Not surprisingly this feature has elicited a great deal of response from readers. Many have written to mention shows they loved and lost including Sports Night, Undeclared and Dark Angel. I know I could have easily written another piece on both Enterprise and Carnivale. Below I have posted two pieces written by readers about shows they felt strongly about.
Nowhere Man
Network: UPN
Years Aired: 1995-1996 – One Season – 25 Episodes
Column written by: Nick Roosa
“My name is Thomas Veil, or at least it was. I’m a photographer. I had it all: a wife, Alyson; friends; a career. And in one moment it was all taken away, all because of a single photograph. I have it; they want it; and they will do anything to get the negative. I’m keeping this diary as proof that these events are real.”
On January 16, 1995, two of television’s most successful corporations,
United Television/Chris-Craft Industries Inc. and Paramount Television/Viacom Inc., launched the fledging new network UPN. The so-called “First Network For The Next Century” put on an array of programs in an effort to make something stick: Legend (an action comedy with MacGyver’s Richard Dean Anderson), Marker (an action show with Richard Grieco), and most notably, the continuation of the Star Trek franchise with Star Trek: Voyager. And another show that debuted that first season was Nowhere Man, created by Lawrence Hertzog.
Bruce Greenwood played Thomas Veil, and as mentioned in the above prologue (which started each show) had everything in life going for him. A good job as a freelance photographer, a beautiful wife named Alyson (Megan Gallagher). In short, he was living the good life. Then one night, while eating dinner at a restaurant, Thomas goes to the bathroom for a cigarette. When he comes back, his wife is gone. No one has seen her, not even the waiter who sat them to the table. He calls his friends, but not only do they not know Alyson’s whereabouts, they don’t know who either Alyson or Thomas is. He finally finds his wife, but she’s with another man. His ATM cards don’t work. And a mysterious organization is chasing Thomas for a photograph negative.
Got all that? That was just the first episode. (Tobe Hooper, best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, directed that pilot episode.) In a plot not unlike The Fugitive, Thomas Veil’s life is turned upside down, and he is all alone in a world that is seemingly after him. And all for a simple photograph. A year earlier, in South America, Thomas took a picture known as “Hidden Agenda,” which shows four men being lynched by what appears to be U.S. soldiers. Thomas was going to show it for a photo exhibit he is planning, but now this organization (which I don’t think was ever named) is chasing him for that photograph. Thomas is now on the run, and every episode sees him eluding the organization and trying to piece together clues as to why his life suddenly changed in the blink of an eye. His paranoia begins to grow, and soon, Thomas even begins to question whether or not he exists.
Greenwood played his part perfectly, as a sympathetic normal man who time has seemingly forgot, and he can’t figure out why. Gallagher didn’t have much to do on that show, but she was cute, if nothing else. TV Guide jumped on the bandwagon, calling Nowhere Man “the season’s coolest show.” But sadly, UPN was looking for numbers, and Nowhere Man just wasn’t pulling them in. To be fair, the network ran the entire first series, but left the season (and eventually series) finale open-ended: it looked, for all intents and purposes, that Thomas Veil was finally going to get his answer. But… does he even exist?
We never really found out, because UPN elected to cancel the show, due to those low numbers. They filled up the Monday night slot the following fall season with Homeboys from Outer Space (seriously) and Moesha (starring young R&B singer Brandy). Much like Joan of Arcadia and Karen Sisco after it, Nowhere Man got its legs cut off just when they were starting to pick up speed. It remains a sad footnote to UPN’s rocky beginning.
Thankfully, the entire series DVD will be released on December 27th, and finally, maybe Nowhere Man fans like me (and there’s a surprisingly good number of them) will get some answers. If you never got a chance to watch it while it was on the air, do yourself a favor and purchase the DVD set. It really stands out as an original, mind-bending, science fiction classic, and if it came out today, I’d have a feeling the show would find its audience now, since shows like The X-Files, which came out at or around the same time, proved science fiction can do well on TV.
Tru Calling
Network: Fox
Years Aired: 2003 – Two Seasons – 26 Episodes
Column written by: Michael Couacaud
Starring Eliza Dushku, the show was about Tru Davies a college graduate working in the city morgue. She is able to repeat the same day over again to prevent murders or other disasters. After the usual “learning the ropes/rules” episodes the show established the main arc; Tru solving the mystery of her mother’s death. Nearing the end of the first season they introduced Jack Harper (Jason Priestley) Tru’s opposite. His job was to ensure that the repeated day remained unchanged.
With this they opened up huge potential and allow the argument of it was right to change fate. Tru and Jack clashed from time to time, sometimes Tru won other times Jack did. The show was approved for a 2nd season only to be cancelled six episodes in. The show used foreshadowing to hint at the tone and direction of the series only for Fox to ruin anticipated clashes between two interesting characters and views and the building of the mythology.
To me this was a classic example of a network without the patience to give a show a chance to grow and build an audience. The final episode was joke. The swiftness of the cancelling and the filming schedule did not allow the producers and writers to wrap up any of the characters or plots. In fact the very episode was the opposite the villains were conspiring against Tru and her allies.
