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An early review of ABC's Flash Forward: Promising, but not flashy?
One of the first reviews of ABC's much-anticipated sci-fi series Flash Forward has popped up on Time magazine's Tuned In blog, and the verdict: great potential, but not very fresh. Click through to read a few quotes.
Some quotes from Tuned In's James Poniewozik:
"Like many of ABC's post-Lost attempts at serials, this one has a great premise with tremendous potential, but I wish more attention had been paid to fleshing out the characters and generally bringing a fresher voice to the dialogue. (Someday, I want someone to bring a cool high-concept like this to a producer like Jason Katims, who can play it out realistically through rounded characters, as he did on Roswell.) ...""How will the writers complicate the story—as they must, since April 29, 2010, gets them only to the end of the first season, and the producers claim to have a map for the entire series? ..."
"Visually, the pilot looks great (with the caveats that I watched in Blu-ray on a movie-theater-sized screen, and presumably the pilot was costlier than later episodes will be), with sweeping visuals of destruction and chaos, as well as the occasional eccentric touch."
Based on the novel by Canadian SF author Robert J. Sawyer, Flash Forward begins when every person on Earth blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, during which time each has a vision of his or her future six months from now.
The show comes from executive producers David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga (Threshold); March Guggenheim (Eli Stone) will be the show runner along with Goyer (The Dark Knight), who also directed the pilot.
Flash Forward premieres Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. ET/PT and will air on Thursdays.
By greenhornet428 at 8:43 PM ON 06/17/09
ahhh Threshold.... I miss Threshold... I know I cant be the only person who enjoyed that intriguing series....
By Manos at 8:59 PM ON 06/17/09
I liked Threshold, but I thought the first few episodes moved way too slow, and by the time things got interesting, the ratings were shot.
By gay fly at 9:11 PM ON 06/17/09
people don't get it.
it's all about the romance. so the bulletin boards can be full of shippers.
all the sci-fi stuff is only to create a buzz, but every show must be only about shippy stuff.
that's the only thing the viewers want.
and maybe some angels and god.
the shippy/god combo always work.
By membrillu at 6:08 AM ON 06/18/09
Bufff... the novel was very disappointing. I hope that the tv show improves on it, because the premise is great.
By zosolias at 8:14 AM ON 06/18/09
Shippers?
Shippy?
WFT?
By IsoTek at 3:53 PM ON 06/18/09
Threshold? There is a name I thought was buried and gone forever. Threshold could have been really great, but I don't know. It started to loose something with me and before it was over, I kinda pooped out on it. I did like that it had Brent Spiner (can't get enough of him) and Charles Dutton. I do think the aliens in Threshold could have been cool.
By mredder4 at 8:05 PM ON 06/18/09
How does one explain how all the planes in the air for those 2 mins 17 secs didn't crash to the ground? Or were pilots, doctors performing surgery, and heavy equipment operators the only ones immune?
By SCI FI Wire at 8:13 PM ON 06/18/09
mredder4: What makes you think they don't crash? Or that anyone was immune? Watch the show and you'll see that they treat this very realistically.
By mredder4 at 9:33 PM ON 06/18/09
Just read the wikipedia article about the book. Makes me not interested in the show, since the writer and the shows producers obviously don't factor in the time paradox of the situation. Why would someone flying a plane black out and see their future if only to plummet to their death? It makes no sense. Nothing's worse than a crappy time travel (or precognitive experience, in this case). It's what spoiled the Star Trek movie. I was a fan of everything but the ass-backwards time travel part.
By crone at 11:20 PM ON 06/18/09
I have read the book, mrredder4. Everyone blacks out but not everyone sees a vision of their future. Because some folks don't have a future! Some folks just black out and see nothing. The visions in the book are actually of events 20 odd years in the future. The show sounds like it is going to be *very* different from the book which could be good because the book isn't all that great. It's ok, but not great ( which is how I feel about a lot of Sawyer books, actually).
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crone:
I have read the book, mrredder4. Everyone blacks out but not everyone sees a vision of their future. Because some f...More »