Victorian Sci-Fi, huh?

[beer_good_foamy]

Joss Whedon Sci-Fi Drama 'The Nevers' Ordered Straight to Series at HBO

Joss Whedon is returning to television.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum has landed a straight-to-series order at HBO for Victorian drama The Nevers. Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the drama landed at the premium cable network amid a competitive situation with multiple bidders, including streaming giant Netflix. An episode count and premiere date have not yet been determined.

The Nevers is described as an epic science fiction drama about a gang of Victorian women who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies and a mission that might change the world. Whedon will serve as writer, director, exec producer and showrunner on The Nevers.

"I honestly couldn't be more excited. The Nevers is maybe the most ambitious narrative I’ve created, and I can’t imagine a better home for it than HBO," Whedon said. "Not only are they the masters of cinematic longform, but their instant understanding of my odd, intimate epic was as emotional as it was incisive. It's been too long since I created an entirely new fictional world, and the HBO team offers not just scope and experience, not just 'prestige,' but a passionate collaboration. I could go on, but — I’m impatiently grateful to say — I have work to do."

So if it's "Victorian", I guess it's set in Britain? I'm sure all my British friends are breathing a sigh of relief that Joss will once again get to indulge his anglophilia?

Comments

[ozma914]

Hm ... we'll see. Well, I won't, since I don't get HBO. Hope it goes well, though.

[kerk_hiraeth]

As I commented when someone posted this story on facebook.

"Good to see Hollywood's willingness to punish serial abusers at work."

kerk

[frogfarm]

"The cast are all senior citizens playing Victorian spinsters, I hope."

[lynnenne]

Did we ever confirm that Whedon was an abuser? Or was he just a faithless horndog? Having suffered through both, I think there is a distinction.

[beer_good_foamy]

Me too.

(And happy birthday!)

[beer_good_foamy]

Honestly, that sounds like a pretty good pitch. Steampunk Miss Marple.

[beer_good_foamy]

I definitely get that feeling and I don't necessarily disagree with it, though as lynnenne said below, I do think there are degrees in hell and what I've heard about Joss so far isn't enough for me, personally, to write him off, even if I definitely will view this more critically than I might have a few years ago.

[shadowkat]

Sounds like Steam-Punk? And it doesn't necessarily have to be in Britain, although...it's hard to do true Victorian without it being in Britain. But, he apparently likes that time period, if you think about it -- all the vampire flashbacks for Buffy where in the 1800s.

Hmmm...I'm not a fan of steam-punk, mainly because I think the Victorian Age has been overdone, just as WWII has been overdone in fiction. But has there been a steampunk television series? Also Joss likes to play with sexual repression and sexual gothic horror which lend themselves rather well to the Victorian Age. After all, I think the Victorians were the ones who invented the whole vampire as sexual repression trope. (Maybe not).

[shadowkat]

No, definitive proof that I've been able to find. (And I looked.) Outside of his wife's blog post.

[shadowkat]

Agreed. Feel the same way. Not enough for me, personally, to write him off. I still find him interesting -- but I will apply a level of criticism to his work that I may not have previously...although since his turn on the comics, I've been rather critical. LOL!

[ozma914]

Thanks!

[local_max]

IIRC, a while back there was a Victorian-set comic called Twist Whedon was set to write, which he described as kind of Dark Willow-esque (!!!), and it never materialized, so I wonder if this is somehow related to some of the ideas from that. Time will tell, I guess!

[beer_good_foamy]

I don't mind steampunk as such, there's some books/movies/cosplays I've seen that are really neat. As I understand it, though, there's been some fairly toxic parts of steampunkdom.

I think they closest we've got to a full-on steampunk TV series is The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr.? And some Doctor Who episodes.

[beer_good_foamy]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Hmmm.

[shadowkat]

The Wild Wild West was also steampunk. But yeah, Doctor Who (does a lot of it), and Brisco County Jr was steampunk.

And yeah, there's some rather toxic bits to it. I've read some of it here and there. (Not a fan of the Victorian period -- which is a toxic period in general).

It's basically re-writing Jules Verne and HG Wells from a modern perspective, which sometimes works, and sometimes really doesn't.

[elisi]

Freshen Ya Drink, Guv'nah?

Eh. Don't get HBO, and I would need very strong recommendations from the most ardent feminists before I had a look. Unless he has taken steps to correct his flaws, I don't know that I would be terribly interested.

[beer_good_foamy]

I keep forgetting that Wild Wild West isn't just that Will Smith movie with the giant mechanical spider. The TV series never aired over here that I know of.

[beer_good_foamy]

I get that. I'm not that burned on him yet, but I'm far from as blindly enthusiastic as I would have been 10 years ago.

[elisi]

He can be brilliant. I adored Firefly f.ex., but then read about what he had planned for S2 and... was grateful it got cancelled. :(

[shadowkat]

I saw a few re-runs over here in the late 70s -- it aired in the 1960s - or rather 1965. Starred Robert Conrad and Ross Martin.

[beer_good_foamy]

The only reason I know that Wild Wild West was a TV series is because someone once tried to commission me to write a Wild Wild West/X-Files crossover. I think. This person at ff.net reviewed a few of my BtVS fics, then DMd me to ask if I'd be interested in a plot idea they had, and when I didn't say outright "NO!" sent me the following:

It is a Wild Wild West story. Have you ever seen that show? Anyway, the basic storyline is that Jim and Artie are on their way to San Antonio, Texas for a case and get held up by a huge rainstorm and have to wait a couple days for it to pass and they finally get there and are checking in at the hotel and are about to go up to their rooms when there is an argument between these two guys about who is going to take the young girl to dinner and Jim goes to intervene before Artie can stop him and he has the situation just about resolved and some one shoots him and he almost dies in surgery and ends up in a coma and a couple days later, Dr. Chen does the neurological eval on Jim and he fails everything and Dr. Chen tells Artie that he is wasting his time sitting with Jim and hoping that he is going to recover because he won't, and he needs to get a new partner, and that is too much for Artie to handle and he sends for me and I come, and he explains the situation, although he has to stop a couple times because he is almost crying, and he explains about what happened with the neurological eval, and he starts crying because he dosen't know if he can face the possibility of getting a new partner if Jim ends up dying, and I hug him and tell him that everything is going to be allright and I know it might not seem like it right now, but Jim is going to pull through because he has come out of alot of worse situations than this before and I take Artie out to dinner and we go back to the hospital and Jim comes to and Artie fusses over him a little bit and they talk about what happened and Jim thanks Artie for saving his life and Jim sees me and talks to me and the next morning, he gets discharged, and after we have breakfast at Bob Evans, we go back to the train and get settled in and I help get the case resolved and stay for a few more days and I am getting ready to go and Artie gets upset because he thinks that this will be the last time that I come to see them and I tell him that this isn't the end of the world, that I promise that I will call every other week or so to see how they are doing and I will talk to Skinner about taking some time off at Christmas so I can come see them and this settles Artie down and I go back to work and Skinner and I talk about when I can take time off at Christmas and we go up to Bozeman, Montana to find Mulder because he went missing while following up a lead on a case, and we find him and he is fine, aside from being a little hypotherimic, and I tell him about what happened to Jim, and then I go home and Arwen and Aragorn are waiting for me and we have dinner together. Write me soon and let me know it you're intrested in writing this for me.

...They were disappointed.

[shadowkat]

OMG. That has got to be the longest run-on sentence that I've seen in my life. There's no breaks, except for a few commas here and there. Also makes never want to us the word "and" again.

Also...it appears to be a cross-over with the Wild Wild West, X-Files and Lord of the Rings.

Wild Wild West wasn't very good. Sort of a steampunk episodic buddy-spy Western. Think the Man from Uncle meets Maverick by way of I Spy. I watched two episodes in reruns and gave up. Brisco County Jr was a lot better.