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Stephen Humphrey is a freelance writer and journalist who has lived in Toronto since 1994...
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Defying Gravity, Flashforward, Lost, science fiction television, SGU, Stargate Universe, V

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Well, school is out, protests, one minor earthquake and the G20 have rocked the city and season finales are recently all wrapped for prime-time shows.

24 did its breathless, unmerciful final wrap and Lost’s big finish left everybody wondering once and forever what that stupid island was all about anyway.

Those shows were the lucky ones, closing shop at will with full honours and high ratings. Not all shows get to choose their death. As with any battleground for hearts, minds and dollars, some return victorious and others don’t.

Despite various predictions to the contrary, Stargate Universe gets to return next fall. Its season one ended as the last Stargate show standing, ever since Atlantis removed its visually stunning yet unengaging mode of bombast from the airwaves last December.

Recently Actor David Blue, who plays boy genius and sci fi everyfan Eli Wallace, closed out a post-finale broadcast for Space Channel’s sci fi news show Innerspace with a gushing thank-you to viewers who’ve stuck with the show.

“We appreciate beyond belief that you’ve come along for the ride with us and gave us a chance,” he said, adding, “You’ve got some great stuff coming next season, I promise.”

It was politic for Blue to say this, since at the time he faced a live audience of cheering fans. But Blue’s gratitude was conceivably more than strategic.

Faithful eyeballs, after all stand between renewal and oblivion.

Television trend-watchers have eagerly tarred SGU with the aura of failure since its coming-out ratings began sliding a few episodes in, when fans of SGU’s jauntier forbears realized they’d have to cope with moody vibes, edgy camera work and a focus on elements previous SG shows avoided like character depth and intelligent scripts.

Brain drain notwithstanding, SGU may now carry on grafting high-concept dysfunction à la Battlestar Galactica onto Stargate canon.

Television genre hybrids are risky. As in the Splice movie, what seems like a good idea might turn out deadly results. In the one-eyed world of TV, haploid seems safer.

Take Defying Gravity, which endured its own heat death before last Christmas.

Grey’s Anatomy producer James Parriott attempted to cross-breed mainstream relationship drama with hard sci fi and, despite an attractive cast, good writing and semi-plausible spaceship, Parriott’s chimera was euthanized – or, dare I say, aborted.

You would think twinning two well-liked genres would strengthen a show’s market share, for example by humanizing the tech-driven world of space travel. Instead two audiences are driven away. Sci fi jocks think, “Ew! Too much kissy-face! Not enough space battles!” while soccer moms think, “Ew! Astronauts!”

Which brings us to Flashforward, the now-concluded effort by Robert J. Sawyer and an impressive raft of Hollywood talent to filter the time-and-space musings of his likewise-named novel through TV conventions, such as cop drama.

Which, unfortunately, was canceled instead of V, ABC’s derivative adaptation of a derivative 80s show, which no long even has the benefit of Michael Ironside to keep things moving.

In Sawyer’s novel soul-searching physicists agonize about causing every person on earth to experience two minutes and change of their personal futures during a worldwide loss of consciousness. In the show scientists are largely displaced by violence-prone FBI agents. It’s worth noting it was co-produced by 24 mastermind Brannon Braga.

While Flashforward never approached the mass slaughter of 24, it had its share of shootings, stabbings, torture, knock-down drag-outs and car crashes in each episode.

“Nearly every other scene, my goodness yes,” Sawyer acknowledged. “There’s no question that there’s a sense on the part of the studio that what people want to see is lots of gunfights and lots of action and lots of people running around.”

All this mayhem (and one pregnancy) naturally allows characters to end up in a hospital, the show’s other main set, where several key characters spend their days as staff or patients.

“Cop and doctor shows are the two big popular formats in the United States,” Sawyer explained, fully serene about referencing these traditional genres.

When Sawyer made these comments ABC had blessed the season’s second half, so he was cautiously optimistic that the recipe might work.

The program still managed to insert key concepts from the book: a couple, very much in love, forsee end of end of their marriage and struggle against destiny to save it, people use a website called Mosaic to compare notes about their flash of futurity, a character learns he’ll be violently killed and struggles to prevent his death while another man bucks fate through suicide.

Where the show transcends the novel, however, is through film and TV’s power to show the collective impact of a worldwide blackout that makes everyone, everywhere a prophet.

In one scene, a stadium full of people fall down all at once. In another hundreds of bloodied and bewildered citizens crawl from cars that crashed while they were unconscious. On the day everyone predicted, Los Angeles becomes a fin de siècle block party.

What also works is moments where regular folks dwell on – pardon the expression – more everyday concerns about the future.

My personal favourite moment from the show is when an agent finds a guy doing the funky chicken in his briefs because in six months he’ll be employed.

Which actually gives this character an edge on most of the show’s cast, who are now between gigs, except for actor John Cho, who had to schedule his Flashforward scenes around shoots for the sequel to J.J. Ambrams’ dazzling Star Trek remake, where Cho plays Mr. Sulu.

Clearly no-one in showbiz can infallibly see six months ahead.

“There’s always pressure,” Sawyer admitted. “There are 400 people who work on making Flashforward every week. Their jobs are at stake.”

Sawyer also pointed out that, sci fi or not, scripted episodic drama is expensive (one season for Flashforward cost $100 million) and must must compete with much cheaper reality shows, where “drama” means some Orange Country trophy wife having a meltdown.

“There’s stuff at stake for those of us who work on the show personally, for ABC and the industry as a whole,” he said.

Sawyer felt he’d already succeeded even if the series were to fail, from this size of his paycheque this year alone.

“From my own personal point of view the money has been spectacular,” he said. “And the exposure for my books has been spectacular.”

The originating Flashforward novel alone spent 50 days in Amazon’s top 100.

However, can’t we all spare sympathy for the hapless characters of this poor show?

The last moment of their fictional lives was a second blackout and a breathless cascade of future moments that will never be realized.

As they hit the ground they remain unconscious forever.