This comes from a friend and I both-she typed it up for me but won’t let me give her credit for it since she read it to me over the phone. Also thank you to everyone else who sent this in. It’s the Sept\/Oct 2000 issue (the Fall TV Preview issue with Jessica Alba from Dark Angel on the cover).<\/p>\n
on pg. 53<\/p>\n
\nROSWELL
\nMondays 9pm WB<\/p>\nThe ‘I Was a Teenage Alien’ show Roswell probably doesn’t remind many
\nviewers of Cheers or Hill Street Blues. But those are exactly the shows that
\nexecutive producer Jonathan Frakes mentions when he talks about the sci-fi
\nseries’ second season.<\/p>\n“I’m a big believer in this show,” says Frakes (who’s better known to Star
\nTrek fans as The Next Generation’s Will Riker). “We’re going to go for
\nsomething like The X-Files, Cheers, Law & Order, Hill Street Blues – all
\nthose big second season successes.”<\/p>\nRoswell’s big break-out will have to come in its second year because it
\ndidn’t come in its first: Ratings for the series weren’t exactly stellar,
\nand a renewal was far from a sure thing.<\/p>\n“I was always confident that this show had such a loyal following that we
\nwere not in trouble. I don’t know if I was being a Pollyanna about it or
\nnot. Others were less confident that I was,” Frakes admits. “They made it
\nfeel like a nail-biter. But why wouldn’t you put this show back on? It’s one
\nof the best shows on the WB.”<\/p>\nApparently, the WB agreed: It eventually picked up the series for another
\nseason. But the show hasn’t received a complete vote of confidence from the
\nnetwork. In the spring, the WB moved the show to a new Monday-night
\ntimeslot. And network execs asked Frakes and his writers to steer the show
\nmore toward science fiction and away from high school heartaches.<\/p>\n“We were directed to do it by the WB [in order to] separate ourselves from
\nthe Populars and the other [teen-oriented] shows,” Frakes says, adding that
\nthe shift in tone made dramatic sense given the alien conspiracies the
\nshow’s characters have had to contend with. “They’ve been probed. Once
\nyou’ve been probed, you don’t go back to high school.”<\/p>\nThe show’s sci-fi pedigree will get a big boost in the coming season thanks
\nto a high-profile addition to the behind-the-scenes staff – former Next
\nGeneration\/Deep Space Nine writer\/producer Ronald D. Moore.<\/p>\n“Ron is the creator of some of the great Klingon mythology of Star Trek.
\nHe’ll help us with the alien mythology on Roswell,” Frakes explains. “We’re
\ngoing to see that culture. At the end of season one, it was suggested that
\nthere is, in fact, another race of aliens, and we will get to see them, too.
\nThey’ll surface early in the season and scare the shit out of people.”<\/p>\nOf course, just how many bowels end up being evacuated because of Roswell
\ndepends on how many people actually tune in to see the show. But Frakes
\nexudes Riker-like confidence about the series’ uncertain future. According
\nto him, Roswell’s timeslot, combined with its new emphasis on science
\nfiction thrills and chills, will give the show the second-year sizzle he’s
\nexpecting.<\/p>\n“I think that the audience really settled into our Monday night timeslot as
\nopposed to our Wednesday night slot, where we were competing with Voyager,
\nanother sci-fi show,” Frakes says. “When the show became a sci-fi show as
\nopposed to a teen angst show, we needed to have our own little niche, and I
\nthink we’ve found that on Monday.”
\n-S.H.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This comes from a friend and I both-she typed it up for me but won’t let me give her credit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roswell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}