That's a good one, sumi.

The blade does get used. It's a integral part of the mythology.

Henry Fitzroy (Blood Ties) has a lot of swords, but he doesn't use them in his daynight job.

Well, between whatsername and her enemies but not between random other people.

I don't think one blade makes a story swords and sorcery. I think swords have to be in common currency in the mythos. That's what I couldn't remember.

Witchblade did have some swordfights, but it was not the focus of the show. The witchblade turned into other stuff, as I recall.

Ah. Right. Then, no Witchblade won't work because the blade was part of a secret identity, not common currency.

Wow. That makes it an even more interesting question. I really can't think of ANY contemporary S&S stories.

With the rampant thirst for useless remakes, Being Human (I'm looking at you) I wonder why no one has turned creative talent to that endeavor. ita, I think you are on to something.

Would an alternate universe apply?

Without having watched the movie or read any of the books, I have the sense that Percy Jackson is sword and sorcery feeling. Based on seeing the ads, I guess, if even that much.

Oddly enough, just as I finished my last post, I switched over to a scene in Caprica where two fellows in Vworld whip out swords to attack Zoe's avatar.

The Dresden Files might qualify as Swords & Sorcery.

A glowing io9 eulogy for Caprica: What killed Caprica?

Do you see what I'm saying? Caprica may have gone too far, tried to cover too much. It broke one of the cardinal rules of mainstream science fiction, which is that if you have a strange alternate universe you'd better populate it with recognizable, ordinary characters. But I like the kind of thought-experiment audaciousness that says, Hell yes we are going to give you complicated characters who defy stereotypes, and put them in a world whose rules you'll have to think hard to understand.

It's too late to bring Caprica back. But I hope that this show is the first part of a new wave of science fiction on TV. Like The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, and Fringe, Caprica tackles singularity-level technology as a political and economic phenomenon - not as an escapist fantasy. And that's why it was a show worth watching, even when it stumbled.

I had a thought yesterday that if Alan Ball ran a new series of Highlander, it could be pretty spectacularly awesome.