I don't know what to say, but I had to write something, you know the usual sycophantic "if you see any film this year" kind of stuff. No film is perfect, but truly great films (not the artsie classics chock full of mise en scene) the kind of film everyone can watch and enjoy, you love them too much to look for fault.

Maybe this film isn't perfect, but...look any film that can essentially erase the whole canon of a much loved legendary Sci-Fi series, begin to rewrite it and not only get away with it but do it well! How is that film not amazing?

Maybe I'll do like a proper review or something later, but now I'm going to roll around on my bed like a school girl with a crush. Yup, I'm gay for Star Trek.

Sweet.

Sorry this post has been a while coming - Geeky Tom has been on at me for ages (my excuse has been starting a new job, which has kept me butt-numbingly busy) but since I did finally get to see the pilot of FRINGE earlier this week, (along with a couple of other unremarkable shows) it's only fair that I share some thoughts with you and put all of us out of our misery.

You may recall that I was able to read the script a few months ago, and posted on it at the time - check this out if you want a plot summary, no spoilers of course.

I absolutely loved the script - it was exciting, intriguing and unpredictable. So while I was really looking forward to seeing it realised, I was also a little anxious about it potentially being not quite as magnificent as I'd imagined. In a nutshell, it was extremely good. I think. The opening tease on the plane, with people literally melting away, was a bit more B movie than I'd envisaged, but the effects were cool, especially later on when the main character's lover is infected with something that makes his skin go hard and translucent, so you can see all the internal organs and veins. Nice.



Joshua Jackson was fine - and went down well with a fair number of the female viewing audience - but for me, the real standouts were Anna Torv as Olivia Denham (the lead FBI agent) and John Noble as Walter Bishop, the eccentric and disturbed scientist whose research may hold the key to curing Olivia's lover. Noble (yes, you may recognise him as Denethor from Lord of the Rings - Return of the King) is sublimely good - funny and heartbreaking at the same time.

Torv is an Aussie actress who was in last year's BBC drama Mistresses (also being remade in the US fyi) as a hot lesbian mistress. She's beautiful, but in quite an understated way, and brings intelligence and guts to the part.

Although it was pretty long - clocking in around 80 minutes - my attention remained focused all the way through. Yes, there's loads of action, but there was also room to let the characters breathe and get a sense of who they are.

So overall, I think this has real potential. The only thing I would say - and this is probably more with my work hat on - is that it didn't quite give me the same rush I got when I first saw the pilot for Heroes, which was just so bold and different and immediately gripping that I was hooked from the get go. I really really like Fringe, but I don't quite feel it in my bones yet. Fingers crossed though...

I got served. With my third (more like seventh or eighth) final warning from Geeky Tom that my membership or privileges or whatever you want to call it to the Wyvern Hawk were about to be withdrawn unless I got my ass in gear and damn well posted something. Which is fair enough really - it's been weeks and weeks. So apologies - work and life got in the way I'm afraid. Not that I expect Geeky Tom to wrap his noggin around that one.

So - what have I to say that's potentially of interest to anyone? Just this...I only managed to obtain the script to the BRAND SPANKING NEW JJ ABRAMS SCI-FI PROJECT!!! And I do not use caps or exclamation marks lightly, so it is a mark of how enamoured I am that I have done so. Unless something catastrophic takes place, I think this is going to be an awesome pilot, full of intriguing twists and turns, shady government cover ups, inexplicable goings on and lashings of gore. Allow me to expand - no spoilers I promise, and I won't go into too much detail.

The feature length pilot opens on board a turbulent plane flying from Germany to the US - the general sense of unease swiftly descends to terror as one of the passengers injects himself with a syringe and shortly after, begins to literally melt, his entire body liquifying. This horrifying condition rapidly spreads throughout the rest of the plane, as both passengers and crew members also start melting away. As the plane flies on auto pilot in the middle of a bad storm, we move to a cheap motel where two FBI agents - Olivia Warren and John Scott - are in the middle of an illicit tryst. They are called to the airport, arriving separately to find a swarm of agents and personnel from various government agencies and the airplane, its windows obscured with blood. Olivia boards the plane for a closer look, and is met with the horrific sight of unidentifiable melted bone and blood.



As the story unfolds, John is involved in an explosion during the course of the investigations - needless to say, the public are unaware of the nature of the incident - and exposed to a chemical which renders his body into a hardened, clarified state - as if he were made of glass. As she frantically searches for a cure, Olivia is compelled to join forces with a brilliant but unhinged scientist whose work in the Seventies explored "fringe science" - paranormal phenomena which cannot be explained by conventional science - and his son, and comes to realise this is but one of many inexplicable incidents that have occurred across the world. The key to them may lie behind the highly closed doors of a huge, cutting edge corporation called Prometheus, whose disciplines seem to cover just about everything...

Penned by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, both ALIAS alumni who have most recently co-written the TRANSFORMERS and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE III films, FRINGE has Abrams' stamp all over it - from the jaw dropping plane incident opener, to the supernatural phenomena and conspiracy theories, all encapsulated in plenty of of high octane action. Rumoured to have a budget in the region of $10million, the pilot script for this 13 part series is complex, ambitious, intelligent and, above all, hugely entertaining. This was a thrilling read and I'm really looking forward to seeing it brought to life (especially since hearing that Joshua Jackson is attached to the project!). Huzzah!