The new television series Sanctuary premieres tonight at 9pm. It stars (and is produced by) Amanda Tapping as the 157-year-old Dr. Helen Magnus, a brilliant scientist who studies monsterous human "abnormals". The series is unusual in that it started life last year as eight online-only webisodes. The original episodes were shot in front of a green screen, with the sets and special effects added during production. The television version does that as well, using fancy virtual sets and effects. It does promise to have at least as many monsters as the original, but it remains to be seen whether the series is closer to fantasy than science fiction.
Tapping is joined by Robin Dunne as forensic psychiatrist Dr. Will Zimmerman, Emilie Ullerup as Helen's daughter Ashley Magnus, Ryan Robbins as Magnus's tech geek Henry Foss, and Christopher Heyerdahl as sinister "abnormal" John Druitt. All but Dunne have appeared in other Vancouver-based science fiction series such as Stargate, Stargate:Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactia.
Unfortunately most of the content has been taken down from the original Sanctuary web site, so if you want to see the webisodes, you'll have to do some creative searching on YouTube. But why not go for the current version? Watch the extended sneak peek, or just tune into SciFi in the US or the Movie Channel in Canada tonight. Its UK premier is next week on ITV.
Related post:
Sanctuary and Secrets of Evolution
Tags:science fiction, Sanctuary
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I haven't seen the webisodes but the write ups make it seem like a more serious version of Special Unit 2, which I really liked but didn't last long.
ReplyDeleteThe basic plot is similar to Special Unit 2, but the execution is much much better. I could barely sit through a single episode of SU2 it was so bad.
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