Strange Things Are Afoot At SyFy

Written by Ryan AnthonycloseAuthor: Ryan Anthony Name: Ryan Anthony
Email: mica1884@gmail.com
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About: 25 year old Tennessee resident and small government conservative. I first discovered my love of writing while working for a high school newspaper; that was eight years ago. Now I'm studying for an Associate's Degree in journalism. My favorite topics to cover for Parcbench include contact sports and television.See Authors Posts (34) on August 20, 2009

Last Saturday, I sat down in front of the TV like I do most weekends, and flipped through the channels looking for something to watch. When I arrived at the list of the Sci‑Fi channel’s programming for the night, after playing with the previous/next channel switcher, I eventually found something that piqued my curiosity. Presented in the light blue box in front of me was “The Terminators.”

My cable box, upon receiving a hurried signal to the More Info key, obligingly spat forth the description “A small town lawman leads the fight for survival after a military defense network sends its army of deadly cyborgs on a mission to wipe out humanity.”

“Could this be a made‑for‑TV tie in to Terminator: Salvation?” I ruminated, every so often allowing my thought processes to pause for a sip of Coke. It certainly seemed so. After all, the commercial made to advertise the movie even sported a typeface similar to that used on promotional posters for Linda Hamilton’s four‑and‑a‑half hours on the big screen.

My thoughts ran to a direct sequel to “Rise of the Machines,” to wit, a two‑hour peek into the brown stuff hitting the fan from the horrified perspective of John Q. Public. None of the names accompanying the movie listing rang bells in my head, which I didn’t pay much attention to. Nor did I care that the trail my logic was embarking on led to assertions that “The Terminators” is a low budget movie: “Clerks” and “Fireproof” both serve as great examples of what a director strapped for cash can accomplish.

Boy, was I wrong.

“The Terminators” may as well have been titled “The Termination of Copyright Law.”

Featuring Adolfo Martinez in the role of Sheriff Reed Carpenter, and Party of Five’s Jeremy London as former military contractor Kurt, this movie clearly identified itself as a rip‑off from start to finish. The movie’s titular robots, known as TR‑5’s, were imbued with glowing red eyes and no shortage of parallels to Roland Kickinger. Its first 30 minutes were filled with blood splattering violence of an unrealism better left to 1991 kung fu cult classic “Riki‑Oh: The Story of Ricky.” Moreover, precious little meat was tacked on the story’s direction other than allusions to a military network bringing about the nuclear destruction of cities from Western to Eastern Seaboards.

The acting was horrible, the dialogue was worse, and every critical plot point was peppered with gratuitous echo sound effects (such as the fight between Bronson, portrayed by Dustin Harnish, and a TR robot that took place on the back of a moving truck.)

To top it all off, the movie’s final “super‑robot” ‑ in a move befitting of a Robert Patrick groupie ‑ prepared for its farewell kill with a knife that springs forth from its wrist! I am no attorney; merely a humble writer at heart, but in my opinion this movie skirted dangerously close to a lawsuit.

Honestly though, as painful as they were to watch in person, the above sentences detract from and obfuscate the greater question of “How does a respectable TV channel, especially one trying to attract a larger audience, get away with allowing these productions on their air?”

Is SyFy’s attempt to rebrand itself as a more mainstream content provider going too go far by continuing to insult the collective intelligence of its viewers with sub‑par programming? Their original productions run the gamut from the forgettable World War 2 flick “SS Doomtrooper,” to 2006’s critically disliked “Mammoth,” which was derided in other circles as employing CGI animation produced by middle schoolers. Now, they didn’t even bother to produce this movie. Instead, that task was undertaken by Asylum Productions, a company that has had a long tradition of rip‑offs under its belt of which even major Hollywood studios have taken notice. 20^th Century Fox once threatened to sue Asylum in regard to the latter’s release of mockbuster “The Day The Earth Stopped.”

In the words of SyFy Channel President David Howe, in a press release regarding same rebranding:

“Syfy allows us to build on our 16‑year heritage of success with a new brand built on the power that suits our genre: the imagination.”

In what I can consider my response, it is my earnest opinion that their new slogan “Imagine Greater” should not just apply to the attraction of a unique demographic, but to the creation and/or airing of unique material. In the words of Englishman Cecil Beaton: “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play‑it‑safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

If it were truly daring to air wrestling shows with formulaic scripting and predictable outcomes in an effort to draw the 18‑35 year old male demographic, which they have a stable lock on already; if the creation of sleeper movies would truly result in success; if material riding Hollywood’s coat tails is different enough for them, I would say the Sci‑Fi Network is following Beaton’s advice.

Alas, all signs indicate otherwise, which doesn’t bode well as their rebranding can either make or break them. With original “Phantom Racer” to be shown this weekend, and another Asylum movie, “Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus,” slated for SyFy broadcasting the next, it remains to be seen if the channel will continue its downward trend or reinvigorate itself in time for BSG spin‑off Caprica.