Fox's "The Passage"

[Derwin0]

Fox picked up a new scifi series for mid-season next year, called "The Passage" based on the trilogy (The Passage, The Twelve, and City of Mirrors) by Justin Cronin.
Fox Picks Up Drama Pilot ‘The Passage’ Starring Mark-Paul Gosselaar To Series

I read (actually listed on mp3) the series as it came out, and it's really good. Reminds me alot of Stephen King's better works.

From the trailer it looks like the series will be covering the pre-apocalypse portion, the first half of the first book, for it's first season. Still hard to image Zack Morris as Agent Wolgast. Also interesting is how they turned the main bad guy at the end of the first book into a woman. Henry Ian Cusack will be joing the series as well, so it'll be interesting to see how this affects his character on The 100.

If you want a good scifi series, this is a good one to watch, and even if Fox kills it after the first season (like the networks tend to do for scifi), they should be able to wrap up the arc in a single season.

 

[wormil]

Monday nights on Fox

I'm a sucker for post apoc shows but when I realized this is basically GMO vampires, I expected to hate it. The first episode kept me interested except for the boy scout dude. I like the actor but the character is cheesy and one dimensional.

 

[Derwin0]

Watched the first episode. Several changes from the book series that threw me off. Especially with Wolgast and Edwards being friends. As well as Amy changing from a quiet 4 year old into a loud 8 year old. But I suppose I can get used to that.

Lila though was the strangest to get used to, but don't want to spoil too much about her as to why it threw me off. And completely removing Sister Lacey from the story is interesting, as she played a major part at the end of book one. Changing Sykes and Babcock to women isn't a big deal, as I don't think it should really affect their characters. The woman playing Sykes actually did a good job with the character, and Babcock, beyond killing his mother, wasn't really fleshed out much in the book, so the show can help fill in those gaps.

Either way, half decent start, though I think they would have been better off devoting the first episode to Leer and Fanning's trip in South America. They barely scratched what happened there and how Fanning became Zero.

Right now it seems the episode is rushing the story into the confrontation at the Chateu instead of fleshing out the characters, especially Anthony Carter who is my favorite character from the trilogy. And all that rushing I think will be determental to the show's long term success, or even making it past this first season.

 

[wormil]

Ep2 rehashed the moral quandaries hashed in EP 1, apparently the vamps have an esp holodeck, the protective glass cages disappear for plot, the main guy will never have more than one dimension, and they are chasing him because with only days until the end of the world they are worried he will tattle, but we're not worried about the kid or getting another one for the experiment, you know, the thing that is supposed to save humans from extinction. It's crappy boring writing. I'm out.

 

[Zookster]

If this hadn't started at a time when all my other broadcast shows were on hiatus, and I wasn't being bombarded with trailers for it during every NFL commercial break. I probably wouldn't have started watching. Big-4 network series of a sci-fi/fantasy nature tend to disappoint or get cancelled if they are any good, so I rarely take a chance anymore.

I've never read the books, but so far, I'm finding this marginally watchable for a network show. Yes, there's been some idiotic writing, as Wormil touched on. I mean, not just wasting time going after Wolgast and the girl, when any child would do, but committing self-inflicted wounds that risk exposing the project, like shooting up a sheriff's station and putting out an APB on Wolgast..and then letting him live and not scouring his friend's house for survivors or other evidence. It's only 10 episodes, and so far, there's enough to keep me interested to see if it gets any better. **fingers crossed, but not holding breath**

 

[Derwin0]

If it makes it past the 10 episode first season, the show will change to something completely different.

But yeah, things were written much better in the books than what's going on in the show.

Next week is supposed to be a Carter backstory episode. Hopefully it does him justice, as he's probably the best character in the story.