www.scifi.com/scifiwire/a...5/14.00.tvJason Katims, executive producer of UPN's teen-alien series Roswell, told SCI FI Wire that the Smackdown network has picked up seven more episodes of the current season, for a full year's complement. "They picked up another seven, so we're doing 20 episodes this year, a total of 20," Katims said in an interview at UPN's winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif. "Which is good. We're shooting now the 14th episode. ... We're more than halfway into shooting." The season finale, which will count as two episodes, will be aired in a two-hour block.
The show, which has faced stiff competition from The WB's Smallville this year, has been in danger of disappearing altogether, as it has for most of its life. As for whether UPN will pick up the series for a fourth season, Katims said, "For next year, we're essentially where we always are around this time of year, which is we don't know. This is where we were the first season and the second season, which is we're kind of at this point not sure about whether the show is going to come back."
Katims also offered spoilers for upcoming episodes in the rest of season three. "[Episodes] 13 and 14 are also a two-part episode," he said. "I think the first half of the season has been sort of dedicated to reestablishing the character stories of the show, ... headlined by Isabel's marriage. ... And then what we're doing starting in February is ... Liz starts to believe that there's some residual effects that have come about after Max has healed her. And she doesn't know what's happening to her, and at some point she thinks she may be dying. ... [She has] certain almost hallucinatory experiences and finally realizes that she needs to get away, and that's really for her own well-being. And she leaves, and she goes to Vermont. Through February, we're ... doing episodes that are ... raising the story stakes, playing around with both that premise with Liz and some other sci-fi premises, to bring us [to] ... a few episodes that remind me of the last few episodes of the first season, where there was definitely a lot of strong human emotion that came out of it, but there were very high stakes, kind of wild episodes. ... Big things happen. Jesse winds up discovering the truth about Isabel. Things like that." Roswell airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. PT/ET