It’s always interesting to me how fans seek out precedents for things. It’s almost as if the crafting of stories is a huge “Where’s Waldo” to them as they try to determine where they’ve seen things in order to catch the writer out at something. I said in an earlier posting that fans don’t understand the concept of ideas, and that put some folks’ noses out of joint, but it remains true. One fan recently dismissed “Alias” claiming he doesn’t watch it because he watched it back when it was called “La Femme Nikita,” apparently thinking that since both series involve espionage and females, they were identical. Which, of course, is like dismissing “La Femme Nikita” as a knock-off of “The Avengers” or “Modesty Blaise.”

Currently fans are perceiving parallels in “Supergirl” to “Kingdom Come.” Truth time: With all deference to Mark Waid, a wonderful writer, I barely remember anything of the plot of KC. If anything, I was riffing “Terminator” (the methodical annihilation of females with the same name in order to eliminate a threat they pose in the future) and “A Tale of Two Cities” (with a lookalike substituting herself for another, doomed lookalike), with a dash of “Buffy” thrown in (evil master villain imprisoned and hoping cute blonde provides means of escape) for the long-time fans who apparently thought every issue was lifted from Joss Whedon.

Then again, I suppose it’s only fair. When “Kingdom Come” came out, as I recall fans claimed that certain sequences in KC were direct rip-offs of “The Last Avengers Story,” written by yours truly. So it comes full circle.

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Received the following e-mail from SPACE CASES co-creator Bill Mumy, and thought I’d share it:

It IS still a good life.

Who would ever have thought that 42 years after filming “It’s a Good Life”, a “classic” episode of the original “The Twilight Zone” television series, that I’d return to the role of “Anthony Fremont” the “monster” with almost limitless mental powers in a brand new episode of “The Twilight Zone”, once again teamed with Cloris Leachman and adding to the mix, my 8 year old daughter Liliana Mumy?! WOW!

When this project, “It’s Still A Good Life” was initially discussed by me and the executive producer of the series, Ira Behr, I was really excited about the possibility of playing Anthony again. Some characters have a way of “staying” with you and Anthony certainly has been one. Honestly, I loved kicking the concept around with Ira, but I didn’t really think it would happen. Then, I got the call. “They want to do it.”

I got nervous. It could be real. Making a sequel to something that is considered a classic, that was named by TV Guide as one of the best 100 television shows ever made is challenging. There are sequels… “Godfather 2” and there are sequels, “Exorcist 2″… I started to worry.

I wrote outlines and submitted them to Ira. He wrote an outline and gave it to me. I liked his direction a lot. I wrote notes tweaking his outline.

He and I agreed on one thing: We wouldn’t do it unless we both felt the script was something we believed Rod Serling would have given the thumbs up to.

Ira generously invited me into the writer’s room to “break” the story. We spent a morning and an afternoon fine tuning it together and then Ira wrote the teleplay. I thought it was great. The very first draft of it. It was all there. He’d captured the characters perfectly, they way Rod Serling had written their dialogue in the original. Their voices felt true.

And… amazingly, the wonderful part of Anthony’s daughter, Audrey, (originally “Amy” but had to be changed for legal clearance reasons) was created and written for my own daughter Liliana! What an amazing opportunity! To return to one of my favorite all time characters and to be able to co-star opposite Liliana, who’s almost the exact same age I was when I originally played Anthony… it felt great. Ira and I both strongly agreed we HAD to get Cloris Leachman to reprise her role as my mother. Not a problem. Cloris loved the idea and came on board.

The deals were made and off we went to Vancouver, Canada where the series is filmed. It’s a great city. Liliana and my wife Eileen were there for over a month last year at this time filming “The Santa Clause 2”, they knew the town well and had made good friends there. We stayed in a nice two bedroom suite at the same hotel they had been in.

Wardrobe fittings…finding the right look for this “monster” Anthony Fremont well quickly. We were all on the same page. The sets and locations looked perfect. The mood and tone was right. Table read of the script… wow… Liliana’s so natural, so good! Cloris…searching for it… always finding it. It took me a few scenes to connect with the monster, but… there he was. Man… he’s a scary guy. He was scary when I was seven years old, but he was also a cute little freckly faced boy then. He’s not a cute kid anymore.

Imagine if you can the “tone” of Peaksville, Ohio as it was in the original episode. No electricity… Running out of supplies… the despair of knowing this monster could read your every thought and if he didn’t like what he picked up on… you could be sent away, erased and vanished to a place known only as “the cornfield”… or worse. You could be transformed into something horrible and kept here. Now imagine it’s 40 years later… things have not gotten any better.

It’s a dark tale to say the least.

Normally they film an episode of the Twilight Zone in 4 days. We were alloted 5. Most days I worked 15 hours. Everyone on the crew knew they were working on a sequel to something the world called “classic” and the lighting and the coverage was special for this.

The entire experience was special. Everyone treated us all like royalty. I was allowed quite a bit of creative input on this project, and for that I’ll always be grateful. I don’t know how objective I can be at this point. We wrapped it day before yesterday. I haven’t seen it edited together yet. But, I believe it’s going to be a really strong show. A good television show. A real good television show.

I don’t do a lot of on camera acting these days. I feel like I did some of my best work on this show. I hope you’ll check it out.

“IT’S STILL A GOOD LIFE” WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19TH 2003. “THE TWILIGHT ZONE” UPN… 9 PM.

Thanks.

Stay out of the cornfield.

Peace,

Bill Mumy

I’ve been pondering whether Pete Rose should be granted entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame in the spirit of forgiveness for his active betting on baseball. Kathleen offered me her opinion on it, and I think she’s dead on.

The only way Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame is if Shoeless Joe Jackson precedes him. All or nothing. If we’re going to forgive Rose during his lifetime, then Shoeless Joe has to be forgiven long after his has ended. It’s only fair.

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Frickin’ freezing. Heat went out to the upstairs, but fortunately the serviceman came quickly. It’s great dealing with a small town oil company.

Saw the Diamond Top 100. “Supergirl” up to #70. “Young Justice” outselling “Teen Titans.” Both cancelled. “Captain Marvel” holds steady while the other U-Decide books fade, but I’m persona non grata at Marvel. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.

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Really enjoying where “Angel” is going this season. Cordelia’s “get over it” speech was marvelous. No apologies. No explanations. It happened, get over it. For some reason, I could see Cordy setting up a Lucy Van Pelt-like psychiatric help booth and start dealing with everyone in the Buffy&Angel verse in the exact same manner. Come to think of it, that’s how she dealt with Buffy during her funk early in season 3. Remember? Something like, “Whatever’s bothering you, deal with it, spank your inner moppet, whatever. Get over it. Before you don’t even have the lame friends you have right now.”

Wesley is guardedly back, and if Gunn doesn’t cut the ‘tude, he’s going to drive Fred right to Wes, which would be interesting. Seeing Conner knocked out a window was nice. I’m still hoping that they can have him guest star on “Buffy” so she could knock him out a window (and Xander could fix it, of course.) And the slow reveal of the involvement of Angelus was pretty cool. Just, please God, don’t force Boreanaz to do an Irish accent again. Please.

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A mixed bag in last night’s episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (as opposed to the 100% rock solid kick-ášš “Smallville.” Holy COW was that a hëll of a show.)

New slayers have been showing up through the expedient of walking in the front door, so spending a whole episode searching for one seemed to stretch things out. Also, the First’s stronghold seems to be in Sunnydale because of the Hellmouth: He’s capping slayers worldwide and he only just now notices there’s one in his backyard?

I had very little problem when the notion of who and how slayers get called was nebulous backstory. Now that it’s become front and center what the show is about, the mechanics of it (or lack thereof) are starting to piss me off.

And…wait. If Buffy dies, a slayer is called? Since when? Buffy’s death activated Kendra, Kendra’s activated Faith. At this point, Buffy’s death shouldn’t be able to activate a toaster oven because the line of succession runs through Faith. If that’s not the case, we’ve got a big honkin’ question: What happened to the Slayer who must/should have been activated when Buffy died fighting Glory? There should be at least one more Slayer wandering around out there. Now who knows, maybe that’s a plot point they’ll get to. But if *I’m* asking these questions, why the hëll aren’t Buffy and pals?

The scene kicking off Act II with the “discovery” of Dawn’s status was just absolutely endless. Would that they’d trimmed it by two minutes so we could see the Wannaslays going head to head with the vamp in the crypt. A major test for them and we see them chatting about it afterward? Whatever happened to the fundamental writing precept of “show, don’t tell.”

Still, the episode was largely worth it for that final scene with Dawn and Xander. I kept waiting for him to refer to himself as “the Zeppo.” Still, whereas last season’s Dawn pity-party seemed unfounded (your sister’s back from the grave! Be happy and shut up!), this season’s similar go-around comes across as far more justified, especially since Buffy promised she was going to be working more with Dawn and suddenly is treating her like out-of-fashion shoes.

And we didn’t have to spend an episode trying to catch Giles touching something.

Now “Smallville” on the other hand–if you’re not watching the following hour on the WB, you are screwing yourself. The show’s firing on all cylinders, and last night’s episode brought a lot of simmering plot lines to a full boil. Everything from Jonathan Kent’s frustration with his wife (I’m sorry, but he had a point; you just don’t blow off your anniversary celebration to work on a Sunday) to Clark’s slo-mo vault from the Daily Planet rooftop (and the guest appearance of comic book’s Maggie Sawyer) just worked as you sensed you were watching something truly mythic unfolding.

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Wouldn’t it be interesting if Adam Strange were transported to Chicago because he’d been struck by a Catherine Zeta-Beam?

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