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Three old shows that could use modern reboots.
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Mrs King and Scarecrow.
With the success of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who as remade, modern versions of themselves, not to mention the flap of movie remakes (Star Trek, Barbarella, Total Recall, Short Circuit, et al), perhaps it's time to start looking back on some shows from the past that seem to be open to modernization-- if we can avoid the inconsistencies that plagued the Bionic Woman reboot.
1. Scarecrow and Mrs King: A spy winds up working with a soccer-mom. In the 80s, this was mostly silly, but with all sorts of mind-bending spy movies under our belts, not to mention the rash of racy spy shows, it could be time to take this a bit more seriously. Here's how we'd do it: Scarecrow doesn't think he needs a partner, but he's gotten pretty unstable recently, and has gone all rebel-Mulder-way out there, and is taking weird and foolhardy risks; Mrs King isn't just a mom, but is also a sleeper agent who doesn't know that she's been trained to kill-- until the conditioning starts shorting out. The kids are teenagers with two different problems, her mom has a dark secret, enemy agents are planted in the PTA... this could be really cool if it can avoid stupidity. Or, alternatively, it could be a really effective spoof of these sorts of shows, cramming everything into one show and poking fun while still being a wild romp.
2. Buck Rogers: Already remade once, it stayed too silly and didn't last long, but in a post-BSG world, the idea that Human forces are being slowly overcome and only someone rough and tumble from the past can save them might get really deep-- a meditation on how the very things that allowed Humans to get out into space are slowly undermining their existence. Along the lines of V, it could show us how to stay human in the face of world-altering change-- or it could go a step further and show us how to become post-human without being destroyed.
3. Land of the Lost: The new movie shows pretty effectively that the ideas can be updated and still be entertaining, but there's a lot more there than silliness, and it would be nice to see a show take a serious look at this one. It's possible to make a hard sci fi show out of this: There's an ongoing phenomena of things dropping out of various points in space and time, and getting stuck in the Land of the Lost; there's not one, but two alien races, both with unclear motives and goals; there's really neat crystal-based technology; there's a world crawling with dinosaurs, cave men, monkey men, and the occasional other lost person. Wouldn't it be great to see it take on the seriousness of something like Lost's first season, with the creepiness of not knowing what's going on, the stress of people who don't know each other washing up on this temporal shore, and the threat of any number of prehistoric nasties-- and then the Sleestaks show up?
There are dozens of silly old shows out there that aren't that silly when you boil them down to their basic ideas, and in this wonderful climate of serious looks and what's gone before, think how amazing they could be if they were remade well. Well, is the important part here-- the new Knight Rider taught us that.
What would you remake if you had the choice?
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