DC Heroines "Birds of Prey" coming to a small screen near you.

[Tabitha]

The WB has commissioned a new series based on the DC Comics book "Birds of Prey" which features Barbara Gordon (formerly Batgirl, now Oracle) and Dinah Lance, the Black Canary.

For more info, you can look at IMDB, the always useful The Futon Critic, The WB's Birds of Prey Page, and this dedicated site The Gotham Clock Tower.

Following info from the Clocktower

THE SHOW
Birds of Prey, based on the DC Comic of the same name. Birds is a spin-off from the Batman comic series, and one of the focus characters is Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl now paralyzed by the Joker. The series also features Helena Kyle, daughter of Selina "Catwoman" Kyle and a father she never knew. The trio is rounded out by the young Black Canary, a young woman who seems to have psychic power.

PREMIERES
Fall 2002 on the WB
The show will air on Wednesday nights at 9PM following Dawson's Creek

CAST
Dina Meyer (Starship Troopers) as Barbara Gordon/Oracle
Ashley Scott (Dark Angel) as the Helena Kyle/The Huntress
Rachel Skarsten (Angels In The Infield) as Dinah Lance/The Black Canary
Shemar Moore (Soul Train) as Det. Jake Reese
Sherilyn Fenn (Twin Peaks) as Dr. Harleen Quinzel
Mark Hamill (Star Wars, Batman: The Animated Series) as The Voice of the Joker


I have been a big fan of BoP from their beginnings, and am caught between thinking they are never going to make this work, and quietly hoping they don't embarras the original premise too much. The Gotham Clock Tower posts a review of the pilot, which has major spoilers for the storyline. I am glad they decided to keep Oracle's paralysis part of the story, but a bit dubious about Black Canary being only 17 - she's like mid thirties in the comic book.

 

[Tabitha]

I thought there would be a bit more of a response to this... Debut time is coming closer and closer, and some more tidbits are starting to come to the fore:

www.scifi.com/scifiwire reports:

Meyer Flies In Birds

Dina Meyer, who stars as Barbara Gordon in The WB's upcoming Birds of Prey series, told SCI FI Wire that her character is more than just the former Batgirl. "She's a genius," Meyer said in an interview during The WB's fall preview in Pasadena, Calif. "She's the glue. She's the backbone of the Birds of Prey. She runs everything. She keeps everybody on track."

Meyer (Starship Troopers) plays Gordon, who has been disabled by the Joker in a future Gotham City. Confined to a wheelchair, Gordon has become a computerized crimefighter known as the Oracle, who leads a team of female heroes in the series, which is based on the DC Comics series of the same name. "She was Batgirl, a wonderful superhero, and has ... this horrible disability," Meyer said. "But she grew from it. She got strong from it. She found her calling from it. Initially she was running ... in Batman's shoes. And it took her getting shot and paralyzed and being confined to a wheelchair to find out who she really was and, in a sense, becoming a better person than she ever could have been had she not fought these villains. So I think that's really, really wonderful. She could have thrown in the towel. She could have said, 'You know what? The hell with it all. I don't have legs, I can't kick ass, I'm done.' And she didn't. She said, 'You know what? I'm going to find out who I really am and do what I got to do and be even bigger and better than I was.' It's the new and improved Barbara Gordon. And I salute her. I think she's fabulous. And I feel honored to be playing her."

Birds of Prey, which also stars Ashley Scott and Rachel Skarsten, premieres on The WB in the fall and will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

There is also a small blurb that Sherilyn Fenn's role (Harley Quinn) is being recast. Apparently her sheduling commitments have thrown a spanner in the works as her character is to play a fairly major role. A shame, I have liked Fenn ever since her days as the cherry stalk knotting Audrey in David Lynch's Twin Peaks. I hope they cast someone good in her place.

 

[Tabitha]

More info coming up:

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Prey Fills Girl Gap

Leata Kalogridis, creator of The WB's upcoming Birds of Prey superhero series, told reporters that her show will fill a gap in genre entertainment. "There's a lot of exploration being done on television and in movies of the way in which boys become men, men become superheroes," Kalogridis said at The WB's fall preview. "There's a lot of exploration of that. And ... outside of Buffy [the Vampire Slayer], [women haven't] really been explored, and it was an opportunity to do that within a franchise that was so firmly identified as ... having female superheroes that people recognized and knew about."

Birds of Prey is based on the DC Comics series and stars Dina Meyer as Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl, who is now disabled and, as the Oracle, oversees a trio of femme superheroes in New Gotham City. "Batgirl is kind of an icon, but she just had not had her own time to be explored," Kalogridis said. "And it gave us an opportunity to do that, which was really, frankly, too good to resist."

Ashley Scott plays Helena Kyle, aka the Huntress, who is the secret offspring of Batman and Catwoman, and Rachel Skarsten plays Dinah, a young clairvoyant who will eventually morph into the Black Canary. "I think the wonderful thing about the show is ... we have Dina [Meyer], who is a woman in her 30s, Ashley, who is in her 20s, and myself, I'm 17," Skarsten told SCI FI Wire. "So I think for girls and women, there's all sorts of different characters, age levels, generations that they can relate to. And then of course there's going to be the guys who watch it to see some booty."

Scott told SCI FI Wire that her role required a lot of physical training. "A lot of wire work," she said in an interview. "There's a lot of gymnastics and stuff. ... I did all my fight sequences in the pilot, but I wanted to go a little further and do back handsprings and really kind of get into it a little bit more physically. So we're training hard." Scott added that the wire harnesses are "so uncomfortable, man. It sucks. I had bruises here and here just doing a stinking photo shoot the other day. ... I was going forward, and they cut off my breathing. And I'm a tough chick. But ... at the end I was like, I started to cry. I was like, 'Guys, this is too much right now.'" Birds of Prey will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT, starting in the fall.

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[triffid]

For all those interested, the British issue of Dreamwatch has a feature on this show, as well as a rather nice piccy of Dina Meyer onthe front cover dressed in the Batgirl costume, sans mask

 

[ray gower]

Sadly it is one of those series that will take time to get to UK screens, if it gets here at all! So I try not to get excited about the forthcomings.

Have now seen an anthology of BoP. So I'll try and pay a visit to the bookshop (with cash). It was quite expensive

 

[triffid]

Do we know at all how close to the original comics this show is going to be?

 

[Tabitha]

Originally posted by triffid
Do we know at all how close to the original comics this show is going to be?

From what I can tell, not very. They are keeping the line that Barbara Gordon was once Batgirl, having been crippled by the Joker, and later becoming information maestro Oracle. That sounds like the closest we get, the other two main characters are pretty different.

For Helena Bertinelli, The Huntress, they are first of all ditching her cool purple threads in favour of a more "Batman and Robin" style leather get-up (boo, but good news if you like your daily dose of cleavage I suppose). Huntress's origin is not the same as the Huntress in the Birds of Prey comics, but is closer to the old "Earth 2" Huntress from way back when. This character is the daughter of Catwoman and Batman. I don't know much more about the comics history of that version of the Huntress, but it would suggest to me that perhaps this series will be set slightly in the future. Is Batman still active in Gotham? Having a 20 year old (or so) daughter would make him fairly old to still be donning the tights.

From what I can remember they have totally ditched all of Black Canary's history. In the BoP comics she is the eldest of the group, probably mid to late thirties. The series will give us a teenage runaway.

Time will tell how faithful it feels, but I am fairly confident that it will feel familiar to casual fans of the Batman mythos. The Joker and Harley Quinn will definitely be making some appearances.


Oh! I have just realised one HUGE difference! In the comic books, Huntress is not really a member of the BoP. She was in their first mini-series, but is generally considered a loss cannon vigilante. The Birds of Prey are simply Oracle and Black Canary, with Power Girl being a part-timer.

So there you go! That's my thoughts.



Oh, and as for it making it to the UK, this will probably be a fairly good partner show to Smallville - both are WB products based on DC characters, so maybe it will get picked up in a package deal.

 

[triffid]

Looks like this show is going to do for DC continuity what Enterprise did for the startrek one, that being totally ignore just about everything ever written. Still it won't make much difference to me seeing as I never read Bop, so I'm gonna take it on face value.

 

[Tabitha]

Well, if you still manage to enjoy Enterprise without the strict adherence to continuity, I highly recommend giving the comic book a go too. You have posted in a Batman thread that he is one of your faves - if you like his expanded family then you really ought to be reading this!

Mind you, I dropped the title when I left the UK, due to money and carrying capacity for travelling and such, but I will be picking it up again when I get home - I just hope the quality hasn't fallen at all.