Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Street of Heroes

This post is not about the Heroes season premiere that aired last night, although it did raise some fascinating questions. (Like, what's Maya's power? Does Alejandro have a power too? Are they really brother and sister? What's up with that West kid? Is he a creepy stalker guy or does he just really like Claire? Because the whole hovering-outside-her-window thing would have been so much better if he had been holding a boom box that was playing "In Your Eyes." And why was Jess from Gilmore Girls [that is his full name, by the way] only in the last 2 minutes?)

No, I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about an idea that I had recently. Actually a few ideas. They're all for TV shows. I thought that with all the success of the Star Trek spin-offs (Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise. Not that I watch any of them... okay, fine, I watch Enterprise, but only to make fun of the theme song.) I would create one of my own and call it Star Trek: Miami. It takes place in the present day and it's about a group of retired NASA employees. Good, huh?

Another idea I had was for a show called Street of Heroes, hence the title of this post. That's the name of the street that the Tahoma National Cemetery is located on, and I was passing it one day and I thought, "Hey, wouldn't that be a cool title for a TV show?" So then I had to think of what the show would be about, and I think I came up with something really good.

So there's this fictional city, kind of an Anytown, USA type of place, in which the police department, the fire department and the hospital are all located on the same street, the "Street of Heroes." (When I told my brother about this idea, he said the courthouse should be on the street, too, but, come on, lawyers aren't heroes.) So the main characters would be a doctor, a cop and a firefighter. People love cops and doctors on TV, and they love firefighters on calenders, so this show would be great.

I also thought of having a coffee shop on the same street, where a lot of the show would take place. The cops would go there for donuts all the time and the doctors would go there for triple shots before their 36 hour shifts and one of the firefighters would go there all the time because he's in love with the barista. It could add a lot of atmosphere.

And this is the best part. I don't know if this would work exactly, but it would be really cool. The city where it takes place would be Gotham City! The hospital would be Wayne Memorial, and of course Gotham PD. So Batman would be in it sometimes but he wouldn't be the main character. And it would be really funny if the characters had issues like how silly it feels to write the word "Batman" in police reports. Plus it would combine some really popular TV genres right now: cop/doctor and comic book.

If I pitched this to a network (Street of Heroes [which I might change to Gotham: Street of Heroes], not Star Trek: Miami), I think I could have a pretty good chance of getting a pilot. Of course I'd have to write it, though. But that wouldn't be so bad. It will probably never happen, but if someone else gets an idea for a cop-doctor-firefighter-coffee shop-superhero drama and it gets made into a successful TV series, just remember: it was my idea first.

So was Star Trek: Miami.