Right now, it’s only 5 episodes and they’ll run on Tuesday nights starting on December 8.

Here’s what Syfy has to say about the series:

Series creator and executive producer, Russell Barrett took a complete do-it-yourself / hands-on approach to the creation of the show by developing, executing and editing the series right in his very home. He also enlisted childhood and hometown friends as series stars including, Adam Clinton (Commander Dick Amos), Stephanie Clinton (Lieutenant Sunny Hunkle), Jay Wendorff (voice of Kyle 14) and Dana Kirk (Operations Officer Donna Kennedy).

”Syfy fans have never seen animation quite like this before! The graphics may be basic and simple, but combining them with live-action elements has never been done in a series before. To say that it was a grassroots endeavor is an understatement. Russell literally produced this in his basement for more than a year, and that allowed him to create a unique series with a sharp, sly sense of humor.” said Mark Stern, EVP Original Content Syfy & Co-Head Universal Cable Productions.

Outer Space Astronauts is a futuristic comedy series about eight vaguely courageous, highly distractable military personnel who journey to the far reaches of the galaxy, seeking knowledge, adventure and whatever else they can come up with. On board the O.S.S. Oklahoma, this legion of misfits are led by a lackluster captain who would rather be planning the next “margarita Monday” than leading a mission against evil, much to exasperation of his by-the-book second-in-command. Regardless of being a comedy of errors, this team will surprise even themselves as they navigate their way around the solar system.

“Russell Barrett is a very dry, very funny guy who created his own part animated, part live-action space ship world in a series of episodes using his own style and vision of animation,” said David O. Russell, Executive Producer. “What more needs to be said about outer space astronauts who are in outer space working as astronauts, in outer space?”

Outer Space Astronauts was created by Russell Barrett, and is executive produced by Barrett, Scott Puckett and David O. Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees).

Meet the series characters:

Captain Bruce Ripley (Russell Barrett) is the worst captain in the fleet with the best reputation. He’s uninterested, bored and sloppy, yet manages to always get the job done.

Commander Dick Amos (Adam Clinton) should be the leader of the ship since he holds the most credentials than anyone, but even with his top performance record, Dick is always stuck behind the eight ball.

Lieutenant Sunny Hunkle (Stephanie Clinton) With a name that equally matches her ‘sunny’ disposition, the sweetest girl in the galaxy gets along with everyone. She doesn’t mind that her ‘secret relationship’ with Dick should remain a secret, she’s cool, calm and easy going.

Intern Jimmy Peck (Peter Burns) has been Captain Ripley’s right-hand man since their college days. A bit simple-minded, or just eternally naïve, Jimmy has a way of coming through just when you thought he was completely useless.

Pilot Johnny Boothe (Benjamin Nurick) shouldn’t be flying or driving anything as he holds the most citations for reckless piloting out of anyone (a record he states proudly!). Boothe’s disregard for safety and his addiction to speed however has saved many a day on board the O.S.S. Oklahoma.

Kyle 14 (voice: Jay Wendorff) is one of the first artificial humans to be given a post on an OSA ship. He’s the most state-of-the-art android in existence and “waaaay better than the Kyle 13 model.”

Chief Weapons Officer Andy Matheson (Laura Valdivia) has saved the life of every crewman on the ship more times than they can count. His enormous stature and history of big time whuppin’ sometimes intimidates his fellow crewman except for Brimley.

Weapons Officer Chad Brimley (Tony Bravo) likes to find other’s weak spots and poke at it with a stick. He has excellent skills, and is highly intelligent in weapons development and ammunition science, but his motivation for work isn’t always top notch.

Operations Officer Donna Kennedy (Dana Kirk) and technology don’t mix. She tries in vain to hide her ‘fear of all things that plug in and beep’ from the crew, but on a ship which functions solely from the latest technology, her technophobia gets the best of her.

Chief Mechanic Pinto (Steve Millunzi) is a human monkey wrench. If something is broken, Pinto can fix it – which is great, because things tend to break quite frequently!

Ka’ak (Jacey Margolis) is from another planet and skilled in all areas of space travel. Despite her super-model looks, her mangled use of English is a good tip-off to her alien roots; not to mention her blood-red skin!

Logo courtesy of Syfy

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I met up with Carol at a recent press screening of her new show and here’s what she had to say about casting everyone’s favorite vampire as a top transplant surgeon.

“Alex had a holding deal for CBS and I was under contract to CBS. He met with lots of people, we met with lots of people. He want to do [Three Rivers] and we wanted to have him. I wasn’t at all nervous [about casting him]. I felt very lucky that they steered him our way and second of all that he wanted to do it.  He’s a really fine actor and he’s so dedicated and he’s a really nice guy and . . . okay. . .he’s cute,” she admits. “He’s a great lead. I feel very luck, usually there’s a nightmare quotient to a person like that and it’s just not there with him.”

As far as their recent ties to the scifi community go, Carol Barbee had to laugh. “Alex and I said that because of his fan base and the Jericho fan base, Three Rivers is the first medical drama that should premiere at Comic Con!”

Maybe next year, Carol, if Three Rivers gets picked up for a second season. Three Rivers premieres on October 4 on CBS.

Photo: Sonja Flemming/CBS ©2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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According to Variety, Spotnitz is working on a series called Humanitas which is a futuristic medical thriller.  Spotnitz wants to take a look at the moral and ethical issues that arise out of our ever increasing ability to manipulate genetics.

He is also working on a TV adaptation of Robert Silverberg’s novel The World Inside which deals with overpopulation.

The ever busy Spotnitz is also penning a cover ops pilot for FX. You can learn more about all of his projects from his website BigLight.com.

Photo Credit: Michael Jade/AdMedia / Newscom.com

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The series boasts a large international cast of faces you’ve seen before but probably can’t name including Blood Ties’ Christina Cox, Andrew Airlie from Reaper, Zahf Paroo of Battlestar Galactica and Malik Yoba from New York Undercover.

Like many summer shows, this one only runs thirteen episodes, though from the sound of the early reviews, it will be lucky to last more than five.

Defying Gravity premieres on Sunday, August 2 at 9:00 then moves to its regular slot at 10:00 on August 9 on ABC.

Photo: ABC/SERGEI BACHLAKOV

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Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty), Lou Diamond Phillips (Numb3rs), Ming-Na (ER, Vanished), Alaina Huffman (Smallville), and David Blue (Moonlight) star in this series about a group of soldiers, scientists and civilians, who are forced through a Stargate when their hidden base comes under attack. Instead of coming through on another planet, they find themselves on the starship Destiny which is locked on an unknown course. Hopelessly lost in space (I couldn’t resist) they must find a way to meet their basic needs such as food and water, all the while battling weekly dangers.

And, despite the fact that they’re trapped on a ship in space, they will still run into guest stars such as Grammy nominated recording artist, Janelle Monáe, Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, and Carlo Rota. Sounds rather Gilligan’s Island, doesn’t it?

And speaking of Amanda Tapping, Sanctuary returns for a second season beginning on October 9 at 10:00. Here’s the blurb:

Sanctuary follows the adventures of the always surprising Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping), a brilliant scientist who holds the secrets of a clandestine population — a group of strange and sometimes terrifying beings that hide among humans.

Joining the cast in season 2 is Agam Darshi as Kate Freelander, a con artist and thief who finds herself in an uneasy alliance with Dr. Magnus. Sanctuary also stars Ryan Robbins as tech wiz Henry and Christopher Heyerdahl as the sinister John Druitt.

Special guest stars this season include Christopher Gauthier (Eureka) and Michael Shanks (Stargate SG-1).

Scare Tactics and Destination Truth will also return this fall along with more new episodes of  Warehouse 13 on Tuesday nights and Ghost Hunters on Wednesday nights. In October, music superstar and longtime Ghost Hunters fan Meatloaf will join the team as a guest investigator in a special episode featuring a home in Thousand Islands, NY, one of last year’s finalist locales in the Great American Ghost Hunt contest.

Photos: Syfy

Pictured: Eddie McClintock; Joanne Kelly and Mark Stern, Executive Vice President, Original Programming, Syfy; Co-Head, Original Content, Universal Cable Productions at the imagination celebration and opening of the Syfy Imagination Park at Rockefeller Center in New York City on July 7, 2009 — Syfy Photo: Heidi Gutman

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Alien Nation

Though the show was canceled after only one season, it spawned a popular series of TV movies and novels so it’s not surprising that Syfy is looking to the series as its next big reboot.

The original Alien Nation was ahead of its time with its scifi take on the problems of discrimination, immigration and segregation.  Smarter than most people remember, the series revolved around the concept of a non-invasive alien invasion. These aliens were all slaves, who end up on Earth when their mothership crashes in the desert outside of Los Angeles.

What happens next is human nature — some thrive, some go hungry, some turn to crime, some learn a trade. Some stick with their own kind but many assimilate casting off the old ways in favor of the typical suburban lifestyle. But no matter how much they try to act human, they are still aliens and that means they’re often subjected to name calling, discrimination and violence.

The Syfy reboot is being helmed by Angel’s Tim Minear. He told Variety that he was excited about the series because of the mix of styles that comes with the franchise.

“It’s genre mixed with procedural mixed with funny and mixed with big, giant scary,” Minear said. “I love serialized stuff, but this is also a cop franchise. That ‘Starsky and Hutch’/'Lethal Weapon’ buddy cop comedy is absent from TV right now.”

According to Variety, the new series would take place years after the original. The alien population has grown and they’ve been forced to live a segregated, ghetto existence.

Says Syfy VP Mark Stern, “The challenge is how do you do it in a way that will reinvent it without it feeling like a derivative rehash.”

They seem to have found the answer in Tim Minear.

Can Alien Nation be the next Battlestar Galactica? My 8-Ball says, All Signs Point to Yes.

Photo: Amazon

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Collider.com broke the news as a “rumor” a few days ago but since then Ausiello and other outlets have jumped on the band wagon so the rumor appears to be true.

Futurama is the brainchild of Simpsons creator Matt Groening. The show, which debuted on Fox in 1999,  revolved around the lives of the workers at the Planet Express delivery company. Fry, the lead character, is actually a boy who is out of his time, after having been frozen then reawakened almost a thousand years in the future. He hangs around with Leela, the one-eyed space ship Captain, Farnsworth the mad scientist and Bender the sarcastic robot.

If you’ve never seen Futurama, then reading all of the descriptions in the world won’t help you get a handle on this quirky pop-culture laden laughfest — let’s just hope they can capture the essence of the original in these new episodes due to air in 2010.

Photo: Amazon

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Top of the list, Stargate Atlantis’ Joe Flanigan, Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica, and one of my personal faves, James Naughton who starred in the Planet of the Apes TV series, but is more commonly known for his role on Gossip Girl.

Warehouse 13 is the story of two Secret Service agents who are assigned to guard a massive, top-secret storage facility in windswept South Dakota which houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and supernatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government. The Warehouse’s caretaker Artie (Saul Rubinek) charges Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanna Kelly) with chasing down reports of supernatural and paranormal activity in search of new objects to cache at the Warehouse, as well as helping him to control the warehouse itself.

Guest Stars Include:

Ivan Sergei (Crossing Jordan, Charmed) is “Ross” an EMT from Unionville, New York. Ross and some of the other townspeople begin to display bizarre behavioral symptoms — involuntary (and potentially dangerous) expressions of their subconscious desires.

Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica, Burn Notice) stars as FBI Agent “Bonnie Belski” who clashes with Pete and Myka when they interfere with a case on her Chicago turf. But after the third inexplicable bank takeover, she finds herself willing to make use of their expertise.

Joe Flanigan (Stargate Atlantis, First Monday) portrays the handsome, wealthy “Jeff Weaver” whose charm captures Myka’s interest, but he finds himself under Pete and Myka’s scrutiny when a sculpture on which he bid, vanishes in an impossible heist.

James Naughton (Ally McBeal, Gossip Girl) is “Gilbert Radburn,” the well-tailored, Trump-esque high-profile entrepreneur. When a competitor threatens his intended acquisition, Radburn’s suspicious behavior brings him under Pete and Myka’s scrutiny.

Roger Rees (Cheers, The West Wing) is “MacPherson” one of Artie’s former Warehouse colleagues, who has gone rogue and is now competing with the team to gather dangerous and powerful objects for his own use.

Erica Cerra (Eureka, The L Word) and Niall Matter (Eureka, The Best Years) portray “Jillian and Gary Whitman,” small-time thieves on the Las Vegas strip, whose fortunes, twisted by the strange power of luck-inducing artifact, take a fantastic turn.

Joe Morton (Eureka, Terminator 2) stars as “John Hill” a charismatic prison inmate and an extremist religious leader in a Florida prison.

Mark Sheppard (24, Battlestar Galactica) is “Mr. Valda” the enigmatic representative of the Regents, the mysterious organization that controls Warehouse 13. He disapproves of Artie’s methods as the team leader of the Warehouse, and isn’t afraid to let him know it.

Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica, The L Word) portrays Myka’s father “Warren Bering,” who receives a dangerous object anonymously in the mail which puts his life in jeopardy.

Warehouse 13 will premiere Tuesday, July 7 with the 2-hour pilot from 9 – 11PM ET/PT.

SCI FI Channel Photo: Philippe Bosse

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Being Human is a quirky mix of daily living comedy with the angst of the paranormal drama.

Here’s the lowdown:

George (Russell Tovey) and Mitchell (Aidan Turner) work in anonymous drudgery as hospital porters. They lead lives of quiet desperation under the burden of a terrible secret—Mitchell’s a vampire and George a werewolf. Deciding to start life afresh and leave behind the dark side, they move into a house, only to find that Annie, the ghost of a woman killed in mysterious circumstances, haunts it. As the monster threesome deals with the challenges of their new life together, they’re united in their desire to blend in with their human neighbors.

By all appearances, George is a mild-mannered and geeky guy – except for one night a month when he’s a flesh-hungry, predatory werewolf. Mitchell is good-looking, laid-back and, unlike George, has an easy confidence with the ladies. But he’s also suffering withdrawal from the blood he craves. Annie (Lenora Crichlow) is chatty, insecure and desperate for company and now that death has separated them, she longs for her fiancé, who owns the house she haunts.

But with unwelcome intruders into their world, a threatened revolution from the vampire underworld and constant threats of exposure – on top of the day-to-day issues faced by young people – the only thing they may be able to rely on in their heightened world, is each other.

Like all supernaturally-based TV shows, producer Matthew Bouch and writer Toby Whithouse had to find a way of making fantastical creatures function in the real world.

“We had to re-imagine how these supernatural creatures would be if they really did exist. We have very real and human characters with adult dilemmas, placed in a fantasy context,” says Matthew.

Toby concurs, “Jason Watkins in the role of Herrick looks incredibly normal and human, but as soon as he starts speaking, he gives across this undercurrent of evil, ambition and cruelty.  We wanted to give the vampires a much more convincing and realistic cover story. I like the idea of suggesting that there is some kind of underworld, another life, another story that is going on in the world that we’re unaware of – that’s hidden. I wrote an episode of Doctor Who a couple of years ago that was set in a school.  The Monday after it transmitted I heard reports that teachers were walking out to the front of their class and saying, ‘Physics, physics, physics’, which is what the Doctor said.  It made the kids wonder if their teachers were really aliens.”

Mark your calendars for the US premiere of Being Human, Saturday, July 25 on BBCAmerica.

Photo: BBC

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I wasn’t too pulled in by this teaser trailer for the new CW show Vampire Diaries. . . until they got to the brother stuff. Imagine the Winchesters as vampires – yeah, it could go down like this.

Enjoy a first look at Vampire Diaries coming to The CW this fall.

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