New TV Shows

I watched Clone Wars on Friday and it was pretty good. It felt like Star Wars, and didn't leave the bad taste in my mouth of the prequels. [Link]

The two-episode premiere started with "Ambush," which seemed like an odd choice for a debut episode, considering that it lacked main characters like Anakin, Ahsoka or Obi Wan... but it did give us a particularly bouncy Yoda, some introduction and insight into the series' status quo (that the Clone Wars are as much about diplomatic disputes than just outright fighting, although that's here as well; that the good guys use brains more than brawn - well, it is a cartoon aimed at kids, what did you expect? - and that the clones may share the same DNA but are as individual as you or I) and most importantly, lots of action scenes. When paired with the following episode, the more space-centric "Rising Malevolence" (which did feature Anakin, Ahsoka, R2-D2 and Obi Wan - and a prototype Death Star, to boot), the premiere hour pretty much set out what the show was going to be as well as could be expected, and it's definitely enough to get me to tune in over the next few weeks.

I also watched Sanctuary, on SciFi, that was pretty good. Amanda Tapping with a Britishish accent is a little distracting though. The actor playing the profiler looks a lot like a younger James Marsters to me. It extensively uses green screens, and it looks pretty darn good. [Link]

The number of special effects shots is a new one in the television format, and the amount of SFX is staggering: "When you watch, you'll think, they would have built that," Sanctuary director Martin Wood said of the elaborate digital sets.

Filling in the green is special effects supervisor Lee Wilson, who said that the opening shot in the premiere took three months for his Vancouver-based company to put together.

"On Stargate we'd do 12 [special effects shots]," Wood said. "Here, we did 486 shots." The show's broad array of monsters bears that out. What Wood calls "a computer with a lens" creates stunningly detailed mermaids, lizards, Neanderthals and all manner of misunderstood creatures. While the writing in the premiere is slow at times, Sanctuary is almost never not fun to look at.

I will probably keep watching both when I get the chance.