Scifi.com

The creators of Fox's SF series Dark Angel said that big changes are in store for the show as it enters its second season on Fox. In addition to moving to a new 8 p.m. Friday timeslot, the show will broaden its story beyond its genetically enhanced heroine, Max, played by Jessica Alba, show executives told reporters at Fox's fall preview for the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, Calif.

"What we want to do is expand the Dark Angel universe slightly, but stay very consistent and true to the themes and the style that we created for the first season," co-creator James Cameron told reporters. He described the changes as "turbocharging" the science fiction elements, playing up a theme of "biopunk" and introducing a host of new, genetically altered characters called "trans-humans." "We're going to stay very focused on the world of Dark Angel, which is our world, 20 years in the future, going through a transformative period, [with] the transformation caused by the manipulation of the stuff of life, the DNA that we're all made of. And [with] people who are human beings, except not quite human beings. ... We're going to see people who don't necessarily look completely human, where the changes in their gene sequences are expressing in forms where clearly they couldn't walk into a 7-Eleven without creating a fuss."

Added co-creator Charles H. Eglee, "Last year, we sat up here and told you all that the character of Max was really a Frankenstein, but the stitches were microscopic. And having explored the mythology of Manticore and the mythology of Max's past and her character, we looked at each other ... and [asked], 'What would happen this year [if] the stitches were macroscopic?' In other words, everything that was internal in Max was externalized in some of these other characters that were coming along. ... Some of the denizens of Manticore have now come into the world."