[Television Review] District 17

District 17 should have existed just to see how long it would have lasted before it was Fireflied. (Yes, I made it up.)
District 17 created by Ron Moore was a one hour procedural that asked the question: What happens if we have no science but instead used magic instead.
The answer is Law & Order meets Harry Potter or if you’ve seen the fan made videos: The Aurors.
The idea while an interesting one hits and misses.

It’s funny, with all the magical series that made the 2011 slate, this one never made it past the pilot. The unaired pilot was leaked recently joining the ranks of Global Frequency and of course taken down so if my review or naming of people/items is a bit off bear with me.
Taking place in alt.reality San Diego entitled Excelsior, District 17 is Law & Order where magic instead of science runs the world. Hexes, curses, Necromancers, totems, buildings working off plants is the norm. Several Battlestar Vets such as Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Heffner and Esai Morales patrol the streets when a big time seer of the city dies. Getting past the whole: Why did a seer not see his own death jokes, the pilot episode pretty much sets up all the characters and the universe without much fat and established the big bad as being the return of those who believe in science.
Overall the characters worked for me. A few things did not.
The police officers using a magic coaster to shoot people, the internet is a vapor of air pushed through pneumatic tubes and seerer’s visions have drastic effects on the world itself.
Out of those three examples I gave you, only one of them works for me: the seer telling the world and having drastic effect on say the stock market.
The magic coaster and vapor of internet just does not work for me. Neither did Jamie Bamber character doing a Dexter with the crime scene with his hands and letting the blood roll chronologically backwards and forwards while they tried to figure out how the seerer died.
Wands and staffs would have really been cool and a magic ball or crystal ball for the internet makes more sense to me.
If a good copy of the pilot shows up on the convention circuit, I highly recommend watching it, was a good 43 minutes of fun.