The peacock network hit a homerun with Tim Kring’s Heroes several years ago. They took a chance on a concept for a show that might easily have been produced in too much of a campy, sci-fi manner. Instead, uber-geeks took measures to safe-guard against blatant “Buffy-ness” and wound up creating a cross-media sensation that’s Worldwide and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What we haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is the commentary this production made on our society so that it would be more easily digestible to the American audience.

Ask the makers of Mann And Machine or Night Stalker or Witch Blade if the American, prime-time audience is ready for sci-fi on major network channels. The answer is, no. Nine years of X-Files only worked because FOX was still a relative infant. As many years of ST:TNG worked because that network too, was a relative infant. When any of the Big Three (have to toss FOX out for this article) acronym networks try sci-fi, they get burned. So the show makers had to lubricate the story, plot and characters for the audience. How was this done? The formula was anything but new…

The Black guy could enter and escape any room like the stereotypical thief who is, shamefully, stereotypically a black guy.

The older Blonde girl was a violent split-personality just outside Vegas stripping on a webcam by night and Mom by day – a money-making career in itself requiring a balance of morals or personalities.

Their mixed child was the youngest character. Like young folks today, he was born into this vast world of technology. He could lay his hands on anything technological and “talk to it” making it do his will – which was usually no more sinister than getting pay-per-view wrestling.

The Chinese guy could control time and space. Ever heard that stereotype that Chinese guys are pretty good and math and physics?

The endlessly attractive and bouncy teenage blonde could regenerate which anyone over the age of thirty still remembers once being able to do as a young twenty-something.

The New York artist was a long-hair, strung-out white guy who painted the future propelling Season One’s plot to a sensational end and mistakenly killed off by writers.

Seasaon One’s two bad guys were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants WASPS and one was the Father of the eye-candy blonde (plot driving relationship).

The borderline alchoholic New York city official candidate could fly (but was in the stages of denial about it – go figure).

His younger brother (kind of the Luke Skywalker of the bunch), who looked up to his older brother and was pressured by family to be like him, had the power to emulate Heroes surrounding him like a sponge as younger brothers will emulate and sponge the people around them.

The Haitian (think Serpant and The Rainbow) could put a halt to a Heroes’s powers and memory with just a touch – arguably as much witchcraft as super power was involved.

Season Two’s awkward female Mexican character made people nearby bleed goo from their eyes and die when she was feeling tormented. Bleeding Mexican Mother Mary statues anyone?

And eventually, the stereotypes became a little less obvious and, coincidentally, the characters also became more vague and seemed more like ‘fillers’ than keys to the plot. When the writers went on strike near the end of Season Two, I have to say, Heroes went mostly head-first into the ground.

But Heroes survives “with teeth” online and in print and teaches the big networks about the real meaning of cross-media survival. Heroes will be back undoubtedly with a larger audience than ever before and, hopefully, with a great, superpower-driven plot as in Season One. I spent yesterday afternoon daydreaming and have two characters to add to the mix…

DINARIUS Bryan's old Digital Interest blog