If you are a long-time fantasy fan, and I say the word “prequel” to you, I feel like there’s a good chance you’re going to throw something at my head — and I wouldn’t blame you for doing it.

Prequels — from Star Wars to X-Men Origins: Wolverine to Star Trek: Enterprise to Terminator Salvation — deserve all the derision you want to heap upon them.

I lost my faith in the prequel the moment I saw Jar Jar Binks, and I didn’t think there was any chance I’d become a believer again.

Batman Begins and JJ Abrams’ Star Trek helped. And lately I’ve been wondering if Caprica is doing for TV what those films did for the big screen. Is the show that redefined the toaster also redefining the post-dated prologue?

There are lots of inherent problems with the concept of the prequel.

First, they almost always lack dramatic tension. Oh no, is that helicopter going to chop Wolverine to bits? No, it is not, which you know; you’ve already seen him making out with Jean Grey in the future.

Equally annoying is the fact that prequel narratives usually can’t stand alone. The stories themselves aren’t as important as manipulating all the pieces so they arrive in tact at a starting line we’re already familiar with.

And then there’s the failure to answer the important questions. Prequels should be the “why” to the “what” you already know — not just a whole bunch more CGIed “what.”

Caprica, though, has so far managed to side-step all of those pitfalls.

Unlike the first three episodes of Star Wars, which are only interesting because Anakin Skywalker sure was a cute and precocious little thing, Caprica delivers a palpable sense of doom. Never once during Attack of the Clones did I feel the need to say to Obi-Wan, “Maybe don’t train him quite so thoroughly.”

But every week of Caprica has found me shouting at Daniel Graystone that he’s blowing up the tracks at the end of the roller coaster: “You’re all going to die!”

While knowing what’s coming certainly makes the Caprica experience more haunting, it’s equally watchable if you don’t know anything about the post-apocalyptic crew of Battlestar. It is interesting to see the motivation behind the construction of the first Cylon. And it is interesting to watch how little Willie Adama grew up. Those things are all BSG.

But it’s equally intriguing to watch two families, from entirely different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, cope with the tragedy of terrorism; and to watch characters explore the connections between monotheism and terror; and to examine the effects of a virtual world without morality or consequences. That’s brand new.

And questions about the why of BSG get answered every week. Why build a Cylon in the first place? Why would they turn against humans?

Because the first Cylon’s dad made her rip off her arm! Because the first Cylon’s mom kept calling her a terrorist! Because the first Cylon had to watch her parents having sex right in front of her single, red eye! (And the probable second Cylon spent too much time trapped in a game of Dick Tracy’s Call of Duty.)

The fantasy genre breeds a rare form completist fan who will follow her fandom anywhere for the slimmest chance that she’ll find a morsel to supplement her understanding and enjoyment of a fictional world. SyFy banked on the Super Fan breed with Caprica — and so far they’re handing out genuinely tasty treats.

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SyFy’s Warehouse 13, which saw record ratings for the network in its first season, will return for a second season of thirteen new episodes on July 13th.

Regular cast members Eddie McClintock, Joanne Kelly, Saul Rubinek, and Allison Scagliotti are returning, and CCH Pounder will continue to make “guest” appearances.

A new addition to the cast, in a four-episode storyline, is Todd, “a tech savvy local who takes a special romantic interest in Claudia” and whose “budding relationship is put to the test by the secrets they are forced to keep from one another.” Nickelodeon star, Nolan Gerard Funk (Spectacular, Drake & Josh) plays Todd.

Warehouse 13 tells the story of two Secret Service agents, a straight-laced woman and bend-the-rules man, who are transferred to a massive, top-secret storage facility in windswept South Dakota which houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and supernatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government. Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly) are given weekly assignments by the Warehouse’s caretaker Artie (Saul Rubinek), who usually has them exploring paranormal activity in connection with the search for new object for the Warehouse.

Warehouse 13 proved to be a massive hit Syfy last year, becoming the most successful series in the network’s 17-year history.

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After much speculation, SyFy announced today that it has acquired the rights to both existing seasons of the U.K. show Merlin. Episodes will begin running in prime-time on Friday, April 2 at 10 PM.

The show was a producing partnership between the BBC and NBC, which ran the first season last summer to poor ratings. But this will be a U.S. premiere for Season 2, which has never been seen on American television.

The channel will rerun Season 1 first, with Season 2 following later.

Both the NBC network and SyFy are part of the NBC Universal entertainment group.

The BBC is currently filming a third season of the show, which will likely eventually run on SyFy as well.

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Three Torches (Out of Five)

There are two kinds of programs on the Sci Fi Channel: those like Battlestar Galactica that are better and more sophisticated than almost anything you’re going to see on the traditional networks, and those like Sanctuary that, while they may have a certain campy charm, simply don’t hold a candle to the more established network shows in terms of acting, production values, and, especially, writing.

Now that I think about it, Battlestar Galactica might be the only Sci Fi Channel show to fall into the former category. But definitely put Warehouse 13 in the latter.

The show isn’t a disaster. But given that it’s Sci Fi’s Big New Show — the one they’re rolling out with much fanfare on the day they’re changing their name to “The SyFy Channel” — it’s also a bit of a disappointment.

Pete and Myka, two seemingly down-on-their-luck Secret Service agents, are assigned to work a secretive facility in South Dakota, a warehouse where mysterious magical items and inventions are stored by the government. Artie, an eccentric caretaker (veteran character actor Saul Rubinek), tries to make sense of them all.

“It’s an invitation to endless wonder,” says Mrs. Frederick (CCH Pounder), the enigmatic woman who oversees the project.

Awkward hyperbole aside, it’s a great premise — part X-Files, part Indiana Jones.

What works in the show?

The producers have definitely gone the “Ken and Barbie” route in casting oh-so-pretty Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly as Secret Service Agents Pete and Myka, but the two have a nice, easy-going chemistry together.

Rubinek steals almost every scene as Artie, and Pounder is terrific (as usual) in a small, but effective part.

Likewise, the show really embraces its humor, which is a nice change after decades of earnestness and angst in similarly paranormal-themed shows like The X-Files, Fringe, and Supernatural.

What works less well?

Well, too much of the humor falls flat. A “wishing pot” creates a ferret whenever the holder wishes for something impossible? And compared to shows like The X-Files and Supernatural, Warehouse 13 has very little subtly and doesn’t miss a chance to dumb things it down.

Many of the items in the warehouse combine lousy science and with outright hokiness. A car built by Thomas Edison runs on body electricity (to the show’s credit, it’s the slowest-moving car ever created — but, weirdly, this isn’t played for laughs).

Artie keeps in contact with the agents with something called a “Farnsworth” — an awkward, bulky video communicator built in 1929 by the inventor of the television. But wouldn’t a cell phone adapted for use in Warehouse 13 be a whole lot easier?

It’s not just the humor that’s broad; the plots and characterizations are too. The central mystery in the two-hour premiere episode involves an ancient Italian comb that turns the wearer in a power-hungry despot and … well, let’s just say the episode won’t be winning any Peabody Awards.

(And can I just say? It seems bizarre to me that the show pairs an ultra-competent, “by the books” woman with an easy-going, rakish guy — a dynamic that already a cliche way back when The X-Files did it. Why make The X-Files comparisons even more inevitable?)

But this isn’t a show that was made to be seriously pondered. It was made to be fun.

And for the most part, it is.

Warehouse 13’s two-hour premiere movie airs Tuesday, July 7th at 9 PM. Future installments will air on Wednesdays at 9 PM. Check out their genuinely clever website here.

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The future of television is getting really confusing.

Summer ratings for the broadcast television networks – CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and the CW, the networks that, through their affiliates, literally “broadcast” their programming – have been terrible.

According to Variety, CBS’ ratings have held steady, but ABC, NBC, and Fox’s are down by at least 20% over just last year — and, for the week of June 15-21, ABC actually saw its average weekly rating sink below a cable channel, USA, something that is believed to be a first.

Meanwhile, the ratings for many cable channels are way up.

“It’s the continuation of a trend that’s been going on since the early 80s,” says Bill Gorman, editor of the TV rating and analysis site TVbytheNumbers.com. “Viewers continue making the 30-year shift from watching broadcast to watching cable.”

With current cable hits like TLC’s Jon & Kate Plus 8 (with more than 10 million viewers), The Disney Channel’s Princess Protection Program (with more than 8 million viewers), and TNT’s The Closer (with more than 6 million viewers), cable networks now air five of the top 20 highest rating programs on television (compared to only two last year).

The premiere of the HBO fantasy show True Blood, meanwhile, drew an astounding 3.7 million viewers (5.1 million when you factor in an 11 PM repeat the same night). And this is on a pay cable network.

Ratings for the broadcast networks plunged last year too, and cable ratings rose, but the broadcast networks explained that away by saying it was because of last year’s writers’ strike which cut short the schedules of most of their premiere shows.

Instead, the year after the writers’ strike, the massive viewing shift has continued unabated. And February’s change from analog to digital broadcast brought even more more viewers into the cable fold.

According to Gorman, the shift from broadcast to cable is accelerating. “Cable is spending more money on their shows,” making them better, he says. “With more viewers, they have more money to spend.”

The broadcast networks have traditionally charged more for advertising than the cable channels — as much as twice as much per viewer. But at this year’s “upfronts” — the May event where the networks roll out their new shows and sell most of the advertising space for the upcoming year — advertisers balked. The two sides have been in a stalemate ever since, with advertisers openly threatening to move more of their ad dollars to cable.

What does the downfall of the broadcast networks mean for fans of fantasy programming?

Theoretically, cable networks would spend some of their new-found resources targeting under-served viewerships, such as fans of genre programming.

Some of that is happening, at least on premium cable channels. In addition to True Blood, HBO has given the okay to film a pilot for A Game of Thrones, their TV adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice book series. Since the show is expensive to produce, and since HBO commissions few pilots that it does not air, it seems likely that the show will make it on television in some form.

And in January, Starz will premiere an ultra-graphic fantasy-esque show, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, created by Xena: Warrior Princess‘ Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, and starring Lucy Lawless.

The Sci Fi Channel, meanwhile, offers occasional fantasy and more frequent fantasy-esque programming, including a new X-Files-type show, Warehouse 13, debuting Tuesday.

But also on Tuesday, The Sci Fi Channel is infamously changing its name to The SyFy Channel.

“If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future,” Sci Fi President Dave Howe told the New York Times in March. “That didn’t capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes.”

So will the newly-renamed SyFy Channel feature more fantasy and fantasy-esque program — or is “SyFy” simply an excuse for them to run more reality and “documentary”-style programming like Destination Truth and Ghost Hunters that they can produce much more cheaply than traditional scripted drama, but that is only tangentially related to fantasy, at best?

The channel, and Dave Howe, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with TheTorchOnline.com on precisely this question.

The SyFy Channel is only the latest niche cable channel to blur its primary brand in hopes of expanding its viewership. TLC has had enormous success with Jon & Kate Plus 8 — but is that really programming you would expect to find on something called The Learning Channel?

“[Cable channel executives] realized there are only so many viewers in a niche,” Gorman says. “They’re starting to say, ‘I’m going for these 18-49 year-old women. Screw this little niche we’ve boxed ourselves into.’”

In other words, as the broadcast networks fall, some of the successful cable channels are starting to act increasingly like them.

“In some ways, more channels doesn’t always mean more choices,” Gorman says.

Still, it’s hard to believe the cable television landscape won’t be at least somewhat better for fantasy enthusiasts, who have been almost completely ignored by the broadcast networks for years. NBC and ABC have found success with Heroes and Lost, respectively, and NBC is currently offering viewers Merlin, a U.K. import.

But for the most part, only the CW (and its predecessor the WB), home to Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and Smallville, has offered much variety in terms of fantasy programming.

By contrast, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and a spate of other fantasy programming in the 90s and early 00s was syndicated, or offered to broadcast affiliates on an individual basis. Legend of the Seeker is a show currently in first-run syndication, and the show has been renewed for a second season, though its numbers are less than half those of Xena and Hercules in their prime, which doesn’t bode well for syndicated imitators.

The hey-days of the broadcast networks are almost certainly over. But only time will tell if what replaces them will be much better for fantasy enthusiasts.

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