Sunday, July 15, 2012

Friday at Comic-Con: Moving Around Part 3 of 3

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

After Spartacus, I was on the move again, this time to Room 7AB, a smaller room holding less than 500 people. I was pretty thrilled at seeing And Then What Happened? Serialized Shows That Ended Too Soon, as longtime readers know that I have thoroughly covered some of those. There was a panel for Aquabats! immediately afterward, and many people around me in line were waiting for that one. As luck would have it, I made it in without a struggle, and wound up having a fabulous time for the hour! The panel was full of writers and producers from shows that didn't last, including Andrew Chambliss, Scott M. Gimple, Ian Goldberg, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Sarah Watson, and Jose Molina. We saw some great clips of how some now-dead shows finished but the bulk of the time was really spent enjoying the conversation. Of course, we were cut short to begin getting in the next group of people, but here are some fabulous tidbits:

- with FlashForward, the writers were repeatedly asked about what was going to happen next, but it didn't really matter. The conjugation being "flashforwarding" or "flashingforward" would have been addressed in a second season. They also would be flashing six months ahead in season 2, three months ahead in season 3, and eventually only a few days... the end result would have been to have 17 people left, with Olivia being one of them.
- After about the third episode of The Middleman, they knew they weren't going to last, so the goal became to come up with what could be a great DVD like Freaks & Geeks. They also kinda did whatever they wanted after a while, because nobody was watching. They were perpetually over by about $5,000 per episode. Oh, and Wendy's apprentice would have been her father!
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles were unfortunately shortened because of the Writer's Strike, enabling only 9 episodes and an unintentional cliffhanger, requiring a change in direction for the second season.
- With Firefly, Jose Molina explained that they wanted to get to the backstories of more of the characters. Inara would have been terminally ill should the show have continued, even throughout what was the Serenity movie.
- The Dollhouse comic books fill in some of the blanks because the finale was set far into the future. They also pretty much burned through the entire planned storyline in the first season because they knew they weren't gonna last.

Time for another room! Everyone who was anyone knew that the "replays" from Friday's panels in Hall H and Ballroom 20 were going to start with an encore of the Firefly 10-Year Anniversary Reunion panel, but the room they were planning to show them in wasn't all that large... and, I didn't make it in. Luckily, because there were hundreds (if not another thousand or so) more people trying to get in, they actually opened up the front half of Ballroom 20 for us! It was probably 8:34pm before they actually started rolling, and we may have missed out on both the clips and the giveaways, but something is better than nothing! I was already aware that Jewel Staite was out of the country, but I was a little sad that Gina Torres didn't make it for some reason. We did, however, have Jose Molina, Tim Minear, Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Alan Tudyk, Sean Maher, and Summer Glau (loved her dress, by the way!) present. While the recording did show that they took questions from their adoring fans, much of the panel was conversation generated by those who made this legendary "post-apocalyptic western" so magnificent. Some things that stood out to me...

- Nathan talked about how Joss was the guy who gave him the "best character [he's] ever played and the best words that ever came out of [his] mouth." Joss was also the first person to give him a chance to "be anything other than a teeny part."
- Joss wanted to tell "an immigration story" but he "needed spaceships" or else he "gets cranky."
Photo: Amy K. Bredemeyer
- Joss had promised that he wouldn't take Tim away from Angel, but he did anyway.
- One of Sean Maher's favorite episodes is "Ariel."
- Adam asked Tim if he could wear the "now famous Jayne hat" throughout the episode... then said he was gonna do it anyway, as Joss wasn't there. The original hat, by the way, earned $5,000 for charity.
- On casting Summer, Joss said that the "amount of vulnerability and strength she can convey is beyond magnetic." On casting Nathan, Joss said that there was "never a moment from the time they met that he did not think [Nathan was] the captain."
- Firefly is the biggest seller for DarkHorse Comics.
- Alan's sister did a painting of Joss protecting a firefly in a har from some evil FOX executives, and it still hangs in Joss's home.
- just a hilarious quote: "remember the time we were off the air for ten years?"
- When asked what the fans mean to him, Joss pauses, cries, then stands to a cheering audience to say that "you feel like you're in that world... when you're telling a story, you're trying to connect to people in a particular way... the way in which they inhabit the world... the story is alive because of you."
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