Axiom’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

Bryan Fuller Departs for Other Projects: He’s off Heroes, he’s on Heroes, he’s off again. Once again, Bryan Fuller (creator of cult favorites like Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies) has departed the creative staff of NBC’s struggling series. Allegedly, he has left to work on other projects for the network and his short stay was planned all along. However, he did previously express some frustration over the mess that Heroes had become in its second and third season and may have decided that his time would be better spent working on his own projects. He has two pilots in the works right now, so we can look forward to that, but what about the fate of Heroes? That show has struggled creatively for two seasons and it experienced a significant ratings slump this past year. Without a notable turn-around in performance in its coming fourth season, we can expect NBC to most likely bail on the show.

NBC Debut Dates: Speaking of Heroes, NBC has announced its Fall premiere dates and that show is their lone Science Fiction and Fantasy entry on the schedule for the first half of the season. The fourth season of Heroes will debut with a two hour premiere on Monday, September 21st at 8 PM EST. It will then settle into its new 8 PM timeslot (one hour earlier than the last three seasons) for the remainder of the Fall. Employing their new “timeslot sharing” strategy, NBC will then roll out the third season of Chuck in that same hour starting in January 2010. Their other genre entry for the 2009-10 season, Day One, will also debut during the season half of the season.

The New Doctor Who will Debut with a Reunion: Matt Smith with be the eleventh actor to play the role of the Doctor (on television) and he will take up the mantel of the iconic character on the weekly series starting in 2010. However, he will first appear in that role in a fifteen minute special for charity that will unite all eleven incarnations of the character. All of the original actors will reprise their roles with the late William Hartnell, Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton appearing by way of footage from their original stints on the series. There is no word at this point on when or if the special will air stateside, though certainly BBC America will bring it over at some point.

Digital Comics from Longbox: We have already seen IDW and Dark Horse experiment with digital comics for the iPhone, now another company is looking to offer a new platform for this format. Longbox plans to offer a service later this year which they call “a digital comics platform similar to iTunes”. Initially they will work with publishers Boom! Studios and Top Cow and will offer downloadable comics for 99 cents. They also hope to expand the number of publishers that they work with going forward. They currently plan to have the service available for downloading digital comics sometime in Fall.

Ratings Update: NBC’s British import Fantasy series Merlin failed to stir up any ratings magic for the network as its two hour premiere averaged only a 1.4 rating in the 18-49 demo and around 5.3 million viewers. I’m sure NBC would have liked to see a better performance, but for a Summer series they will probably be happy enough if the show holds onto those numbers. Part one of ABC’s disaster series Impact did even worse averaging a 1.1 rating and about 4.7 million viewers.  Performing even worse was FOX’s burn-off of the failed pilot Virtuality.  It’s Friday night bow pulled in only a 0.5 rating and 1.8 million viewers which will do nothing to nothing to change the network’s mind about passing on it as a series (Johnny Jay liked it though, read his review here). The Listener was pre-empted this past week to run a a Farrah Fawcett special (and don’t expect a make-up run on that episode). And on Saturday, the Kings and Eli Stone burn-off episodes continued to languish.

Previous Update:

June 22nd – Primeval Cancelled, Wetpaint to Measure Fan Engagement, Fall Premiere Dates

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