Written by: Samuel K. Sloan (FarPoint Media Executive News Director)
Oh my goodness! We talked about this concept over a year ago on one of our shows and when it came to nothing we just flipped it off as just another great idea that SCI FI traded in for stuff like wrestling and “Flash Gordon.” But, now we are happy to report that, just like an old warehouse crate that the program will highlight, the SCI FI Channel has dusted off “Warehouse 13” and will revisit the project for a new series.
Touted “X-Files” meets “Moonlighting,” this new dramedy follows the lives of two FBI agents who have the job of overseeing one of the government’s top-secret storage facilities — the same kind of warehouse everyone got to see at the end of “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” when the worker was seen storing away the crate containing the Ark of the Covenant. Lined end-to-end were countless crates, all filled with the bizarre and unusual. The job of the man-woman team is to track down objects that have either escaped or been stolen from the remote South Dakota warehouse. Each story will be self-contained, however, there will be an overall connecting link each week.
“There’s something rich about that whole concept,” Mark Stern, SCI FI’s programming VP told Variety’s Michael Schneider and Josef Adalian. “It’s a huge storehouse, a ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’-style spot described as America’s attic. It’s a great mix of continuing stories and closed-ended ones,” Stern continued. “It’s a nice, clean franchise.”
What makes me excited with anticipation about “Warehouse 13” are the writers involved. “Farscape” creator Rockne O’Bannon is teaming with D. Brent Mote (“Atomic Train”) and and the imaginative Jane Epsenson (“Serenity,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), who we will be interviewing next month on Slice of SciFi and The DragonPage Cover to Cover. Jane also serves as the producer of next month’s “Battlestar Galactica: Razor” and is one of the executive producers of the weekly “Battlestar Galactica” series.
Shooting will begin soon for the 2-hr pilot episode with SCI FI counting on “Warehouse 13”
to be another big winner for it, just as “Eureka” has turned out to be a gold mine for the cable station.
For a time the channel with sci-fi in its title was beginning to drift away from the genre that gained it its popularity, trading off on low-grade creature features, fantasy, and of all things, professional wrestling. However, with the success of shows like “Eureka” and their great miniseries’ like “The Lost Room,” execs at the specialized channel may be realizing — finally — what it is that butters their bread — Good science fiction.
Another new program slated for SCI FI Channel’s next season in the fall of 2008 is a space opera titled “Revolution,” which is a rare joint effort between NBC Universal and CBS Paramount. Based on the American revolution, the plot follows the same kind of turn of events on a distant planet originally colonized by Earthlings and now seeking independence from their former home that seems determined to control their destiny.
Stay tuned to Slice of SciFi for future updates on the progress of “Warehouse 13.”
Between “Earthlings”, “Revolution”, and “Warehouse 13”, this one sounds the most interesting to me. I’ll keep an eye on it.
It sounds like “The Librarian” plus 1. And in South Dakota. I’ll watch it, but it sounds like a rip-off.