I was just thinking about ways to get this show back on the air when it hit me: another station picks up this show. It's been done before - most recently with TNT's Southland (originally an NBC show). Going through the lineup of channels I think I found the perfect taker...
Syfy.
Think about it. It's a joke of a station without any flagship series. It's actually a mockery of a station, broadcasting such gems as Mega Python and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid. If they can air this complete junk you mean to tell me bringing back Heroes is out of the question? Let's look into how exactly this would work:
Start Over With All New Cast
Tim Kring's original vision for the series was to have a new cast every season. Well, this is the perfect way. Get all new people in and start over. Now, you still have to keep it in the same universe - you still have to make reference to the old characters. Someone would need to say "I hear there's a guy who can control space and time" or "There's rumors of more like us - one person can never feel pain and never get hurt". But all in all its new characters taking on a new storyline. No Sylar, no Peters - no one who aquires power and eventually gets too powerful for the show. Maybe as a treat during sweeps you bring back a character from the old series. Maybe someone needs to go to Angela for advice. Maybe someone needs the help of Parkman. But these would be few and far between.
Second Time's A Charm
Let's face it - this show made a lot of mistakes towards the end. We now know you can't have people who can control time and space, can't have people who aquired everyone else's power till they are mega gods, can't have characters who keep coming back just cuz they're hot and can't have Indian doctors who never seem to have a purpose on the show. Imagine if the writers could have a second chance to do this show right? I'm sure this 2nd time around they'd really stick to their "new characters every season" rule. They'd kill people off and make them stay dead. Without the pressure of getting ratings they could have a little more wiggle room in terms of storylines. The show would be better a 2nd time around with the writers knowing what does and doesn't work.
Cheaper Budget For Powers
Despite low ratings what also did in the original series was its massive cost to produce the show. The reason why reality tv is so popular is these are really rock bottom cheap to put together. But a show where someone flys or someone makes light shoot out of a cello - yeah, you have to pay people to make that stuff look good. This being Syfy you could have a cheaper budget where you have more Puppet Master or Parkman type powers (someone makes a face and its implied they're controlling your body or mind). Even if you wanted to have special effects it could be cheasy. Have you actually seen what a Mega Python or Gatoroid looks like on Syfy?
In any case production value could be cheaper and it'd give Syfy a show it could build around that fits in with its theme. We're not asking them to bring back The Golden Girls - we're talking about a show about people with powers on a station dedicated to science fiction that has nothing else to show.
February 4, 2011
January 31, 2011
What Could Have Been
Looking back on this series, it started off white hot and then really went out with a little POP from a cap gun. What looked like a unique universe with lots of back story about people with special abilities fizzled at the end with an unnecessary lesbian sidestory and a once-fearsome villain exploring his emotions. There's many instances where the show set up something interesting or brought up a topic only to have it go nowhere. So since the show has been cancelled I figured I'd start pointing out issues that led to its demise.
Hiro Becomes Comic Relief
One of the greatest scenes in this series is from way back in the stellar season one. Peter Petrelli is on the train, only it stops and everyone freezes. What we see next is Future Hiro who looks like some type of rebel ninja/samurai. Gone is his broken English. He's a warrior from the future, evidently. What better way to show the potential of this character? For all intents and purposes we were energized to see how this character would ultimately progress into this ultra cool ninja. What happened over the next few seasons, though, was a gradual decline of this character into basically comic relief. Even his background theme music was whimsical. They took out everything serious about this character and ultimately made sure he couldn't cause anymore trouble by coming up with a handicap that he could eventually die if he kept using his time travel powers. What happened to Ninja Hiro with the katana blade strapped to his back?
No Purpose For Suresh or Ando
I've always wondered what the hell Suresh was doing? I know he was picking up where his father left off on research of people with special abilities. But what for? He always seemed like he was on the outside looking in. He had no offensive abilities - not like HRG who while powerless was able to coexist in a world with heroes and villains. Suresh was just a doctor. Perhaps it'd have been better to make Suresh a sort of character like Xavier was towards the XMen - a mentor and developer of abilities. Perhaps he'd find you and explain your abilities and ultimately what you'd be able to do once your powers were fully developed. I think the writers wrote themselves into a corner with this character and eventually decided it'd be easier to give him a power so as to justify him being on the show. Otherwise the writers never outlined "here is this character named Suresh. This is what he's researching and this is what he's going to do with that info."
As with Ando, the writers seemed to get lazy trying to explain how a normal sidekick could operate amongst all these people with abilities. The ultimately gave him a power, even if it was a stupid one. Instead of developing this character to make him complex enough to be able to survive in this world and influence it, they gave him a power because, well, the show is about people with powers. It would have been better to kill off this deadweight. Audiences would have had an "Oh no! They killed off Ando!" and the show would have had a little more gravity and peril. Clearly in a world where there are bad guys with special powers - not enough people died. If they didn't want to kill him off, they should have made it that he was able to supercharge Hiro's powers: on his own Hiro could only go back an hour or two but by having Ando with him there'd be no limit to how far back or forward in time he could go. Like if Hiro was alone, he couldn't completely stop time, he could only slow it down but if Ando was next to him he could freeze time completely.
There's a bunch more holes in this series that could have been handled better that I'll go into eventually. Knowing that the show had a limited shelf life and was eventually cancelled it'd have been better if they went down a drastically different route then just letting this thing die a slow death.
Hiro Becomes Comic Relief
One of the greatest scenes in this series is from way back in the stellar season one. Peter Petrelli is on the train, only it stops and everyone freezes. What we see next is Future Hiro who looks like some type of rebel ninja/samurai. Gone is his broken English. He's a warrior from the future, evidently. What better way to show the potential of this character? For all intents and purposes we were energized to see how this character would ultimately progress into this ultra cool ninja. What happened over the next few seasons, though, was a gradual decline of this character into basically comic relief. Even his background theme music was whimsical. They took out everything serious about this character and ultimately made sure he couldn't cause anymore trouble by coming up with a handicap that he could eventually die if he kept using his time travel powers. What happened to Ninja Hiro with the katana blade strapped to his back?
No Purpose For Suresh or Ando
I've always wondered what the hell Suresh was doing? I know he was picking up where his father left off on research of people with special abilities. But what for? He always seemed like he was on the outside looking in. He had no offensive abilities - not like HRG who while powerless was able to coexist in a world with heroes and villains. Suresh was just a doctor. Perhaps it'd have been better to make Suresh a sort of character like Xavier was towards the XMen - a mentor and developer of abilities. Perhaps he'd find you and explain your abilities and ultimately what you'd be able to do once your powers were fully developed. I think the writers wrote themselves into a corner with this character and eventually decided it'd be easier to give him a power so as to justify him being on the show. Otherwise the writers never outlined "here is this character named Suresh. This is what he's researching and this is what he's going to do with that info."
As with Ando, the writers seemed to get lazy trying to explain how a normal sidekick could operate amongst all these people with abilities. The ultimately gave him a power, even if it was a stupid one. Instead of developing this character to make him complex enough to be able to survive in this world and influence it, they gave him a power because, well, the show is about people with powers. It would have been better to kill off this deadweight. Audiences would have had an "Oh no! They killed off Ando!" and the show would have had a little more gravity and peril. Clearly in a world where there are bad guys with special powers - not enough people died. If they didn't want to kill him off, they should have made it that he was able to supercharge Hiro's powers: on his own Hiro could only go back an hour or two but by having Ando with him there'd be no limit to how far back or forward in time he could go. Like if Hiro was alone, he couldn't completely stop time, he could only slow it down but if Ando was next to him he could freeze time completely.
There's a bunch more holes in this series that could have been handled better that I'll go into eventually. Knowing that the show had a limited shelf life and was eventually cancelled it'd have been better if they went down a drastically different route then just letting this thing die a slow death.
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