Day One

Day One was an NBC showed scheduled to air in early 2010. At the time of the shows development a year earlier, NBC had Heroes still on the air and ABC’s Lost was still a cultural juggernaut, so NBC was looking for a new genre show to take advantage of those sci-fi fans that loved the idea of long range storytelling mired in mystery and conspiracies. The premise of Day One was that a worldwide cataclysm would occur during which all of the world’s infrastructure would be destroyed as some seemingly alien columns began popping up all over the planet. Amid this destruction, the residents of a Los Angeles apartment complex were designated as the savior’s of the planet.

Anyhoo, between developing and filming the pilot of Day One a few things changed in the TV landscape. First Heroes was a cancelled after a steep decline in quality and ratings while Lost was gearing up to end it’s run and NBC had been burned a few times by other attempts at genre shows. So fearing that they had another Surface (man-made sea monster take over the world), NBC shelved Day One with the promise that it would be re-tooled and aired as a mini-series, then be re-tooled yet again and shown as a stand-alone 2 hour movie. Finally NBC just decided this show was not worth the bother and decided that it would never see the light of day. This decision upset a good number of fans that were eager for this show (that had been heavily hyped by NBC for months) but it was much ado about nothing because the promo video that NBC showed for Day One was all the convincing I needed that this show would be a disaster. That promo with its bland actors and groan worthy dialogue made Day One look like it would have been a less edgy Falling Skies and since Falling Skies is about as edgy as a CBS sitcom I think we all dodged a dreary bullet.