"Part of the fun of this is the reveal of who each character is," Stern said.

All three four-hour events are being made by RHI Entertainment, which also worked on Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars and a billion made-for-TV movies. Let's just keep our fingers crossed they don't do a hatchet job on Farmer's awesome novels. [Yahoo News]

Also, don't get too comfortable with the old Saturn logo, because that's getting the boot as well.The channel's new tag line will be "imagine greater," and the changes could roll out as soon as July 7th. The rebranding will debut in front of advertisers today. Maybe I fear change too much, but will this tweak really expand the possibilities of a channel that already runs a schedule full of whatever they loosely call science fiction? I never felt that the channel was every truly limited by a need to broadcast actual SF, so I'm not really sure what'll change with the title.

The biggest winner out of all this seems to be Airlock Alpha, the website formerly known as Syfy Portal, which sold the trademark to the cable channel for an undisclosed sum. [The New York Times]