After the successful Internet premiere of Damian Kindler’s Sanctuary in 2007, SCI FI Channel picked up the show for a television run — 13 episodes, now in production in Vancouver, British Columbia and set to premiere on the cable network this fall. The show is about an organization that seeks to find and help monsters and other “unique” individuals in the world, led by the 150-year-old scientist Helen Magnus (Stargate SG-1’s Amanda Tapping, who also serves as an executive producer).

The jump to television adds up to a reboot of the series, including reshoots and a recut of the original pilot episode. In this exclusive interview with SciFi Stream, Kindler reveals his plans for the official first season and the changes that are now in the works.

Check out the full interview after the jump, then head over to the show’s official Web site — SanctuaryForAll.com!

SciFi Stream: How is TV Sanctuary going to look different from online Sanctuary? What are not just the visual changes that you are making, but the creative regenesis?

Damian Kindler: “Regenesis” is a great word. I haven’t watched that show, but I like the term — “regenesis.” The television version will be very different, and the reason for that is twofold.

One is that SCI FI wanted the scope and scale of the show to be very different. We put a very gothic — kind of Gotham City feel of Sanctuary – up online. And when you are a network you want to appeal to as many people as possible. You know, I don’t want to watch a gloomy “Sin City” show that will appeal to a smaller audience. We’ve got the ability to virtually go almost anywhere we can, why would we keep doing the “Bring in the rain, bring in the dark buildings” and never show the sun.

So we wanted to deepen the palette, which we all agreed upon. The second big reason is that for the online component — which was really almost like an R&D feasibility study — we rendered most of those webisodes in two weeks, or less. It’s a joke. To do a full 44 minutes we need like six weeks, 12 weeks — depending on the level of vis effects. So we wouldn’t be able to effectively create a smooth pipeline to create a heavy virtual show without having done that.

Conceptually, we have rejigged the show. What you are going to see in the first two (our premiere) is absolutely, 98 percent new. And I mean that from the character to the story to the way that story works. Everything will be brand new. It’s what SCI FI wanted, it’s what we wanted, too. It all came down to money and time, and they said, “Let’s push our air date back. Let’s get into some of this, because this is what we’d like and talk about what it’s going to cost. Who do you want to partner with?” They didn’t say, “Yeah, let’s just put it all together and throw it up.”

They said, “Look, we want this to be a pretty vital cog in our machine here. We want it to be a Friday night show, and we want it to compete with the SG-1’s and Battlestar’s and Eureka’s of the world. We don’t want it to be crappy like Flash Gordon or Painkiller Jane. (I hope no one who likes those shows is watching this!) But those shows aren’t around for a reason. We don’t want to be that. There’s another reason for doing 13 [episodes, instead of a full 20 or 22]. We get our story development and vis effects and everything humming along, and you are laying the very, very stable framework to make it right.

So it will be very different. And I think that’s good. People paid for that [the webisode series] already — they’ve got it, they own it, it’s on their hard drives. They should want to say, “I liked it, but now I’m curious about the TV show.” There are elements you will see reused and redone, but mainly I’d say most of it’s new. And that’s important, because we built a really cool social networking community out there, and we want to say, “I’m glad you liked all that. Now come and see the big, shiny new — you saw the prototype, now come and see the working model.”

SFS: Amanda [Tapping] talked about lightening up some of the characters, like Helen Magnus — giving her more of a sense of humor.

DK: Yeah. Absolutely. I always thought Helen Magnus had a really good sense of humor, but apparently not! It was a little too dry. A little too “arid” — so yes, we’ve added some “perspiration” to her sense of humor.

She’s an amazing character. And yes, I think we played the stiff upper lip, stodgy British marm a bit — maybe because I have a bit of a fetish for stodgy British marms. But I’m leaving that behind and I’m in therapy and feeling good about it! Anyway, Amanda is wonderful about it. She does humor so brilliantly, and so does Robin Dunne. We’re looking forward to that more human interplay.

It will feel almost less film noir, which has that heightened kind of — not bordering on cliche, but more naturalistic feel and interplay. I think the humor is there, and we’re going to continue to keep that in there.

But you can go too far. You can make it goofy, and that can take you out of the moment and lower the stakes. And you don’t want to do that.

SFS: What is the core of what Santuary is, that you said, “This is the kernel that we are fashioning everything else around, and it’s not going to change?”

DK: It’s still the search for monsters, helping the monsters that need helping, protecting the world from monsters that are too dangerous to be allowed to be free. And it’s revealing the secret behind that work, which has to do with the future of the human race and why the monsters are the key to that future. There’s a very dark, incredibly powerful secret that Magnus is holding onto and responsible for.

It’s one thing to say, “Hey! Another monster of the week! This is great! Why are we doing this?” “Well, because they’re out there!” I think that you need to know why. I think there has to be this deep, secret agenda of why would you go out and face down these creatures or try to contain these creatures if there wasn’t a really long-winded reason. And we’re going to very much be as long-winded as possible … so by the end of Season Nine you might have an idea of why!

Yeah, we’re going to create some conspiracy. There is an arc.

SFS: Kind of X-Files — that blend of “freak of the week” and the arc stories.

DK: Buffy and X-Files are kind of the two “tonal” things. “Freak of the week” is important, because you have to have a cornerstone. If you’re like, “I’ve got this amazing show! It’s conspiracy up the wahzoo. You’ll never find out what’s going on. It’s called LOST!” Dude, that was a lucky shot. So many people, whenever you pitch a show, one of the important things is if you can’t tell me what happens every week and I can’t see a hundred episodes in it, why would you order it?

LOST had the benefit of being “Survivor meets blah-blah-blah.” But, to be honest, this show has to have “freak of the week” because people need to know what to expect. If you said to Stargate SG-1 fans, “Well, wait until we get into what the Trust are doing, and what this is about, and …” People are going to go, “What? Are you going to a planet or not?” At some point you’ve got to go, “Yeah, we’re going to a planet.” What happens beyond that is important because it creates a wide and realistic world of mythology that they live in.

We want to be able to echo that. We just want to be able to have a very strong spine for everything to stand on. Once monster of the week, threat of the week, issue of the week and all the other human things that get pulled along in that wake, we can ask what are the larger implications of the freak of that week, or the week before, or next week?

So I think we have a very strong concept. And the good news is everyone who has seen the webisodes, who is reading the new scripts we have been writing, who is watching what we are doing, is definitely feeling good. And I like that. It means the concept is strong. It’s simple enough to say, “Here’s a woman. She’s running a sanctuary for monsters. And there’s lot of other stuff going on, but I can pitch it as ‘Monster Hunter and New Protege.’”

Sanctuary premieres this fall on SCI FI Channel in the United States.
Visit SciFi Stream’s Sanctuary show guide!