The Others

The Others was a supernatural television series from executive producers John Brancato, Michael Ferris, Glen Morgan, and James Wong. The one-hour drama revolved around a varied group of individuals known as The Others, who shared an extrasensory ability to reach beyond this world and into other dimensions. Their otherworldly insight was both a blessing and a curse. The show lasted only one season before being cancelled.

The Others Saturdays on NBC (10-11 p.m. ET)

The writers of such thrillers as "The Net" and "The Game" and the producer/writer team behind many of the most acclaimed episodes of the "The X-Files" have combined their talents to produce a suspenseful, one-hour drama series about a varied group of individuals known as the Others, who share an extrasensory ability to reach beyond this world and into other dimensions. When college junior Marian Kitt (Julianne Nicholson, "One True Thing") has several terrifying encounters with the ghost of a young woman who died in her dorm room, she thinks she's going insane. Her visions soon attract the attention of a small, mysterious group of individuals known as the Others, who recognize Marian's special ability to see into the past and the afterlife.

While Marian grapples with her "gift," she reluctantly joins this secret society whose members are linked by their different abilities to reach into the world of the supernatural. Led by famed medium Elmer Greentree (Bill Cobbs, "I'll Fly Away"), the Others are motivated by their quest for knowledge and the desire to help people, even though it often brings them face-to-face with dark, unknown forces. Marian soon discovers that their otherworldly insight is both a blessing and a curse.

Also starring are Gabriel Macht ("The Object of My Affection") as empathic medical intern Mark Gabriel; Kevin J. O'Connor ("The Mummy") as seer Warren Day; Melissa Crider ("Murder One") as Satori, a New Age "sensitive" and John Billingsley ("The Sky's On Fire") as Miles Ballard, a professor of mythology and folklore, who serves as the facilitator of the Others. Also featured is John Aylward (NBC's "ER") as Albert, a vision-impaired grouch with a heightened sixth sense.

A number of notable directors associated with the supernatural genres have directed episodes of "The Others," bringing a cinematic sensibility to the series. This impressive list of feature film directors includes Oscar-winner Bill Condon ("Gods and Monsters"), Tobe Hooper ("Poltergeist," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre") and William Malone ("The House on Haunted Hill").

Glen Morgan ("The X-Files," "Space: Above and Beyond") and James Wong ("The X-Files," "Space: Above and Beyond") are executive producers of the series from DreamWorks Television in association with NBC Studios. "The Others" was created by executive producers John Brancato ("The Game," "The Net") and Michael Ferris ("The Game," "The Net"). Mick Garris ("The Stand," "The Shining") directed the pilot and additional episodes.

This information was taken directly from the official The Others website which is no longer available.

Played by Julianne Nicholson

Ability: To see into the past and the afterlife

When I was six I had an imaginary friend. One day he showed me his grave. He died in 1875 and it really freaked me out. Then I got used to seeing him. I never really told anyone this before. How do you tell someone that half the people you see are dead?

My sophomore year of college I had several terrifying encounters with the ghost of a young woman who died in my dorm room. I felt like I was losing my mind. My visions soon attracted the attention of the Others, they recognized what was happening to me and helped me cope with my special ability to see into the past and the afterlife.

Played by Gabriel Macht

Ability: Empathic

When I was ten my German shepherd ate snail bait - when I found him his heart wasn't beating. When I held him in my arms, I could feel his life leaving him, practically see it. And I willed him back. I gave him my strength, and he lived. Afterwards I was so drained I was laid up for days.

I've had dizzy spells and migraine headaches all my life. When I learned to get past the pain I realized there is more to it. I'm an empath, I pick up on other people's feelings.

Played by Melissa Crider

Ability: Sensitive/Professional Psychic

It's like seeing colors in a world that's full of people who are color blind. I started picking up on the other side when I was 15, right before I left home I was charting astral patterns and helping my friends reach their dead grandparents. Then I started to channel spirits from my family and it got pretty personal. Now I am able to make a living at this, providing psychic services.

Played by Bill Cobbs

Ability: Medium I've been talking to the other side since before I could talk to folks on THIS side. When I was ten, I had nightmares of unspeakable things, and madness beyond imagining. It was 1927, peacetime, happy times. My family thought I was out of my mind - so did I. Then the Bow Street Others found me. They were folks who were feeling the same terrible things - darkness, insanity, death - each in their own way, of course.

We wrote letters to the government,which were ignored, until 1939 when those terrible things started coming true after Hitler invaded Poland.

Played by John Billingsley

Ability: Professor of Mythology and Folklore (group facilitator)

I wrote my doctoral thesis on apparitional materialization and am currently searching for substantiation of certain beliefs. I mostly just keep track and try to document what happens to the group. Unfortunately, every time I try and capture an event on camera, I'm usually a few minutes too late.

Played by Kevin J. O'Connor

Ability: Seer

I guess I see things that aren't there - or are. Maybe. Have you ever take your fist and rub really hard against your eyeballs and kind of see sparks - red and blue…. I just follow the signs, they're everywhere if you know how to see them.

Played by John Aylward

Ability: Heightened sixth sense They say when one sense is lost, the other sense is heightened. In my case, when a rocket grenade explosion took my natural sight, I gained my 6th sense. All I can see are psychic visions that I wish I were blind to.

My visions are in the negative. The darkness appears light and the light is dark.

Guest Stars: Sylvia Short [ Mrs. Talbot ], Malin Ackerman [ Elaine Stillman ], John-Patrick Mavric [ Michael Erstad ], Steven McCarthy [ Jim ], Gretchen Cleevely [ Linda ], Cynthia Garris [ Realtor ]

Brief Summary:

College student Marian moves into the dormitory room where a young woman recently died and senses an alarming supernatural force as she reluctantly turns to the Others -- a small but diverse group of people dedicated to analyzing their extrasensory abilities -- who urge her to embrace her "fearsome talent." But she soon discovers that whatever gift of insight she possesses is both a blessing and a curse that puts her life in danger, forcing her to appeal to a famed medium, an empathic medical intern and a New Age "sensitive" among the Others.

Aired: aired 5 Feb 00

A television pilot is a test episode of an intended television series. It is an early step in the development of a television series, much like pilot lights or pilot studies serve as precursors to the start of larger activity, or pilot holes prepare the way for larger holes. Networks use pilots to discover whether an entertaining concept can be successfully realized. After seeing this sample of the proposed product, networks will then determine whether the expense of additional episodes is justified. They are best thought of as prototypes of the show that is to follow, because elements often change from pilot to series. Variety estimates that only a little over a quarter of all pilots made for American television succeed to the series stage, although the figure may be even lower

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Guest Stars: Jenny Gago [ Gloria Munoz ], J.T. Larsen [ Adrian Munoz ], J.E. Freeman [ Unknown ], Brian Britt [ Rick ], Zachary Quinto [ Tony ], Damon Saleem [ Attendant ], Mike Griff [ Watchman #1 ], Eric Leviton [ Watchman #2 ]

Brief Summary:

While Elmer senses a dreadful dark force on the horizon, Satori tries to help the single mother whose young son has been missing for three years - and whose ethereal presence is suddenly felt by both women. Aware of the unknown power that opposes them, Elmer and the Others need Marian's supernatural gifts to counter the unseen evil that they believe is responsible for the boy's abduction.

Aired: 12 Feb 00

Guest Stars: Jim Pirri [ Sandy Molian ], George Wyner [ Doctor ], Alma Avery [ Camryn ], Saemi Nakamura [ Yuki ], Steve Tom [ Dr. Fine ], Janet Tracy Keuser [ Dr. Howard ], Ethel Lee [ Nurse Hoffman ], Evan Jones [ Ethan ], Sybil Azur [ Chelsea ], Walter Phelan [ Stunt Demon #1 ], Ted Smith [ Stunt Demon #2 ]

Brief Summary:

A vain and egotistical man decides on laser surgery to correct his eyesight, but after the first operation begins to see horrific apparitions which threaten his sanity. Meanwhile, Marian puzzles over Albert's enigmatic past until she unwittingly begins to share his nightly vision of the TET Offensive maneuver that cost his eyesight.

Aired: 19 Feb 00

Guest Stars: Dale Dye [ Unknown ], Diane Salinger [ Unknown ], Rachel Wilson [ Unknown ], Casey Lluberes [ Jeanette Depasse ], Annie Kitral [ Ticketing Agent ], Clement E. Black [ Pasty-Faced Man ], Kevin Vickey [ Businessman ], David Stifel [ Volunteer ], Adam Gierasch [ Male Passenger ], Dennis Bendersky [ Captain Steve Garcia ], Phyllis Ehrlich [ Female Passenger ]

Brief Summary:

Just as the Others board a plane to Sedona, Arizona for a psychic conference, they learn that an inquisitive Miles purposely booked them on the same flight path previously occupied by an aircraft that recently crashed, and the harrowing activities they witness are thought to be somehow linked to parts salvaged from the wreckage -- and recycled onto their jetliner. As the Others react to the sight of tormented faces pressed against the outside windows and through the cabin walls, Marian has a strange encounter with the captain of the doomed crew, who has an urgent message only Miles can decipher.

Aired: 26 Feb 00

Guest Stars: Christina Haag [ Kathy Allen ], Ted Marcoux [ Greg Allen ], Wanda Lee Evans [ Mrs. Maxwell ], Michael Leopard [ Sheriff ], Becky Wahlstrom [ Erin ], Sybil Azur [ Chelsea ], Lyle Kanous [ Funeral Home Host ], Louise Pellegrino Rapport [ Grandmother ], Cherry Petty [ Susan ], Alyson Croft [ Taylor ]

Brief Summary:

The group helps a woman grieving for her child and husband killed in a car accident--a process complicated when they discover that the husband is not yet dead.

Aired: 4 Mar 00

Guest Stars: Al Leong [ Mr. Lee ], Barbara Kerr Condon [ Grandma Kitt ], Sybil Azur [ Chelsea ]

Brief Summary:

As an unsure Marian considers withdrawing from the Others, she moves into a new apartment that harbors a vague yet sinister force hiding in the wallpaper intent on scaring her enough to ignore her supernatural gift, but she is more concerned to learn that some of the Others appear to be stalking her. Meanwhile, Mark is tormented by the responsibility of his empathic abilities and can find relief only in the arms of Satori, but they are prevented from becoming physically intimate because proximity causes their environment to explode.

Aired: 11 Mar 00

Guest Stars: Jeanette Broz [ Jenny Purdy ], Anastasia Horne [ Kim ], Jill Bennett [ Lisa ], Gabrille Union [ Unknown ], Jude Ciccolfia [ Lewis Purdy ], Javier Grajeda [ Dr. Wallace ], Ming Lo [ Dr. Park ], Lisa Gerberg [ Erin ], Amber Farris [ Little Jenny ]

Brief Summary:

Marian thinks joining a sorority will help her regain some normalcy in her life -- until she learns one of the sisters is under psychic attack. She befriends troubled college coed Jenny, who is plagued by chronic panic attacks of horrifying visions from her childhood that become more physically forceful and threaten her bewildered Theta sorority sisters. Marian recruits the help of the Others, who suspect that the Theta house is haunted based on a murder on the same grounds long ago, but wise old Elmer deduces that something evil from the young woman's painful past is intruding with harmful intent. This turns out to be her imprisoned father, shot by Jenny as a child when he murdered her mother and now bent on revenge.

Aired: 18 Mar 00

Guest Stars: Tushka Bergen [ Mary Jane ], John Vickery [ Unknown ], Aubrey Morris [Unknown ], Clive Barker [ George Hutchinson ], Jill C. Klein [ Nurse ], David Jean-Thomas [ Cop ], Rochelle Leffer [ Paramedic ], James N. Gale [ Customer ], Floyd VanBuskirk [ Street Person ]

Brief Summary:

A restless Mark is disturbed by his continuing dreams where he falls in love with Mary Jane, a mysterious beautiful woman from 19th-century London who also sees Mark only in her dreams. Ignoring Elmer's stern advice to stop his dalliance or risk his own destruction, a sheepish Mark asks love struck Marian to help him channel through to his would-be lover. Then an Internet search by Miles reveals that Mary Jane Kelly was the last victim of Jack the Ripper.

Aired: 25 Mar 00

Guest Stars:

Kristen Cloke [ Demon ], Joe J. Garcia [ Service Man ]

Brief Summary:

On a stormy night, the seers are terrorized by the Rabisu, an "entrance demon" who invades Elmer's house and preys on their minds with the repeated question: "What do you want?"

Aired: 22 April 00

Fan fiction (alternately referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, FF, or fic) is a broadly-defined term used to describe stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. Works of fan fiction are rarely commissioned or authorized by the original work's owner, creator, or publisher; also, they are almost never professionally published. Fan fiction, therefore, is defined by being both related to its subject's canonical fictional universe and simultaneously existing outside the canon of that universe.[1] Most fan fiction writers assume that their work is read primarily by other fans, and therefore tend to presume that their readers have knowledge of the canon universe (created by a professional writer) in which their works are based.

Guest Stars: Thomas Silcott [ Young Elmer ], Peter Dillard [ Andrew Church, nicknamed "Vicar" ], Tucker Smallwood, David L. Crowley, Daniel Alexander [ Wing Commander ], Mary Fortuna [ Amy ]

Brief Summary:

Elmer wrestles with his distant past as an American serviceman based in Britain during World War II whose special psychic gifts were employed even then to help doomed flyers "get to the other side" -- but there was one who refused to go, and his fate is now intertwined with that of a downed American pilot who is lost in the Iraqi desert. As time winds down before the pilot is captured, Elmer enlists the help of Marian to lock on to the pilot's position while the regretful old man confronts a spirit that might be lost forever -- and a very surprisingly other visitant.

Aired: 29 Apr 00

Guest Stars: James Morrison [ Troy Manheim, aka Simeon Nye ], Darin Morgan [ Leonard ], Randy Stone [ Lanny Owens ], Thomas Wagner [ Unknown ], Chet Grissom [ John ], Paul Hayes [ Bartender ], Carolyn Field [ Andrea ], Jody Fasanella [ Melissa ]

Brief Summary:

A phony, cash-poor psychic calling himself "Simeon Nye" is frightened when his disastrous visions of his clients' futures begin to come true, so he seeks help from his more serious competition -- Satori -- who agrees to aid the bewildered man when she discovers he also inexplicably functions as a medium to her long-dead father (through their agreed-upon code word "Kermit"). But Satori learns that the charlatan has unknowingly summoned an angry spirit -- the ghost of the real Simeon Nye -- and if she renders assistance in ridding him of it, she will lose the chance to satisfy her dream of communicating with her dad.

Aired: 6 May 00

Guest Stars: Marian Seldes [ Katarina Risavitch ], Stephen Macht [ William Gabriel ], Nicki Micheaux, Peggy Miley, David Moses [ Dr. Shaw ], Serena Berman [ Amy ], Strawn Bovee [ Pathologist ], Endre Hules [ Pjotr ], Elizabeth Liebel [ Mrs. Neswizkii ]

Brief Summary:

When three emergency room patients die mysteriously all at once under his care, Mark clashes with his father, a hospital board member, over his contention that he saw several tiny snake-like creatures in the equipment -- but neither is unaware of the sinister force present that coincides with the arrival of a sickly elderly woman. Elmer, Marian and the rest of the "Others" rush to help Mark after he is struck down by a phantom illness, and they discover that the missing link might be the geriatric female patient who is deathly fearful of "the Mora," fearsome monsters from Eastern European folklore. When they find talismanic fetishes under the beds of the deceased patients, the Others' suspicions focus on the Russian janitor, but he turns out to be attempting to ward off the evil. The old woman turns out to be a 110-year-old former ballet star who fled the Russian Revolution, leaving her infant son behind, and who is afraid to die until she learns what happened to her son; the Mora are, Elmer insists, merely projections of her will to go on living. When she confronts Marian in her apartment and is shown pictures of her great-granddaughter, also a ballerina, Katarina dies happily in her own bed -- even though, as Marian later learns, she never left the hospital.

Aired: 10 Jun 00

Guest Stars: Kristen Cloke [ Alison/The Woman ], Wendy Moniz [ Eva ], Mary Gillis [ Mrs. Paulsen ], Jonathan Levit [ Movie Producer ], Michael Ensign [ Professor Dan Pelin ], Al Leong [ Mr. Lee ], Niall Padding [ Attending Physician ], Debra Azar [ College Girl ], Amy Bryden [ Night Nurse ], Victoria Gallegos [ Nurse ], Donna Maria Moore [ Paramedic ]

Brief Summary:

In the season (and series) finale, Elmer is mysteriously brought back from the dead, and as he recovers, he again senses the presence of entrance demons -- specifically the beckoning and beautiful woman who stalks him from the other side -- and fears for the "Others" when each one gains something highly desirable. The old man warns his friends not to be deceived by the false reality when Miles is offered a prestigious professorship, Marian finds a kindred spirit roommate, and Satori and Mark find they can embrace each other without fear.

Aired: 13 May 00

Did you watch The Others? Did you like it? Any comments welcome.