Has been picked up and will probably air in January. Certainly has viral potential.

http://www.movieviral.com/2011/05/23/fox-and-nbc-fall-pilots-viral-potential/

I really like watching Sam Neill and will try to find time for this. Also, having Jorge Garcia in it is great too.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/06/jack-bender-joins-alcatraz-as-ep/ Jack Bender is working on Alcatraz also.

ALCATRAZ - First Look Trailer - YouTube

Interview with Jorge (http://highertourism.blogspot.com/2011/09/at-last-good-year-after-lost-jasons.html)

That's a great interview.

Anyone have an explanation for why Jason S. Parrish abbreviated his own initials to "JL"? Pen name?

Jorge talks Alcatraz (http://www.sfx.co.uk/2011/10/10/losts-jorge-garcia-talks-alcatraz/)

https://www.tvfanatic.com/videos/alcatraz-preview/

ALCATRAZ - "Myth" Promo: Series Premiere this January! - YouTube

Alcatraz (FOX) - "Welcome to Alcatraz" Promo [HD] - YouTube

I read a rumor that Elizabeth Sarnoff is no longer involved with this show. Has anyone heard anything about that?

Read the same thing too.

@803er on Twitter said that it was announced on either EW or TV Guide, but no commentary on it.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/alcatraz-liz-sarnoff-exit-261990 - just one of the stories

The character of Jack Sylvane is played by Jeffrey Pierce. Anyone that saw my recommendation for the 2005 series Charlie Jade can know that the title character was played by Jeffrey Pierce. It'd be great if Michael Filipowich from Charlie Jade could be found as a character in Alcatraz because of how well both actors performed off of each other in the previous show.

ALCATRAZ - First Look Featurette - YouTube

ALCATRAZ - Preview #2 from the Series Premiere airing MON 1/16 - YouTube

time travel, a character named jack, people who don't age and disappear for years at a time, people who are supposed to be dead but are somehow alive, calling alcatraz "the island", rain during the important scenes, flashbacks galore, and the EXACT same soundtrack. oh, and hurley.
j.j. abrams thinks he can get away with this? i was pretending it was a lost episode the whole time.

Hurley still doesn't like blood but he gets to dress a lot cooler. We got 23 and Kelvin :)

I'm liking it.

It reminded me a lot of Cold Case and The 4400...but there is definitely some character crossover going on with LOST. You expected Jack to say "I don't know, I was in a room with a bright light last I remember."

Been a member of The Fuselage since 2005 and I was wonder if the Producers going to create a new section for Alcatraz discussion like they have done for Fringe and FlashForward?

It took them ages to create a sub-section for this last season of Fringe. It's a ghost town.

~
Reading fan reactions various places online -- not here -- and finding myself amused. Jack - island - obvious. If you're going to play that game, how about something like this:

Doc Soto - Diego Soto - DS?

http://wikibruce.com/2012/01/a-rabbit-hole-into-the-mystery-of-alcatraz/ Alcatraz had an ARG

http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=33950&start=30
100%
Alcatraz promo 1x04 "Cal Sweeney" - YouTube

Really excellent episode this week. So glad that Jorge has such a great part.

The acting and scripting are a little clunky in places, but I'm liking the show. I hope it gets its own dedicated board for easier theory discussion.

I feel like with the way the show is set up, the writers have a good balance between long running plot and individual episode goals. One of the problems with Lost was that it sometimes felt like the characters had nothing to do. By focusing on the week-to-week goal of "catch the bad guy," the characters have purpose and it keeps the episode moving. The writers can then dole out information about the long running mystery in dribs and drabs as needed.

They can mix up the formula from time to time by having a guard or civilian come back (one who isn't already working for Hauser). I imagine that once we figure out how these guys are coming back, the usual convict bad guys will be replaced with master mind bad guys. And given the way Hauser is running New Alcatraz, he'll probably be a bad guy at some point, too.

All told, there's enough potential here that I'll probably stick it out for a season or two [insert joke about battered Lost fans here].

I agree this show has a lot of potential!
I know we're only three episodes along, but I'll be glad when they start showing some more dimension to Sam Neil's character. His tough exterior is starting to get old.

I would also love to see a dedicated board for this show so I could check out spoilers!

Just to get the ball properly rolling for a Bad Robot production, I'll pitch the first crazy theory. No spoilers, just speculation.

The secret isn't time travel - the secret is cloning.

I theorize that the government was using Alcatraz as a subject pool for an experiment in cloning. 1963, the year everyone disappeared, was smack in the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred just the fall before - maybe the military was afraid the situation would turn into a shooting war, and so were looking for an inexhaustible supply of soldiers.

In just three episodes, we've seen Alcatraz prison draw an exceptional amount of blood from the prisoners. Prisoner 2002, Kate's grandfather, had so much blood drawn, he seemed to live in the infirmary. Jack, the prisoner in the first episode, had quite a bit taken from him as well. Between beat downs by guards and beat downs by other prisoners, the convicts all seem to be regular visitors of Dr. Beauregard. There was more than enough material for genetic experimentation.

After enough samples were taken, the original test subjects were killed. The government worked in secret and perfected the physical cloning process. They are now able to replicate the subject - including mental patterns - at the age that the sample used for cloning was taken.

The convicts that are turning up in the present day are clones that are being tested to see how they behave in the field.

http://insidealcatraz.blogspot.com/ - insiders
http://docscomics.tumblr.com/
http://diegossoulpatch.blogspot.com/

Could be cloning. Other theories: something that causes people to stop aging? Cryogenics? I don't know but I'm hooked on the show, Haven't been this excited for a series since Lost.

I wasn't going to watch Touch. The commercials didn't do anything for me but it was a great pilot episode. Very familiar and not.

They properly stopped aging, because they were transported in time, someone took them, Rebecca's father might be the answer on what happened. He was also in the bed next to Jack.

So, Alcatraz decides to send "prisoners" who are grouped up in murderers/rapists/robbers etc and set them free and run amok into time for a experiment. A cat and mouse game, no doubt.

Not sure if Hauser knew this. He just wants them back. But the new prison under the old one, might change my perceptions. But it might be the other theory: Someone else took them and not some sinister government, transported though time into the present for a specific reasons unknown. To save the world lol. omg twist. ;)

Been discussing this show on the Onion's AV Club so far, but I guess I should check in here too :)
I thought episode 3 was fairly lame. My biggest fear for the show isn't even that the mysteries wont be resolved (I know, I'm shocked too), but that it will get bogged down in the tedium of its procedural format. If it turns too much in to a "bad guy of the week" show and neglects the background "mythology" too much, then I'm calling it quits. That already happened with Person of Interest (another JJ flash in the pan) and I can't deal with it again. Although POI is actually finally starting to get better, but it's kind of too little too late.

Anyways, my favorite character is actually the Warden in 1960. His archetype is a bit hackneyed but man he plays it SO WELL. I just love watching him get sadistic pleasure out of screwing with the inmates. The "four match talk" scene was easily the highlight of ep 3.

My only theory-ish thoughts so far:
Grandpa Madsen (aka the inmate behind the curtain that every inmate-of-the-week winds up talking to in the prison hospital) is some kind of patient zero for time travel experiments being conducted in the basement of Alcatraz. I'm sure Warden Gentles is getting a nice paycheck from the government to do these experiments on his prisoners. Anyways, grandpa Madsen somehow got control of this project and is now using the other inmates in some kind of revenge plot.

Oh and was I just hearing things or did Hauser mention Walnut Creek when he was yelling on the phone midway through the episode? This was before Polly Zobelle and Hurley put the clues together and discovered the child killer's bunker in Walnut Creek. If he was, I thought maybe because his secret neo-alcatraz facility was also in Walnut Creek (the forrest surrounding it looked very similar to where the bunker was located).

ps: is anyone here also on AV Club? I'm under the same screen name
100%
episode 4 observations:


- Pretty sure bank tellers don't have the authority to shut off bank security cameras.
- Were those safe deposit boxes ALSO from 1960, because I'm also pretty sure modern ones don't operate with only one basic lock.
- Anton Sugar much?
- Hurley really hates Chinese food. Maybe he was kidnapped by an egg roll.
- All of the "tame" criminals (Sylvane and Sweeney, who normally never killed anyone) seem to be way more violent and murderous in the present. Looks like the opposite of what Sangupta was trying to do happened.
- Shouldn't Hurley not be going along on the suspect capture missions, seeing as how he's not at all trained in law enforcement or anything?
- Sangupta seems really, really out of place. I think she must have time-traveled to the past from the present originally. Notice how she's the only one wearing color at the dinner party, almost like a colorized bit in a black and white film. Although I don't really buy the stodgy prison warden just accepting and hiring her back then without question.
- Human-sized air ducts? What is this, a video game?
- Once again last 5 minutes have the only real relevancy to the overall plot. Another black bag with another key.... A FUTURE KEY...TO THE PAST!!!!!!!1
Okay this episode gets a better score than last week simply because they actually did plot stuff, even if it was only for a few minutes. I'm temporarily less worried about the show.

I think Jack Bender took over as show runner after the third episode. We'll see if the show formula has a change up.

Beema, nice observation on Sangupta.

I think Jack Bender took over as show runner after the third episode. We'll see if the show formula has a change up.

Beema, nice observation on Sangupta.

Agreed! Ever since Doc and Rebecca said Sangupta set up the prisoner database in the Batcave, I have been trying to figure out how anybody from the 1960s would have the computer proficiency to do that. Your solution works very neatly.

ALCATRAZ - Doc Soto's Alcatraz Tour (Part 1) - YouTube

Alcatraz 1x06 "Paxton Petty" - Promo - YouTube

The Legends of Alcatraz (http://www.fox.com/alcatraz/ford/?searchid=%7C%7C) - game

thoughts on Paxton petty:

sangupta is against water torture, but electrocution is okay?

glad we are finally getting somewhere with the doctors and tommy madsen's infirmary stays, even if it's just audience surrogates asking wtf is going on

was this the first prisoner who really had no clue whatsoever about what was going on? all the others have said "they told me to do this"

pretty good episode, but the comically one-dimensional bad guys are starting to get silly. They are starting to feel like Mega Man villains... Sniper Man, Safety Deposit Box Man, Mine Man. Soto and Hauser saying the guy's name in unison was funny but it kind of just called attention to how implausible the whole thing is.

Once again, the ladies love Soto (the ME this time)

Seems like Alcatraz is gaining more momentem, more human interest in the characters. I watched it instead of Being Human.

And yes, the Doc is a great part for Jorge (Hurley) Garcia!

Regarding the prisoner interrogation: Electroshock therapy was an accepted medical practice in the 1960s. Considering that, and the fact that Sangupta gave Paxton a sedative to dull some of the pain, it is possible she believed she was using a humane method to extract information.

I was excited to see confirmation of the fact that the 63s do NOT all reappear on Alcatraz.

I'm curious to see what sort of "methods" Sangupta employed, and that Dr. Beauregard knows, that can bring a person out of a coma.

Why doesn't Soto know that Sangupta worked at Alcatraz?

http://www.fox.com/alcatraz/ford/ ARG

Checking in here. Last night's episode was pretty good. Struck a perfect balance of past/present story lines and it actually feels like it's going somewhere. Of course, that doesn't do us much good since it's looking highly likely that the show will be cancelled. 2 hour season finale will probably be series finale...
Sam, have you heard anything?

Haven't heard anything. Seems they are on the bubble.

I hadn't heard they were on the bubble for Alcatraz. Argh. That means the part I care about most after DS/Jorge Garcia (the mythology) probably won't get addressed if it gets canceled. At least Community has been renewed... :undecide: