Wakcy Phemomenons

The baseball season ended last night, at least in terms of my emotional involvement, as the flawed Yankee team exercised what is becoming its annual choke. Thanks, Arod, for your 2 for 15, and especially your double play in the last inning to squelch a possible game-saving rally. For the record, I now predict the Astros to go all the way, probably beating the White Sox. Now with the curtain lowering on the Summer Game I'll be devoting more time to lesser forms of mass entertainment, including the multitude of science fiction programs that were intriguing enough to sample, and among which I am just beginning to distinguish.

I'll quickly dismiss the Monster-of-the-week entries ("Supernatural," "The Night Stalker,"), both of which are stylish but forgettably episodic. CBS's Friday night opener, "The Ghost Whisperer," is a very stodgy and inappropriately mundane rip-off of "Medium", and to a smaller extent, "The Sixth Sense." The guest ghosts on this show are hardly ectoplasmic; they are lumpen humans whom we are supposed to believe are ghosts because master shots have the ghost whisperer (Jennifer Love Hewitt) speaking and gesticulating to thin air. The stories are boring and the supporting characters are wasted. That this claptrap replaced the thoughtful, beautifully acted and character-rich "Joan of Arcadia" is shameful.

Then there are the three sci-fi mystery serials, "Threshold," "Invasion" and "Surface." 'Threshold" was the most promising of the pilots, sporting a top-notch cast including Carla Gugino, "Star Trek" Hall-of-famer Brent Spiner, and super-dwarf Perter Dinklage, and a nice mystifying interdimensional UFO that emits out malevolent audio signals that alter human DNA. Cool, but each subsequent episode has delved only minorly into the science of the transformation, lapsing instead into routine chase stories trying to winnow out infectees trying to spread the signal. I suppose because of its genesis from "Star Trek" creators such as Exec Brannon Braga, the concept of alien infection is never far from the creative surface.

Speaking of "Surface," the lead-in to NBC's strong Monday lineup, I'm thinking now that Steven Spielberg would be recruiting his lawyers to sue, if he at all needed the dough. The initial episodes about a newly discovered sea creature appropriated one of its subplots heavily from "ET," as a boy adopts a baby Creature and bonds with it while his parents watch cluelessly as all the critter's hiding places continue to explode. And in last night's episode the entire Richard Dreyfus madness section of "Close Encounters" was ripped off, as an obsessed yokel watches his exasperated wife drives off with the kids, comes briefly to his senses, then discovers a picture in the newspaper that matched his recurrent sketches, so he can return to his mania. I wish the show weren't so clumsy in its homages (and I'm being really really kind here) because it does have its entertaining moments, such as the volcanic explosion of Old Faithful.

I also noticed some laughably bad script editing in the first few minutes. One of the characters, a government agent (which may explain it) uses the word "unequivocably," which doesn't exist. Hey man, it's unequivocally. But even worse was the narrative voice over recounting recent series events, and mentions all the "phenomenons" that had occurred. Phenomena, Ms. Script Supervisor, phenomena. This is a show whose native tongue is purportedly English. I was reminded of a great moment in the 1955 "Godzilla," when a Japanese dubbing actor tried to enunciate "phenomenon" but it came out "phemonemon." At least he had a linguistic excuse.

Finally there's "Invasion," ABC's companion piece to the increasingly absurd "Lost," which contains elements of both "Surface" and "Threshold," including elusive undersea creatures and an amorphous alien threat to undermine humanity. It also channels Spielberg in its use of the requisite governmental cover-up and in a female lead's fascination with running water, reminiscent of Dreyfuss's obsession with mashed potatoes and shaving cream. The production values are very convincing in this one, including the pilot's devastating hurricane, so effective that the producers were forced to air an apologetic disclaimer because of the recent weather catastrophes in the Gulf Coast. But this show, lacking the vivid cross-cultural characterizations that enrich "Lost," seems to be following the same tedious path of "Threshold," slowly unfolding the layers of deception to reveal more deceptions underneath, and as yet has not achieved the critical mass of revelations necessary to sustain my interest for much longer.

A common element to all three programs is the theme of secret government operations vs. civic liberty license in discovering the nefarious alien threat. "Invasion" and "Surface" tend to demonize the dark forces much like the Empire in the "Star Wars" sagas, but "Threshold" presents the secretive NSA-like operatives as the protagonists, trying to protect the unwashed and uninformed masses lest there be "panic." I guess its refreshing that the Government gerts equal time; the deeper question is, are these clonish programs worthy of my time?