What Will Be SyFy Channels Next Big Space Opera?
Now that the Battlestar Galactica series is finished, and Farscape has been canceled, what is the next big space opera to replace them? The SCI FI channel, soon to be changed over to SyFy for some reason, has some big shoes to fill. Those shows were great! I am curious as to what lengths they are willing to go to to top it.
It looks like Caprica is going to be a really good show, but even though it is in the same vein as BSG it's not BSG. It's not really a space opera. SyFy president Mark Stern has said that they are going to greenlight a new series pilot in the couple of months, and that they are looking into developing the next space opera hopefully for the next year of the year after.
When Stern is asked about what he is looking at to replace the channel's missing space opera, he say's:
You know it's so early days, I don't have anything really specific. We're talking to a lot of people that we already work with, about ideas. We don't want to do something that is the same old. You don't want it to feel recycled. So that's the challenge of doing that. I'm a huge fan of Firefly, and shows that take that idea and take that part of the genre and reinvent it in a whole new way. I'd love to find our version of, not specifically Firefly, but similar to what Joss [Whedon] tried to do with that in terms of, "lets recast the Western in space." Love that idea, and I love that show. What's another way to approach that? We're talking to a number of people about that, but at this point honestly it's about getting Warehouse 13 on its feet, getting Caprica on its feet, getting Stargate Universe going. This is a really big time for us, we haven't really had time to think about next year.
You should go read the full interview over at i09 because it shows you that this guy is a fan of the genre, and he want's to give the audience what they are looking for in a sci-fi show. One of the points he made is that they are going to be able to do more hard sci-fi shows because they have broadened their brand a bit, they're not just catering to the hard core sci-fi geeks, but to everyone.This allows them to do more for the hard cores.
I'm really excited to see what they come up with here in the near future.
Source: i09