The new NBC science-fiction series, "Surface," will attempt to appeal to a wider audience than other new genre shows debuting this fall, said Jonas and Josh Pate, co-creators and identical twin brothers.

"I don't know if this is their focus, but our focus is big, family popcorn adventure that an 8-year-old can watch with his grandfather," Josh said in a presentation at the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, California, according to SciFi Wire.

"We want to have a big tent. We want to focus on adventure, not horror. We want suspense, not gore," he said. "We're an 8 o'clock show; they're 10 o'clock shows. Especially as more episodes come out, I think the difference in the DNA in the shows will be pretty apparent."

Why the renewed interest in science-fiction shows by the big networks? Josh said that he feels its due in part to the success of ABC's "Lost."

"I've seen some kind of comparisons to the success of 'Lost,'" he said. "I think that's valid. I think the business of TV is changing slightly, and that serialized shows make more economic sense, the first one being '24.' What it's really about is a serialized show, and then that lends itself to this genre pretty well. So I think that's what's really driving the networks' openness to this type of storytelling."

It also has to do with the increasing sales of DVD releases of television shows, he said. Networks are more willing to gamble on a genre show because, after they have made their money in advertising while the series is on the air, they hope they can also have strong sales of the same materials on DVD.

Pate also said that the cost-effectiveness of special-effects technology has helped as well. "Creatively, this is something we've been wanting to do for several years," he said. "But both with the improvement of the technology and the special effects, and with the networks being more open to this kind of storytelling, we realized that we might have a chance with a show like this season."

However, while "Lost" helped pique the network's interest in the show, Jonas said that he and his brother had been working on the concept for "Surface," previously called "Fathom," long before the ABC show aired.

Are the creatures that will appear on the show going to be alien or extraterrestrial in nature? Neither twin would directly answer that question, but Josh did say that fans can clearly rule some theories out.

"I've seen a lot of stuff on the Web about theories about where it's from," he said. "Nothing I've seen on the Web is anywhere close to accurate."

"Surface" will appear on NBC this fall on Monday evenings at 8 p.m. ET/PT.