John Scalzi - The Best and Worst Television Adaptations of SciFi Classics
I'm going to engage in a bit of shameless self-promotion and tell you that this Friday marks the debut of Stargate: Universe, a television show for which I am the Creative Consultant, and if you wouldn't mind watching it (whilst, of course, setting your DVR to record AMC's scheduled offering Field of Dreams, and promising to watch all of it, including the commercials), I would be deeply appreciative. Appalling personal advertisement out of the way, the debut of Stargate: Universe is also notable because the television series has cinematic roots in 1994's Stargate, directed by Roland Emmerich, who would go on to make Independence Day and the upcoming 2012. And while Stargate has been the most successful science fiction movie-to-television crossover (SG:U is the third series that can trace its ancestry back to the movie) of course it's not the only one; a number of science fiction flicks have beamed down from the silver screen to the the small screen. How did they do? Let's take a look.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Defrosted astronaut Buck Rogers debuted in a comic strip, but made the jump to movies in a 1939 serial from Universal Pictures starring Buster Crabbe. Rogers actually jumped to TV twice: Once in 1950 for a single season on ABC (and for which no recordings exist), and then in 1979 for NBC, in the rather more well-known series starring Gil Gerard. NBC actually released the series pilot to movie theaters, where it did the modern equivalent of $60 million at the box office -- enough for the network to greenlight the project, which would last for two seasons. Incidentally, Buck Rogers may head back to the big screen; Frank Miller (The Spirit) is reportedly prepping a new version.
Flash Gordon
Take everything I wrote about Buck Rogers above and apply it here to this jock-turned-planet saver, including comic strip incarnation, 1930s movie serials (also starring Buster Crabbe), 1950s single-season TV series (starring Steve Holland), and disco-era theatrical release (the 1980 camp classic featuring Sam Jones, Max Van Sydow and the music of Queen). Flash's most recent televised foray was on the SciFi Channel (now Syfy) in 2007, where it lasted again for just a single season.
Logan's Run
The 1976 movie, in which a man runs from a civilization where you get blown up at the age of 30, was made into a 1977 series for CBS. The show made a number of changes from the movie -- including having the civilization being run by a secret cabal of old people, and giving Logan a kicky android sidekick -- but it didn't matter: The series' crystal flashed after just 14 episodes.
RoboCop
Paul Verhoeven's great 1987 movie had two tragically crappy sequels as well as this 1994 Canadian television series, in which the truly awesome ultraviolence of the movies was squashed to make the show teen-friendly. This worked about as well as you would expect, and when combined with the high per-episode production cost, the series lasted a single season.
Alien Nation
In the far-off year of 1991, aliens live among us! And run drugs! And dissolve in salt water! The 1988 flick paired a human and alien cop to solve a crime, and did only moderate business. But it was enough to convince the then-scrappy Fox Network to commission a series in 1989. Though it lasted just a single season -- which had as much to do with Fox's own precarious situation as it did with ratings -- the show continued on after cancellation though five successful made-for-TV movies.
Total Recall 2070
Total Recall, as you may recall, was a huge hit in 1990, in which the memory-impaired Arnold Schwarzenegger ends up starting a revolution on Mars. But do you recall the 1999 television series Total Recall 2070? It was set up as a prequel to the events of the movie, but was in reality only tangentially related to anything, instead borrowing a couple of elements from the flick and then going off to do its own thing. It lasted a single season before falling down the memory hole.
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Don't mock it: it was nominated for an Oscar (the inaugural Best Animated Feature award, which went to Shrek). Similar to the 1979 Buck Rogers, this 2001 movie about a big-headed boy genius was originally a TV series pilot, but was promoted to the big screen when executives at Nickelodeon liked what they saw. It was smart decision: The flick did $80 million in business and helped propel the television series to three seasons of animated goofery, with a spin-off series Planet Sheen scheduled for 2010.
Your thoughts on these movies-to-series? Any that I missed? Drop 'em in the comments, folks.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. He's also Creative Consultant for the upcoming Stargate: Universe television series. His column appears every Thursday.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Good movie, inflate-o-monster TV series, but it ran for 4 seasons. Seems like Irwin Allen made every movie and TV show back then.
Don't forget the camp pr0n classic "Flesh Gordon."*
*For values of "don't forget" that involve "I can't, so you should suffer, too."
Star Wars qualifies, given the two animated "Clone Wars" series. I highly recommend the hand-animated 2003 series, directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (creator of "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Samurai Jack"); there's also the ongoing computer-animated one, which I haven't seen.
Also, John, you undercount the number of Stargate-based series: there was the animated "Stargate: Infinity", which only ran one season.
There is The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the Terminator spin-off. I have only seen the pilot episode so far.
Wow, of the older series I had actually forgotten about all of them except for Buck Rogers and Alien Nation. AN was actually pretty good. Apart from the other series mentioned so far in the comments, I would add War of the Worlds, which ran 2 seasons in syndication in the late 80s (the first one pretty good, the second not so much). It took the 50s movie as its starting premise and moved 30 or 40 years into the present/near future.
Also, does Jimmy Neutron really count, considering the big screen feature was actually made for television?
Don't forget that an edited version of the original BSG pilot was released in theaters in Canada BEFORE the pilot aired on tv (and in American theaters after) - does that count?
If Star Wars qualifies based on animated series, then Spaceballs qualifies, too. The G4 network was showing that one. I don't know if there were any others.
Men In Black also had a cartoon incarnation on TV for a while.
There was also a Planet of the Apes live action TV series for at least one season.
How about The Lost World? That was a reasonably entertaining show for a while, too. It was based on a 1960 movie, which was based on a Conan-Doyle book. Does the book original disqualify it?
There was even a SciFi channel series made from Black Scorpion in 2001.
There were several Invisible Man series, too.
I could probably go on, for quite some time, but I'll let someone else pick up the completeness torch. (smile)
There were actually two Robocop series (a miniseries around 2000 as well as the '94 show). I actually really, really liked the 1994 series; the violence was toned down, but the social satire was there in full force, and the characters were actually a lot of fun.
I'll second Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles, which is as good as a sci-fi movie spin-off is likely to get.
Another one that was (blissfully) omitted is Honey I Shrunk the Kids.
Nurbles, the less any of us think about Spaceballs: The Series, the better. It might be the worst thing to ever hit the airwaves, and I'm including Fox reality shows.
That said, if we're counting animated sci-fi, then the door's open for Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Starship Troopers (which became a damned fine animated show, actually).
If we're including animated tv series, then both Ghost Busters and Men in Black had reasonably successful tv offspring.
Can we count Highlander? The original movie was pure fantasy, but the sequels had hints of SF.
Westworld led to Beyond Westworld which only lasted three episodes in 1980.
According to wikipedia, Total Recall 2070 was a hybrid of Total Recall and Blade Runner...
"Flash's most recent televised foray was on the SciFi Channel (now Syfy) in 2007, where it lasted again for just a single season. " [And, unfortunately, recordings exist.]
I guess technically "Buck" Rogers made his first appearance in a comic strip. But the strip came from two novelettes by Philip Francis Nowlan in 1928 & '29 titled Armageddon 2419 A.D. & The Airlords of Han.
I say technically because he was Anthony Rogers there. The name became Buck for the strip because it was more commercial.
I liked some of the visuals in the "Jimmy Neutron" movie enough to watch the credits to see who might have been responsible, and recognized the names of two (out of about six or eight, don't have the DVD at hand to check) "conceptual designers" with genre sf connections--Bob Eggleton and Don Maitz. Unfortunately, it's probably way too late to hope for an "Art of Jimmy Neutron" coffee table book.
Flash Gordon also had an animated series in the late 70s, I believe by Funimation. Who also did a made for TV animated movie.
Planet of the Apes also had an early 70s Saturday morning cartoon series as well, I think that one was a spin off of the live action TV show.
And there have been how many versions of Batman? I know it was done as a movie serial long before it reached TV in any of it's live action or animated forms.
Planet of the Apes made the trek from big screen to TV, spawning 6 inch action figures in the process! I enjoyed the show as a kid, (and the action figures ) but recall being frustrated that all the humans were now able to talk.
The Invisible Man was crafted into a TV series (at least twice, with a freaky latex mask maker in the first, and some odd light refracting chemical in the second) I hesitate to add this, since the TV shows have so little to do with the root film.
If we invert the questions (TV shows that try to migrate to film), the poorly done Lost in Space movie come to mind. "Crush Kill Destroy" is my only response to that film.
Is Stargate unique in that it was originally a movie, which inspired a TV show, which inspired two other TV shows AND two other movies which were both released to DVD (not made-for TV movies)? It's a very rich franchise!
"Planet Sheen"? I am so there.
However, I remember there were plans for a sequel to Jimmy Neutron called "Jimmy Neutron 2: The Search for Carl" that never materialized...shame, as that would've been hilarious.
Don't forget the Back to the Future Animated Series. It ran for two seasons in the mid 90s.
As a creative consultant for SG:U maybe you have some input into the show. Although I realize that quite a lot may already be set in stone at this point, I wanted to share what my circle of sci-fi friends have thought of the show so far.
We all have been fans of SG in all it's foms from the beginning. I own the DVD of the movie and I truly felt that the first SG characters were very faithful to portray their movie counterparts. It was so good for me in fact, that I catch myself forgetting that the cast even changed. When SG:A started, we were all a little sceptical at first, but very quickly we were hooked. It was just more SG and we loved that. Add to that the quirky Eureka and we had a trifecta of Sci-Friday and we were all quite happy.
Then the world ended. Well, the SG world anyway. I'm not the standard fan who loves re-runs or watching the same thing multiple times. Once is all I love to watch, twice or more starts a very quick fall to boredom. Consequently I don't own many DVDs and the ones I do own I don't really watch much, I just have them for collectors sake. Moving on...
When it was first announced that there would be a new SG, we were all thrilled. Then as details began to emerge we were a little put off by the thought of a single set (the ship) and the idea that the characters would never be in control of the ship, would never meet anyone new, and would basically be lost in space with no control. Well, since I've been watching the show it seems some of my initial concerns were misplaced, but I'm now annoyed by another issue.
When I found out that the ship stopped and the people could get off and and back on to the ship, that made me smile. As we started to meet the characters and listen to the dialog I smiled a little more. But then I sat through 3 episodes... and I'm falling asleep.
I'm on board with the concept now, I like the characters so far, and I'm quite curious to see where this story goes. But all of that is fighting every week to get me through an episode because it is SO SLOW to watch. An entire episode of wandering around the desert??? Really???
I get the feeling that the writers/directors are trying to get us to really know the characters with character history and an immense amount of time spent in the characters heads and emotions. That's all we got out of the desert episode was the fact that the soldier has issues. Those kinds of episodes happen in every TV show eventually and they are good when in the right place, but why are they doing that in the first few episodes? I'm a die hard SG fan and you're loosing me. You've already lost a couple in our group that loved the previous shows because they don't have the patience. They stuck it out for 3 episodes, but they've moved on now. I have to suspect that many are not returning to SG:U simply because of the ultra-slow pace of the story so far.
The first episode had me captured, but every episode after that I've wanted to fast forward through because I'm sick of spending an entire episode in one person's head or without making anything but one single step forward in the story.
I desperately want a new SG show. I think SG deserves to be on TV for a very long time. Don't let them kill this series because they're stuck on trying to be all deep on the characters too soon.
I swear, if tonight's episode starts with the ship heading towards the star, and ends with the ship just escaping that situation barely, but makes NO other new steps forward then I may not be able to save even my own interest in the show. Another thought in our group is that maybe the ship can recharge somehow off of the star, but if heading towards the star is a good thing, then they better not spend the entire hour leading up to that. That's the kind of thing that you need to get to in the first 15 minutes, and then move on with our lives.
If feels like someone is trying too hard on this one right now. It's Stargate, we're going to like it as long as it's in space, has wormholes, and keeps moving. Right now SG:U is standing still for the most part. Please don't let it die just because someone feels the need to show us the entire casts mental state every episode. We'll get to know and love the characters as time goes on. We don't need to learn all of that up front.