NBC's Heroes Still Rising - and 'No One Is Safe'

NBC's Heroes continues its rise in popularity. The show has spawned several taglines that have caught the imagination of the viewers and have helped increase its ranking. Currently it is the top ranking freshman series on television.

Tim Kring, creator and executive producer of the series says the original "buzz" phrase from the show, "Save the cheerleader, save the world," was not necessarily intended to be tagline. "Well, the 'Save the cheerleader' was just a line of dialogue from the script. And it caught the imagination of a few people over at NBC in the promo department, and they ran with that," he explains. "And so from then on, we started thinking, 'Well, what could we do for this next pod of episodes?' And sure enough, the script already had another line in it that we also liked. So it's not like we fished around for lines to impose onto the show. They just sort of come naturally out of the show." And the latest tagline from Heroes is "No one is safe."

The show has changed the face of network TV in several ways. One is by its use of languages and subtitles. However initially it was cause for concern for the executives. "Yeah, we definitely thought about it. And actually, in the pilot we went through every scene that was filmed and sort of paraphrased enough so that -- we called it subtitle fatigue. We thought maybe [the audience] would get tired if there was just too much to read." However the popularity of the show has proven that reading subtitles isn't a deterrent to viewers. "I think it's been a thing where, as people get closer to these characters, they seem to want to know more about them and know more about their story and [they] get sucked farther into the story. I think their tolerance for it is increasing," says Kring.

And actor Masi Oka, who plays Hiro Nakamura on the show, adds, "It was a very bold choice, and the payoff was amazing." He says, "I think this very simple creative decision ... [of] putting the subtitles close to the characters' faces, like a comic book bubble, I think that was a brilliant stroke of genius. And I think that kind of helped towards the comic feel that the show gave."

"The idea was that," explains Kring, "the theory behind the show is that this is happening in a global way. It just seemed very sort of disingenuous and strange to have it all happen with English-speaking people in Southern California."

When asked if he thought audiences are more accepting of projects like this, with new and bold approaches and subtitles, Kring replied, "I think we are increasingly living in such a smaller world, and people feel very much on each other's doorsteps all of a sudden. I think cultures are really being -- we're all being forced by global events to deal with one another. I just feel it's a very powerful tool to depict this stuff on television."

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