newcritics

After the success of Heroes last year (which I didn’t watch - anyone have the DVD for me?), NBC has re-discovered SciFi as a valuable TV genre. Perhaps it has been sharing DNA with the folks from sister network, the NBC Universal-owned SciFi channel. The first week of NBC’s season looked like “Must Geek TV” with the premieres of Heroes, Journeyman and the Bionic Woman.

I skipped Heroes (it’s on the Tivo for when I watch Season I), but checked Journeyman and the Bionic Woman. The comedy Chuck is also kind of in the SciFi-meets-nerd-meets-secret agent genre.
Now it’s Monday night geek against Monday Night Football as Chuck, Heroes and Journeyman hit their second episodes, with Bionic Woman on Wednesdays after Deal or No Deal. (Is Howie Mandell SciFi or just wacko - left as an exercise for the reader).

So, as a red-blooded American geek, should you bother with these shows? Let’s investigate.

Heroes: Well, everyone else is watching. I have no opinion. Next.

Chuck: Nerd Herd manager (think Best Buy’s Geek Squad) gets an email from his college roommate, a spy for the NSA, that contains a database of all the spy secrets of our government encoded in pictures. Chuck opens the email, and all the data goes into his head. Enter Sarah, the beautiful, buff, blond secret agent who either has to recover the data or kill him. Sarah’s scene of getting ready for their ‘date’ was quite enhanced in HD, with the gratuitous pan up her leg as she straps on spy knives. But this is targeted at the geek set, so that works. Through TV magic, Chuck and Sarah team up and with a rival agent John (played by Adam Baldwin of Firefly SciFi cred) from the CIA prevent a bombing. The CIA and NSA can’t agree who ‘owns’ Chuck so it’s up to Sarah to mind him, while John watches for any excuse to take him down.

Geek Factor - 7/10 pocket protectors. Chuck is super geeky, and believable as a geek. Sarah is super sexy as every nerd’s fantasy, but not as believable as a spy.

Story Quality - 6/10 iPods - This is entertaining, butnothing new. Nothing. It’s not exactly 24-like when the plot is solved by 53 minutes after the hour, every time. There are some funny bits, and the acting isn’t bad, but I’m still waiting to see why this ‘Human as Computer’ is different than any of the many forgettable shows with similar plots in the past.

Journeyman: From NBC’s website, Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, “Rome”), a San Francisco newspaper reporter and family man who inexplicably begins to travel through time and change people’s lives. This show reminds me of Quantum Leap without Dean Stockwell to provide commentary, or Early Edition without the newspaper. Time Travel is the MacGuffin that moves the plots forward. Of course, everyone thinks Dan is crazy, using drugs or cheating on his wife when he disappears, because, apparently, when he goes back in time, he uses up the same amount of time in the present. So if he’s in 1997 for a day, he misses a day at home, and his son’s school recital or similar event.

Geek Factor - 5/10 PocketProtectors. Dan uses an iPhone-like device which accounts for 2/10ths.

Story Quality - 5/10 iPods. Again, I’m not seeing anything unique or new here. Geeks might want to recompile their Linux kernels instead of watching this if the plots or the SciFi aspect doesn’t improve. Personally, I’ve stopped watching.

Bionic Woman 2007: It may be a new rule that if you’re going to revamp 1970’s SciFi shows, you have to cast Katee Sackhoff in a lead role. Her career-jumpstarting role in SciFi’s BattleStar Galactica as the hard flying, hard drinking, man jumping Starbuck saved Ron Moore from the tough job of explaining why the ’70s icon of cool (played by Dirk Benedict) was now a woman. And Katee is super bad as the evil, original bionic woman in this season’s re-imagined series. Think of her as the woman terminator, but with the emotional baggage of a woman scorned — minus some of the emotion that would allow her to feel bad about what she’s done. Hell hath no fury like a woman being turned into a computer. Michelle Ryan’s “Jamie Summers” is no Lindsay Wagner. A bar tender dating doctor Will, who does special “reconstructions” and teaches “ethics,” she looses the requisite two legs, one arm, ear and eye in a traffic accident perpetrated by Sackhoff’s Sarah.
Will, unable to bear losing Jaime, takes her to the secret lab, government-be-damned, and turns her into…Jamie Summers, the Bionic Woman. And, keeping up with inflation, we hear that Six Million Dollars doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s at least $50 large to make a bionic woman these days. Miguel Ferrer is Jamie’s “Oscar Goldman without a conscience” who sacrifices agents and ethics to keep Jamie and his program alive.
Ryan’s acting leaves a bit to be desired, but Sackoff shines as the evil agent.

Geek Factor: 7/10 - Nanobots that repair both the bionic and non-bionic components, ability for Jamie to “turn off” tracking by thinking about it - very geeky.
Story Quality: 6/10 - Still feels predictable, but I’m still watching.

So, should you watch? Well, I think NBC is thinking about the future, and that SciFi could be part of their future, but only if they improve the show plots. Tell some new stories, please! The fact that Jamie Summers has a vulnerable little sister who is now friends with evil Sarah is a good plot twist, but more for the sensitive side and less for the geeks. Chuck has some fun “James Bond meets Maxwell Smart” moments, but again, its a formula.

Breakthrough sci-fi like Firefly (it’s the future, but it’s a western…hey Star Trek was wagon train to the stars…oh well), Alien, and most of Philip K. Dick’s stuff tell new stories or old ones in new ways.

NBC can change their future ratings, but only if they, well, boldly go where no one has gone before.