SciFiChick.com was recently able to participate in a Q&A session with the creator and executive producer Tom Wheeler of NBC’s newest superhero vision – The Cape. The Cape premieres with a two-hour episode on Sunday, January 9th at 9pm EST with an encore broadcast the following Monday. Then, the regular time period will begin Monday, January 17th at 9 pm.
Could you tell us a bit about The Cape universe, some of the ideas behind it and how it will differ from other superhero shows?
Tom Wheeler: Sure I mean I think one of the kind of fun challenges of – I mean I’m a lifelong comic book fan. The idea of sort of writing my own comic was always really appealing, you know, writing any comic. I just – I’m just a fan of, you know, I just have always been sort of attracted to those stories.
The opportunity when I thought about writing the Cape it was – it came sort of in stages. I knew I wanted to write a story about a father and son and a father who takes on the persona of his son’s favorite comic book hero. But then it took a while for me to settle on who that hero should be.
And I also wanted it if I was going to write it for TV I really wanted to kind of wrap my arms around something that felt like its own comic book universe, still grounded and emotionally grounded and sort of high-stakes but I sort of wanted to create my own kind of playground.
So the idea of creating a fictional city seemed to fit in a sort of kind of silver age fashion just sort of create, you know, a hero with some silver age sensibilities for even though it’s set in the 21st Century and just larger than life characters but see if we could maintain a really sort of strong emotional thread throughout and kind of what’s some of the great character driven superhero stuff we’ve seen.
I knew I wanted costumes. I knew that would be a challenge. But I also feel that that sort of in a sense what embodies a superhero or at least the ones I grew up with.
And I’ve been sort of approaching it from a couple different places. I want it to have kind of a pulp sensibility. I wanted it to feel – I wanted Palm City to feel like it was – it had some timeless elements to it. The nightlife I wanted to feel sort of old Hollywood. I wanted there to be some – I didn’t – I wanted to have different – a feel of different worlds with in it and yet still be a relatable world.
So I think you’ll see kind of a mixture of both. But those were some of the – that was the genesis of some of it and how they ended up combining a little bit.
In looking at the longevity of the superhero-based series like The Cape, where does the focus need to be beyond superpowers and saving the day?