Tim Kring and Masi Oka on ‘Heroes’ Season 1 DVD, Season 2 secrets (kinda)
Hiro is in feudal Japan. That’s where Heroes left us at the end of Season One. How could they do that to us, and then make us wait all this time to find out how the heck that happened, and where the heck it will take him? It’s terribly mean.
But the wait is almost over. Season Two debuts on September 24, and a week before, on September 16, we’ll discover how many Emmys the show can pick up: it’s been nominated for eight, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Masi Oka, who plays Hiro.
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Creator-writer-executive producer Tim Kring and Masi Oka joined journalists on a conference call last week to talk about the show’s past and future. We pressed them to reveal as many secrets as they could. And it turns out there’s quite a bit to say about the Season One DVD, which hits the streets on August 28... oddly enough, the same day as a lunar eclipse. (“It is amazing to work for a big company like GE that can actually manipulate these huge astronomical events like that,” Kring joked.) The package will include 50 deleted and extended scenes, different commentaries than the ones that have been online, and the 72-minute pilot episode that was chopped almost in half for broadcast -- it features “a couple of storylines [that] were taken out of it that were never seen by anybody, other than the Comic-Con audience last year,” Kring said. It should prove to be exactly the kind of cohesive package fans love, for Kring explained: “We knew early on that this kind of show is designed for DVD. And so we started our planning of the DVD pretty much right at the very beginning.”
But while the DVD will be a great way for new viewers to catch up with what they’ve missed, it won’t be necessary to have seen Season One before Season Two debuts. “Season Two’s about new storylines -- it’s a new beginning for everyone,” Oka said, “so that people who haven’t watched the Season One can just jump in to Season Two.”
Fans never really want to have anything ruined for us, but every tidbit Kring and Oka revealed about Season Two was like a drop of water in the desert. Like this:
Kring: “They’re [NBC] doing 11 episodes in a row that start on September 24th. And somewhere in that run of episodes we’re going to introduce a very scary villain.”
Or this:
Kring: “The audience can expect some interesting casting. I cannot spoil it because it’s going to be too much fun. But I would look for another face that will have a very similar impact to George Takei [who will appear in the season premiere] for the real genre fans.”
And that was about all we could wring out of Kring and Oka, except for the fact that at least parts of at least several episodes keep Hiro in feudal Japan. Very mean of them, again: making us continue to wait...
(Technorati tags: Heroes, Tim Kring, Masi Oka)
comments
posted by Jurgan (August 10, 2007 9:24 PM)
Spoiler warning! Did you have to give away the season finale on the front page? Some of us are still catching up.
posted by MaryAnn (August 11, 2007 10:04 AM)
Sorry. I guess I kinda figured it's like the ending of *The Sopranos* or Harry Potter: by now, hearing how it ends is inevitable whether you've seen it or not.
And anyway, the point that viewers can just jump into Season 2 without having seen Season 1 presupposes that those viewers will figure out that Hiro ends up in feudal Japan at the end of Season 1, because that's where the first few episodes, at least, of Season 2, will be taking place.
I promise you, it's not really much of a spoiler. It was a bit of a surprise, but it has nothing to do with how the events of Season 1 finish up. It's more like those teasers at the end of epidosde of *Quantum Leap,* where you saw where Sam was gonna end up next, but which had nothing to do with where he'd just been.