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From: Nyssa <Nyssa@LogicalInsight.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-03-09 (Saturday)
Followup-To: rec.arts.tv
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2024 10:04:56 -0400
Organization: At River's End
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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
 

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