Lexa Doig – Hello, nurse!

That’s one reason that my other unusual turn-on is pregnant women. Now if only I could find a muscular woman who likes the idea of being pregnant…

She seems a bit fuller around the face, so the extra tittage makes sense…to a point. That’s an arful lot of add-on flesh. I would suspect surgical engineering if she weren’t a new mom. Wouldn’t make sense to get an augmentation right in the middle of breast-feeding time, eh?

Still…several inches of cleavage where there was *none.*

Whew.

Pregnant muscle women… thats an interesting idea.

Well, best you enjoy her while you can in reruns since it seems that this fifth season was the last run for the series.

http://www.andromedatv.com/about/behind_billhamm01.html

What’s next for Andromeda?

Part One of our interview with Tribune executive Bill Hamm

Since the beginning of Season 5, and now with dozens of props from the set of Andromeda for sale at auction, many fans have concluded that our heroes’ adventures are winding down. Others are hoping for an official announcement to the contrary. AndromedaTV.com Producer Jeremy Horowitz sat down with Tribune Entertainment VP of Scripted Programming Bill Hamm to set the record straight on this issue, as well as to find out what fans can do to help the shows they love.

Jeremy Horowitz: What’s the official word? Is Andromeda coming back for a sixth season?

Bill Hamm: No. Andromeda will conclude its fifth and final season this May. Basically, five seasons is the magic number you need for business purposes to go into syndication and have your repeats stripped. We now have that number and everybody felt at this point — both the creative people on the show as well as the local affiliate stations — that we had told as many stories as we possibly could, and that it was time to go out on a high as opposed to getting another season and whimpering out.

Jeremy: When you say “to have your repeats stripped,” you mean to be shown five days a week in reruns, right?

Bill: Yes. If you only have 3 seasons or fewer, there aren’t enough episodes to run five days a week or four times a night, so you really get hit economically. But a fourth season or even a fifth season is really what you want.

Jeremy: I don’t want to get too far afield, but when you say you “get hit economically,” you mean that the deals are structured differently, and so you don’t get as much money if you don’t have as many episodes?

Bill: Right. You’ll see stuff that’s only been on for half a season or a season, and they just get played off, if at all. Usually they just sit on the shelf, never to be seen again. It’s sort of like a magic 5-year club. The amazing thing is that Kevin Sorbo has now had two series that have lasted that long. So he’s really in an exclusive club.

Jeremy: What would you say to the idea that the show is ending because Kevin Sorbo is leaving? Was that the order of events, or was it otherwise?

Bill: No, that’s actually false. Kevin enjoys doing the show, and he was open to discussing a potential sixth season. But when we all sat down – writers, producers, Kevin, the rest of the cast – we really felt that we had finished what we had set out to do, and that it was time to look toward new horizons. So we’re really proud of Kevin’s contributions and can only wish him great things on his ABC pilot.

Jeremy: Could the fans have done anything to save the show? Whether it was massive letter-writing campaigns, or fundraising, or anything else, was there anything that the fans could have done to keep it on the air for a sixth season, or even beyond?

Bill: Not really. Again, to put the economics aside, many dramas (with some exceptions such as Law & Order ) tend to have a five- or six-year cycle. So it really was just everybody saying that we feel that it’s time to put a conclusion on it and move on.

Jeremy: So even if Warren Buffett, for example, had stepped in and said, “Here’s $20 million to continue Andromeda ,” what would have happened then?

Bill: Well, I’m one who never says never, so with that kind of offer there would definitely be potential, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I can only say that I have the greatest appreciation for the Andromeda fans. They’re the best out there, and we appreciate the support and letters they’ve sent over the years. At this point, though, it’s time for Andromeda to ride into the sunset.

Jeremy: One last question about fan involvement in that scenario. Pie in the sky, let’s say, for example, the fans were able to raise $10 million and come to Tribune Entertainment or someone else involved in the production and say “We love this production so much, we want to buy in.” Would that have meant something?

Bill: It’s an intriguing idea; I never really gave it too much thought. I think it’s going to get complicated by who owns the rights to these shows, and having fans come in on that basis makes it a bit of a messy playing field. But I think what you’re playing into is basically what I think is going to be a cool potential for the future, which is that you may see the next Andromeda come around, and it may be on some sort of pay basis where the fans pay for the show themselves. You get a million fans all paying a dollar each, and that may be enough to make a new episode every week. Whether it comes through your cable or satellite, or through a Netflix type of situation where it comes in the mail — whatever it may be — I think there’s a lot of potential there because it gives you a chance to do more specialized shows that don’t need a mass audience, but if you have a million paying people, it may be enough. I hope the fans are open to this; I’m not sure that we’re ready for it right now, but the potential is there.

Actually, the best thing I can tell anyone who’s interested in watching the old Andromeda is to use what we have now that we didn’t have years ago – and this is not a plug – but you can buy the series on DVD, or you could even find a place where you can rent it, and that makes you your own ultimate scheduler, where you can watch the show any time of the day or night, and in any place, and I think that’s the wonderful thing today. And I’m not just pitching it for Andromeda , you know, whether it’s 24 , or anything else, you’re in control, which is a nice change.

Jeremy: Absolutely. One last thing on the fan issue: You read about projects in Hollywood that have a hard time finding partners and, frankly, financing. Beyond the Sea , the Bobby Darin movie, is a good example. Kevin Spacey really wanted to do the project, and, according to what I’ve read, he made some compromises because he had a foreign partner involved who put up a ton of money to do it, and Kevin Spacey really wanted to get the project done. The foreign partner believed in it too, but that meant the movie had to be shot in Germany, among other things. What’s the difference between a single person with a lot of money having an interest in a production, and a lot of people with a little bit of money, but ultimately putting up a large sum of money as I described before, with an interest in production. If the fans were able to organize and call themselves “The Supreme Council of Andromeda” or something like that, and they had a real, bona-fide organization that put together a big chunk of money and said, “If you’re in, we’re in; we really are interested in this,” would it be taken seriously?

Bill: I think it would. You really have to separate between movies and TV, though. Unfortunately with television series, it’s not the same situation as just a single feature film. You’re trying to set up a situation where you’re doing 22 episodes per season, so that gets to be a pretty hefty price tag. Certainly on Andromeda alone, the production budget was over $25 million for the season…

Jeremy: For the fifth season.

Bill: Yeah. I think your idea works maybe more in a one-shot. Now say there were enough Andromeda fans that wanted to see the next chapter, it might work better as some kind of reunion movie or special a year from now – if fans wanted more closure than we’re giving them, something along those lines could happen. But I think it works better in a movie area. Now I can imagine, if there had been enough original Star Trek fans, and Paramount had never done the theatrical Star Trek movies, it’s possible that they all could have banded together and said “we want to make a theatrical version of it, and here’s some investment seed money.” [Notices Jeremy’s reaction.] Do you know of something like that?

Jeremy: I don’t want to give you false information, and I’m sure there are lots of people out there who know much more about this than I do, but there is a group of people out there – their website is http://www.newvoyages.com — who have the blessing of Eugene Roddenberry, Gene’s son. They put together a mini-series which they consider to be the Fourth Season of the Original Series of Star Trek. They built sets, they hired actors, they designed costumes, and I have to say that, whatever its faults may be, the production values are very high, and it’s very convincing. And it was obviously a concerted effort by these people who love the show so much that they decided to do it themselves.

Anyway, as far as the fundraising issue goes, I think the fans definitely perceive the difference between television and film. The reason I bring up a project like Beyond the Sea, and what that entailed in terms of a big foreign partner, is because you hear very often with television shows that there isn’t enough money in the budget for certain things. The reality is that there are many political issues that affect whether a show is or isn’t successful, but when you keep hearing “we don’t have enough money for this, we don’t have enough money for that,” (which hasn’t always been the case with Andromeda ) the fans get the feeling that if they had a large chunk of money to contribute, a lot of that would be alleviated. So do you still think that there is a major difference between feature films and television series on the level of budget strategy and planning?

Keep an eye out for Bill’s response

in Part Two of our interview, coming soon!

Lexa will be playing the doctor replacing DR. Jance Fraiser on Stargate SG-1 in the upcoming season. Like the Dr. Fraiser character, it will likely be a reoccuring guest role, not an offical place in the main cast. Dr. Fraiser appeared in many episodes so it is not unreasonable to expect it will be the same with Lexa. Playing a doctor on the show likely means not much cleavage to be seen, or much body for that matter. As she has her child to care for, she can be expected to limit her acting during the child’s formative years.

Her hubby is the actor that plays Dr. Daniel Jackson on the show.

Also slated to appear in several episodes of Stargate is Claudia Black, who has decent muscle for an actress. Those of you familiar with Farscape may remember she was 1 of 2 actresses on that show with jawdroppingly amazing and well developed abdominal muscles.

Phenoms

(Who incidentally thinks it was a shame to loose Dr. Frasier… I always thought there was something kind of sexy about that actress.)