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 Heroes - View Trailer

Coming in July to BBC2

Sue Deeks, BBC Television's Head of Series, Programme Acquisition, secured the free terrestrial television rights to Heroes in the UK for the BBC.

She says: "Heroes is a fresh and imaginative take on the superhero theme and features amazing special effects – BBC Two is the perfect home for such an intriguing, intelligent and irresistible drama."

From creator/writer Tim Kring (Crossing Jordan), this 23-episode drama begins as a total eclipse casts its shadow across the globe.

As a total eclipse casts its shadow over the world, ordinary people discover they possess extraordinary powers. Their ultimate destiny is to save the world from impending disaster.

We are introduced to Peter Petrelli, a young man who dreams of flying, and his brother Nathan, a ruthless politician who thinks that Peter is dreaming his life away. Meanwhile, ordinary people from all around the world are starting to suspect that they have abilities beyond those of normal humans.

Heroin addict and artist Isaac Mendez paints images he cannot understand, until he sees his paintings as real life images on the news, could he really be painting the future.

In Las Vegas, single mum and stripper Niki Sanders has got herself in trouble with the mob and starts seeing strange things in mirrors. Texas high school cheerleader Claire Bennet is finding growing up hard, especially as she is seemingly indestructible, through a series of daredevil stunts, Claire discovers that her body has no limits and is able to recover from any wound almost instantly. Japanese businessman Hiro Nakamura discovers that he has powers of telekinesis and tries to convince a friend that he can bend space and time, but is it really possible for him to move through the space- time continuum like his comic book heroes?

Heroes is an American science fiction drama television series, created by Tim Kring, which premiered on NBC on September 25, 2006. The show tells the story of several people who "thought they were like everyone else... until they woke with incredible abilities" such as telepathy, time travel and flight. These people soon realize they have a role in preventing a catastrophe and saving mankind. The series follows the writing style of American comics with short, multi-episode story arcs that build upon a larger, more encompassing arc. Even with small story arcs that move the story forward, Kring said "we have talked about where the show goes up to five seasons".

When the series premiered in the United States, it was the night's most-watched program among adults aged 18–49, attracting 14.3 million viewers overall and receiving the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years. On October 6, 2006, NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly announced Heroes had been picked up for a full season, and on January 17, 2007, Reilly announced Heroes had been picked up for a second season. The second season of Heroes will consist of 24 episodes, and the first season of a new spinoff, Heroes: Origins, will include six episodes. The second season will premiere on September 24, 2007.

The show features an ensemble cast of twelve main characters, although NBC's cast page lists only ten characters: Leonard Roberts (D.L. Hawkins), who first appeared in the series' fifth episode, was an additional member of the original full-time cast; later Jack Coleman (Noah Bennet) was upgraded from a recurring role to become the twelfth full-time cast member as of "Fallout".

Volume 1: Genesis

The main cast, not all of whom have been shown to possess powers, consists of:

• Noah Bennet(Jack Coleman), more commonly referred to as "Mr. Bennet" or "the Man in Horn-Rimmed Glasses", a father who works for the Primatech Paper Company, which is actually a cover operation for an organization that investigates people with superhuman abilities.
• Claire Bennet(Hayden Panettiere), Mr. Bennet's adopted daughter, a high school cheerleader who lives in Odessa, Texas, and has a spontaneous regenerative ability.
• Simone Deveaux(Tawny Cypress), an art dealer and gallery owner whose skepticism and complicated romantic life are tested.
• D.L. Hawkins(Leonard Roberts), the husband of Niki and father of Micah, has the power to alter his physical tangibility and phase through solid objects, both organic and inorganic.
• Isaac Mendez(Santiago Cabrera), an artist living in New York who can paint future events during precognitive trances. He also writes and draws a comic book called 9th Wonders! which has also been shown to depict the future. He has problems with drugs.
• Hiro Nakamura(Masi Oka), a programmer from Tokyo with the ability to manipulate the space-time continuum. He is convinced that he is a hero, and with other "special persons", he can change the future.
• Matt Parkman(Greg Grunberg), a Los Angeles police officer with the ability to hear other people's thoughts.
• Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar), a New York Congressional candidate with the ability of self-propelled flight.
• Peter Petrelli(Milo Ventimiglia), a former hospice nurse and Nathan's younger brother. He is an empath with the ability to absorb the powers of others he has been near and recall them, as if they were stored in a file-cabinet like unit.
• Micah Sanders(Noah Gray-Cabey), D.L. and Niki's son and a child prodigy, Micah is a technopath, allowing him to "talk" to electrical devices, which gives him control of machines and electronic devices.
• Niki Sanders(Ali Larter), the wife of D.L. and mother of Micah. A former internet stripper from Las Vegas who exhibits superhuman strength and an alternate personality who goes by the name of Jessica.
• Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy), a professor of genetics from India who travels to New York to investigate the death of his father, Chandra. Through his investigations, he comes into contact with people his father listed as possessing superhuman abilities.

The main antagonist in season one is Sylar (Zachary Quinto), a serial killer who hunts super-powered individuals in order to take their abilities. Additionally, the first season slowly reveals who and what is responsible for a plot to destroy New York City. The series also features many guest and recurring characters, including friends and family of the main cast, criminals and villains, and other individuals with remarkable powers.

The plot of Heroes is designed to be similar to the stories of comic books. Like comic books, Heroes has large overall arcs and small arcs within the main arc. No matter what characters exist and what events make up a season, all seasons of Heroes will involve ordinary people who discover their abilities and their reactions to their self-discovery. An individual's powers will be relevant to a personality trait they possess.

Each episode reveals new answers and questions and progresses the story and/or the characters. There is an overall arc of the first season that revolves around stopping an explosion of immense proportions that happens in the future. That arc is initially carried by two characters, Hiro Nakamura and Isaac Mendez, where the former saw the event in the future and the latter painted it from his visions.

The first four episodes of the first season primarily revolved around characters discovering their powers, dealing with the issues of normal life and coping with the consequences of their discovery.

At the end of the fourth episode, a smaller arc began with the message "Save the cheerleader, save the world", which is tied to the explosion already foreseen. By the end of that arc, the characters slowly discovered their abilities and the existence of others like them, and some of them even began to realize the need to come together to prevent a catastrophe.

As characters progress through the first season learning of others similar to them, the plot turns to the question of how the explosion seen in Hiro's trip to the future and Isaac's paintings will occur and what role the various characters will play to stop it or cause it.

Heroes: Origins

Main article: Heroes: Origins

On May 14th, NBC announced that during the 2007-2008 season, NBC will air a Heroes spinoff called Heroes: Origins. The spinoff will introduce a new character each week, and viewers will select which one stays for the following season. This spinoff is set for six episodes.

Recurring elements

Three elements appear repeatedly throughout the series: the helix, the scar and the eclipse. The scar appears to be man-made, but the circumstances surrounding the helix – its meaning and its manifestations – are a slowly-unraveling mystery.

Helix

The helix is a symbol that appears quite frequently throughout the series. The helix symbol consists of an S shape from which three lines extend, with two on the left and one on the right. The "S" shape resembles a strand of RNA during transcription, which would make the lines extending outward the nucleotides during the transcription phase.

In episode 12 ("Godsend") the symbol appears on the sword hilt and Ando Masahashi remarks that it appears to be a combination of two Kanji characters: 才 (Sai) meaning "Great Talent" and 与 (Yo) meaning "Godsend". During an interview at the Wizard World in Los Angeles, writer and Co-Producer Aron Coleite stated that it literally means “God sending great ability.” Writer and co-executive producer Michael Green stated that the writers know it as "the helix". This symbol frequently appears as a pattern formed by mundane objects, but it also recurs on certain plot-significant items and on several characters:

• On various paintings by Isaac Mendez.
• On Jessica's back whenever she surfaces as Niki's alternate personality. When Jessica is repressed, the symbol does not appear on Niki's back. This also appeared on a painting of "Jessica" by Isaac. The symbol was hidden under an extra layer of paint. Later on, Jessica hides the symbol (an apparent tattoo) under a layer of foundation makeup.
• As recurring pattern in Dr. Chandra Suresh's code
• On the hilt of a katana once owned by 17th century samurai Takezo Kensei, possibly the earliest known manifestation of the symbol. This katana is held by Hiro Nakamura.
• Printed on the front of Dr. Chandra Suresh's book, Activating Evolution.
• As a logo for Primatech Paper, in "Company Man".
• On jewelry, most notably the Haitian's necklace and Hana Gitelman's earrings and ring.
• On a flag at the "Jittetsu Arms" shop in New York and on the shop's ad in the Yellow Pages.
• On the flag and katana of a samurai in 1671, witnessed by Hiro Nakamura in the episode "How to Stop an Exploding Man" during the preview for Volume Two: Generations.

Scar

A mark consisting of two black parallel lines has been shown close to the neck of multiple super-powered characters. According to "Wireless, Part 4" and "How Do You Stop an Exploding Man, Part 1", the mark is the scar left by the two-pronged needle of a pneumatic injection device, which, as revealed in a biography of Hana Gitelman in the Heroes 360 experience, injects a radioisotope to allow tracking. All of the marked characters have had encounters with Mr. Bennet and/or the Haitian. The following have displayed it:

• Matt Parkman
• Ted Sprague
• Hana Gitelman
• Claude
• Isaac Mendez

Reception

Critical acclaim

• After completing half its first season, Heroes had already collected an assortment of honors and accolades. On December 10, 2006 the American Film Institute named Heroes one of the ten "best television programs of the year". Three days later on December 13, the Writers Guild of America nominated the program for "best new series" of 2007. The next day (December 14), the Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominated the program for a Golden Globe Award for "best television drama", and nominated Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura) for Best Supporting Actor on a TV Series. Neither the series nor the actor won; the show lost out to ABC's popular medical drama Grey's Anatomy and Oka lost to Jeremy Irons, who played Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester in Channel 4's Elizabeth I. Heroes won the award for Favorite New TV Drama at the 2007 People's Choice Awards. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People nominated Heroes on January 9, 2007 for an Image Award in the "Outstanding Drama Series" category, but the show again lost to Grey's Anatomy. On February 21, 2007, it was announced that Heroes was nominated for five Saturn Awards. The nominations included "Best Network Television Series", "Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series" for both Greg Grunberg and Masi Oka, and "Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series" for Hayden Panettiere and Ali Larter. The series won the award for "Best Network Television Series"; as well, Masi Oka and Hayden Panettiere won the awards they were nominated for.
• The cast of Heroes was named in the 2006 Time Magazine's Person of the Year issue under "People Who Mattered". In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald lift-out section, "The Guide", listed Heroes as one of the best shows to come in 2007. It was described as a "Modern twist of The Tomorrow People".

Ratings

• USA TV Ratings
• Heroes is NBC's top-rated scripted show for the 2006-2007 television season, and the most successful of the shows which debuted in that period.^{[citation needed]} It ranked twenty-first in the ratings, with an average of 14.3 million viewers in the United States.
• UK TV Ratings
• The series currently airs on the UK satellite channel Sci- Fi, The premiere attracted 600,000 viewers and the series is averaging 450,000 viewers which is five times more than any other viewership for a programme on this channel. It is also to be shown on BBC2 beginning on 25th July 2007.
• Australian TV Ratings
• The series currently airs on the Seven Network, beginning Wednesday nights at 8.30 p.m. The series debuted strongly, attracting more than 2,000,000 viewers in the five capital cities; however it quickly changed to a number closer to 1,000,000 due to competition against higher rating shows on other channels that were placed in the same timeslot. A move to the 8.30 p.m. Thursday timeslot in the cities of Sydney and Brisbane has seen a significant increase in its numbers in those markets, especially in Brisbane.
• French TV Ratings
• The series currently airs on TF1, beginning Saturday nights at 8.50. The series debuted strongly, with the premiere attracting just over 6 million viewers in France.

Production notes

When the writing team works on an episode, each writer takes a character and writes the individual scenes surrounding that character. These stories are then combined and given to the episode writer, allowing every writer to contribute to every episode. This allows the writing team to finish scripts faster so the filming crew can shoot more scenes at a location.

A special 73-minute version of the pilot was first screened to a large audience at the 2006 Comic Con in San Diego.. Initially it was reported that this unaired pilot would not be released, however Tim Kring confirmed in a subsequent interview that it will be included on the first season DVD set.

In keeping with the comic book thematic elements used in the show, professional comic book artist Tim Sale was brought in to provide the artwork used as the work of Isaac Mendez. Mendez's work in the 9th Wonders! comicbook on the show is also the work of Sale. Additionally, the font used throughout the show in the various captions and credits is reminiscent of traditional hand-rendered comic book lettering. The font was created by Sale and is based on his handwriting style.

The series is filmed in Los Angeles, California and Santa Clarita, California.

Each week that the show airs NBC releases a Heroes Webcomic. The comics give additional character background and plot information not shown in the television episodes. These graphic novels will continue on what is believed to be a weekly basis during the show's summer hiatus.

Music

In France, the theme music of Heroes is composed by Victoria Petrosillo. Her song Le Héros d'un autre is used by television network TF1 to replace the show's original incidental music. Moreover, the network had to create an opening credit sequence in order to play Petrosillo's theme song.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/syn/gatewaymonthly/newHeroes/-/heroes

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