Science fiction fans should have plenty to cheer about Monday, as a promising new series debuts and a dependable show launches a season of new episodes on a new network.
The first is the most ambitious: “Invasion America,” is an animated series created by Steven Spielberg and developed by veteran television and film producer Harve Bennett, who helped bring four “Star Trek” movies to the big screen.
The series premieres with the first of a two-part episode on the WB network Monday at 8 p.m. on WGN-Ch. 9. Part 2 airs at 8 p.m. Tuesday after “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” where the series will run for three weeks, ending in a 90-minute finale on July 5.
Billed as the first dramatic animated prime-time series, “Invasion America” uses the genre in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the groundwork laid by “The Simpsons,” which showed that cartoons can be acceptable storytelling forms and not just pacifiers for kids.
The series’ artwork is a sophisticated mix of computer-generated images and movie-quality cell animation that is pleasing to the eye and fuels the story.
The storyline is relatively simple but fanciful: A moody 17-year-old learns he’s not only an alien/human hybrid, but a kid who is tabbed to be the leader of an intergalactic movement to save our planet from conquest by a far-flung civilization that is part of his heritage.
“If you had told me yesterday there were aliens coming to invade America, I would have said no way. I was wrong,” says boy leader David Carter (voiced by newcomer Mikey Kelley).
David’s father is Cale Oosha (Lorenzo Lamas) from the planet Tyrus, whose human-looking natives have inhabited our planet for the past 50 years, supposedly for friendly exploration.
But Cale’s uncle, the Dragit (Tony Jay), secretly laid plans for the capture of Earth. Forced to flee into the Utah desert with his mentor Rafe (Edward Albert), the two are rescued by an Earth woman (Kath Soucie) who would become David’s mother. When David was 2 years old, his dad left for the homeworld to do battle with the evil Dragit.
Lots of familiar voices populate “Invasion America,” including Leonard Nimoy, Robert Urich, Ronny Cox, Kristy McNichol and Rider Strong of ABC’s “Boy Meets World.” The story moves along a lot quicker in Tuesday’s action-packed episode, which should set the tone for the entire series. Note: There is enough violence to warrant a TV-PG rating.
Meanwhile, starting its fourth season is “Sliders,” the former Fox sci-fi series about a quartet of dimension-hopping adventurers. It’s now on the Sci-Fi Channel with more emphasis on science fiction storylines, rather than the sci-fi hints sprinkled here and there in previous episodes.
“Sliders,” which has taken viewers to alternative Earths that had dinosaurs, and water-depleted, Wild-West or Ice-Age settings, and included practicing witches and warlocks, was a fan favorite when it was on Fox from 1995 to ’97. Sci-Fi picked up the 48 episodes Fox aired and commissioned 22 new ones.
Monday’s episode, which airs at 8 p.m., shows the effects of a reduced budget requested by the Sci-Fi Channel ($1 million per episode, as opposed to $1.3 million on Fox). But it was never the special effects that made “Sliders” so enjoyable–it was the stories and cast, which is once again led by the appealing Jerry O’Connell as young inventor Quinn Mallory.
“Sliders” was based on the hook that Quinn and his lost friends were searching for their original Earth. In Monday’s episode (the first of two new shows that night) he finds it, but it has been invaded by a brutal species called the Kromaggs, a villainous race introduced in a previous episode.
Quinn, aided by startling new information about his past, must “slide” to save his own world along with companions Rembrandt Brown (Cleavant Derricks) and Maggie Beckett (Kari Wuhrer). Sabrina Lloyd, who played Wade Wells, didn’t return; John Rhys-Davies, who played Prof. Maximilian Arturo, was killed off the previous season.
Quinn also learns he has a brother and O’Connell’s brother Charlie joins the cast in upcoming weeks.
– Where’s the paint brush: A&E’s wonderful “Biography” series offers a breezy and revealing hour on pop artist/professional socialite Andy Warhol at 7 p.m. Monday. “Andy Warhol: A Life at the Edge” paints a portrait of an insecure, self-conscious man so hungry for the spotlight that he sells himself out in order to stay in it.
There are a lot of great archival photographs and film footage of the man who turned paintings of soup cans into a movement. Warhol himself says in an old interview that “there’s not very much to say about me.” Other interviewees include his two brothers, Warhol gadfly Debbie Harry of the punk rock group Blondie and actor Dennis Hopper, who starred in some early Warhol movies, including the immortal “Tarzan and Jane Regained . . . Sort Of.”
