Matt Greenberg knew that turning "The Invisible Man" into a weekly TV series would be a challenge.
"When I first took this job, I asked a sci-fi friend of mine, 'I'm doing this thing. Do you have any advice?' " said Greenberg, the creator/executive producer of the Sci-fi Channel show. "He said, 'Well, if you do it like everybody expects you to do it, the sci-fi fans everywhere will hunt you down and they will kill you.' So this was partially done out of fear and partially done in an attempt to push the envelope."
His goal for the show, which premieres Friday at 6 and 8 p.m., was to stand the familiar "Invisible Man" cliches on their head.
"I thought, I'm going to take all the classic tropes and a lot of the cliches, and I'm going to try to subvert them," Greenberg said. "So I guess it comes down to several different ways in which to do that."
Greenberg wasn't interested in going with either of the most familiar iterations of an invisible man.
"The classic one is Claude Rains," he said. "It's like the mad scientist who goes wacky — ha, ha, ha! And I didn't want that over 12 episodes or 24 episodes because that would get boring quick.
"Then there's the stolid secret agent — the good guy who is just there and he's going to do the right thing, but he's going to do it invisible. I didn't want that, so I said, 'Let's make this guy a really fallible, likable rogue.' "
To that end, the hero — almost anti-hero — he came up with is Darien Fawkes (Vincent Ventresca), a small-time thief who doesn't pose much of a threat to anyone. But, through ineptitude and a kind heart, he ends up in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
His scientist brother, Kevin (David Burke), obtains Darien's release in return for becoming the guinea pig in his underfunded government project to develop invisibility. And, in another twist, the invisibility process isn't a matter of simply drinking a potion.
Instead, a strange gland is implanted in his brain that allows him to secrete through his sweat glands a substance called quicksilver. The substance bends light, making Darien indeed invisible. And the computer-generated effects are great.
"What I didn't want was the typical thing of — here's the invisible floating glass walking along. Oh, boy! Isn't that exciting?" Greenberg said. "He can secrete the stuff. He can secrete quicksilver over the glass. The glass goes invisible."
Which also makes for a reasonable explanation for how both the man and the clothes he's wearing can disappear.
These aren't groundbreaking effects or anything, but they are very good for a television series.
"Obviously, the silvery stuff was inspired by (director James) Cameron's 'Terminator 2.' . . . But I would say the concept that sort of got me thinking the most was actually 'Predator.' Which is an odd thing to think of in terms of an invisible man thing, but one of the things that that creature does is he's got a little control box that allows him to bend light around him," Greenberg said.
Of course, things aren't as simple as that. Not only does Darien have to learn to use his new powers, but there are complications.
"It's a very pixy-ish little entity in there," Greenberg said. "And because the person who created it ends up dying and nobody really understands it, lots of little things are going to happen that are least expected — little side effects that you least expect."
And there's a big problem that makes for convenient storytelling. A malfunction in the gland causes Darien to go crazy every six or seven days. "What basically happens is the lid is blown off his ID, releasing his darker inhibitions," Greenberg said. So the agency keeps him under control by controlling the drug that keeps Darien from going crazy.
(Eventually, Darien is partnered with Hobbes, played by Paul-Ben Victor, a bitter, misanthropic agent, under the supervision of a boss known simply as "the official," played by Eddie Jones.)
"The Invisible Man" has possibilities, but it's still a work in progress at this point. Greenberg has done a reasonably good job of creating an impertinent, mocking sense of humor and nice action, but the mix doesn't always work. Friday's two-hour pilot episode is also excessively violent at times — sometimes quite bloodily so.
But, again, it's a show with possibilities, one that science-fiction fans will want to check out.