'Alcatraz' on FOX HD

I'll definitely give this a shot.

Undercovers was a combination of a chick flick with some action. Wasn't a total surprise that it failed. I found it totally boring and unwatchable. Five-O isn't my bag but I understand its appeal.

Alcatraz should be at a minimum slightly more intellectual than the CSI type shows.

I actually think Hawaii Five-O is pretty good. And I'm not a chick.

Plot and cast details as well as the trailer have been released. DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER IF YOU WANT TO GO INTO THIS SHOW FAIRLY BLIND... although knowing JJ, it won't matter how much you *think* you know

http://www.slashfilm.com/jj-abrams-f...plot-revealed/

Fox has announced that the series premiere of "Alcatraz" will be January 16, 2012.

The only new network show I have any vague interest in watching ahead of time because it contains Alcatraz and time travel.

Movies or shows with Alcatraz as a backdrop are nearly always entertaining and time travel is always a fun plot device.

It's clearly gonna be a "stretched-out mystery", but leave the LOST writers out, and I just may watch...

I'm thinking it'll be "find the crook of the week." If a couple hundred inmates who all vanished at once in 1963 all appeared at once in present day, at the prison, the National Park Service would notice that. But if they were showing up a few at a time each week and blend in with the crowd for the boat ride back, that's different. This situation lets the series continue for as long as writers can keep it up, a-la "Time Trax" which did it that way. They might even not need to explain WHY it happened.

Of course this is all my speculation. Let's see what they give us in January.

Of all the shows you could refer to you picked Time Trax?!



Brimstone, Reaper or Breakout Kings had the same kind of formula and contained far less cheese!

Why do I think the "it sucks, but I still watch every week" group that populate every sf/fantasy TV show thread here are already warming their voices?

I've said it many times: sci-fi fans eat their young. They're virtually never satisfied. Even the consistently brilliant BSG always had its consistent critics who were faithfully there every week, voicing their displeasure, especially during the New Caprica occupation arc which seemed to rouse the ire of a certain subset of viewers (and we know who they were, don't we? ) to a fever pitch - a lot of 'em vowed they were going to quit watching at that time. Of course, they never did, but that didn't stop 'em from vowing they would, a vow they repeated every week.

Those last two posts should be a sticky

And I've said it many times (usually in response to every time you bring it up) that a SF genre show should get no more of a free pass than any other show on television. Whether it be cops, doctors, lawyers, kitchen sink or soap.

Crap sci-fi should never be accepted just because it's sci-fi. Make a sci-fi show and give it the same attention to detail and writing as you would any other quality drama. Not just drop lazy garbage on the page and expect desperate nerds to lap up any old dregs they are fed.

I loved Caprica!

Well I think the point is, some of these shows aren't nearly as bad as they're made out to be. Sci-fi fans are notoriously hard to please, more so than followers of other genres. Nothing satisfies them.

In the case of many of these ambitious sci-fi shows of recent years, they certainly weren't "crap" or "lazy garbage", or "dregs". To the contrary, some of them - 'Stargate: Universe', 'Dollhouse', and 'Flash Forward' come immediately to mind - were pretty good and had potential to get even better. But you wouldn't know that to read the online comments from some of these so-called "fans".

Well in the case of all those three they all started poorly. Dollhouse in particular had some horrible early episodes (the pop star episode was atrocious on every level) and only became good shows when they started embracing their potential and trying to be better.

If SF fans just accepted what was given to them SGU would have continued to be 40 minutes of emo and Flash Forward would have continued to be a horrible soap opera that went nowhere for weeks.

It's the same thing with Fringe. If viewers had watched the first season and all just said "Yeah, this is fine because there isn't much sci-fi on television" then it would still be pumping out the same old cloned X-Files storylines instead of not settling to be just that and becoming one of the most original science-fiction shows on television.

Sci-fi fans shouldn't settle, because then the genre becomes just like all the other identikit procedural on television. A sea of poorly written mediocrity week after week that the audience laps up. Sci-fi fans should want more and push for more. If the writers cannot be bothered to think about the script and details in a genre that is grounded in imagination and detail then they don't deserve to be applauded.

I would rather have one Inception every ten years than 52 SS Doomtroopers every year and one good sci-fi show on air than a thousand poorly made clones churning out the same thing week after week.

Besides 'Awake', this is my most anticipated new show.

Looking forward to this one. Fingers crossed.

Anticipation may be all you get with "Awake". I'm not sure it's even officially on the schedule. There seems to be some second-thinking going on with that one.

I read somewhere the AWAKE is now slated for March.

Probably not on the NBC site. I was just there and couldn't find any indication of a premiere date.

My guess? NBC throws it out there when something else goes down in flames in it's first few episodes (with a few weeks in between filled by additional episodes of "Biggest Loser or "Celebrity Apprentice".

Wiki says March for Awake.

I don't want to go off-topic, since there's already a thread for Awake here, but suffice to say I read that the delays were due to re-writing of some of the later episodes in the season.

Yeah, I read that they filmed a few episodes of Awake and then halted everything and went back to the drawing board. Doesn't sound very promising.

I'm looking forward to Alcatraz even though the serialized aspect of it appears to be minimal. It looks as if the episodes will be mostly stand-alone crime stories of the week focusing on one of the former Alcatraz detainees reeking havoc in the modern world . There might be some flashbacks to the Alcatraz days and there certainly will be some agency investigating the paranormal aspect of it. But for the most part, I don't think anyone will need to watch these episodes in any particular order or be concerned about missing some.

Another series I'm probably going to investigate is The River just to see what this documentary style mystery series is about. I might also check out Touch later in in the year which appears a little intriguing.

After being severely burned by "Flashforward", "V", and "The Event", I am extremely weary of this one.

I feel like they aren't going to properly leverage the Alcatrez setting and then throw out some techno mumbo-jumbo throughout the storylines to make it "sci-fi" and call it a day.

You're probably right, but I'll at least catch the pilot and see if it sticks..

Saw the pilot last summer and can't wait for the series. I, too, worry about a "Flash Forward" burn that'll keep viewers away. But the pilot did leave me wanting more. Then, again, so did "Terra Nova's" screener and that show quickly devolved (pun intended) into almost a cartoon.

I give the pilot 8 of 10. And will keep watching so long as "the others" don't show up to turn a giant wheel and make the island disappear. I'm gone if that happens, again.

Like DrDon, I've seen the pilot and I am also looking forward to the series.