Give a science fiction show a second chance on TV.

[o1pickleboy]

So you have been empowered to resurrect one science fiction television series from the tv graveyard. The only snag is the series must of been canceled and not given a chance to go off on it's own terms.

You are given 13 episodes to tell your story and to get ratings or else you canceled again. So what is your show? What are you going to do in the 13 episodes for ratings and what is your 13 going to contain storywise?

Just to help jog your memory here are some series that didn't go off on there own terms.

Babylon 5 Crusades
Earth 2
Odyssey 5
Space: Above and Beyond
Highlander: Raven
Firefly
4400
Jericho
Jeremiah
Star Trek Enterprise

[fireSTRIKE!]

I'd go with Odyssey 5...

[Legato]

Firefly. I personally felt it wasn't given a fair chance both as a tv series and as a movie

[GrifterWC]

I second Firefly.

Just to pick something different I'd give Enterprise another shot.

[spoon_jenkins]

So what is your show?
Earth 2. I enjoyed that show.

What are you going to do in the 13 episodes for ratings
Contrive excuses to have Rebecca Gayheart parade around in her unmentionables every episode.

and what is your 13 going to contain storywise?

I have no idea.

[Legato]

I'd bring back Quantum Leap. Im sure some of us would agree that Sam deserves a happy ending.

I would bring it back as a TV Movie

[o1pickleboy]

I'd bring back Quantum Leap. Im sure some of us would agree that Sam deserves a happy ending.

I would bring it back as a TV Movie

Really easy to do. You only have to worry about getting two actors

[Jared]

Enterprise: The Earth-Romulan War, a 13 hour epic. End with an epilouge scene showing Trip as an old man many years in the future, OR give him a worthwhile death during the conflict. Either way is better than the pointless stupidity of the series finale, which I will gladly retcon away (we'll say Riker had shoddy records).

Earth 2: Spoon_Jenkins has this well covered.

Highlander Raven: Elizabeth Ward Gracen is probably too old to feasibly resume her role as Immortal. And the show sucked, anyway.

Tek War: Make it more like the telemovies, which I remember being pretty cool. Bring back the hero's black partner.

[Ninth Hispana]

.......It has to be ''Crusade''.The desperate last 13 episodes, with half the crew vanished, Gideon's certain death looming and Earth's civilisation on the point of collapse.Where is Galen?and who or what is the enigma called Noh?.....I would throw everything at these ep's...:smile:

[Julusnc]

Firefly or Tru-Calling

[Chiasm]

Farscape

It was abruptly cancelled after its 4th season on a cliffhanger. It did get a mini series that wrapped it up but that shouldn't disqualify it since Firefly is being mentioned and it too got a wrap up movie.

[o1pickleboy]

Farscape

It was abruptly cancelled after its 4th season on a cliffhanger. It did get a mini series that wrapped it up but that shouldn't disqualify it since Firefly is being mentioned and it too got a wrap up movie.

Wrap up movies are better than nothing, but I don't consider it or them going out on their own terms so Farscape does count

[Pro]

I take it 400 should read 4400?

If so (originally intended this as a movie script but can be a restart of the series as well i suppose. Didn't take any of the books into account since i didn't read them):

4400 movie script

5 years after the events in the last TV series episode.

In the wake of the great leap forward NTAC has become an independent Positives organization supported by the government to control the Positives within the Washington territory which has been isolated from the rest of the world.
No one gets in, no one gets out. Border jumps are dealt with in the harshest way possible, death followed by burning the body. The fear of another epidemic is very much apparent.

Some groups want to get into Seattle in hopes of getting powers. Some groups among the Positives are radicals who want to convert the entire world fast as possible, even if it requires involuntary injections.
Potentials are those who can get powers but haven’t received them due to the quarantine. Some Potentials refuse to take government ordered medicine in hopes that an epidemic might flare up some day and grant them powers. Medication against powers is mandatory under martial law.

At first the story is told from the perspective of people living outside the Washington Isolation Reserve.
A team of marines is trained in taking down Positives who skip the border. We get to know them and see their actions justified by the bestiality of the Positives they’re chasing, members of a radical splinter group seeking to infect others with promicin involuntarily.

Not the usual series music but a rather ominous techno-orchestral piece which begins dark and moves faster as it progresses until it becomes the chase music from the first scene. News messages, advertisements, etc are played while fleeting images are seen from news reports and talkshows, many of them mentioning Positives. Police are chasing a Positive heading for an urban area, chasing him through no-man’s land.
“Object is identified as Positive, flying at 220 mph across the no-fly zone towards the borderline”.
“Get 2 choppers in the air and alert anti-air units along the border”. When they finally take him down he has already caused such a stir that elsewhere a small group of Positive radicals have crossed the border on their way to inject the president of the USA with promicin. We get to know more about the world in 2015 and about what has happened to Seattle since the Great Leap Forward.

Conversation between the president and Jordan Collier:
“This is not a matter of denying people the right to have powers. We’re not even going to debate the morals of that before we’ve dealt with the fact that 50% of people will die if exposed to this disease!”.
“I object to the word disease, we are not sick”.
“But you do carry a virus that's guaranteed to kill 50% of the world’s population and that’s why your people are under quarantine”.
“All of our research has shown no viral agents in any of our people. The virus is dead”.
“Sorry mister Collier, but for now the quarantine remains. The risk is too great”.
“You can’t keep us here. We can barely keep the situation contained, damn it! Not everyone is content to sit around and be patient. The Movem ..”.
Cuts him off.
“I know about the Movement and I can assure you this. If you don’t stop your people from crossing the borders we will, and if the Movement attempts to spread its gospel across the borders of the reservation camp I will personally command the army to bomb Seattle and its surroundings flat, if need be with a tactical nuclear missile!”.

In a desperate effort to prevent the president from being injected a small group led by Tom Baldwin crosses the border as well. With the stakes higher than ever the series is off to an exploding restart.

[TOAA]

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

[Filthy Mutie]

Firefly is the gimme.

Generation X is the dark horse.

[LordEd1976]

Space: Above and Beyond.

[Jared]

Generation X is the dark horse.

Do you mean Mutant X? There was a Generation X pilot movie that never went anywhere.

[Legato]

Farscape

It was abruptly cancelled after its 4th season on a cliffhanger. It did get a mini series that wrapped it up but that shouldn't disqualify it since Firefly is being mentioned and it too got a wrap up movie.

The difference between Firefly and Farscape is that Farscape atleast got the closure that settled most of the stuff that the show never got the chance to settle. The Peacekeeper Wars felt like a true finale.

The movie Serenity never felt that way, nothing about that movie felt wrapped up since Simon and River are still fugitives and The Alliance still have power despite the exposure.

I seconded Enterprise. The show wasn't really bad honestly

[Pro]

I seconded Enterprise. The show wasn't really bad honestly

Agreed. They took way too long with the Xindi plot but overall it was not as bad as some make it out to be.

[RolandJP]

Lexx


Starring Megan Foxx as Captain Tiffany Blowbone (Sorry been reading some Fleming Bond books)

[jlmoor]

I make it 4 for FIREFLY!!!!!!! I also would like to add Miracles to the list. Not that I have an idea, just thought it cold have gone somewhere interesting. I don't think I ever realized that Mutant X was acutally based on an X title. I thought they were just fishing for X fans to bite.

And I want Megas XLR back. Giant Alien robots. That's Scifi right:smile:

[Legato]

I make it 4 for FIREFLY!!!!!!! I also would like to add Miracles to the list. Not that I have an idea, just thought it cold have gone somewhere interesting. I don't think I ever realized that Mutant X was acutally based on an X title. I thought they were just fishing for X fans to bite.

And I want Megas XLR back. Giant Alien robots. That's Scifi right:smile:

They had no connection to the X-Men series, basically another X-Men knock-off series. It was a low budget version of Heroes actually

[Jared]

The movie Serenity never felt that way, nothing about that movie felt wrapped up since Simon and River are still fugitives and The Alliance still have power despite the exposure.


I don't think Firefly was the type of show that ever would have ended with Mal and the totally bringing down the Alliance. There would never be an Endor Celebration, the war was already over. That was the point.

[jlmoor]

They had no connection to the X-Men series, basically another X-Men knock-off series. It was a low budget version of Heroes actually

Ah, that was Generation X then. Sorry. That looked bloody awful.

[Hoss]

Automan, Manimal, or The Man from Atlantis

[Jared]

They had no connection to the X-Men series, basically another X-Men knock-off series. It was a low budget version of Heroes actually

Mutant X was a team that went on missions and did stuff. So in that regard, it's the complete opposite of Heroes.

[o1pickleboy]

Mutan X was a team that went on missions and did stuff. So in that regard, it's the complete opposite of Heroes.

Heroes does stuff. they fight Sylar at the end of every volume or and they watch Nathan die at the end of every volume too

[GozertheGozarian]

Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys. Great cartoon that fell victim to Fox scheduling.

[batGRRRl4ever]

I pick the 1980's CBS sci-fi show "Otherworld"

Otherworld was a short-lived American science fiction series that aired for only eight episodes from January 26 to March 16, 1985 on CBS about a family who went on a vacation to Egypt and fell through a portal and onto an alternate Earth called "Thel". This parallel Earth is a land comprised of many totally different provinces, each with its own way of life. For example; one of the societies killed strangers to use their life force to obtain eternal youth. In another, women are the dominant sex and men are treated as inferiors. They roamed from society to society looking for the capital city of Imar. The Supreme Governors of Otherworld were located there and had the power to return them to our universe. Of course, there had to be a villian. Kommander Kroll and his "Zone Troopers" were constantly trying to hunt them down during their journeys. Although only eight episodes ever aired before the network canceled the series, the planned 13 episodes may have been taped and sold to foreign TV networks. A last episode where the Sterlings finally came home is remembered in Spain and perhaps other countries. Whether these 5 lost episodes still exist remains a mystery, although the website scriptcity.com has an Otherworld script entitled "Seeing Double" (reportedly involving evil duplicates of the Sterling family) for sale. The series was rerun on the USA Network, and re-shown several times on the Sci Fi channel.

The show only got one season and I really liked it, it was a very mature sci-fi show for it's day. The family found a major clue to Imar in it's final aired episode, but like Sam in Quantum Leap they "never found their way home".

[batGRRRl4ever]

Oh yeah, Earth 2 was also a pretty cool show. Although it would naturally have to go in a seriously different direction once a LOT more people would be showing up.

[jlmoor]

I pick the 1980's CBS sci-fi show "Otherworld"

The Otherworld TV show was a 60 minute sci-fi series on CBS about a family who went on a vacation to Egypt and fell through a portal and onto an alternate Earth called "Thel". This parallel Earth is a land comprised of many totally different provinces, each with its own way of life. For example; one of the societies killed strangers to use their life force to obtain eternal youth. In another, women are the dominant sex and men are treated as inferiors. They roamed from society to society looking for the capital city of Imar. The Supreme Governors of Otherworld were located there and had the power to return them to our universe. Of course, there had to be a villian. Kommander Kroll and his "Zone Troopers" were constantly trying to hunt them down during their journeys.

.


holy crap I have been trying to figure out what this was for year!!!!!

I am so freaking out!!! Thank you so much!! I was going to post in anyone knew what the hell this was but after asking everyone for 20-years I thought I might have hallucinated it. All I could remember was the female dominant episode. You just became my hero

[Toreador]

M.A.N.T.I.S. I'd give another shot. There was supposedly a final episode that didn't air in the US where he got killed by a invisible dinosaur but I'd ret-conn that away as a bad dream or something. Story-wise I'd have him pass the suit on to someone else.

Also Nightmare Cafe would be a good one. Voyagers (the time travel show) as well.

Starman too.

Phoenix.

[berk]

I'm considering giving Defying Gravity a second chance after not being too impressed with the first episode, which I just got around to watching a couple nights ago.

[Paradox]

I would want VR5 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112209/) to come back, although I don't know exactly what I'd do with it. It was a neat concept, but was given very short shrift by both Fox and the audience.

[o1pickleboy]

Ok My vote goes to Babylon 5 crusades.(strong shout out for Jericho) I have worked out a few more resurrection plots, but I will just do Crusades for this post.

I would start with a two hour Movie to rekick off the series.

2272, The earth is desolate all life has be wiped out by the Draq plague. Matthew Gideon the captain of the Excalibur whose job was to cure the plague failed and is now a broken man. Gideon spends his time traveling from one hellhole planet to another stopping off in-between in the worse places in the known universe. Drowning his sorrows in backroom gambling and alcohol.

On the one year anniversary of earth's destruction Gideon is found by three individuals that have been seeking him out. Durena Nafel, Galen and L'Kar(the first born Narn telepath who was rapidly aged) They find him in hope he will join them in a mission to change time and save the earth.

Convincing Gideon to join them, their mission is to go into sector 14 and telepathically sent Gideon and Durena's consciousness though time into their body's 4 years in the past using L'kar super-telepathy(a gift from Lyta Alexanders genes) and Galen's technology mixed with tech from episolon 3

Battling Alliance white star's and Babylon 5 in a hijacked Excalibur. The Excalibur is destroyed and Durena is killed. Making in to sector 14 L'Kar refuses to send Gideon back in time without his word to free his past-self and his fellow Narn telepaths from the Narn's accelerated aging tanks.(do to the side affect of the rapid aging doesn't stop if rapid aged to much) Gideon promises and is his conscious is sent back in time.

Awakening in 2267(right after the final episode of the original series) and armed with knowledge of the next four years of failure Gideon vows to find the cure this time and save earth.


As for other things I would do. I would get as many of the orginal cast as I could. I would add the character L'kar to the cast and a ranger. If I couldn't get the original doctor I would add a Minbari doctor in her place(since the dr I wanted Steven Franklin is both character wise stuck on earth with the plague and the actor is dead)

a few things I would do though the course of the 13 episodes.

1.) Gideon would launch a preemptive strike on a Draq base that attacks Mars in his future.
2.) a black opts mission into Centauri space to steal their medial knowledge(since they are the most advance race that didn't share their knowledge with the alliance and aren't helping to cure the plague)
3.) A mission into Vorlon space to attempt to get there medical knowledge( one that will of course fail)

[Red Lotus]

The difference between Firefly and Farscape is that Farscape atleast got the closure that settled most of the stuff that the show never got the chance to settle. The Peacekeeper Wars felt like a true finale.

The movie Serenity never felt that way, nothing about that movie felt wrapped up since Simon and River are still fugitives and The Alliance still have power despite the exposure.

I seconded Enterprise. The show wasn't really bad honestly

I would pick Firefly too. But I do think the movie was able to move River into a more stable character at the end.

[Jared]

The trouble with that Crusade idea is that we already know, via flash-forwards on B5, that Earth does not get wiped out by a plague.

[fireSTRIKE!]

I pick the 1980's CBS sci-fi show "Otherworld"

Otherworld was a short-lived American science fiction series that aired for only eight episodes from January 26 to March 16, 1985 on CBS about a family who went on a vacation to Egypt and fell through a portal and onto an alternate Earth called "Thel". This parallel Earth is a land comprised of many totally different provinces, each with its own way of life. For example; one of the societies killed strangers to use their life force to obtain eternal youth. In another, women are the dominant sex and men are treated as inferiors. They roamed from society to society looking for the capital city of Imar. The Supreme Governors of Otherworld were located there and had the power to return them to our universe. Of course, there had to be a villian. Kommander Kroll and his "Zone Troopers" were constantly trying to hunt them down during their journeys. Although only eight episodes ever aired before the network canceled the series, the planned 13 episodes may have been taped and sold to foreign TV networks. A last episode where the Sterlings finally came home is remembered in Spain and perhaps other countries. Whether these 5 lost episodes still exist remains a mystery, although the website scriptcity.com has an Otherworld script entitled "Seeing Double" (reportedly involving evil duplicates of the Sterling family) for sale. The series was rerun on the USA Network, and re-shown several times on the Sci Fi channel.

The show only got one season and I really liked it, it was a very mature sci-fi show for it's day. The family found a major clue to Imar in it's final aired episode, but like Sam in Quantum Leap they "never found their way home".

wasn't there also a similar series called Fantastic Journey?...

just thought of another series called "the Visitor" that could have been done up differently and better, I think...

[o1pickleboy]

The trouble with that Crusade idea is that we already know, via flash-forwards on B5, that Earth does not get wiped out by a plague.

Yeah. JMS didn't write it to allow us the belief that Crusade was going to fail. Just like we knew from the beginning of B5 that Londo would live to be emperor and G'Kar would live long enough to kill him as a old man. The enjoyment from a story when the ending is known has to come from the trip getting there.

That is why I am using Sector 14 and making my story start in a alternate future. Time travel was using to change the time-line by the Vorlons to ensure they wouldn't lose the Shadow war. Why couldn't time travel be used to save earth?

[howyadoin]

Firefly and Sarah Connor Chronicles.

[Surtur]

Not exactly sci-fi, but I want the Dresden Files to come back.

[Monty_Cristo]

i wish it were possible to make more episodes of Tales from the Darkside; good ones.

[Legato]

I liked the series Special Unit 2 so I dont mind if it was brought back. I also nominate bringing back The Outer Limits.

Twilight Zone but get a better host this time.

[Monty_Cristo]

I liked the series Special Unit 2 so I dont mind if it was brought back. I also nominate bringing back The Outer Limits.

Twilight Zone but get a better host this time.

hey, good call. Special Unit 2 was kind of low budget but the leads were entertaining enough.

[The Batman]

If we're going to give any Star Trek show a second chance I think it should be the first one. There were still a couple of years left of that Five-Year Mission.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/images-2/kirk-and-spock-in-star-trek.jpg

[Ziggy Stardust]

I stand by an Earth 2 relaunch.

[jlmoor]

If we're going to give any Star Trek show a second chance I think it should be the first one. There were still a couple of years left of that Five-Year Mission.

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Entertainment/images-2/kirk-and-spock-in-star-trek.jpg

Original cast + CGI?:wink:

[dumbstruck]

FreakyLinks

[The Batman]

Original cast + CGI?:wink:

Time travel to 1969.

[jlmoor]

Time travel to 1969.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[Redem]

Any of you heard of Century city? it was a lawyer show IN THE FUTURE that lasted three episode or so, was pretty good

[a. non]

Two series' I'd bring back:

Welcome to Paradox, an Outer Lilmits-like series where all the stories take place in the same city

Mission Genesis, based on the Deepwater Black novels about the last of humanity on a spaceship

[Ziggy Stardust]

While not Sci Fi, I think a Kolchak the Night Stalker show might be fun today.

[jlmoor]

While not Sci Fi, I think a Kolchak the Night Stalker show might be fun today.

I think it qualified. Scifi showed it all the time. Old and new.

[BeastieRunner]

Space: Above & Beyond gets my vote as well as Brisco County, Jr.

Man, FOX can't handle Sci-fi.

[Phil Clark]

Goin' old school, I would like to see Lost In Space get another chance at serious sci-fi, as opposed to the second and third seasons camp that developed thanks (again) to Batman. Lost in Space went camp to keep up with Batman, but the first season of the show (done in Black & White) was pretty good straight Sci-Fi. No camp, aside from the retrospective camp of seeing the cheesy special effects that were at the time cutting edge for a TV series.

[Frank]

The 90s Dark Shadows with Ben Cross :biggrin:

Invasion

Moonlight

Friday the 13th-the series(remember that show with the supernatural antique boutique?)

Some of them are not sci-fi but who cares.

[DubipR]

Two shows spring to mind:

1. Voyagers
http://www.ultimatedisney.com/images/t-v/voyagers-26.jpg

2. American Gothic
I know it's not science fiction, but a damn good show.

[noh-varr]

Pushing Daisies is the one I want back the most. Then Dead Like Me, followed by Firefly.

[Alex]

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

That.
And i don't want to write my own story, i want the writer to finish his story.

[jade_nova]

From the list I will pick Space Above and Beyond. My personal choice would be Dark Skies. It was a show about how aliens were involved in historical events through the latter Twentieth Century.

[Ontir]

Sliders

A young genius invents a device which opens portals between worlds, only to discover that in each world there is an equal variant of him, doing the same thing. He must work with those having similar goals to thwart the more malevolent versions and get everyone, including himself, back to his rightful universe.