Podthoughts by Ian Brill: “Bionicast”

Posted by Maximum Fun on 10th October 2007

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Remember when Jordan said that Comic-Con, where studios try to get passionate fans to become even more passionate about movies and TV they haven’t seen yet, was all about the privilege to be advertised to? Aaron and Marc the hosts of Bionicast are the types of fans that Comic-Con is made for. I started this “fandom trilogy” (which was not planed out but whatever) with a Doctor Who podcast and its four decades of sci-fi entertainment to draw from. Then I profiled a Firefly podcast that kept the alive the spirit of a franchise you can polish off in a week. I end it with a podcast that had six episodes in before the show even aired. As soon as this on iTunes I wondered how could there be a podcast dedicated to NBC’s Bionic Woman, a show that (at the time) most of the world hasn’t seen. What if the hosts ended up not liking the show? My questions have been answered. Sort of.

The show is a great example of the modern fan culture. Two hallmarks of today’s fandom provided the impetuous for the show. One is the competitive nature of fandom. Aaron and Marc declared themselves the first Bionic Woman podcast (true) as well as the best (I don’t want to listen to any others so we’ll say that’s also true). The second is the abundance of Bionic Woman that was already out there. There was enough hype and rumors to get any good fan salivating. It starts by having one of the executive producers of Battlestar Galactica, with Katee “Starbuck” Sackoff in tow, “reimagining” (which Hollywood holds at a higher value than “imagining”) another ‘70s sci-fi property. Then they throw some previews up on-line and do a panel at the hallowed grounds of Comic-Con. From there all fans have to do is come up with speculations to what the show will be about as well make some connections using the casts’ IMDb pages to other sci-fi shows (Robocop’s Miguel Ferrer has a meaty role on the show).

That’s what the hosts of Bionicast do for most of the 90+ minute episodes of their podcast. They get to indulge their own geekery. NBC apparently cooperated with the show at first, they got to see the unaired pilot, but that cooperation dried up pretty soon. In lieu of content like interviews with cast and crew the two guys talked about what they knew of the character from NBC’s promotional materials and then ended each show with half-hour discussions of other sci-fi shows they like (the original Bionic Woman show did not fall under this category). It seemed the concept of a new Bionic Woman show, as opposed to the actual show itself, was a way for these two guys to digest the vast amount of TV, film and comics sci-fi and fantasy fans have been soaking up lately. Battlestar Galactica plays a major part of these discussions. Later on when the actual show is reviewed Marc says that he wishes most of the creators of Battlestar Galactica end up working on Bionic Woman. At the point I just had to wonder why these guys just didn’t start a Battlestar Galactica podcast, since that’s where their true passions lay. Then I realized there are enough of those and in the world of fandom it’s not as cool to be the 82nd Battlestar Galactica podcast than it is to be the 1st Bionic Woman podcast.

The podcasts produced after Bionic Woman starts enlightened me about an important facet of today’s fan. It explained why these networks create so much material about a show months, maybe even a year before the show actually airs. For this review I watched the first episode of Bionic Woman. It’s a perfectly mediocre sci-fi show, with only the performances by Sackoff and Ferrer being reasons to tune in. The hosts of Bionicast weren’t ecstatic about the show but I could tell they were being charitable to the show. After all, they had already put this amount of effort into discussing the show, what does it matter if the show is any good? It’s when Aaron and Marc discussed the ratings of the show on the episode dedicated to the second episode of Bionic Woman did I see why that network hype was so important. Producers and studios can engineer a situation where they not only get viewers, not only fans but agents of a show. The hosts sounded like young studio execs when the split hairs over the show’s TiVO ratings and how the show captured the treasured 18-34 male demographic. These guys are already willing to fight for a show that only excites them because of the pedigree and concept, not for the actual execution. I can already see the strongly worded on-line petition that springs up if the show gets in trouble. The podcast itself is free advertising for the pilot. Its reasons like that why found Bionicast a perfect snapshot of today’s sci-fi fandom.