Science Channel Adds More Sci-Fi

Discovery's Science channel, normally a conventional wow-the-world-sure-is-weird stream of shows like How It's Made (the stories behind everyday stuff), Oddities (extraordinary science artifacts), and Punkin Chunkin (designing devices to hurl pumpkins at things), has been steadily increasing its sci-fi footprint in an attempt to draw new viewers--imaginative and passionate folks who could be successfully reminded that the first word in sci-fi is "science."

First they adopted Firefly--a smart and symbolic move: no other series adoption could have announced "we get sci-fi" more than picking up Firefly. Then they launched a profiles series about science-fiction geniuses, called Prophets of Science Fiction. Prophets came with a pedigree too--it's from the hand of Ridley Scott, who happens to have directed at least two of the most important milestones of science-fiction cinema.

Science's latest savvy move is to rescue a contemporary, hard-science Canadian series that was successful in the north but that's virtually unknown in the States: ReGenesis. The show, which aired for four seasons on Canada's The Movie Network from 2004 to 2008, follows a team of scientists at the North American Biotechnology Advisory Commission (NorBAC) as they investigate global use and abuse of advanced biotechnology.

The acquisition raises the profile of ReGenesis. It has hitherto been airing in the States only on the relatively unknown MavTV high-definition channel, which has four regular series including ReGenesis.

The background of ReGenesis is intriguing in itself: it was created by Christina Jennings, whose Shaftesbury Films co-produced the program. Shaftesbury has been considered an innovator in multi-platform presentation (ReGenesis also exists as an alternate-reality interactive game) and originated a number of interesting series including The Listener and Murdoch Mysteries.

The core idea behind ReGenesis is to explore the implications of the bleeding edge of scientific investigation. Though mankind had advanced to the point of being able to create "perfect" food, luxury items and even babies in the lab, not everyone was motivated by altruism, and there are plenty of madmen and terrorists with deep pockets who intended to use high-tech science for evil purposes.

Shaftesbury's stated commitment is to grounding ReGenesis, as much as possible for an action thriller, in real-world scientific problems--the show looks for questions like, "Which scientific investigations lead in directions we shouldn't go?" This remit even led to a unique partnership with the Ontario Genomics Institute to attempt to document "the reality behind the fiction," not incidentally also allowing OGI to raise awareness about its own research.

ReGenesis stars Peter Outerbridge, Conrad Pla, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Wendy Crewson, Mayko Nguyen, and Greg Bryk (who happens to have just surfaced in Immortals). The show premieres on the Science Channel on Saturday, November 26. Hey, Science, all we can say is, the more channels interested in sci-fi and fantasy, the more grateful we'll be. Is original scripted sci-fi next?

Tags: Regenesis, Shaftesbury Films, Christina Jennings Follow me on Twitter  |  Follow me on Facebook