THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 28, 1995 TAG: 9508260065
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Long : 150 lines
UNITED PARAMOUNT, the two-nights-a-week network that saw all but one of its shows crash and burn this year, will be born again tonight on WGNT at 8 with the season premiere of ``Star Trek: Voyager.''
The crew of the Voyager locates Amelia Earhart 400 years into the future, but not her luggage.
This is one of four ``Star Trek: Voyager'' episodes that were produced last year but never seen until now. UPN saved them in order to launch the 1995-96 season at warp speed here in August.
``Star Trek: Voyager,'' the latest incarnation of the wagon train-to-the-stars concept introduced by Gene Roddenberry in 1966, was embraced by viewers when UPN signed on in January. But they were indifferent to the network's sitcoms, ``Platypus Man'' and ``Pig Sty,'' and also reacted with a great big yawn to the dramas ``The Watcher,'' ``Legend'' and ``Marker.''
``We took those shows off because they weren't good,'' said UPN's president and chief operating officer, Lucie
Salhany, when she recently met with members of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles.
How refreshing. A network exec who tells it like it is.
With the collapse of UPN's prime-time schedule, was there any thought of giving up on UPN, and launching ``Star Trek: Voyager'' into syndication, where it would make millions? No way, said Sulhany.
``We are in this for the long run. Next year, 10 years from now, there will be a UPN. We are not going to shut down.''
So, UPN will press on into the fall of 1995 with three new dramas, zero sitcoms, two new shows for kids on Sunday mornings, and plans to add a third night of prime-time programming perhaps in March. To follow ``Star Trek: Voyager'' on Monday night at 9, UPN has stripped in ``Nowhere Man'' starring Bruce Greenwood, who you may remember from ``St. Elsewhere.''
``Nowhere Man'' starts tonight with a 90-minute show. Think of this as ``The Fugitive'' with a little of ``The Prisoner'' and ``The Hitchhiker'' tossed in. Greenwood plays a photographer whose identity is snatched away in a twinkling.
Somebody out there has erased any sign that he ever existed. The man doesn't even have a Social Security card. That bad ``somebody'' is everywhere, a semi-villainous Michael Tucker, formerly of ``Law & Order,'' tells the Greenwood character.
``You don't know what you are up against,'' Tucker says.
He's not kidding.
The plot of ``Nowhere Man'' has so many twists and turns that even the star, Greenwood, is puzzled about what is going on. ``I don't exactly know what my character has done to make all of this happen. I suppose it has something to do with a photograph he took. I honestly don't know what they are going to do with me,'' said Greenwood to the TV writers.
Unlike ``Live Shot,'' another new drama on the UPN schedule, ``Nowhere Man'' has the look of quality about it. Will the impatient MTV generation stick around long enough to see why Greenwood as Thomas Veil is in so much trouble?
Don't bet on it.
Just in case the 1995-96 prime-time schedule also collapses, UPN has plenty of other shows in development including a ``Mission Impossible'' for the 1990s plus shows from four-star producers Aaron Spelling and Stephen Cannell.
``Live Shot'' has its two-hour season premiere Tuesday night at 8. It's life in the newsroom of a fictional Los Angeles TV station where they do ``Re-Action News.'' The first show brings Jeff Yagher to KXZX as the news director.
David Birney is the Ed Hughes of KXZX - ``The Beacon of Truth.''
When Birney met the TV writers, he practically begged the critics to be kind to this series. Give it a chance, he said. Let it breathe a little.
``What we have here is a blend of satire and off-center approach to drama that's really wonderful,'' said the man who will always be Bernie Steinberg of ``Bridget Loves Bernie'' to viewers who were around in the 1970s.
On Tuesday, Sept. 5 at 9 p.m., UPN brings out its third new drama, ``Deadly Games.'' That ol' Trekster, Leonard Nimoy, is involved as one of the executive producers. (Starting in September, ``Deadly Games'' will run Tuesdays at 8 p.m. followed by ``Live Shot'' at 9.)
This Nimoy property - a fantasy in which the characters in a video game come to life with serious mischief in mind - was first pitched as a miniseries to ABC, which eventually passed on it. Now it's back, with UPN selling it as a high-tech action series.
I give it a 30 to 70 chance of surviving. Whatever lift ``Deadly Games'' has comes from the performance of Christopher Lloyd as bad guy Sabastian Jackal.
Nimoy is involved for two reasons, he told the TV press. The UPN executives want to spread as much ``Star Trek'' magic around as possible, and who better to sprinkle the stardust than the former Mr. Spock? Secondly, Nimoy admitted that he can't get work as an actor, so he's become a producer-director.
``I've found fun in doing this series, and I hope the actors, and eventually the audience, will find the fun, too. I have a good time doing this.''
And what about this ``Star Trek'' phenomenon, Nimoy was asked by the TV writers? Why has the franchise endured and prospered for going on three decades?
Simple, said Nimoy.
``Those of us in the original `Star Trek' did such an amazingly incredible and wonderful job of laying down a foundation that producers can build on it forever. `Star Trek' is unstoppable.''
There is reason to believe that the ``Star Trek: Voyager'' series will carry ``Star Trek'' into the 21st century. With a 9 percent share of the prime-time Monday audience at times, its ratings were solid last winter but trailed off for a very good reason. Too many reruns.
That will not be a problem this season, said Sulhany, who announced that at least 22 new ``Voyager'' episodes will be produced and aired from now until the spring of 1996. It is possible, she said, that as many as 26 new shows will appear on UPN this season.
Starting with tonight's episode, in which the Voyager crew runs into folks from the year 1937 frozen in time, the producers expect to put on new shows from now through the November ratings sweeps. ``With a possible rerun in October,'' said the producers.
The series is relatively new to TV, but it has already elevated previously unknown members of the cast such as Roxann Biggs-Dawson (B'Elanna Torres), Jennifer Lien (Kes) and Robert Picardo (The Doctor) to household names. ``I knew the show had developed a strong following when I went home to visit my parents and they put 10 pictures in front of me to autograph even before I could say hello,'' said Biggs-Dawson, who once danced in ``Chorus Line'' on Broadway.
Co-executive producer Jeri Taylor promises to populate Delta Quadrant with ``fascinating new aliens'' to engage the Voyager crew, restlessly looking for the way home to Earth. ``They'll be as interesting to the viewers as the Klingons and Romulans have become,'' said Taylor.
And this season, Taylor and her colleagues promise to give a name to the ship's doctor - a holograph played by Picardo. ``Even with a name, he will have a thinly disguised contempt for everyone on the ship,'' said Picardo.
UPN begins programming for children on Sunday, Sept. 10, with the premiere of ``Space Strikers'' and ``Teknoman'' at 10 a.m. Both ``UPN Kids'' shows are animated, with the network promising three-dimensional computer-generated imagery in ``Space Strikers. In that one, Capt. Nemo and the crew of the Nautilus face off against the Phantom Warriors. ``Teknoman,'' which will have the Japanese touch in its animation, is about Earth in the year 2087 when the Venomoid Warlord battles the Space Knights.
After the ``Nowhere Man'' premiere tonight, WGNT at 10:30 will run a 30-minute peek at its new syndicated programming including ``Baywatch Nights'' and ``Xena: Warrior Princess'' from the folks who bring you ``Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Kate Mulgrew is back as Capt. Kathryn Janeway
UPN photo
Bruce Greenwood, right, pictured with guest star Steve Eastin, in
``Nowhere Man'' tonight at 9 on UPN.
UPN photo<
David Birney and Rebecca Staab star in ``Live Shot,'' the story of a
fictional L.A. TV station, Tuesday night at 8 on UPN.
by CNB