The Lost Room

[Maximara]

I like this miniseries, as it's well written, but you can tell it was made during Scifi's cheap period.

"Hey, it's about time for us to make another miniseries. What can we afford?"

"Hmm, how about instead of spending money on props, sets, or costumes, we buy a bunch of cocaine, and use the leftover money and we just raid an antique store and make a show about the items having magical powers?"

"Brilliant."

And later on, Warehouse 13 became a show that lasted multiple seasons.

Actually the premise above appeared in Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990) though those objects had the nasty requirement of having to kill someone with or while possessing an object with one noted exception - a kid's playhouse ("The Playhouse"). In fact, according to wikipedia it has been stated that Warehouse 13 gots its inspiration from Friday the 13th: The Series.

[FaxModem1]

I like this miniseries, as it's well written, but you can tell it was made during Scifi's cheap period.

"Hey, it's about time for us to make another miniseries. What can we afford?"

"Hmm, how about instead of spending money on props, sets, or costumes, we buy a bunch of cocaine, and use the leftover money and we just raid an antique store and make a show about the items having magical powers?"

"Brilliant."

And later on, Warehouse 13 became a show that lasted multiple seasons.

Actually the premise above appeared in Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990) though those objects had the nasty requirement of having to kill someone with or while possessing an object with one noted exception - a kid's playhouse ("The Playhouse"). In fact, according to wikipedia it has been stated that Warehouse 13 gots its inspiration from Friday the 13th: The Series.

Point being, which I think you missed, is that it's very cheap television that only requires a few antiques brought from the prop department and/or raiding an antique store, and then having your writers write around said prop. This was after they were done funding shows like Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, or Farscape, and instead having Wrestling, Law and Order, and reality television on their channel. Their original miniseries wasn't about an epic dynasty in space like Dune or Children of Dune, it was about a cop investigating antiquities in normal town, USA.

Either the people in charge were tired of being the space show channel, or they got cheaper. Pick your poison.

[Deledrius]

Their original miniseries wasn't about an epic dynasty in space like Dune or Children of Dune, it was about a cop investigating antiquities in normal town, USA.

Either the people in charge were tired of being the space show channel, or they got cheaper. Pick your poison.

Why not all three?

What's the third option, you ask...? It's that the idea of "seemingly-mundane everyday objects having mysterious uses are sought after by shadowy organizations because of some strange incident that set it all in motion" is a pretty decent premise for a bit of speculative fiction. And it has the side benefits of being cheap (because it's modern day) and avoids the usual space trappings of their previous sci-fi outings, so the channel isn't pigeon-holed. Everyone (especially the accountants and PR department) wins!

[FaxModem1]

Their original miniseries wasn't about an epic dynasty in space like Dune or Children of Dune, it was about a cop investigating antiquities in normal town, USA.

Either the people in charge were tired of being the space show channel, or they got cheaper. Pick your poison.

Why not all three?

What's the third option, you ask...? It's that the idea of "seemingly-mundane everyday objects having mysterious uses are sought after by shadowy organizations because of some strange incident that set it all in motion" is a pretty decent premise for a bit of speculative fiction. And it has the side benefits of being cheap (because it's modern day) and avoids the usual space trappings of their previous sci-fi outings, so the channel isn't pigeon-holed. Everyone (especially the accountants and PR department) wins!

Mostly because they rejected any form of space show after Battlestar Galactica ended. All speculative fiction on their channel took place in seemingly normal town America, at the expense of any other potential programming.

And what does speculative fiction have to do with Wrestling, or Law and Order?

[Steve]

Honestly at that point I suspect they were just embracing the idea of being a "guy channel" like the Spike TV channel (which, among other things, used to do reruns of TNG and DS9). It had the benefit of getting established viewing audiences without having to pay for SFX-heavy TV programming.

Looks like they continued that fine tradition by dumping Expanse as they did, just for Amazon to snatch it up.

[chaos42]

I think its fairly clear that this was a pilot for a tv series disguised as a miniseries. They do that all the time they would do a miniseries but leave it open so that they could figure out if there was enough audience demand to green light it. Overall the main attraction is that normal everyday old item have weird powers, the advantage to the people running the show is that the cost is minimal as nothing abnormal other than some low cost special effects (these effects were every where at the time i saw this when it came out). I do kinda wish there was some final resolution to the entire series but as i said this is a pilot the third leaves with a bunch of stuff left unresolved.

Personally i have a theory of what we are seeing in the series minor spoilers



the world we see here is a room were there was no room 10 in the beginning ever but in an alternate universe there was a room 10 like wise with the person and everything he brought with him. The reason these items behave the way they do is that they are matter from another universe that doesn't follow the same rules as the setting world i will call main world for short, they don't exist in the main world they don't have any set rules attached to them and they are altered based on what the people of our world do with them, ie the items have no function to start with but once someone interacts with them in some way they set what the object does, but not in any control able way, the reason the pencil for example make a penny was probably something random like some one saying something around the person who first had the pencil. Items like the key are more obvious why.

The room it self i think acts as kind of an airlock it the boundary between the world of room 10 and the main world, its also why objects don't work there. The other thing i think this room is that its a moment in time that been stopped thats also why it resets the rooms stuck in time every time the room is unobserved it goes back to how it was because its going back to the point it was opened the first time, but anything removed from the room stays removed because its left the universe.

But thats what i think we are seeing. All in all the best thing to do is put everything back in the room as that might fix things.

As for room 9 i think the problem is that thats were the rip in reality is in our world between the 2 but without room 10 as a buffer it goes nuts and the objects around the door removed that barrier

[Maximara]

I like this miniseries, as it's well written, but you can tell it was made during Scifi's cheap period.

"Hey, it's about time for us to make another miniseries. What can we afford?"

"Hmm, how about instead of spending money on props, sets, or costumes, we buy a bunch of cocaine, and use the leftover money and we just raid an antique store and make a show about the items having magical powers?"

"Brilliant."

And later on, Warehouse 13 became a show that lasted multiple seasons.

Actually the premise above appeared in Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990) though those objects had the nasty requirement of having to kill someone with or while possessing an object with one noted exception - a kid's playhouse ("The Playhouse"). In fact, according to wikipedia it has been stated that Warehouse 13 gots its inspiration from Friday the 13th: The Series.

Point being, which I think you missed, is that it's very cheap television that only requires a few antiques brought from the prop department and/or raiding an antique store, and then having your writers write around said prop. This was after they were done funding shows like Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, or Farscape, and instead having Wrestling, Law and Order, and reality television on their channel. Their original miniseries wasn't about an epic dynasty in space like Dune or Children of Dune, it was about a cop investigating antiquities in normal town, USA.

Either the people in charge were tired of being the space show channel, or they got cheaper. Pick your poison.

Except Friday the 13th: The Series also used "a few antiques brought from the prop department and/or raiding an antique store" and being 1987 to 1990 didn't have all the special effects we have today. Never mind the producer was none other then CBS who had money to spare.

Heck Scifi had done cheap stuff before such as Cube in 1997 and a movie of which all I remember are three pieces:

A military man discovers an alien and after shaving his head goes on a trip somewhere carrying the alien (who is about the size of a small child).

The military man asks his superior why the fact aliens have been to earth has been covered up and told that it was to prevent people from panicing.

Later after the man discovers that the alien is actually a time traveler from Earth's future and the alien dies he meets his superior again and says it is best to keep the fact that humanity's future is that of small diminutive mushroom eating creatures a secret.

Lifeform (1996) is another piece done on the cheap - and they still ran out of money and so just had the base blown up by with an atomic bomb and the one survivor (he was elsewhere) told that another space ship (the VIking lander) has been picked up on radar.

If anything The Lost Room was typical low rent Scifi fare - we want to do something as cheap as possible - brainstorm time.

[Draco Dracul]

I remember catching this with my folks back when it first aired. I was actually really disappointed that it didn't get the ratings to go to series.

[rickgriffin]

Okay so in part 3 I just had some thoughts related to what Julianna Margulies said re: not liking science fiction. Because I encounter the attitude a lot (especially from teachers in school) and in a way I don't quite get it.

I mean, I suppose, if you were to pick up one random science fiction book at random, it would be very unlikely to contain compelling themes. But I'd personally say the same about most any story. A lot of stories are just fluff stuff happening to people. But that stuff is still usually gonna be some kind of human drama, which is the thing they say the want from stories. Right? Am I wrong?

Even when science fiction is about aliens, it's about people, because stories are about people. If there's something to criticize sci-fi for it's that it often focuses on ideas and concepts to the detriment of actually exploring character, but ANY story can do that. It just seems baffling to be to suggest that sci-fi is somehow inherently devoid of character.

[Ranadiel]

I'm glad that Chuck enjoyed the series, and I would love it if someday we were to get something else set in the universe.

Anyways, I said earlier that I would post my theory on the event, so here it is...multiverse collapse. There is a comment in night 3 about how Anna is still in the room, but that there are multiple rooms. So based on that comment and various observations, my theory is essentially that the event was a multiverse collapsing into a universe, but for some reason Room 10 was not impacted leaving it as the only multiversal location left.

When an object is in the room, it simultaneously exists in all versions of the room from before the collapse. When an object leaves the room, it takes all the multiverse equivalents out with it into the universe. This extra mass that shouldn't exist in the universe is what causes the odd behaviors (and is what makes them invulnerable) as physics in the new universe doesn't know how to react to there being thousands, millions, or more versions of an object condensed in a single spot. Reason for the room resetting every time is that you are entering a different iteration from the multiverse. In theory you might eventually hit the same one again, but there is no telling how large the multiverse was so it could take trillions of tries.

Does nothing to answer why it happened or if anything would happen if everything was brought together again, but physically it seems to me to be what happened.