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Sci-Fi Channel to Pick Up John Doe
KrayzieKyd writes "The Sci-Fi Channel will be
showing 'John Doe',
another dead series that premiered with cult hit Firefly. It features a man with no memory of who he is but, but somehow has infinite knowledge. With his gift, he solves crimes which are hinted through his monochromatic sight with color. The show will re-premiere Friday, Jan 20 at 9pm ET." It's raining new shows on Sci-Fi, apparently.
can be found here http://www.mininova.org/tor/182793
If only somebody could convince Sci-Fi to stop making a new 'oh no monster' craptastic movie each month, and instead maybe make a couple really good ones a year.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
They're probably just out of new series, so they're going to air old series as much as possible before anyone notices the lack of anything new...
I wish they would bring back Farscape. That, and Firefly, would be good for the network, me thinks.
/vjl/
My Daily photo website.
The series ended with a cliffhanger (first season finale), which I've always thought is a pretty nasty thing to do to your audience, not that I'd expect anything better from Fox. I watched it the first time around in tandem with Firefly and was looking forward to some payoff in the second season, but I can't see a reason to watch it again knowing there will never be a payoff at all. You can bet Sci-Fi won't mention that when they are promoting it.
It's true. SciFi seems to murder its best shows.
He has no memory of his past and sees everything in black and white. Sometimes, though, he'll see an object or person in color, which causes him to pay special attention to the person/oject and, you know, go adventuring and solve crimes and stuff.
I remember reading that the reason for all his knowledge was because he nearly died in some boating accident. When you die, you immediately know everything, but forget your own personal details. He just somehow got saved at the last second.
I watched every episode when it first aired on Fox. I loved the show. I hated how they left a cliffhanger at the end and then cancelled it. Any plans to at least tell the story of where he came from? I'm still curious about it.
The show has an ongoing storyline, which stars off kind of slow but takes a pretty wild turn late in the season. Sadly, we'll never know how it ends, since the season-ending cliffhanger was the last episode. So beware if you start in on it -- you will be left hanging.
I suppose it's possible Sci-Fi could do a movie-of-the-week or two to wrap it up, like the "Alien Nation" movies did for that show. That would be swell. But I'm not holding my breath.
Interesting concept, but...
This whole black n' white Vs colour was used in an episode of the X-files... except the other way round. A guy saw things in colour, but then they turned black and white, and died. He used this power to, uh, take photos of the bodies and, uh, sell them to the police.
So it's not *exactly* the same concept, I guess...
And I agree with whoever says bring back Farscape. Though I did enjoy catching a glimpse of the actors that played John and Aeryn on SG-1.
If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
They're just rebroadcasting the old episodes, not producing new ones. So they'll show the 20-whatever shows a few times, including the final cliffhanger that was never resolved, and that's that.
I broke my own rule of not even looking sideways at a television show until it has at least two years in the can by watching and enjoying Threshold. I look for it after the Christmas break and find it has been cancelled. Most annoying. Now I'm waiting for Surface to be cancelled and of course the crapfest Invasion will probably be on air for years to come. No justice.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The most noteworthy thing about this show is how it's exactly like "The Pretender".
A consistent schedule, at least a nod toward marketing the show and maybe one or two episodes being shown in the proper order might have helped, too. I actually liked John Doe ... it was like "X-Files & The Pretender: What if they mated?"
But it isn't me, and I love science fiction. I think most of their programming is crap. The show discussed in the article was just fox's attempt to regurgitate some kind of "Bourne Identity: The Show" as the film had just been released.
Hm, well I suppose this could run before Galactica. I am rapidly losing enthusiasm for SG-1 (they had a nearly golden cast until they offed Claudia Black, PLEASE bring her back she brought 2/3 of the energy to the show since RDA left), and Atlantis is only so-so, but don't frack with Galactica, man.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
You're right - FF was done a huge disservice by the people who put the lineup together. Well-written, character-driven SF on TV *can* be successful (e.g., BsG), but not if it's put in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a shame, because the writing was great, the cast was obviously in sync, and there was plenty of room for storyline growth.
Oh well.
What will happen, eventually -- Hollywood is going to have to be dragged into the future kicking and screaming -- is that we will move away from this broadcast delivery model in which we are expected to watch shows at specific times. Once the whole issue of how money changes hands gets worked out, things will progress rapidly, I think - witness the popularity of TiVO and its copycats. As long as content producers can find a way to get paid, they'll be on board...and it may turn out that when people can watch whatever they want, whenever they want, that shows like FF have more of a shot at building an audience.
Of course then marketing shows to the public becomes an issue: in the broadcast model, there are only so many channels, and only so many hours in the day. This limits the pool of competitors for eyeballs. When people can choose from a wider array of content and watch it on their terms, profits can be diluted, competition can be fiercer for eyeball loyalty, etc.
On a related note: if I could, I would gladly pay a nominal fee to watch serial shows like BsG, FF, etc. without commercials. If I could buy access to what amounts to about 40 minutes of actual content, skip the commercials, and see the show in high def, I'd GLADLY pay the content producers.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
I eagerly await the remainder of their backwards trek through Fox's collection of excellent prematurely-cancelled Friday night shows. Firefly and John Doe, check: How long before they work their way back to Strange Luck and VR.5 ?
Sounds almost like me. I usually have infinite knowledge and no memory of it at the morning.
You can complain to Arbitron all you like. It won't do you much good though. Nielsen Media Research runs the television ratings surveys.
they need to pick up dark angel.
surely a contradiction in one word... I think the word we are looking for here is "repeat"...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
And one more thing: He's a walking encyclopedia. He literally knows every fact on record. John's no psychic or clairvoyant--he can't predict the future. But when it comes to learning anything new, like how to pilot a helicopter, he's a very quick study.
Does this mean he's a walking Wikipedia?
If you're reading this, stop it.
"... a man with no memory of who he is but, but somehow has infinite knowledge."
But could he microwave a burrito so hot that he couldn't eat it?
I smell a paradox.
You forgot about Strange Luck. Like John Doe, it is one of those shows that cannot be explained in 1 sentence.
Fight Spammers!
Fridays at 9pm (eastern) is the time for Stargate Atlantis, I hope they aren't dropping that.
Hmm I just checked the shedule on Scifi.com and it seems this John Doe show is actually on at 7pm eastern, so its not going to interfere with the normal scifi friday lineup (phew)
I think we need to see this one go away.
/. this week (or more?) $50 a year per user is $50 million. This is enough to get 20 shows going for a year.
We're geeks. We like to be ahead of the game. We like it our way, hold the ketchup and the onions, thank you very much.
In-your-face, take it or leave it TV is dead, or it should be. The horse is beaten, the flies have eaten, it's time to bury it. A la carte TV is so 90's, even if it wasn't really available. The iTunes format is cool. but it isn't quite what we need or want.
AKIMBO is cool, but I'm sure it's plagued with lame shows and whatever "it isn't open source" problems people have with it.
So the answer is where should we go next? I'd love to see viewer funded "television" -- maybe geek television at its finest. Firefly, BsG, hell, even bring back Monty Python with a newer funnier cast. Give us an option -- tell us how much it will cost, how many episodes we can assume to be paying for, ask us what video formats we'd like to see, and then do it. Start a website or a blog or whatever we need to find you. Let us pay for it, in advance, with a contract stipulating some refund if you don't meet the requirements.
I'll put up $500 of my own money, right now, for Firefly to come back. I'd pay $500 for 2 guaranteed seasons (22 episodes per season). I'd cancel cable TV in a heartbeat (I bet we're paying over $1000 a year) and put that money towards 6 or 8 good shows, a la carte. Film them in Canada, give the actors a piece of the action (call them producers, skip the unions) and let's find some good TV. I can't handle anything aimed at the mainstream (maybe L&O: CI on occasion) anymore.
There are 1 million people coming to
Why are we still talking about Sci-Fi again, we have money, let's use it. Any 10 of you want to match my $500 and get something started?
and I don't know what the producer's name is.
Fortunately, Wikipedia to the rescue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doe_(TV_series)
X-Pretender, Two skinny FBI agents undercover as porn stars. How could that go wrong?
You have most of this, at least for BsG. It's available on iTunes the day after broadcast, without commercials, for $1.99. Now if only Apple would get going on the high def content.
even bring back Monty Python with a newer funnier cast
BLASPHEMER!!!
Oh no, a monster! Oh no, a monster! Oh no, oh no, oh no a giant monster Monster! Monster! Oh no, a giant monster! Shut the window, bolt the door! Don't wanna see that monster no more! Monster in my pants by the B-52s
...are they? I mean, they advertise them as "Sci Fi world premieres," but I've just been assuming that these were B movies that studios make to go straight to video but that get picked up by Sci-Fi as filler material to avoid showing yet another rerun of some old series. (Not that there's anything wrong with old series, unless you've watched them a million times already.)
In most of them, you can tell that the dirty words have been silenced out. Why would Sci-Fi make a movie that they know they'll be airing with language they know they can't use? Sometimes I'll even see a bare breast blurred out and such.
Sometimes, I'll even see one of these crapfests (and I mean the term in a flattering way ;-) on a premium movie channel a few months before Sci Fi airs it.
Nah, I don't think they're actually making these movies. Okay, maybe sometimes financing part of them, but not making them specifically for the network. These kinds of movies have been made since the video market started booming, and will still be around long after the Sci Fi channel is a distant memory.
I mean, really, there always has to be a little Jerry Springer mixed in with the Masterpiece Theater, you know? And yes, I also like vegging out once in a while by partaking of some of the mind-numbing entertainment they show. :-)
http://www.scifi.com/johndoe/
I read about this a couple of months ago, and never knew it about the time. Apparently after the got cancelled, they revealed what was going to happen: http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue326/news.html
I know that in my area in Seattle, John Doe came on FIRST. No doubt about this in my mind.
I wish they would bring back Farscape.
For what purpose?
<SPOILER ALERT>
Did you see the special movie finale? Crichton opened up a wormhole that threatened to tear apart the space-time fabric of the universe, and in so doing forced the Scarans and the Peacekeepers to the bargaining table; a treaty was signed, with the entire process being overseen by Scorpie; Chrichton lost his best friend in the final battle, became a father of a boy by Erin Sun, and named his newborn son after his fallen comrade.
</SPOILER ALERT>
So what would they do as a follow-up? Join forces with Jesus Christ to save Santa Claus from Saddam Hussein?
The actor, Dominic Purcell, also plays the older brother on this season's hit Prison Break - another show with an annoying cliff-hanger last fall. Fortunately it will be on again in the spring but I expect they will leave us hanging before next season.
wasn't this show on NBC before, except called The Pretender?
swanker than you
You don't know where it's been.
Doe: "....010111010101101..1011."
Stranger: "Wow....he actually knows the assembly code for DOS."
Or something like that. But it did actually get good, especially as it progressed toward the eventual cliffhanger that others have mentioned. If SciFi channel has ordered new episodes I'd be thrilled, but I don't think they have.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
No, it is gun v. electicity .... electricity wins.
Fight Spammers!
Firefly is awesome
Seriously there should have been more seasons!
so everybody with money buy the dvd's so the show can continue
That post was made with an automatic complaint generator .
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I now don't watch anything with a continuing plot on FOX until it makes it to season 2, at which point I start watching at season 1.
There was a time when they'd give shows time to find an audience, but now they just bounce them around the schedules, show them 10 minutes late so your TiVo misses the end, and randomly cancel episodes in favor of two guys talking about whatever sporting event just happened.
And they wonder why people download torrents instead...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
OMG.. I just looked up his show list in IMDB. 128 items listed.. Some acceptable.. Some completed dross... But then.. His earliest item was Crossroads (OK.. only the brits will know this one..)
A very dodgy soap 1964-1988.. Resurected briefly a couple of years ago I believe. The only thing I can remember from this was Benny with his bobble hat and his "Miss Dianne" comments.
Believe me... Anything he has done since has gotta be a BIIIG step up from this....
The show had some promisse, but they really needed a smart person to help out the writers. There were so many logical inconsistencies that it made watching the show difficult. Of course they could easily explain it through some convoluted logic at the end, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch.
And be snappy about it. Frank Converse ain't gonna live forever, you know.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
And... unlike... unlike what? WHAT HAPPENED? This post was cancelled? That's BULLSHIT! It was just starting to get good! DAMN YOU SLASHDOT!
~ Aero
I wish they would bring back Farscape.
They did, only they dropped the muppets, and renamed it Fargate SG-1.
Was this also the show with all the funky remote viewing and stuff in it? Or am I thinking something else.
So we can see giant planes flying around and Jedi slashing heads off of robots. We wanted 3 more Star Wars films because LucasFilm sells oodles of merchandise and thus funded George Lucas to create 3 more star Wars films.
Since directly funding more Firefly seasons is highly unlikely, why not buy all of the Firefly comics, videos, merchandise, toys, candy holders, ecetera. The possible backfire is that the show would be a giant toy commercial (I doubt Joss Whedon would do something like that except in parody).
In Japan there was a simular concept with the funding for two version of Tokimeki Memorial funded entirely by shareholders (please scroll down a little bit until you see a "February 26, 2004" headline). Shame that didn't go out well but I wonder if somebody has the stones to pull off this kind of project.
You're not thinking of The Greatest American Hero, are you?
But then after the first few minutes, it would get a lot better. I wonder how many people switched channels during that scene.
-- $SIGNATURE
I think this is the model you're going to see come first to the internet, for broadband users. A person will be able to buy the rights to download a season of a show (call it 20 eps) for a fixed price; or a single show for a higher price. The first couple of shows will be free in order to get people hooked. There won't be any commercials (who'd watch 'em?) but there will be obvious product placement (e.g., the main character is often seen drinking a Pepsi). Advertising will also be sold on the web site that offers the shows, for very high prices. But most of the money will be made in fees, which even if it only amounts to, say, $1.50/show/person, is far, far greater than the overall returns on normal TV.
;-)
This will be coupled with a service, which we'll call MovieWatcher or TVWatcher (both of which I hereby copyright, for future reference). The Watcher programs run in the background on your computer and download the shows you've paid for as they become available, flagging a notice when the downloads are complete ("You've Got TV!"). That way you don't have to do *anything* - you pay for the shows and they automagically appear on your computer as the episodes are completed. You can watch them anytime you want, keep copies for your personal library, etc. And I'm claiming this idea under the DMCA as well, just in case anyone thinks of trying to cut me out of my fair share.
Not only is this blazingly convenient, it also comes without the annoyance of those goddamned commercials we all hate so much. We can watch what we want when we want, only directly supporting the shows that we're interested in. Nobody else gets a 'piece' of our action. And if a particular studio wants to hawk a new, unknown show, next will come the concept of 'bundling' - get 3 shows for the price of 2! Buy an entire one year subscription to show X and you'll get a season of show Y for just an additional $5! Etc, etc.
Why would anyone pay for shows when you can just torrent them? For the same reason 95% of us still pay for music when we could easily download it for free: because 95% of us aren't thieving little college shits who think they 'deserve' free music and free TV and free movies just because they're wasting good oxygen.
Watch; it'll happen. And sooner than people think.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Since Threshold was given a bum shuffle on ABC and got cancelled, SciFi should pick it up and order new episodes. Surface is pretty good and Invasion is okay, but it pissed me off that Threshold got cancelled but Invastion got extended. Sick and sad.
1 is the square root of all evil.
Yep, that's the one.
John Doe was awesome. However, the whole "you die and you learn everything" just doesn't cut it. The final episode was a massive cliffhanger. We can only hope they release more episodes =)
Buffy's season seven was interminable self-parodying dreck. Yeah, it had its high points, but at that point Joss had moved on to other projects. The endings of seasons three and five were much better endpoints for the series. (Though I'll admit some fondness for the very, very down ending of season two.)
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Unless they destroy it, like they did with Sliders. I used to like that show. I thought it was moderately intelligent and had a great premise. When the Sci Fi channel started making it, though, it got sooooo bad.
I'd rather have no Firefly at all than have it become really bad. And that says a lot, because I really want more Firefly.
Even though I know it may be a stretch, they could in fact manage to pull out a new show based on John Doe. We know he has no memory, we also know it's because of some sort of gov't coverup. He's currently on Prison Break as a death row inmate. What if Scoffield's ultimate plan to save his brother was to give him a pill that would make him appear to be dead but also allow him to survive the electric chair (sabotage the chair to not really deliver a lethal dose of electricity but since he appears dead it isn't caught). After he is executed and his body is sent off for burial, he's revived by a 3rd party and dumped in the woods thus beginning the series John Doe. Scoffield was supposed to pick him up, but somehow either he got sidetracked or the people delivering John Doe had to dump him randomly to avoid being detected. His memory loss could be a side effect of the pill and the death experience. This would allow both Prison Break and John Doe to continue as either sister series or be merged back into one (Prison Break being the prequel to John Doe). The cool part is that you'd have to end this season of Prison Break with my above scenario. The 2nd season of Prison Break would be Scoffield on the outside trying to find his brother and instead find more details about the conspiracy involving his brother and another group that wants him to stay alive. There would be near misses between the two brothers in every other episode (passing eachother on opposite sides of the street or even being in the same building at times). John could even see Scoffield off in the distance, but just doesn't remember him. You end this season to line up in conjunction with the events at the end of the 1st season of John Doe, but with the two brothers meeting face to face for the first time since Prison Break. The NEW season of John Doe would have the two brothers talking and Scoffield trying to fill John in on the details that he's missing. It would be a mission for both of them to try to recover John's memories and to find his son. With John having all that knowledge and Scoffield's pattern recognition abilities, you could squeak out a good season if there's good writers onboard.
Of course then marketing shows to the public becomes an issue:
If only there was some hugely popular web site that a million geeks read every day. Perhaps one that talks about a second-rate cable channel picking up the re-runs of a four year old failed television show as if it were news.
Alas though, I guess marketers are going to be screwed....
I still wonder when/if Google will get into advertising in videos. It seems to me that if you're watching a TV show on the internet, there's no reason to ditch the ad-driven model that already finances the industry. Google can just make it that much better, because it's really no different than AdSense: dynamically insert one or two targeted ads in the middle of any video I'm watching, choosing the ads based on content and my own preferences. It's gotta be more lucrative than the way it works now, with advertisements tied to a specific show targetted at a "demographic". Then give consumers the option to either watch it free (with ads) or purchase it (without ads).
Why would anyone pay for shows when you can just torrent them? For the same reason 95% of us still pay for music when we could easily download it for free: because 95% of us aren't thieving little college shits who think they 'deserve' free music and free TV and free movies just because they're wasting good oxygen.
Some of us just use bittorrent in lieu of our VCR - since there's nothing you can do with the former that you can't do with the latter. As long as I'm subscribing to cable, I'm paying for that content, and last I checked at least, format shifting and time shifting are still fair use rights.
At least they should negotiate to get Exene Cervenka to come on for a guest appearance occasionally...
adéu,
Mateu
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
If you go around inserting animals you can hardly be surprised when they bite back.
It's raining new shows on Sci-Fi, apparently.
From the lineup, you'd have to say it's raining 'something' at the Sci-Fi channel that starts with "sh". They really need to start focusing on quality over quantity. I understand the theory of throwing a bunch of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, but this is getting ridiculous.
And in their last run of the series, they'll stop showing episodes just before the end, because when it comes time to change up their schedule they don't give a damn about where in each run each non-original series is.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I know. "...and solves crimes!" is just such a lazy excuse for a series idea.
So how did you feel about Profit?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The show has an ongoing storyline, which stars off kind of slow but takes a pretty wild turn late in the season.
This is what is wrong with a lot of science fiction shows today; they are following the soap opera gotcha format. BG is a good example of this.
Science fiction is supposed to challenge viewers' beliefs and make them think, not to rope them into some "story arc" or "backstory" (both are terms which, of course, are bandied-about by those who would like to be screenwriters someday).
I imagine that people that gather and discuss the latest Battlestar Gallactica episode are talking about soap opera-like things, not ideas.
Dang you Fox TV! Dang you to heck! Oh, wait, House is pretty good, and 24. Ok, just dang you a little bit...
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble