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Warren Ellis's Global Frequency May Not Air
ajs writes "According to Ain't It Cool News, the WB network has cancelled Warren Ellis's Global Frequency, a wonderfully twisted modern-day SF TV series which may yet air, but the company that owns the series will now have to shop it around to other networks. If you're a fan of the comic series or you have just been starving for good non-space SF since the X-Files went away, you might want to send words of support to your favorite non-WB network. Slashdot has previously interviewed Ellis."
if you're interested, check out Bad Signal. The upshot was that in his column, he had said something along the lines that one of the critical things that changed after he stopped writing "The Authority" was that Apollo and Midnighter were "outed" as it were as a gay couple. That then lead to a number of plot indulgences where opponents had to "react" to their homosexuality and various "issues" of hate crime had to be addressed.
;-)
Early in the series when Ellis was writing it, such topics as rape camps, drug abuse, and all manner of other "difficult topics" were covered, so doing stories that involved hate crimes was tame by the series' standards. However, to DWELL on any of these topics was certainly not The Authority's style, and it slowed the book down and turned it into something that was far from its core story.
That said, I felt that the book took a nose-dive after Ellis left. It went from being the story of what happens when the super heros are several orders of magnitude more powerful than the rest of the planet to being the tale of thier humanity and flaws. Nice idea, wrong take on that book, IMHO. These heros were much more than just human. The story was interesting because the issues that they dealt with were on a whole other scope.
To give you an example, let me SPOIL a bit of the early story. Our heros get embroiled into a combat with an alternate earth where the world is ruled by a half-breed alien whose corrupt family has litterally been raping the planet for resources, breeding stock and slave labor since they were marooned here several hundred years ago.
In the end, our heros are suck with a decision: they've beaten them back and killed the leader, but if they leave now, the planet will still be enslaved and the half-breeds will still be in power. They struggle for a beat and then one of them holds the Italian peninsula still for a second. That doesn't seem like a big deal until you think about how fast the planet is spinning and how fast it's orbiting the sun.... From our vantage in space, the only change is that Italy gets a little thinner... on the surface, of course, no one could have lived through the devistation.
In most books you could not walk away from such wholesale carnage thinking of these people as heroes, but that was the point to The Authority. They weren't above the law, they simply represented a very different law... one that acted on a the scale of nations and of worlds and realities. When dealing with individual people, The Authority simply treated them as representitives of larger systems.
This made The Authority interesting (though not always morally defensible), and IMHO, that was lost when Ellis went away because the people who took it over didn't understand that that's what made it different from Stormwatch or The JLA or any number of other super-team books.
The "fetish gear" didn't really do anything for me
How do you know it's a good show if it's never aired? if the WB isn't gonna show it, it probably sucks... don't get your hopes up.
Uh... no.
The owls are not what they seem
American TV has become riddled with reality shows. It's quite discusting:
* Wife Swap - Who watches this!? Some sick, twisted indiciduals, that's who.
* Survivor - Isn't this like the 80th episode or something? How many different spins can they put on the challenges?
* Big Brother - People tune in to this waiting, just anticipating two of the people boarded to have sex.
* Extreme Makeover - The epitome of our obsession with aesthetic qualities.
* Much, much more crap...
Please, turn it off!
LOST, Adult Swim, and various Comedy Central programs are the only reason I watch TV anymore. They're the only reason I haven't lost all hope in American entertainment.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Thankfully, though, the WB has released the pilot back to the company that produced it instead of holding onto it like some networks to prevent it from ever being made.
Right now, Ellis and the folks are negotiating with other television stations with the pilot, which Ellis remarked as impressive. There's still hopes yet, folks. You might still be on the Global Frequency.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Granted, it didn't happen IN outer space per se, but I'm pretty sure the entire plot revolved around the concept of aliens from outer space. I seem to remember several UFOs as well... ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
That's not sci-fi, that's pseudo-scientific psychic crap with conspiracy theory thrown in. And what are the odds that this show gives legitmacy to The Department of Fath^H^H^H^H Homeland Security with cute references to "HomeSec" like they did in TheGrid and The4400 shows?
I'll be glad if it never airs. So much crap on TV. I've got a grand total of four shows I bother to watch: 1) Enterprise, 2) Stargate, 3) MythBusters, and 4) BattleStar Galactica ("imported" early from the UK).
--
Power to the Peaceful
It also seems a quintessentially American trait to worry about what OTHER people are watching. Turn it off if you don't like it. You list 4 examples of American horror and 3 reasons to be proud. I agree with you on CC and AS, and I might add The Sopranos, Curb your enthusiasm, Nova and more reasons not to be worried as to the state of American entertainment. I even admit to being intrigued by the current Survivor. To each his own. One thing seems clear to me, on most nights of the week, something good can be found in American entertainment.
I thought they'd air anything... look at all the crap that's on there now!
ideas that reproduce and self propogate in a malignant way
Totally offtopic question. This idea, stated as such, seems really... really... off-putting. Who believes that there are ideas, ideas, that we mustn't be exposed to, because they'll do something evil. Sounds like a standard censorship argument, with a blank into which can be written "Porn", "Scientology" or "Jesus". Is this what memetics is about? What a disappointment, if it is.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Sure, it\'s a similar idea, but this is no Bruckheimer produced crap, it\'s apparently extremely loyal to the graphic novel and, if Warren Ellis\' other work is any indication then it will be a far cry from the current material based on the ideas.
"non-space SF since the X-Files went away"
What, are you kidding me??
Not a bloody chance.
SF has *science* in it - one definition is that it must obey all known scientific laws, unless breaking one is required for the story, and then even the handwaving explantion must be reasonable.
Fantasy is *NOT* SF - the two are related, but not the same. However, as Lord Dunsay said, fantasy is *very* hard to do right: you have to make all the rules...and then *NEVER* break any of them, or the reader's suspenders of disbelief go "snap", and you've lost it.
X-Files was inconsistant conspiracy theory. This is about one step short of, say, Bush's energy policy, or his fight against accepting that global warming exists, and is human-caused - that is, the Hollywood idea that a "theory" is what you come up with in the nightmare after you've had too much bheer and pizza.
Non-space sf on tv? Max Headroom. Non-space fantasy on tv? The Chronicle.
None of the above? Cattlecar Galaxative (22 planets strafed to death, and a flamable covered wagon, er, spaceship in the hard vacuum of space).
mark "s'ppose a movie of Charles de Lint
would be too much to ask for"
Has anyone considered the possibility that the show was not picked up because the pilot sucked? I understand Slashdot's efforts to champion this kind of programming, but you know there is such a thing as shitty Sci Fi.
... good 'in space' series? The New Star Trek sucks, stopped watching it after episode 2. Stargate Atlantis isn't too bad, but it really doesn't count as 'in space' it's really just 'vampires in space'.
Specifically, the grandparent is a cut-and-paste of MY post, and the context has been sadly removed.
And he didn't even fix your spelling errors ("devistation", eh?). The bastard! :)
n/t
if wb doesn't want it they need just add rediculous amounts of profanity to the pilot and run it over to hbo
All the torrents you could want.
The WB has passed on the pilot. However, they've also been real gentlemen and released it back to the studio to be taken elsewhere. Many networks hold onto pilots out of spite, fearing that if it succeeds elsewhere, they'll look bad.
This sounds disturbingly like what happened in The Making of 'And God Spoke' -- a mockumentary about two eternally optimistic indie filmmakers shooting a cheesy biblical epic. "Very unusual!" they gloat, when the big studio drops the project but lets them keep it. As if this is a good sign.
"I'm more a fan of "hard core" SF like Star Trek myself..."
Heh. A lot of people would object to calling Trek "hard core SF". The term "hard SF" is usually used to describe stuff that's heavily based on real-world modern-day science knowledge and theory. Larry Niven's "Neutron Star" is a good example.
The one thing that appears to be universally true about these genres is that if you ask X different people what the definition of "SF" is, you will get at least X different answers.
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.