I watched the premiere of the new SciFi show _The Dresden Files_ last Sunday and thought it was fairly awful. Then I learn (from Wikipedia among others) that what I was watching was actually episode 3, and the two hour pilot has been condensed to one hour and shifted to episode 5. Now I don’t know if the pilot is any good, but I generally like to start watching a show by being introduced to the characters, environment, and, ya know, central conceits of the show (i.e. I’m a detective, but I’m also a wizard, and here are some of the things I can do and some of the limitations, and here is what “being a wizard” means in this universe). The new “first” episode didn’t really establish much of anything, and so didn’t hook me, and so SciFi (and the show) lost a viewer. Sucks, cause for all I know it might actually be a good show. Or not.