As of late I have been getting into watching cancelled tv shows. Some of them are great and I can't imagine why they were cancelled, but some of them, as could be expected, are terrible. 
In my opinion, the jury is still out on how good, or bad, Cleopatra 2525 is. I can tell why it was cancelled, but a few changes to a bumpy first season is commonplace. The first season of most every sci-fi show I've watched (and that's more than I care to admit) is awful and needs a whole lotta fine tuning. Maybe I'm just too softhearted to give up on any series, no matter how terrble it is, but I think Cleopatra 2525 could have been great, given time. How much time.. Well, that we'll never know.Cleopatra 2525 ran for a short 2 seasons back in 2000 and 2001 for a total of 28 episodes. I think one of the major downfalls of the show was the runtime of only a half hour for each episode. They didn't even get past episode 5 without needing to add "To Be Continued..." to get the whole story told. The episodes all felt rushed and character development was minimal. Just expanding the episodes to an hour would have done wonders for the show.
Cleopatra 2525 has a host of recycled cast and crew from other sci-fi shows. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert created this series right after Hercules: The Legendary Journeys ended, and it has the same low budget tongue in cheek feel to it that the Hercules, Xena and Young Hercules shows all shared. Some actors that the avid sci-fi watcher would recognize are Gina Torres from Firefly (she guest starred on Hercules), Victoria Pratt from Mutant X (a similarly short lived show, guest starred on Xena), Jennifer Sky and Danielle Cormack (both had recurring roles on Xena) and even Kevin Sorbo's body double Patrick Kake and Strife AKA Joel Tobek. Now, I know everyone remembers Strife. He was the irritating one that always hung out with Aries and Discord looking like a bad Edward Scissorhands impersonator, until of course he was killed by Callisto. So Joel's career has gone from Johnny Depp wannabe to a Gacy/ICP/Circus World kickback. Magicmysticgrl = Huge Hercules and Xena nerd. I'm still sad that the actor who played Aries died. ::Moment of silence for Kevin Smith.. No the OTHER Kevin Smith::The short and stupid of the story is that Cleopatra (her stage name) an exotic dancer went in for a standard boob job in 2001. They put her under with anestetics but couldn't wake her back up, so they cryogenically froze her. She slept for the next 524 years until woken up by Sarge and Hel, two freedom fighters native to the year 2525. Predictably, much has changed in the last 5 centuries, aliens called Baileys attacked the Earth and humanity was driven underground to a huge network of levels and corridors. The Baileys rule the surface and mutants rule the lowest levels. Betrayer robots sent by the Baileys have infiltrated the underground. Hel and Sarge are trying to take back the surface with the help of a mysterious Voice that Hel can hear through a transmitter implanted in her ear.
All of the amateur Let's-Make-A-Show-About-The-Future mistakes were made in this series, but I'm fairly sure it was deliberate. Just like the bastardization of Greek and Roman history was deliberate in Hercules. (I'm a fan of the actual history of Greece and Rome, so I'm allowed to disparage the show.) The costumes are visually pleasing, if not realistic, made out of metal bits and glowy things and pleather in all sorts of bright colors. The sets are cheap and shake when actors brush by them, but do their job well enough. The acting is hammy and very rarely syncs up with the effects properly. But.. It's got a catchy theme song, what else does a show need. ::Starts Singing:: "In the year 2525, there are women with the will to survive.." It's a remix of an old Zager and Evans hit "In the year 2525."
All in all the quality of this show is fairly awful, but the enjoyment factor is great. For myself I enjoy Cleopatra 2525 as a 4/5 but as for recommending it to others, I'd give it a 3 and consider myself generous. It's just not a show that a great many people will appreciate. You can't be critical and watch shows like this, you just have to sit back and pretend you can't see the guy behind the curtain, just concentrate on the Wizard. It's all a test of your imagination, of how well you can or can't fill in the gaps. If you can still enjoy a movie/tv show without it having a billion dollar budget I think you'll enjoy this show. So, we've got a shiny metal MM, a red pleather MM and a glowy yellow MM.
Labels: Casting-Call, MagicMysticGrl, TV
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