Will Threshold Get Lost in the Crowd?

Surface. Invasion. Night Stalker. Supernatural. There's a whole lot of eerie goings-on going on in prime time this fall. But the three executive producers of CBS' Threshold (airing Fridays at 9 pm/ET, starting Sept. 16) remain steadfast that there is room for everyone. And who better to throw their hats in the ring than Brannon Braga (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager and Enterprise), David Heyman (the Harry Potter films) and David Goyer (a writer for Batman Begins, Dark City and the Blade films)?

 "Clearly, not all [of the supernatural-tinged shows] will survive," says Heyman, whose first TV-series effort concerns the discovery of an extraterrestrial craft on Earth, and the team, led by Carla Gugino, that will investigate the ship. "So our challenge is just to make the very best show that we can. And the way we are going about that is by trying to give [our premise] as much verisimilitude as possible to ground us in reality."

Threshold in a nutshell, per Braga: "Our template is that there is a gigantic alien infiltration of some sort occurring, and [Gugino's Red Team is] trying to figure out what it is. This, in turn, results in any number of bizarre occurrences around the country."

Bizarre occurrences meaning, of course, heaps of mystery, brain-busting riddles and inexplicable happenings tied to the craft's presence. (Or are they?) Following the exposition-heavy pilot, "what we are planning to do is tell a seasonal arc where each episode provides a puzzle piece to a larger mystery," says Braga.

Ah, yes, the "larger mystery" — buzzwords made infamous by ABC's big plot-tease, Lost. "We know how the first season ends, and the second season and the third. For Seasons 4 through 6, things get a bit foggier," Goyer says with a laugh. "But we know how the whole thing ends. We are definitely progressing toward something very specific."

One of the big questions the Red Team will pursue is not what is among us, or even how, but "Why now?" says Goyer. "One of the reasons may be because we've reached a place technologically where it's actually making it possible for other entities to do what they're doing. It's going to spotlight how we are really quite vulnerable in ways that we hadn't anticipated before."

Shiver. Gives us the chills. And that is by design, make no mistake: "Our show is meant to be disturbing and genuinely scary," says Goyer, "because I think if something like this did actually happen, it would be disturbing — and it would be scary."