ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 1, 1996 TAG: 9608010030
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
It's out there. It's coming. Shhh! You can almost hear it making its way through the woods: Clumpf, clumpf, clumpf.
No, it's not King Kong. That might actually be more pleasant. It's the new fall television season, and it will be here before any reasonable person could want it to be.
The question to be asked every year about this time is, which will be the dominant program type among the new shows? That's just a polite way of asking, Which established hit from last season will be the most imitated? Last year the answer was easy: NBC's ``Friends,'' which itself was already an imitation of NBC's ``Seinfeld.''
This year, although sitcoms are again, by far, the most common format, the most imitated single show would appear to be Fox's ``The X Files.'' This drama about adventures in the paranormal world became a hit last year even though it premiered a year earlier. There are going to be so many ``X Filesy'' shows that we might even call this ``The X Season.''
Why is a slightly old show being imitated rather than the big new hit of the season, as is traditional? That's easy. Among the 42 new shows introduced by all the networks last fall, precisely none registered as a runaway hit. So the imitators have had to glom onto something else.
``The X Files'' is all about a couple of neurotic dunces who hopscotch the nation checking out reports of mysterious, creepy and technically unexplainable phenomena. There's a scare around every corner and a conspiracy under every bed. Boogey boogey boogey, as Groucho Marx would say.
ABC appears to have the smallest number of ``X''-influenced programs. Just one, really: ``Sabrina, The Teenage Witch,'' a sitcom about a 16-year-old girl who, says ABC, learns that she comes from ``a long line of witches'' and that her household pet is ``a mischievous warlock sentenced to do penance in the form of a household cat.''
TV critics will be sentenced to do penance by watching it, at least once.
NBC, most shameless and (perhaps therefore) most successful of the networks, has decided to devote its entire prime-time schedule on Saturdays to ``X Files'' clones.
First off is ``Dark Skies,'' described by NBC as a ``unique and disturbing revision of American history.'' It seems that many of the seminal events of the past three decades have been influenced by an alien invasion force that arrived here prior to the '60s.
The first episode will answer, albeit flippantly, a nagging national question. Who killed John F. Kennedy? Why, naturally, it was creatures from outer space!
Next on NBC's Saturday bill of fright comes ``The Pretender,'' a fantasy series about a ``super genius whose exceptional intelligence allows him to master virtually any technical profession.'' He can be a doctor one day and a computer repairman the next. Though he sounds like a menace to society, which is up to its neck in menaces already, he's the hero of the show because he functions as ``a one-man vigilante force for justice.''
Finally, the third hour of NBC's triple threat: ``Profiler,'' about Samantha the Psychic, a soothsayer who says most of her sooth for the police force. When they come up against a particularly ghastly murder, Samantha is brought in to pick up the vibes and recreate the crime in her mind. Presumably, she also entertains at cocktail parties.
NBC's movies scheduled for the season include films about an angel coming to America, people who dabble in virtual reality, spooks bewitching a small town and an asteroid ``on a collision course with Earth.'' One can hope it will head straight for Burbank, headquarters of NBC Entertainment.
CBS, the most desperate network, has its ``X File'' ready to go as well: ``Early Edition'' is about a man who opens his front door one morning to make a startling discovery: He has received tomorrow's newspaper 24 hours early! What does that mean? (A) That he has a chance at changing history and (B) He gets an advance peek at what's on sale at Bloomingdale's.
Does this stuff sound fascinating? Or pathetically derivative? Either way, file the new season under ``X'' for ``X Files'' and not ``O'' for ``Original.''
- Washington Post Writers Group
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB