Why there's GOT to be more than three magical schools in the HP world

So I spend kind of a lot of time on Tumblr, and it's impossible to do that without coming across A LOT of Harry Potter headcanon. A combo of my own particular love of wider worldbuilding, regional fantasy from all regions, and talking at length with my niece who just finished reading the books has led to this list, which has been stewing for ages.

1. If there are, the wizarding population is so low it's amazing they haven't just been, like, bred out or inbred to death by now.
2. There are more than three countries in the world.
3. What the heck do people from any of the 200-odd other countries in the world do if they are born magical? Flounder? Get locked up? Get ignored? Run amok without anyone to teach them or stop them because there's no infrastructure? Get recruited at a young age by the government?
4. There is no way that a school full of UK kids / German kids / French kids alone (as far as we've seen) represents one third of all magical students in the world, each.
5. It would have been way easier for Voldemort to just, like, set a magical bomb and kill every last one of them, leaving the world to himself.
6. It would be like Harvard and Yale claiming they're the only schools in the world just because more people have heard of them.
7. People who are not top-of-the-line have to have somewhere to go--the equivalent of all the thousands of kids who don't get into Ivy League. Or, like, any fancy school. Ever. Are we just to believe that every single kid who has any hint of magic ever goes to one of those three schools? The average grades would be much lower, the average competency would be lower, and there would be mostly people from other countries there.
8. Or are we actually supposed to honestly thing there's only three countries in the world that produce magical children?
9. Even if there used to be dozens in every country and now there's literally only those three, there's no indication that UK, France and Germany are so out of date, or that the rest of the world has moved on to something else. Someone should have said something at least once.
10. We know that the new book is supposed to be set at least in part in the US, so there's got to be a magical presence here, too, right? Did Voldemort only have high ambitions for three schools out of all of them? Because that severely provincializes his world-threatening-ness.

TV preview stuff!

Some of the stuff that's good to see! And that I'm going to be looking at as the fall happens!

Hobbity stuff!

Or, like, basically, the entire playlist of Emergency Awesome, really. By now, though? I bet you're totally sick of that ad, aren't you?

Just a little more from SDCC on Marvel stuff!

You guys.

More SDCC goodies again!

Also from Emergency Awesome, which, really, is exactly what I was feeling I needed this whole weekend while all this awesome was happening where I couldn't get it!

More SDCC goodies!

I'm back online! I'm back online back online back online baaacccckkkk oooonnnnllliiiinnnneeee!

Can you tell I'm excited?

Anyway, here's some of the amazing things from SDCC that I missed! Basically all from Emergency Awesome on YouTube! And all with the same exact ad before them!

Ten reasons I'm excited for Star Wars

1. It's more Star Wars!

2. I really want to see people cosplaying as middle aged Princess Leia to counter balance all the slave Leias.

3. More Millenium Falcon! At least, those rumors I heard had better be true.

4. A new generation of Jedi!

5. It looks like Luke has his Jedi Master beard on!

6. I really want to see if the refounded Jedi order are different from the old one, what with the whole what-do-you-mean-the-world-isnt-really-only-black-and-white of the old guys.

7. Aliens! I always loved how populated the SW universe is, and how everyone speaks their own language and that's normal.

8. Lightsabre battles. Safe bet, always awesome, even when the movie isn't.

9. I'm super curious about vilainous plots. Evil Empire? Or, like, trade negotiations and senate infighting? It could go either way, and whichever way, I get stuff to talk about!

10. The awesomeness of Skywalker women has been increasing down the generations, so I'm looking forward to the most awesome one yet. You hear me? Most awesome, no less.

Links to some SDCC vids because I can't apparently embed on mobile

You guys, it's killing me that I'm once again not at comic con AND I'm without an internet to soak up all the good!

So here are some links!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJnCHcL6s3E&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qalqYR0MrUI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ip2qTFgMUY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI67CqloNEY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

How to depend on Tumblr for your TV and fandom news

Because getting online and keeping up on TV is hard wen your net access is unreliable and your cable is cut, I'm living off Tumblr on my phone. Here's how you can, too!

1. Get a Tumblr account.
2. Go to that search bar up top, and find blogs that post about the shows you watch and the fandoms you follow.
3. Scroll scroll scroll though your feed.
4. Don't hide from spoilers--that's literally news.
5. Fact check anything that sounds too crazy.
6. Read all the fan-theories about every aspect of every scene, and compare it to the actual thing when you actually see it--and then argue interpretations with someone else.
7. Remember that Tumblr as a whole is biased in favor of relationships, social justice, and representing the underrepresented, which is fantastic and one of the reasons to be on Tumblr, but also means sometimes tiny things in shows become much bigger than they need to, and don't actually have any inherent meaning.
8. Understand that using Tumblr to keep up on shows will give you a slightly skewed idea of what is actually going on--including some characters disappearing, some storypoints that were never actually in the show, and about half the time, the actual show is sort of a letdown after the careful thought that goes into the fan theories.
9. Understand also that things will be different now--being a fan on your own is different than being a fan in an active fan community.
10. Make wonderful new friends.

Ten things I love about Doctor Who

I basically love Doctor Who, as a whole, in about any incarnation that the Doctor or the show gives me (even angry, over-acting Six with his very small budget and HORRIBLE special effects), but here's ten things that I love most about the show, and if they're there, it basically ensures that I'll have no problem at all adapting to the changes. Cuz, you know, there'll be changes.

1. When the Doctor looks proud at his Companion being brave or saucy or otherwise not what the villains expect. Especially if it's someone who gets underestimated, even by him.
2. When the Doctor forgets to act human--like when he's not sleeping or eating, and everyone else is. Or like in Midnight, when he's not trying to blend in.
3. When the Companions get to do something so beyond the call that they get to steal the show--and the Doctor loves it.
4. When the story is positive in the end--hopeful and joyful, and convinced that people are basically good and strong and able to overcome anything.
5. When the Doctor acts the wrong age for how he looks--like when he's a childish old man, or a cranky old young man.
6. When Companions collect each other, and more than just two go off on adventures.
7. When the Tardis has opinions and makes them known.
8. When the setting is truly alien, or is a specific moment in actual human history.
9. When there isn't really a villain because everyone has understandable motivations and the conflict is a misunderstanding that can be solved through something other than blowing things up and killing everyone.
10. When everyone lives.

What ten things would be on your list? What do you like most about the series?

Shows I'm missing this week because I don't have cable

Matador, a new spy show

Continuations of
-Extant, which I've probably actually decided to catch on DVD or Netflix anyway
-Tiny House Nation, which is so cute
-Mythbusters
-Welcome To Sweden, which is probably too niche to survive, but I love Sweden and do I love that
-Tree House Master and Pool Master, which are like dream house wishlist shows
-Almighty Johnsons*
-and The Strain **.

The Lottery, a post apocalyptic Children Of Men type story.

Gunslingers, which looks like it's trying to get in on Hell On Wheels territory, though it's more closely tired to famous history, do who knows if that'll be a strength our not.

NOTES:
*I actually liked this one, the only new show I was able to catch this week. Norse gods reincarnated into human bodies in Aukland is weird enough to carry me through the set up episodes. Plus, there seems to be some gender war going on that could be interesting if it doesn't turn hateful, and it gas the girl from Whale Rider, who I like a lot.
**I've been waiting so long for this, and then I was sick with migraines all weekend and totally forgot about it.

I'mm'a just leave this full-length DW trailer right here

samiholloway found this photo for you on Tumblr!

Open Open in app samiholloway shared something with you 221-cuppa-tea wonderlandinmymind Doctor Who Trailer [x] #doctor who #twelve #oohhh 1,509 notes 35 East 21st St, 10th Floor. New York, NY 10010. Email settings | Opt-out

What about Rockne?

 Everyone knows JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon, and they're both amazing and you can generally trust most TV from either of them, but for me, going back even before Buffy (my first Joss), there was Rockne, making the shows I want to watch. Someone other than me must've been hooked my Alien Nation and brought through the 90s by SeaQuest, but no one seems to talk about this dude as much as the Js--so I want to just put this little heads-up post here, talking about his work, to weigh the scale a little on the other side.*

If you know about SciFi, you almost definitely know about Farscape, and that's probably his best show to date (though I haven't seen as much of Defiance and Revolution as I want, so maybe they're catching up and I'm just not aware yet), but all his work has certain similarities that make them his:

• Lots of strong characters with their own motivations and goals, that don't always match up with anyone else's
• Weirdness handled well--alien civilizations, conspiracies, not-normal-earth realities
• Long, interconnected chains of smaller stories that tell bigger stories
• A certain unexpectedness--it's hard to guess what his shows will do next, and that's kind of great when you watch a lot of tv
• The juxtaposition of normal and super-bonkers--Human astronaut lost in space, end of the world survivors with new roles, a cop and his alien partner, etc
• Big storytelling--not just a few people's stories, but the whole world's stories
• Hopefulness, usually, even if it's hidden
• The idea that humans are pretty adaptable, even if we're also sort of ignorant and need to be taught things
• Politics and religion as main issues, though generally they're alien or post-apocalyptic, so it doesn't really get preachy
• Cross-cultural understanding as the answer
• Neat tech

Basically, if you're a fan of the normal and everyday colliding with the weird, and with those weird collisions telling stories that couldn't be told without them, you should be watching his shows and picking them apart and talking about them. And that'll give him the space and the faith from the networks to write the way he wants to write and give us more on the scale and quality of Farscape!

And speaking of, I hope the movie for that is so fantastic that the world clamors for more Farscape in some form or another, and gives the man a chance to bring us something else as ambitious without interference from the network! Because that's my wish for all my favorite writers and creators--freedom from network interference.

What do you think of when you think of Rockne S O'Bannon?



NOTES:
*as if fandom was a scale, rather than a big ball of wibbly wobbly fandomy stuff.

Professional Fangirl's plan for the fall 2014 season

Basically.

It looks like there's lots of stuff Relevant To This Blog's Interests coming up, and I want to keep a little more up to date than I usually do, so I can talk about what's happening each week as well as the old stuff I still like talking about.

So here's the plan:

• I'm still going to be liveblogging things on my Tumblr, because that's easier both for posting and for interaction, but I'll also be collecting up the comments I make a few times a week and reposting them here, all in unified posts.
• I'm not going to be doing reviews, because that gets exhausting and no one is paying me to do it, but I will be finding a few things each week--ideas, scenes, plot developments, problems, characters moments, shippiness--to talk about each week, and those will be posts.
• I'm going to check out at least one episode of each of the new shows I want to see, and I'll post opinions here--probably as one-post-per-night, rather than individual posts, at least at the beginning. The ones I keep will come up again as the stories happen.
• I'm going to try to keep on top of things, but not beat myself up when I can't.
• And I'm going to keep making the crazy fanbased connections I always make.

So what's your plan? How do you deal with Every Show Ever starting all in the space of a month or so?

Why the ending of Lost still bothers me, even now

In one sentence: because it came out exactly as they said it wasn't.

In a longer series of sentences:

From the beginning of Lost, they kept encouraging fans to try to figure it out, to voice their ideas of how it worked and what it all meant. And from the beginning, people kept saying "it's purgatory" and they kept saying "it's totally not purgatory, it's totally science", and then we get to that last episode and guess what? It's purgatory. Of some sort. And then there's a church and a light and everyone is together except the black guys, and then they all go into the light and it's done.

No.

I will never be alright with that.

Not because it was just a shitty ending, but because a) it felt like a cop-out, like they knew they didn't have the endgame they kept saying they did, and didn't try to give us something better, b) because it was all a lie, and that spoils a lot of the previous enjoyment, c) because it smacked of network meddling messing up a good thing, and d) because, from a writerly perspective, it feels unfinished, and it really only needed a few more seconds of screentime to fix that, and they didn't do it, for whatever reason.

D is the one that most pisses me off. Okay, they can't control network meddling, or writers' strikes or any of that behind the scenes thing. Maybe that messed up whatever they'd originally wanted to do at the end and then they just gave us what should have been a vindication of our cleverness but was done in such a way, after so much denial, that it felt like a lie. Whatever. But the fact that they didn't give us just, like, three more minutes to show what happened on the other side of the light, and prove that it was, all along, science and truth and not supernatural BS, is a permanent thorn in my side.

Ways it would have been better, and which would not have pissed me off:
They go into the light and...

• Get a second chance to make life on the Island work, since now they know, intimately and painfully, exactly how all the mistakes turn out.
• Find themselves watching their past selves, because now they're the whispers that were never explained, and all along, they were trying to warn themselves.
• Wake up on the plane, which doesn't hit the Island, and they get to live the lives they should have lived, but they still know each other and now get to apply the lessons they learned in the closed-alternate-reality of the Island.

Hell, even going into the light and finding out that they're the ones who started the Dharma Initiative at all, at the very beginning of all this, would have been okay--basically, anything that would have brought it back around to something that matters to the show, the characters, and the massive and complicated history of the series, and took it's drift into supernatural and away from science fiction, and put it into a sciency context again, would have been okay.

But we didn't get that.

And I'm still pissed.

We get so many of out shows cut off before the end that I think there isn't a precedent for how weird / SF / F / H shows to actually accomplish an end. And that means when one actually does get an end, instead of just being cancelled, we want it to be good, to prove that things like this can stay good all the way through.

Lost didn't do that, and it felt like a betrayal.

This fall looks like a good time to be a Geek!

We've got Doctor Who coming back. We've got Sleepy Hollow getting FIVE more episodes. We should have Walking Dead and / or Hell On Wheels. We'll have Agents of SHIELD. And look at all these new shows coming up!

It's hard to tell tone, but based on blurbs and geekiness, here's ones (reasons in bold) I'll be watching at least one episode of:

Astronaut Wives Club
ABC
From Gossip Girl producers Stephanie Savage, Josh Schwartz, the drama stars JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Azure Parsons, Zoe Boyle and Odette Annable as a group of women whose husbands are astronauts in the 1960s. Dexter's Desmond Harrington will also star.

• Could be dumb, could be an awesome period piece; hard to tell. But there's astronauts, and that's a built-in dramatic point, right?

Backstrom
Fox
Based on the Swedish book series, this drama features offensive, irascible detective (Rainn Wilson) with self-destructive tendencies. Bones' Hart Hanson will write and executive-produce. Genevieve Angelson, Dennis Haysbert, Kristoffer Polaha, Thomas Dekker also star.

• Swedes, misanthropes solving crimes AND Hart Hanson? I'm already there.

Constantine
NBC
DC Comics character Constantine (Matt Ryan) struggles with his faith as he is haunted by the sins of his past, but he is suddenly thrust into the role of defending humanity from the gathering forces of darkness. Batman Begins' David Goyer will executive-produce with writer Daniel Cerone (Dexter). Harold Perrineau, Lucy Griffiths and Charles Halford also star.

• I'm not super-familiar with the Constantine story, but I love a comic book adaptation, and I especially love ones that are unexpected. I also love an antihero done well, and battles between good and evil where it's not stupid, so we'll have to wait and see on those points--it could totally bowl me over or it could ruin itself on those two points alone.

Emerald City
NBC
This Wizard of Oz-themed drama is described as a dark, modern re-imagining of the Frank L. Baum series of novels. Created by Siberia's Matthew Arnold and executive-produced by Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles' Joshua Friedman, the series will feature a 20-year-old Dorothy Gale who is thrust into an epic battle for Oz between warring kingdoms.

• I'm a little over-saturated with Oz these last few years, but on the other hand, I loved Sarah Connor Chronicles. And a female epic protagonist is always on my plate. So will this overdo it? Or will it fall into the SCC trap of getting too wrapped up in its own mythos (even if that mythos is amazing)? Or will it prove that TV-people do learn lessons? (I'm hoping for that last one)

The Flash
CW
Scientist Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) is given the power of super-speed after a freak accident that transforms him into the Fastest Man Alive. The Arrow spin-off is based on characters published by DC Comics and omes from Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and DC Chief Geoff Johns. Jesse L. Martin, Tom Cavanagh, Candace Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Rick Cosnett, Carlos Valdes, Michelle Harrison, Patrick Sabongui and John Wesley Shipp will also star.

• Another comic adaptation! I haven't managed to watch a lot of Arrow, but I like what I've seen of it, and with the Flash being automatically more fun than Oliver but still in the same world, it should be good.

Forever
ABC
Dr. Henry Morgan (Ioan Gruffudd) is New York City's star medical examiner who studies the dead for a reason: He is immortal. With the help of Detective Jo Martinez (Alana De La Garza), the drama will peel back the layers of Henry's long, colorful life through their cases. Chuck's Matt Miller will write and executive-produce with Dan Lin (Terminator Salvation) and Jennifer Gwartz (Veronica Mars). Judd Hirsch, Barbara Eve Harris, Joel David Moore and Donnie Keshwarz will also star.

• Despite his habit of being in dumb things, I like Ioan Gruffudd a lot, and I feel like he could make this work even if it's shaky and / or lame at the beginning. Especially if they get into strange stuff pretty early--I mean, it's a show about a dude who doesn't die. They're going to have to tackle strange stuff, or else it won't matter that he's immortal. 
• Plus, you know, police procedural with an ME--I love me a procedural, and my favorite ones are where the partner is not a cop.

Galavant
ABC
Handsome Prince Galavant (Joshua Sasse) is on a quest for revenge against the king (Psych's Timothy Omundson) who stole his one true love (Mallory Jansen) in this fairy-tale musical. Dan Fogelman will write and executive-produce with Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken writing the music. Vinnie Jones, Karen David and Luke Youngblood will also star.

• Most likely, this one is going to be a disaster. But just in case it isn't--if, say, they poke fun at the whole Disney-princess thing like Enchanted did or something--I'm so going to watch it.

Gotham
Fox
Based on DC Comics characters, this drama explores the origin stories of eventual Batman ally James Gordon (Benjamin McKenzie), a detective with the Gotham City Police Department, and his battle with the villains who made the city famous. David Mazouz (Touch) will play young billionaire Bruce Wayne. Mentalist creator Bruno Heller will write and executive-produce with Nikita's Danny Cannon. Jada Pinkett Smith, Donal Logue, Sean Pertwee, Robin Lord Taylor, Cory Michael Smith, Erin Richards, Camren Bicondova, Drew Powell and Zabryna Guevara will also star.

• I always liked Commissioner Gordon, for one, and you know, I kind of actually do "like everything about Batman except Batman", as Kimmel says. It's possible I'm literally the only person in the audience for this show.

Gracepoint
Fox
When a young boy is found dead on an idyllic beach, a major police investigation gets underway in the small California seaside town where the tragedy occurred. Soon deemed a homicide, the case sparks a media frenzy, which throws the boy’s family into further turmoil and upends the lives of all of the town’s residents. Based on the British series Broadchurch, the event series stars David Tennant and Anna Gunn as the pair of cops investigating the case. Chris Chibnall (Doctor Who, Camelot) will adapt his original work with fellow executive producers Amy Epstein and Dan Futterman. The cast also includes Nick Nolte, Michael Pena, Jacki Weaver and Kevin Rankin.

• I'm so confused about why this show even exists. I mean, My Future Husband David Tennant just made this show last year, and it was brilliant and strong and devastating. Will FOX allow it to be that powerful? What I've read says the first episode will be the same, but the rest will diverge, so I'm even more divided: why not just do a whole different show? vs Maybe the divergence is what makes it worth watching again?
• However! I will watching anything and everything with David Tennant in it, and maybe this one will be the one that gets him more US gigs.

Hieroglyph
Fox
This action-adventure drama set in ancient Egypt tells the story of a notorious thief named Ambrose (Max Brown), who must navigate seductive concubines, criminal underbellies and even a few divine sorcerers when he is plucked from prison to serve the Pharaoh (Reece Ritchie). Pacific Rim's Travis Beacham will write and executive-produce alongside Peter Chernin, Katherine Pope and Fringe's Miguel Sapochnik, who will also direct the pilot. John Rhys-Davies, Antony Bunshee, Caroline Ford, Condola Rashad and Kelsey Chow also star.

• Possibly also a disaster, depending on how they handle race, historical accuracy, women (seductive concubines, really?), and plot, but I like Egypt, and there's always the chance that FOX will produce something good and strong and not cancel it, right? Right? They got Sleepy Hollow right, after all, and this show starts with a thief, which always makes things more interesting, so...

iZombie
CW
A med student-turned-zombie (Rose McIver) takes a job in the coroner's office to gain access to the brains she must reluctantly eat to maintain her humanity, but what happens when she starts inheriting the corpse's memories? With the help of her medical-examiner boss (Rahul Kohli) and a police detective (Malcolm Goodwin), she solves homicide cases to quiet the disturbing voices in her head. Veronica Mars' Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero will write and executive-produce the project, based on the DC Comics series. Robert Buckley, David Anders, Nora Dunn and Alexandra Krosney will also star.

• Another comic book adaptation, another procedural, AND Rob Thomas? Where has this been all my life?

Last Man on Earth
Fox
Will Forte created and stars in this comedy series about two strangers who, after the apocalypse, must put aside their differences to ensure the survival of the human race. The Saturday Night Live alum will executive-produce the series along with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who will also direct the pilot.

• This one is on my list mostly for Will Forte, and a little bit because we need some silly post-apocalypses on TV, what with the trend toward darker and darker dramas going on. I can see it getting stupid or wearing thin, though, so I hope there's a lot more going on than this weensy blurb lets on--and I hope it's basically a romcom like The Mindy Project.

Marvel's Agent Carter
ABC
Captain America's Hayley Atwell as the titular agent as she finds herself marginalized when the men return home from fighting abroad in 1946. Working for the covert SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve), Peggy must balance administrative work with secret missions for Howard Stark all while trying to navigate life as a single woman in America, in the wake of losing the love of her life. Resurrection's Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas will executive-produce with Steve McFeely, Christopher Marcus and Jeph Loeb.

• Basically, the only way I wouldn't watch this show is if I was blind. And I'd still listen to it.

The Messengers
CW

When a mysterious object crashes to Earth, a group of seemingly unconnected strangers die from the energy pulse, but then awaken to learn that they have assigned the task of preventing the impending Apocalypse. The Expendables producer Basil Iwanyk will executive-produce with Teen Wolf writer Eoghan O'Donnell. Diogo Morgado, Shantel VanSanten, Sofia Black-D'Elia, Jon Fletcher, Craig Frank, Lane Garrison and Joel Courtney will star.

• Okay, it's CW, and they haven't had a great track record with their SF lately (it's mostly been too far on the side of moany, over-pretty teens, and not enough on the side of the weird), but I'm always up for a classic something-fell-from-the-sky-and-changed-people storyline!

Mission Control
NBC
This 1960s-set workplace ensemble in the tone of Anchorman examines what happens when a strong woman (Krysten Ritter) butts heads with a macho astronaut (Tommy Dewey) in the race to land on the moon. How to Be a Gentleman's David Hornsby will write and executive-produce with Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Michael Rosenbaum, Malcolm Barrett, Julie Meyer, Eric Nenninger, Leah Renee and Jonathan Slavin will co-star.

• There's a fine line that the Anchorman walks between incredibly stupid and secretly brilliant, and since they're invoking that movie's name, they'd better have that line down. But there's also astronauts, comedy feminism, and the 60s!

NCIS: New Orleans
CBS
The series features NCIS' New Orleans office, which handles cases from Pensacola, Fla., through Mississippi and Louisiana to the Texas panhandle. New Orleans, with its rich setting of music, fun and debauchery, is a magnet for military personnel on-leave. And with the fun comes trouble. NCIS' Gary Glasberg and Mark Harmon will executive-produce. Scott Bakula, Zoe McLellan, Lucas Black, CCH Pounder and Paige Turco will star.

• Procedural. NCIS, which is a great source of stifled shippiness in my life. CCH Pounder and Scott Bakula. And ethnic diversity, as well as one of the best cities in the world for stories to happen in!

Proof
TNT
Executive-produced by The Closer star Kyra Sedgwick, the drama stars Jennifer Beals as Dr. Kathryn Russo, a brilliant surgeon who begins investigating supernatural phenomena including resurrections, out-of-body experiences, and hauntings. In her personal life, Russo is grappling with the loss of her teenage son and trying to salvage her strained relationship with her daughter. Weeds' Matthew Modine, Scandal's Joe Morton, Callum Blue, Edi Gathegi, Annie Thurman and Sean Gleeson also star. Murphy Brown alum Rob Bragin wrote the pilot and will serve as an executive producer with Jill Littman, and producer Tom Jacobson.

• You had me at supernatural phenomena, though this could easily fall into the melodrama hole of taking itself WAY TOO SERIOUSLY. On the other hand, it could be so powerful. And there are so many ways a show like this could go right off the rails in the best way possible.

Scorpion
CBS
An eccentric genius (Elyes Gabel) and his international network of super-geniuses form the last line of defense against the complex threats of the modern age. Sleepy Hollow creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci will executive-produce the project from Prison Break's Nick Santora. Katharine McPhee, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Ari Stidham and Robert Patrick will also star.

• Kurtzman and Orci are pretty trustworthy, TV-wise, and generally create stories I like to see. Plus, we haven't had a show about nerds solving crimes since Num3rs, that I've seen, and there's potential for it to sort of veer into Person of Interest / Intelligence territory in a new way. All good things.

Selfie
ABC
A self-obsessed, twentysomething woman (Karen Gillan) is the subject of a viral video made after a humiliating public breakup. When the video makes her an Internet celebrity for all the wrong reasons, she hires a marketing expert named Henry (John Cho) to help restore her image. Suburgatory creator Emily Kapnek will write and executive-produce the project inspired by My Fair Lady. David Harewood, Tim Peper, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Allyn Rachel will also star.

• So much potential for stupid, but also so much for awesome! My Fair Lady is a solid plot for reimagining and has created good things in the past, John Cho is always awesome, Karen Gillan does bold-woman-with-appealing-vulnerability very well, and it's written by the lady who made Suburgatory, which was so sweet and silly.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
NBC
This comedy from 30 Rock duo Tina Fey and Robert Carlock stars The Office's Ellie Kemper as the titular character who escapes from a doomsday cult and starts her life over in New York. Titus Burgess, Sara Chase and Lauren Adams also star.

• Yay! Something new from the creators of 30 Rock! It's probably a stretch to put this on the list unless the "doomsday cult" is a major part of the plot, but I'm really just happy to see it.

Utopia
Fox
Based on the hit Dutch series of the same name from John de Mol ( Big Brother, The Voice, Fear Factor) this social experiment challenges 15 contestants to build a perfect world. The players will live in an isolated, undeveloped location for an entire year as they build a civilization from scratch — unless they are exiled and replaced by new contestants from the viewing audience.

• I am disheartened by the idea of people getting kicked off the show. I was hoping it would literally be people having to deal with each other, and I sort of hope the fans vote consistently to keep everyone and subvert that system. But it sounds sort of like The Colony, which is still one of my favorite reality social experiments ever, so I'll give it a shot.

The Whispers
ABC
A race against the clock to defeat an unseen alien enemy out to destroy the world using our most precious resource against us. Juno's Soo Hugh will write the project from Steven Spielberg's Amblin TV. Barry Sloane, Milo Ventimiglia, Lily Rabe, Derek Webster, Brianna Brown, Kylie Rogers, Catalina Denis and Kyle Harrison Breitkopf will star.

• I think this'll depend on what "our most precious resource" is--if it's something dumb, or if they withold that info, it'll probably ruin the show, but if it's something really cool, it'll carry through a lot of other suspension-of-disbelief issues. Also, it'll matter whether ABC goes whole-hog with the aliens, or if they go, like, The Event on the issue and water it down by looking at the wrong people through the whole story. 
• It does have Steven Spielberg associated with it, though, so there's hope.

Also, there's a few midseason shows:

• Extant: Female astronaut comes home pregnant to her weird husband and possibly-robot son. Depending on whether the group that's Extant is a previously-lost alien race, or, like, us. Might suffer from Takes Itself Too Seriously To Be Enjoyable. 
• The Leftovers: 2% of the whole world population disappears. This could be really, really good, if it's about how people handle it, and how they make sense of it. It would be really, really annoying, if it's actually about how only 2% of people are pure and everyone else is in hell.
• The Strain: Vampire-virus pre-apolcalypse! Also, Guillermo delToro. Nuff said.

So, basically, this fall is going to be all about aliens, the 60s and comics, and that's not even mentioning all the fun-looking inter-racial and ethnic comedies that are coming out but don't look SF&F-y. I'm always optimistic and always let down, but this year is making me more optimistic than ever!

Let's see if it holds up.

The Stats:

• Aliens - ||
• The Sixties - ||
• Comics - |||| 
• "Darker reimagining" - |
• Good vs Evil - |||
• Astronauts - |||
• Immortality - |
• Procedural - ||||
• Fairytales - ||
• Ancient Egypt - |
• Undead - ||
• Apocalypse - |||| 

NOTES:
http://www.tvguide.com/special/fall-preview/new-shows.aspx
http://www.businessinsider.com/summer-tv-shows-2014-2014-5?op=1