ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
There's a rush on to mine the same gold strike Fox has hit with ``The X-Files'' as rival television networks prepare to launch a flood of new sci-fi, horror and fantasy projects for the coming TV season.
Such shows used to be considered wildly risky - even the classic ``Star Trek'' was a spotty ratings performer when it first played on NBC in the late 1960s - and they're still hard to turn into hits, as Fox discovered last season with ``Space: Above & Beyond.''
But the enormous popularity of films like ``Independence Day'' and ``Jurassic Park'' keep proving such fare now appeals to a vast audience, and the success of ``The X-Files'' suggests TV indeed can cash in on the boom.
That's why almost everybody in the network business is counting on at least one high-profile project from that genre next season.
Top-rated NBC's first big attempt will be September's ``Dark Skies,'' a one-hour series that takes the murky alien invasion conspiracy theories of ``The X-Files'' several steps further. It suggests extraterrestrials have been here more than 40 years and already have sunk deep roots into our culture.
UPN's ``The Burning Zone'' takes the plague virus scenario of ``Outbreak'' into the sci-fi realm. It postulates the release of a long-dormant ``super-virus'' that can invade host bodies, coalesce into a ``thinking mass'' composed of millions of viruses that function like the cells of a single brain and can utilize other Earthly viruses, like Ebola, as weapons against their primary enemy - humans.
CBS's ``Early Edition'' takes a more whimsical approach, following what happens when a regular guy (Kyle Chandler) starts getting tomorrow's newspaper delivered a day early - and starts acting on all the news nobody else knows is going to happen.
Fox attempts a double-whammy by launching ``Millennium,'' the new sci-fi show from ``X-Files'' creator Chris Carter, which features a hero (Lance Henriksen) who can relive the visceral experiences of a murderer by visiting the crime scene. He belongs to a secret organization that's trying to get to the bottom of an unprecedented epidemic of bizarre serial murders that's erupting as we near the year 2000.
More Earthbound, but similar, are NBC's ``Profiler,'' whose heroine (Ally Walker) also gets psychic visions from examining murder scenes, and ``The Pretender,'' whose hero (Michael T. Weiss) is a super-genius who can become almost anyone he wants - from a surgeon to an airline pilot.
ABC's taking the comedy route with ``Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,'' featuring a high school girl (Melissa Joan Hart) who becomes aware of her supernatural powers just when she's in the throes of puberty - and really needs them the most.
Coming for midseason on WB is ``Slayer,'' starring Michelle Geller as a teen-ager who hunts down and kills vampires in between homework and dates. The network's ``Invasion: America,'' Steven Spielberg's serial cartoon series for prime time, is already in progress but probably won't be ready until the fall of 1997.
In first-run syndication, ``The Adventures of Sinbad'' will go after the fantasy market where ``The Legendary Journeys of Hercules'' and ``Xena, Warrior Princess'' are prospering and ``Viper,'' the canceled NBC futuristic action series from 1994, goes back into production for another run at the sci-fi crowd in the fall.
As if these many series weren't enough, the networks are ordering up lots of movies and miniseries, including ABC's multipart remakes of Stephen King's ``The Shining'' and Jules Verne's ``20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,'' plus a slew of projects from NBC: ``Baby 2000,'' a gene-tampering thriller set in 2025; ``Charm,'' which takes place largely in a virtual-reality world; ``The Lottery,'' based on Shirley Jackson's classic horror story about a town's shocking secret; ``Asteroid,'' a miniseries about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth; ``Alien Infestation,'' a miniseries from author Robin Cook about alien DNA from a spacecraft, and a miniseries based on Homer's epic ``The Odyssey.''
Whenever all the networks lock onto a single genre and start mining it heavily, the odds are most of their efforts will fail. In the meantime, though, fans of the genre are due for a feeding frenzy starting this fall.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB