Night Stalker
Format	Science Fiction Drama Horror
Created by	Frank Spotnitz, based on the original series concept by Jeffrey Grant Rice
Starring	Stuart Townsend Gabrielle Union Eric Jungmann Cotter Smith
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	10 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 42 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC iTunes
Original run	September 29, 2005 – February 7, 2006

Night Stalker is a television series that ran for six weeks in the Fall of 2005 on ABC. The series starred Stuart Townsend as Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter whose wife was murdered. Kolchak spends his time investigating other strange murders, believing they are linked in some way to his wife's murder. He is helped along the way by fellow crime reporter Perri Reed (Gabrielle Union), photographer Jain McManus (Eric Jungmann) and editor Anthony Vincenzo (Cotter Smith).

Night Stalker was a remake of the 1974 series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. ABC owned the rights to the original TV movies, but not the Universal TV series, and were limited only to using characters that had appeared in those movies.

Its premiere episode aired on September 29 on Thursday nights at 9 P.M. against CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on CBS, The Apprentice on NBC and the 2005 MLB Playoffs on Fox. Night Stalker was cancelled after six episodes due to low ratings. However, the Sci-Fi Channel, which frequently airs canceled network genre shows, showed all ten filmed episodes during the summer of 2006. The ratings were extremely poor on SciFi Channel as well, but as of 2007 the show continues to air in rotation on the network's weekday series marathons.

The last episode that was aired was the first of a multi-part episode, so viewers never saw the end of the sixth story. However, some time after the cancellation, the seventh episode appeared on Apple's iTunes Music Store for download. On February 7, 2006, the final three episodes were released on iTunes.

Night Stalker is currently being re-run on "Chiller" (channel 257 - DirecTV) and (as of December 2007/January 2008) Bravo in the UK (channel 121 on Sky Digital).

Contents 1 Characters 1.1 Main characters 1.2 Recurring characters 2 DVD release 3 Other airings and cancellation 4 Episodes 5 What would have happened 6 Trivia 7 External links

[edit] Characters

[edit] Main characters

• Carl Kolchak (Stuart Townsend): The "believer". Reporter for the L.A. Beacon newspaper; continuously searches for his wife's murderer and supernatural happenings in LA.

• Perri Reed (Gabrielle Union): The "skeptic". Head crime reporter for the L.A. Beacon. She helps Kolchak in his cases of the paranormal, although she looks at the cases "normally".

• Jain McManus (Eric Jungmann): Kolchak's "open-minded" friend. He is a photographer for the L.A. Beacon.

• Anthony Vincenzo (Cotter Smith): Editor of the L.A. Beacon. A friend of Kolchak's who hired him as a favor after they worked together in Las Vegas.

[edit] Recurring characters

• Agent Bernie Fain (John Pyper-Ferguson): Kolchak's former friend in Las Vegas but now a nemesis, an FBI agent who believed Kolchak murdered his wife and made up a bizarre story to cover up his involvement. The character is loosely reworked from Agent Bernie Jenks, Kolchak's Vegas contact in the original 1972 Night Stalker TV movie.
• "Edhead" (Loreni Delgado): Technology specialist for the L.A. Beacon. Friend of Jain's.
• Alex Nyby (Eugene Byrd): Coroner's assistant at the L.A. Morgue. A contact of Kolchak's who was romantically interested in Perri.

[edit] DVD release

Night Stalker: The Complete Series was released on May 30, 2006. The set includes all ten episodes; commentary on the episodes "Pilot" and "The Sea, Part Two"; deleted scenes; a featurette entitled "A Conversation with Frank Spotnitz"; and unproduced scripts for the DVD-ROM.

[edit] Other airings and cancellation

On November 13, 2005, Frank Spotnitz announced on his blog that Night Stalker was canceled. ABC announced the official cancellation of the series that following Monday. On July 28, 2006, the series premiered on the Sci Fi Channel.

The lack of interest may have been due to the more dramatic tone of the new series, or the more youthful/pop oriented style and setting meant to appeal to a different demographic than fans of the original program, or the fact that the show was put up against the top rated show CSI on Thursday. Also, ABC only owned the rights to the two TV movies, restricting their access to the better known minor recurring characters in the TV series. Superficial similarities to Spotnitz's previous work on The X-Files (a male believer as the protagonist and a female skeptic as his partner, the generally darker tone, an unseen conspiracy) were also cited.

The series is currently being run in its entirety on Ftn in the UK - Freeview Channel 20. In Australia, free to air station the Seven Network and Prime in regional areas screened the series between early June and September 2007.

Episodes aired on Saturday nights on Chiller, beginning November 3, 2007.

[edit] Episodes

[edit] What would have happened

After Night Stalker went off the air, many plotlines were left unfinished. Frank Spotnitz revealed what might have developed and hinted at possible explanations:^{[citation needed]}

• The bikers that were chasing Victor Caleca are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the pale rider being the biker with the long blond hair.^{[clarification needed]}
• The mark on Kolchak's wrist is the mark of evil. If the series were to continue we would have found out more living people have the mark on their wrist, Kolchak would have been told the opposite by a mysterious man later in the season, but the truth would be told to him by the end of the season.
• Linda Caleca and Julie Medlock would have reappeared sometime in the future.^{[clarification needed]}
• During the episode "The Sea", Kolchak passes a sign with a pyramid on it. On the commentary Frank Spotnitz noted that the pyramid is the insignia of a group, all the members of that group have the mark on their wrist. The pyramid means the opposition of Good Vs. Evil.
• In the bonus commentary for the episode "The Sea, Part Two", we find out that the series would have later revealed that Carl was talking to himself in part one.^{[clarification needed]}

[edit] Trivia

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (September 2007)

• The episode "Burning Man" appears at least partly inspired by the classic Kolchak episode "Firefall" in which people are mysteriously burned to death. While the reasons for the burnings were different, the method used in "Burning Man" was one possibility mentioned in "Firefall".

• The episode "Timeless" was partly inspired by the Kolchak TV movie The Night Strangler (1973), about a killer who must take lives every 35 years to maintain his/her youth. Both featured a character named Titus Berry, a newspaper researcher.

• Kolchak drives a current model Mustang. This alludes to the original show, in which Kolchak drove in a '65 Mustang (at the time, it would have been a ten year old vehicle).

• The episode "Malum" features numerous references to the cartoon Happy Tree Friends.

• Darren McGavin (original Kolchak character) makes a brief cameo appearance (digitally) during the pilot episode. Also in the pilot episode, a hat rack containing the original straw hat worn by Darren McGavin is seen in Kolchak's den. The script for the unproduced episode "The M Word" hints that McGavin would have made an actual appearance in that episode.^{[original research?]}

[edit] External links

• Night Stalker at the Internet Movie Database
• Night Stalker at TV.com
• Interview with Frank Spotnitz - Now Playing magazine

v • d • e Night Stalker Media The Kolchak Papers The Night Stalker (film) The Night Strangler (film) Kolchak: The Night Stalker (episodes) Night Stalker (TV series) (episodes) The Demon and the Mummy Crackle of Death Characters Carl Kolchak Tony Vincenzo Crew and writers Darren McGavin Jeff Rice Richard Matheson Simon Oakland Related The X-Files The Dresden Files