Dr. Molly Anne Caffrey has a contingency plan for just about everything: alien invasions, and even for TV show cancellations. Of course, the usual plan for the latter is spelled "DVD". And so it goes with this past year's short-lived series
Threshold. It was one of a handful of sci-fi themed new shows for the last Fall season schedule that tried to capitalize on the popularity of
Lost. I personally thought it was among the best of that bunch, and it certainly wasn't the first to get canceled so quite a few of you thought the same way. But CBS had given it a 13-hourlong-episode order, and took it off the schedule after airing only 9 of those hours (the double-length pilot plus 7 regular episodes) because the numbers just weren't there in the ratings.
For those of you who don't know, Carla Gugino (
Karen Sisco, Chicago Hope) starred as Dr. Molly Anne Caffrey, an incredibly smart analyst who writes up contingency plans for the government based on all kinds of (hopefully) unlikely scenarios: earthquakes, biohazards, terrorist plots, pandemics, and even alien invasions. The contingency plan for the latter is code named "Threshold", and thus we get the name of the show. Why? Because the government must activate this plan when a mysterious alien lifeform "attacks" a Naval ship and warps the members of its crew using a sonic signal to "infect" humans with their alien biology.
Caffrey reports to Deputy National Security Advisor J.T. Baylock (Charles S. Dutton,
Roc), and is instructed to assemble a team consisting of the best minds according to the needed disciplines in her "Threshold" plan. The muscle is Sean Cavennaugh (Brian Van Holt), a ghost agent assigned by Baylock to protect Molly and the rest of the Red Team. Brent Spiner (
Star Trek: The Next Generation) is Dr. Nigel Fenway, a forensic microbiologist who is key in identifying which humans have become infected. Spiner's character plays off of the character for Peter Dinklage (
The Station Agent), Arthur Ramsey, a master linguist and mathematician who is the best mind for this sort of project...except his mind is usually more on drinking and on the ladies (when the government came to get him for this assignment, they literally plucked him out of a strip joint). The final member of the team is engineer Lucas Pegg, played by Rob Benedict (
Felicity, Birds of Prey). Pegg is willing to help, but his dilemma is that he's engaged to be married soon, and the secrecy of the project means his fiance doesn't know where he's disappeared to!
13 hours were produced (with a 14th hour starting to be mapped out in case the show got picked up), with the first two hours forming a double-length pilot episode called "Trees Made of Glass". Will we see it on DVD? Yes, according to our industry sources. The same sources who gave us info
posted last Friday about
Joan of Arcadia - The 2nd Season coming to DVD also inform us that
Threshold - The Complete Series will come to DVD, possibly as early as the Summer. We can expect every produced episode on there, of course, including 4 unaired episodes. But there's no word yet on if there will be any extras produced by CBS and Paramount Home Entertainment for this release, so we don't know if we'll get to see how the producers intended to continue the show if it had gotten picked up.
This is early "gossip" info, of course, and extremely subject to change. Stay tuned and we'll let you know more just as soon as developments start to happen, okay?
