Screen Rant » journeyman

Kevin McKidd Talks Call of Duty & Rome Movies

Rob Keyes — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:17:50 +0000

Kevin McKidd is one of those actors who deserves some major roles and more spotlight attention. He was incredible in the way-too-short HBO series, Rome, and is excellent in all of his other work including Trainspotting, Journeyman, amongst roles in many other films.

In addition to this acting work, comic book fans may know him for being the long-rumored candidate to play Thor for a very long time back in the day and video game fans will recognize him for voicing (and providing the face) of Captain “Soap” MacTavish in what is now know as the most successfully launched video game ever: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

With the insane success (financially and critically) of the latest Activision video game and the news over the last several months of them planning a Call of Duty movie, those plans will surely be getting a kickstart now. Read below to find out what McKidd has to say about Rome’s return in the form of a full-length film and of his interest in the Call of Duty movie.

We’ve known that the Rome movie was happening for quite some time now and with many fans picking up the show on Home Video since the series finished its run on HBO, the fanbase and desire to see more of Lucius Vorenus again is growing.

McKidd touched on the status of Rome project and it’s all sounding good at the moment and clarified that his character isn’t dead although the end of the series leaves viewers believing it to be a likely outcome.

“There is a script that is being shopped and it’s supposedly very good, I haven’t seen it, but I am definitely going to be a part of the movie… He is very much alive, so that should be a fun story to tell.”

To find out what McKidd says about his involvement in Modern Warfare 2 and his interest in the Call of Duty movie, check out our post at Game Rant.

To get your McKidd fix now, you can watch him Grey’s Anatomy and as Poseidon in the upcoming Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

Source: NY Post

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Journeyman: Here’s How It Would Have Ended

Bruce Simmons — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:56:40 +0000

NBC quoted low ratings and played the ‘writers strike’ card to cancel Journeyman.

After the series got cut off at the 13 episode mark, viewers were left in the dark as to where the story was headed. This was particularly annoying since a few different strands of story were developing during the shortened season.

The creator of Journeyman – Kevin Falls, in an interview over on AICN had the opportunity to let some of his plans for Dan Vasser out of the bag. Though this sounds like a good thing, the down side to this is that the interview wasn’t going to hit the ‘net until they knew for sure that we wouldn’t be seeing any more of Dan Vasser…

Crap.

Here’s where the show would have gone had it stayed on the air…

Katie and Dan were going to split up for a while. Jack (Dan’s brother) and Dan were going to live together and then Dan and Katie would get back together.

Livia (Dan’s time traveling ex-fiancée from 1948) was going to die in episode 20. Dan was going to save her in 21. And in episode 22, Dan would come back to his house in the present and find someone else would be living there. Katie (his wife) and Zack (his son) would be gone and this time Dan would have no idea how to get his family back.

The end game of the series would have had some of the key people Dan had helped in “the past” coming together in a “Rube Goldberg-inspired climax” kind of ending for a big save on a bigger storyline involving everyone. That would have been neat to see.

Through it all, there was something bigger than the government that was tossing Dan and the other travelers around time. The underlying reasons for the time travel leaned towards a good purpose.

Livia’s original travel purpose was to get Katie and Dan together, but then the writers felt that Livia was keeping some secret from Dan that was huge and tragic.

Livia only went forward in time and Dan backward because they each had a specific and separate purpose. One of the side affects was the tragi-romantic notion of Dan and Livia never being able to live in the same time.

Sooner or later in 2008, Dan would have encountered an elderly Livia.

That would have been a great tale to watch unfold.

Kevin Falls went on to lament that he wasn’t so much bitter towards NBC as he was towards the mainstream critics who dismissed the show without a second nod (Screen Rant not included, since we loved the series). He felt they were doing some of the best television out there at the time and he was right.

(Click to continue “Journeyman: Here’s How It Would Have Ended”)

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Do Networks Ignore Sci Fi Fans?

Bruce Simmons — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 22:04:56 +0000

Have you ever wondered why some TV shows are canceled due to supposedly low ratings when it seems like they have a strong following? Sometimes there are obvious reasons – like when CBS scheduled Jericho up against Fox’s American Idol, or Journeyman possibly being a victim of bad timing with the writers’ strike and too many reality show hitting the networks.

One of the systems that has the biggest impact on what we get to watch on television is called the Nielsen Ratings. It was founded by Arthur Nielsen in 1923 and through statistical sampling measurements, extrapolates what audiences are watching across the country. This information is important to advertisers who pay dearly for much coveted time slots in which they know the audience is watching.

Neilsen Ratings measure what programs selected “families” actually sit down to watch. This tells me that networks tend to rely on the black and white data, and do not consider what the “unnoticed” audience watches. Neilsen families are the ones who made shows like 60 Minutes, Seinfeld, ER, Survivor, CSI & American Idol the top rated shows in their respective time slots. I’m no expert, but this sounds like the folks that enjoy these shows may not be sci fi fans. Sci fi is a smaller niche, but fans of sci fi shows tend to be extremely loyal and dedicated to a series.

A case in point is an impromptu survey I came across on TVGuide.com. They had a list of shows that have been canceled recently and asked readers for their thoughts.

Of eight canceled shows, the readership wanted 4 of them back.

The survey said they should leave Bionic Woman dead. (Imagine that… ask Vic, he’ll tell ya about that wonderful, plotless show.) They also thought that Cavemen should remain dead. Oh Lordy, not just leave it – bury it and delete all the media it’s recorded on. Leave the cavemen to the Geico commercials, which really are very funny and have even themselves taken a pot shot at the now canceled series.

Among the shows they wanted brought back was one of my newest addictions: Friday Night Lights. A gritty series focusing on a rural town’s high school football team and the challenges that teams teens face.. One of the other shows they wanted to see return is Journeyman. (Ah, there is some sanity out there and Vic is not alone.)

Knowing a TV series’ demographics has it’s merit, but Nielsen’s “sampling methods” have been (rightly) criticized since the selected families know who they are, defeating the premise of double blind testing. Neilsen ratings also refuse to count recorded programming for later viewing as part of its sampling methods. This used to apply to VCRs (remember those?) but now includes Digital Recording Devices like Tivo. This does make some sense, since we skip commercials watching recorded shows, but it could spur advertisers to think of more creative ways to put ads in front of viewers while the show is on.

I’m optimistically pessimistic that someday statistics from a more thorough random sampling of the viewership will happen and network execs might just use their gut feelings about shows.

Until then, it may be some time before the studios recognize that they are missing an important segment of the population: the sci fi appreciating fan.

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Journeyman Series Finale: Quality To The End

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:12:26 +0000

So. Journeyman has really reached its end… and that’s a travesty. I wrote about NBC’s cancellation of Journeyman a week ago and there was a lot of passionate response to that piece.

In this excellent final episode, titled Perfidia, Dan (Kevin McKidd) meets someone who claims to be another time traveler on one of his trips. The problem is that Dan has appeared in an insane asylum, putting everything he (Evan) says in doubt. Evan is infatuated with a woman he met in college who doesn’t remember him now, years later.

Dan’s brother Jack, who now believes Dan time travels is leaning heavy on the professor/scientist who obviously knows what the heck is going on for answers.

Katie’s annoying sister taints the show with yet another appearance.

Livia is pretty much dead weight. Again.

Be warned, spoilers follow…

Dan and Livia keep returning to see Evan in the very recent past (this same year) and assume that their mission is to keep him from being killed. He’s been traveling over and over again to try to reconnect with the woman he was married to for 20 years after altering time so he never meets her in order to save her life. He’s madly in love and has been trying to continually change things so that he can at least see a spark of recognition from her.

When he finally does, he drops dead for no apparent reason immediately afterwards. At least he dies happy…

I’m really glad that the producers saw this coming and were able to end Journeyman with a sense of closure instead of an abrupt, go nowhere episode.

As it turns out Dan started time-traveling almost immediately upon Evan’s death, indicating that no new travelers can enter the loop and that the number of people who can do this is limited. Dan also finally meets up with the suddenly ready to talk professor in an elevator, where we learn that he is not behind this. He has merely been studying and following the phenomenon.

He tells Dan that no one is behind his trips – it’s actually intrinsic to Dan himself and has been over the years to a very few people. He also shares the dangers of revealing this ability to loved ones for much the same reason that superheroes have secret identities: There are people out there who if they found out about this would stop at no end to get control of it.

In the end, it turns out that certain sedatives can restrict the ability to travel through time. Evan was in the same place and time for many months while sedated. Dan and Katie have a talk about it close to the end of the episode and he decides that despite the strain on his family and marriage it’s too important to set aside.

Although Katie wants a normal life, she abides by his decision, and in the final and emotional scene (for both the characters and the fans), she finally gets to see him vanish.

I’m very saddened that this show had to end, but I’m happy that the series ended in a quality way with it’s head held high.

R.I.P. Journeyman – We hardly knew you.

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R.I.P. Journeyman

Vic Holtreman — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 13:51:14 +0000

People really disappoint me. How in the heck could a show as great as Journeyman have ratings so low that it gets canceled?

It seems the deadline for NBC to renew the show was yesterday, Dec. 11th, and they let it come and go without doing a thing. On their side is the fact that this week’s episode, without a Heroes lead-in, had the least number of people who tuned in to watch the show so far.

And no, this wasn’t due to the writers strike… it was just low ratings.

At least the producers gave the series final episode (which has yet to air) a sense of closure instead of just having it end abruptly as Jericho did last season. And I will be consoled if Bionic Woman also ends up getting dropped from the schedule, but that’s still up in the air.

Plus, since that show isn’t as good as Journeyman that probably means more people are watching it. Yeesh.

I wouldn’t waste my time with any “save this show” sort of campaign as I doubt it will do any good, unfortunately.

Here’s what I want to know: When the heck are the networks going to start to take DVR data into consideration when it comes to weekly rankings? I know I don’t watch TV shows live any more and my understanding is that rankings are based only on live viewing. In a way that makes sense I suppose, since when I watch recorded shows I skip through most of the commercials and that’s what they really care about.

I mean if you go to the Tivo website you’ll see that Journeyman ranks 13 in the top 25 recorded shows. That’s pretty damned good as far as I’m concerned.

On the other hand, going back to my “people disappoint me” comment: Survivor: China is ranked number 3.

Source: SciFiWire

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Annoying News Of The Day: Journeyman Ends At Episode 12

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:04:08 +0000

It looks like NBC’s excellent time traveler series Journeyman is a victim of not only the writers’ strike, but poor ratings as well.

Kevin Falls, creator of the series:

“Episode 12 is the end of our order, and let’s not kid ourselves. It’s a longshot that we would get a back nine, given the strike and our questionable numbers”

“Numbers” meaning ratings and “back nine” meaning the remaining number of episodes required to complete a full season.

Unfortunately for Journeyman, it follows the weaker than expected Heroes this season on Monday nights and goes up against one of the seemingly (to me) infinite number of CSI spinoffs (in this case, CSI: Miami).

I’ve thought this show was outstanding from the first episode, except for the lead character’s seeming inability to pin down his ex-fiancee on what and who exactly is behind their “missions.” I like the actors, the dialog and the story, not only in and of itself but the unveiling of it from week to week. If this will be it for the show I’ll be really bummed.

And what about the possibility of leaving the viewers hanging with an unanswered mystery the way CBS did with Jericho? Regarding how the 12th and supposedly final episode was written:

“It wouldn’t answer every question, but it would give you a lot to chew on, We would give you some answers, and we’d withhold others. We didn’t want to turn over every card. But I think people will find it satisfying, and it’s really good… you’ll get some of the answers to what goes on…”

Falls also says that Dan (Kevin McKidd) will encounter another time traveler in that 12th episode who will make a number of things clear.

Tonight the 10th episode will be airing on NBC following Heroes.

Source: SciFiWire

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Heroes & Journeyman Season Premieres = Good Stuff

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 05:40:18 +0000

I don’t know about NBC’s new show Chuck, but at least with the season two premiere of Heroes and the series premiere of Journeyman they’re on the right track. The two shows packed a solid one-two punch of mystery/sci-fi entertainment in their premiere episodes of the 2007 Fall season.

There will be some pretty good spoilers following, so stop reading if you don’t want to know.

Heroes began with the familiar voiceover combined with quick scenes from season one intercut with scenes from future episodes, showing us that Sylar is indeed still alive as well as giving us a peek at a few of the new characters. As a matter of fact, by the end of the show we see that everyone who was at the final showdown last season survived. The episode picks up four months after the events of last season’s finale.

Nathan Petrelli (flying guy) who was a senator with Presidential aspirations in season one is now about one step away from homeless flying guy. He’s sporting a thick beard, drinking heavily, and certainly seems to no longer be a senator. My eyebrow definitely raised when he appeared: How the heck did he survive the explosion from the finale? He took his nuclear overloading brother Peter way up into the sky to explode out of harm’s way… not knowing exactly when Peter would explode, I can’t see Nathan having let him go in midair to drop while flying away.

We also see that mind reader policeman Matt Parkman is now trying to get into the NYPD, and his marriage finally fell apart and he’s now divorced. This bothered me more than a bit considering the fact that his wife was pregnant at the close of last season, and he’s now playing father to Maya, the little girl who is the human equivalent of Google Maps for Mutants. Our non-genetically blessed buddy Mohinder Suresh is back in India pitching his ideas much like Daniel Jackson did in the original Stargate movie: to a small and unbelieving audience. I actually think that particular scene was reminiscent of that scene in Stargate on purpose.

Fan favorite Hiro went back in time to Feudal Japan to discover that his hero Kensei, isn’t, while his father and Peter’s mother have received death threats in the form of a mysterious symbol in red painted on photos of them. Little Maya is seeing the same symbol in nightmares and it is related to the baddie mentioned in the finale who supposedly makes Sylar look like Mr. Rogers.

The funniest bits had to do with Claire and her family. They’ve relocated to Costa Verde, California from Texas and she has strict instructions to “not stand out” from her father. He’s now working at the equivalent of Kinko’s and there’s a funny scene later in the show between him and his overzealous manager/boss. One thing that I found odd was how they’re able to afford to live in a gigantic house in coastal California on the salary of a Kinko’s employee…

Minor issues aside, the show has the same feel as last year and was pretty good at sucking in the viewer to see what happens next. It kind of feels like the new 24 as far as cliffhangers that make you want to keep watching.

Journeyman was on right afterwards, and right from the opening scenes I could tell that this was not a schlock TV show cashing in on the current sci-fi/mystery trend. We got a feel for the main characters within minutes with acting and direction that was subdued and not at all cheesy. The lead character is Dan Vasser (played by Kevin McKidd, who’s been in the news lately regarding his possible involvement in the Thor movie). He’s a newspaper reporter based in San Francisco who despite some rough times, his marriage seems to be on the mend. His deal is that he is randomly transported in back in time and at first has no inkling why and doesn’t even really believe it’s happening.

Outside of the fantasy of traveling back and forth in time, the show plays it completely straight, including his reaction to this and that of his friends and family (are you on drugs!?). He keeps going back to intersect with a character who at first he saves from committing suicide, and then goes back to convince the guy’s girlfriend or fiancee not to abort their baby. At this point Dan thinks he’s done, only to discover that although the couple ended up getting married and having the child, the mother and child died ten years later.

The other thing that happened is that in the past he saw his now-dead finacee Livia, who seems to have been killed in an airline crash. At first it was kind of cool seeing the retro look of his environment, complete with ads for old movies (Less Than Zero on a giant billboard) and big brick-sized cell phones. After his third trip back however I started questioning how they could sustain this as a series without it getting repetitive very quickly – but then I remembered the show that probably inspired this one: Quantum Leap.

I also kept thinking “He’s a bright guy, he’ll find a way to prove to his wife that he’s not nuts or on drugs” and of course, by the end of the episode he did come up with a creative way to do just that.

And since we’re in 2007, the era in which shows like this must have some mysterious twist, towards the end they did indeed through a curve ball into the episode when he meets the time-traveling version of his dead fiancee alive and well and apparently doing something similar to him in the past. She seems to know what’s going on and what he needs to do but does not take the time to explain it in depth.

So, did she die in a plane crash or not? What is the end purpose of their journeys? We’ll have to tune in next week to find out…

I’ll definitely be watching Heroes this season, and I’ll give Journeyman at least a few episodes to see how it develops. Now let’s see if NBC can go three for three with the premier of The Bionic Woman on Wednesday.

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Fall 2007 Shows Starting Up This Week

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:13:11 +0000

The 2007 Fall television season has started and for those of you who are Tivo-less and need to know when shows are starting, there are some biggies coming up next week. I won’t be covering them all, because I already watch too much TV and some just don’t interest me, but here are the ones that I think may be of interest to Screen Rant readers:

Heroes: Monday, Sept. 24th – NBC
I won’t let the lackluster season one finale keep me from this series, which kept me riveted all season long last year.

Reaper: Tuesday, Sept. 25th – The CW
I haven’t seen much on this but the basic plot is about a 21-year-old who becomes a bounty hunter for the Devil after discovering his parents sold his soul when he was born. It’s a sci-fi-drama-comedy from what I gather. I may tune into the pilot just for grins, but a lead character that’s a 21 year old spoiled all his life kid doesn’t appeal to me right off the bat.

Bionic Woman: Wednesday, Sept. 26th – NBC
I haven’t seen the original pilot for this show, but I’ve heard that so much of it was awful that they went back to the drawing board and re-did most of it. I watched the original so I suppose I’ll tune in to see what this one is like.

Journeyman: Monday, Sept. 24th
This one stars Kevin McKidd from HBO’s Rome, who was at one point rumored to be in the running to play the title character in the upcoming movie: Thor. McKidd plays a San Francisco reporter who suddenly becomes able to travel back in time. It’s got some heavyweight writers behind it, so it may actually be decent. It will be on directly following Heroes.

Smallville: Thursday, Sept. 27th – The CW
This will be the seventh season for the show and the last one in which Lex Luthor is a regular. Up until recently it was supposed to be the final season for the series, but it seems now that it will go one more and end after eight seasons. As usual, the finale from last season left about half a dozen seemingly impossible to overcome cliffhangers, and the writers had their work cut out in writing their way out of them. This season adds another hottie to the show in the form of Clark’s cousin Kara, aka Supergirl.

Stargate: Atlantis: Friday, Sept. 28th – Sci Fi Channel

This show has gotten stronger while Stargate SG-1 got weaker as it headed towards the end. I really love McKay and Ronin, although Sheppard still seems a bit youngster-like for my taste as far as being a leader and don’t get me started on Dr. Weir, who was caught in an explosion in the season finale but I’m sure won’t stay dead, although I wish she would.

Cavemen: Tuesday, Oct. 2nd – ABC
Why is Cavemen in this list, you may ask? One reason: morbid curiousity. I want to see just how bad this show, based on the very clever Geico TV commercials, turns out to be. None of the actors who portray the cavemen in the commercials are on the show, and taking a concept that is funny in 30 second commercials and trying to turn it into a full season of half hour episodes is a bad idea IMHO. Kind of like taking a three minute Saturday Night Live skit and turning it into a movie.

There are a few that I watch that won’t be starting until halfway through the season around January or so, including 24, Lost & Battlestar Galactica.

That’s about all that caught my eye… if you have any shows that you think should be added to this list, please chime in below with the show and your reasons for tuning in.

Source: BuddyTV

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Journeyman – A Time Traveling Show

Bruce Simmons — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 04:18:13 +0000

But will Journeyman travel forward in time, keeping us enthralled enough to stay on the tube? Only time will tell. (I can’t believe my fingers just typed that!)

Some years ago (That’s like, back in time!), Seven Days made a bid at time travel being used to fix problems, but Journeyman, staring Kevin McKidd (HBO’s Rome) as Dan Vasser, will be fixing personal issues as opposed to government issues, I’ve been led to believe.

Dan Vasser is a newspaper reporter who gets thrown back to various times within his own life. He has no control over this little issue, (like hiccups!), and that’s going to drive me crazy, but when ever he ends up, he finds purpose in missions to change the future by affecting others personal lives from the past. (Dude, that’s a lot of responsibility. What if he steps on ‘that’ butterfly? Some of you know what I mean!)

NBC is focused on creating clarity (With time travel??) with the story lines so we can follow along. I’m thinking as long as they only have at most, 2 time lines in play to track, I should be ok, but egads, why don’t we leave the time travel to the experts with the warp engines and transporters?

Apparently though, the first episode is going to throw many plot lines at us, but they’re doing this to get us right in the thick of the confusing story lines, that, can probably be erased as our time-teleporter pops back and forth.

Thanks for taking the … time … to read this snippett.
Journeyman will premiere Sept. 24 and air Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
NBC’s Journeyman site.

Source: Sci Fi Wire

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