The Futon Critic

By Brian Ford Sullivan

In my six years of covering television, I've never seen a more bizarre series of events transpire than those that did late last night. In what can easily be called one of the biggest 11th hour moves in recent memory, FOX has ripped one series from life while resurrected another from death. "Dark Angel," which had previously been reported as renewed (read the original story) has now been canceled in favor of the Joss Whedon drama "Firefly." It seems that FOX never gave the James Cameron produced series a formal commitment as executives had planned to renew "Dark Angel" in reaction to their disappointment over "Firefly's" two-hour pilot. However in the past few days the prolific Whedon took it upon himself to pen a new pilot script that impressed FOX executives enough to go with "Firefly" instead. A new one-hour pilot will be shot with the previous two-hour pilot being repurposed for later in the season. With production costs of both series being two of the network's most expensive, insiders say executives felt that they could only financially support one of the two series next season leading to the "one or the other" situation.