"Masters of Science Fiction" too artistic for ABC

This is what happens to an original series at ABC when its mercurial entertainment president Stephen McPherson doesn't like it: It gets put on hold for more than a year, trimmed from six episodes to four and then buried deep within the bowels of television Siberia.

That's what they call it when you air Saturday nights at 10 in August. It simply wouldn't be possible for a broadcast network to more effectively guarantee that a series be viewed exclusively by close friends and family members of the production team, unless they cut the national signal and screened it instead on someone's front porch.

But this, alas, is the fate that has befallen "Masters of Science Fiction," and the shame of it is that from the looks of the first two hour-long installments, the network is appallingly firing a fatal bullet through an anthology project of genuine artistic vision. The problem is, it apparently doesn't track as nearly shallow enough for the suits whose job it is to prevent pretty much anything that's unique and imaginative from accidentally leaking out to the public.