October 3, 2008
First there was the cartoon family of cryptozoologists (above) in “Secret Saturdays”. And now we have a new cryptofiction program about an attractive 157-year-old cryptozoologist who keeps a Merbeing, a domestic Bigfoot and other cryptids around her house.
Amanda Tapping as Dr. Helen Magnus (above and below). Credit (above, only): Jeff Weddell / Associated Press
Brief biography: Dr. Helen Magnus M.D D.T.C.X.B was born in England in 1850. She became the first female member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and was one of the only female doctors practicing medicine at the time in Victorian England. In addition to her medical doctorate, Helen also has PhD qualifications in terology, cryptozoology and xenobiology.
For those that have taken a break from reading about the LA Dodgers in your hometown newspaper, you might have noticed that The Los Angeles Times television critic Robert Lloyd had this to say on October 2nd about “Sanctuary,” which premieres tonight, October 3rd, on the Sci Fi Channel:
Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping, “Stargate SG-1” – as shown in photo directly above) is a good-looking 157-year-old doctor of cryptozoology and xenobiology, the study, in the former’s case, of extinct and otherwise nonexistent animals, and in the latter’s, of extraterrestrial life, which is to say things that, practically speaking, don’t exist. We don’t learn how she’s come to be a good-looking 157 years old, but she has.
She lives by the river in a digitally rendered New York surrogate called Old City, in a digitally rendered sprawling Gothic pile that I am pretty sure incorporates the facade of Chartres Cathedral — an enormous place she shares with her leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding, gun-toting, karate-kicking daughter, Ashley (Emilie Ullerup), and a basement full of assorted monsters, mutations, beasties and thingies both benign and malign; the complex is part refuge, part prison.
There is a mermaid, a man with a face on the front and back of his head, a lizardy thing, and a big Bigfoot of a fellow who helps out around the house. We don’t learn how she manages to keep them all, but she does.
“Sanctuary” debuted last year on Scifi.com as an online series, and quite a grand one in that context. Tonight’s TV premiere expands, rearranges, gussies up and generally improves the first four webisodes (there were eight in all) for the bigger screen….
I look forward (when I have time) to watching “Sanctuary,” “Secret Saturdays,” and according to a recommendation I just got from Patrick Huyghe, “Fringe.”
Emilie Ullerup as Ashley Magnus
Robin Dunne plays Will Zimmerman
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Breaking News, Comics, Cryptofiction, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Media Appearances, Movie Monsters, Pop Culture, Television