Is 17th Precinct worth airing? A script review

Two weeks ago, when NBC finally killed Wonder Woman, we, here at CliqueClack breathed a collective sigh of relief. All the same we still found ourselves depressed over the simultaneous cancellation of 17th Precinct. Luckily, our beloved editor-in-chief had the script ready for preview. Although Brittany and I read it over with girlish squeals, those squeals quickly translated to morbid sighs.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Ron Moore. The man who rekindled my 1980s love of Battlestar Galactica for the post-modern generation will always deserve my respect and adoration. However, for good or bad, Ron Moore is TV’s modern-day George Lucas. On the good side, he creates awesome, fantastical worlds that are ahead of their time. On the bad side, when re-creating awesome 1970s sci-fi worlds, he forgets to update the dialogue. So, is 17th Precinct like Star Wars for the post-1990s (a written script better left in the 1970s without the hideous Jar Jar updating), or is it like Star Wars for the 1970s (something totally awesome and unseen ever before)?

Read on to see what Brittany and I thought. Let us know if you feel NBC should carry the unaired episodes over to SyFy in the comments.

An: I have looked forward to 17th Precinct ever since IGN’s The Aurors April Fool’s day trailer and the 17th Precinct publicity stills. So, when I heard they canceled it, I cried tears of blood. Yet, surprisingly, after reading the script, my untyped yearning for the pilot quenched. At its best, 17th Precinct looks like Dresden Files meets The Aurors meets the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series (the comic or the first three novels). However, at its worst, when you remove the magical elements, it’s like every single bad cop show that seems unaware of its underdeveloped characters and believes its “cool” factor will carry it through.

Every show creator has his or her strengths and weaknesses. Take for instance Joss Whedon, whose initial ideas always sink bottom, but whose re-imaginings are always rock solid (think Buffy the movie vs. Buffy the TV show and Firefly the pilot vs. Serenity the movie). Similar to Whedon, Ron Moore has his strengths and weaknesses. While he does a great job imagining and recreating new worlds (think Battlestar Galactica), occasionally he does an abysmal job fleshing out characters (think Bionic Woman). Unfortunately, 17th Precinct combines both. The marginalia describing the magical universe provides a densely texured world, a la Battlestar Galactica. However, the characters appeared to fit a standard cardboard template, a la Bionic Woman. On the one hand, I could see myself watching the show for the special effects, while hoping the show’s progression would develop the characters. However, I almost understand why NBC canceled it. If it had amazing effects but terrible characters who hadn’t improved, could they really take the risk on something that would undergo comparison to Harry Potter and the Dresden Files, especially with the similarly created Grimm?

Although I haven’t read too many pilot scripts, the difference between a crisp, professional script, an insecure one, and an amazingly confident one leak across the page pretty obviously. I would categorize the script as amazingly confident and clearly written by someone familiar with the process. At points it felt too confident and seemingly took certain things for granted. While the initial ad libbed greeting indicates a trust in the actor, I felt it walked away from an opportunity to establish the characters. I always hate it when scripts specify a character’s numeric age (i.e. 40s vs. just saying “middle aged”), sometimes I feel it limits the casting process and restricts a character to the stereotypes surrounding his or her age as opposed to his or her unique personality traits.

So, I’m up in the air. The show could’ve done well based on geek factor alone. After all, summer shows like Haven and Warehouse 13, who started off with the concept but deepened the characters later, have both done well. Then again, I believe a show’s strength comes from its characters and its writing (think X-Files). I hate to think that two sci fi shows (Wonder Woman, 17th Precinct) died before they left the initial reel. I wish Syfy would pick up the unaired episodes for a special mini-series. Despite my feelings on the script, the show had a good cast and a world which called for fabulous special effects. And that’s something which might deserve the light of day.

Brittany: I pretty much have to agree with everything you said. Like you, I had really high hopes for this show, because of the cast and creative pedigree. (In particular, and a bit selfishly, because it’s been said this is the gig Jamie Bamber left my beloved Law & Order: UK for.)  But I think it’s a case of the stars getting in my eyes. Strip away the neat special effects, and 17th Precinct feels like another average procedural … and I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of hearing everyone whine about how many procedurals we have on TV every year.

The special effects sound neat on the page, but I can only imagine how much money bringing them to life would cost episode after episode. And honestly, neat effects only take a show so far. The characters, as you said, all seemed fairly weak and I just wasn’t engaging with them the way that I was hoping for. Of course, you get all the jargon and such that comes with establishing a whole universe – especially a sci-fi one, for which there is usually little to no frame of reference for the viewer, so that’s all the more exposition – which was clunky and certainly didn’t help any. And there were some lines of dialogue that were written as such obvious one-liners that it bordered on cheesy. It was like getting a Christmas present in a big, shiny package and then finding out there’s not much inside.

Now, I don’t mean to say I loathed the entire script. I didn’t. But it was very much a pilot, and a so-so pilot at that. In all fairness, I can think of very few pilot episodes that I liked — Sports Night, Third Watch, The Chicago Code; even Human Target took two episodes to find its stride. It’s entirely possible that given a handful more episodes, we’d have started to dig into the characters more (at least we’d certainly have moved past all the exposition). But usually, even in the murkiness of pilots, you can see some sort of potential that makes you want to hang on past the starting line. And I didn’t quite find that here.

I feel a lot better about letting this one go, now that I’ve read the pilot. Fantastic cast, interesting idea, but maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

Clacked by An Nicholson
on Jun 07, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT