Even though the Fall TV season is underway, there are still quite a few new sci-fi shows that are scheduled to air with midseason premiere dates. One of these is the highly anticipated J.J. Abrams series ‘Alcatraz.’

A few months ago we told you about ‘Alcatraz’ and that Fox would be giving it a midseason start date. This time travel mystery drama is about a San Francisco police detective Rebecca Madsen (played by Sarah Jones) who is assigned to investigate a series of crimes. When she finds out the suspect of one of her cases was a prisoner who disappeared from Alcatraz 50 years ago, she teams up with genius expert Diego Soto (played by Jorge Garcia) to help her solve the case. When they find out that this suspect is not the only prisoner to disappear from the island and return, it is up to them to figure out and try to solve the mystery of how and why this is happening.

It’s a great ambitious premise from the minds of Abrams and ‘Lost’ script writer Elizabeth Snarofff, and one that would need to be filmed properly before it airs. Maybe that’s why Abrams has decided to put a hold on continuing to film new episodes to reshoot some of the scenes from the seven already completed ones.  The reshoots are expected to last 1-2 weeks and luckily the production won’t shut down during this time. Since the show is not on a tight schedule, the producers decided it would be best to go over the first few episodes and make improvements now rather than continuing to finish up the rest of the season.

With the downward spiral of ‘Terra Nova’ (also on Fox), I’d say this is a good move on Abrams’ part. He already is the showrunner for ‘Fringe’ and ‘Person of Interest’, and with ‘Alcatraz’ sounding slightly similar to ‘Lost’ (Creepy island, mysterious forces, Jorge Garcia… need I say more?) there is a lot riding on making this show successful. So far, the buzz from those who’ve seen the pilot episode at SDCC was that ‘Alcatraz’ has the ability to surpass any of the other sci-fi shows that debuted in September.

Baseball fans were treated to a new promo during Game 1 of the World Series but if you’ve been a long time reader of this site, you already know that the promo is just 30 seconds of the trailer that we unveiled in July. But you can check out both videos below.

‘Alcatraz’ stars Jorge Garcia (‘Lost’), Sarah Jones (‘Sons of Anarchy’), Sam Neill (‘Jurassic Park’), Parminder Nagra (‘Ella Enchanted’) and  Santiago Cabrera (‘Merlin’, ‘Heroes’). And although there is no exact premiere date for the pilot episode of ‘Alcatraz’, Fox has announced that it will air sometime in January 2012.

Source: Deadline