Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-03-09 (Saturday)

Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Nyssa  <Nyssa@LogicalInsight.net> wrote:

anim8rfsk wrote:
>

Nyssa <Nyssa@LogicalInsight.net> wrote:

anim8rfsk wrote:
 

Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net> wrote:

I watched:
 
 
What did you watch?

 
Hey, thanks for asking!
 
TRACKER
 
No, not this silly uncredited remake that Adam is
watching starring Green Aquaman.
 
The one and only original series from 2001, starring
the Highlander versus the vampire from Forever Knight!
 
An incredibly goofy one season wonder from Canadia?s
space channel.
 
Adrian Paul is Daggon, a.k.a. Cole a prison guard from
Cirron who comes to earth chasing 218 prisoners that
the Evil Zin released and came exactly 100 light years
(sometimes it?s 100,000,000 light years) from their
planet SAR TOP in the Migar solar system. Some of the
aliens are Cirronians, some Desserians, some Enixians,
some Nodulians, some Orsusians, and some are, of
course Vardians, with the occasional prisoner, being
of one species and pertaining to be another so he
didn?t get beat up in the prison yard. Apparently,
none of these beings
are corporeal.  So when they landed here, they all
inhabited nearby, living
beings usually but not always human.  Cole tracks them
down and puts their life force in a little version of
the containment vessel from Ghostbusters, murdering
the host in the process. Which is sort of amusing as
he goes to these missing peoples families, and
promises to help them, find them, not bothering to
mention to the grieving mothers, that he?s going to
murder their missing sons.
 
All these characters have different inconsistent
abilities. When Cole tells us that Joanne Kelly from
Warehouse the 13th the series does not hesitate to use
her Desserian abilities against him, she demonstrates
by hitting him over the head with a 2 x 4.
 
They finally start explaining all this in the show
opening about halfway through the series.
 
For whatever reason Cole himself didn?t need to snatch
a body; he just built one from scratch based on the
billboard of an underwear model that?s out in the
middle of a field where no one could see it.
 
He is aided in his mission by a plucky bar owner, who
is the first person he runs into. She is aided in her
mission by an extremely ditzy barkeeper. The running
gag is that she inherited everything, including the
bar and the barkeep from her grandmother, and anytime
they break anything she says she inherited that from
her grandmother. Ha, ha.
 
Cole has a superpower that he uses surprisingly
seldom, which either allows him to go back slightly in
time or to stop time while he runs around. You?d think
you could fix anything this way. For instance, the bad
guy throws a girl out of a window. Cole stops time and
runs downstairs and catches her (like that would
help.) but then looks upstairs helplessly because
obviously the bad guy would have escaped by now. Why?
Hasn?t zero time passed?
 
Towards the end, they start messing with the series
format. Cole figures out how to use his image
projector to look like anyone, so Adrian Paul can take
the week off. In a very special two part episode, the
ditzy barkeep goes to London to be chased by Jack the
Ripper, and an incredibly young Kathryn Winnick
replaces her oh so briefly. Everybody but the top two
characters it disappears from the opening credits. But
the evil forever
night vampire Zin will soon be back.  We find out the
girl who owns the bar has been half alien all this
time, and can do some of Cole?s magic tricks.
Apparently she inherited this from her grandmother.
 
In the conclusion of the evil Zin storyline it turns
out there?s something buried 500 feet under Chicago
that will kill everybody everywhere. Cole stops him by
locking him in the vault with the device. Isn?t that
the last place you?d want him to be?
 
The senses shattering series finale is both a clip
show and a will they or
won?t they show.  Cole figures out that if he just
turns the knob on his Ghostbusters containment vessel
to the left, it will suck in every alien in the world
all at once. But then he only has an hour to get them
all back to prison because reasons so he catches
everybody and says goodbye to the girl and leaves
forever.
 
And then a couple hours later, he?s back because he
decided he?d rather hang around earth and it doesn?t
bother the girl that he?s not even a physical being
and it?s just using an inducer as long as it makes him
look like an underwear model. Then unknown to them his
secret computer in the secret computer room Secretly
puts up a secret screen that secretly shows hundreds
of secret alien presences?
 
On Freevee and other services. Freevee seems to have
the running order right; Ian?s IMDb episode listing is
completely wrong, based on people leaving the series
and their storylines being wrapped up.
 
Fred-Bob sez ?check it out!?
 

The premise sounds like "Brimstone" only the good guy
doing the chasing of bad guys on "Brimstone" doesn't
have any superpowers. He's just a dead cop recruited
by the Devil to round up the excapees.
 
And the equivalent of the barkeeper lady is the clerk
at the two-bit dive the dead cop is sleeping in.
 
The question becomes: Which series was first and stole
the premise from the other?

 
Brimstone was 20th century; Tracker was 21st century.

>
I thought so, but I wasn't certain until Adam set me
straight.
>
"Brimstone" deserved better treatment than it got from
Fox. They didn't even broadcast the 14th episode. :P~~~

 
Ha ha
 
All produced episodes were broadcast. They didn't order
another season.
 

It didn't even make it through a *whole* season.

From what I'd read at the time, there was a 14th episode
in the can, but Fox pulled the plug and never aired it.
No reason given by Fox, but my guess is that they already
had something (probably cheaper to produce) ready to substitute
in that time slot and would gain nothing from showing
something that wasn't continuing anyway.

I think it was finally gaining an audience, after a
slow start, via word-of-mouth. There have been other
series that started slowly and gained audience as
the season progressed, but as we're seeing now, the
suits are 'way too quick to cancel something rather
than letting an audience build up as the story progresses
and more people get pulled in.

If it isn't an instant "hit" by some measure (or is
more expensive to produce than a reality show filler),
yank it and roll the dice again. Thus pissing off
viewers who afterwards are less likely to trust the
network not to rinse and repeat as new shows appear.

Nyssa, who is in the camp of not trusting the networks
to pull a show she likes and filling the airwaves with
crappy (non)reality shows or unfunny sitcoms