SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who 50th Anniversary; Agents of SHIELD; Arrow; Community; How I Met Your Mother Sequel; Big Bang Theory; Alpha House; Almost Human

The Night of the Doctor, a prequel video for The Day of the Doctor was released during the past week, showing a regeneration from Paul McMann’s Doctor to John Hurt’s.  There is a difference in the nature of Hurt’s Doctor which we will undoubtedly learn  more about in the 50th anniversary episode. Despite what we learn in this video, Steven Moffat says that the numbering of the Doctors will remain the same.

A clip from The Day of the Doctor played at Children in Need above showing when Matt Smith and David Tennant met is above.

There are many more shows planned for the 50th anniversary celebration. I posted a schedule of BBC American broadcasts here.

The trailer for An Adventure In Space And Time, on the development of Doctor Who fifty years ago, is above. A spoiler-free review has been posted here.

Steven Moffat discussed fifty years of Doctor Who in a twenty-minute video available on line here.

SHIELD The Hub

The Hub was one of the better episodes of Agents of SHIELD so far, but still remained weak. Last week Simmons was in danger but fans were disappointed to see her survive. Fitz came out looking much better in this week’s episode which was centered around placing him in danger. On the other hand, Simmons came out looking like an even weaker character than before, if that was possible. Once again we were teased with the possibility of being rid of her. One would think that Simmons would be history after shooting a superior officer, but nothing really happened. They advanced the mystery of the season about Coulson returning after being killed when Coulson found that the file about his time in “Magical Tahiti” is being kept from him. Speculation ranges from there really being magic involved to Coulson being a robot.  More credence was given to the robot theory when Sky said during the episode that “He’s acting like a robot version of himself right now.” Considering the weak level of writing in this series, that might be intended to foreshadow the end result.

While this episode involved Russia and Georgia, Arrow (the far better of the two superhero series) also had its characters travel to Russia. Summer Glau’s character was a little less robotic as she wound up going to bed with Oliver in a scene which was primarily designed to frustrate the fans who have been rooting for Felicity and Oliver to get together since last season. (Yes, while this is a fun genre show, it is also a CW show.)

COMMUNITY -- "Introduction to Teaching" Episode 502 -- Pictured: (l-r) Jonathan Banks as Hickey, Joel McHale as Jeff Winger -- (Photo by: Justin Lubin/NBC)

We have to wait until January 2, but a lot of photos from Community have been posted on line. In the picture above, Jonathan Banks of Breaking Bad appears as Professor Nichols. We don’t know the circumstances or his position (student or faculty), but Jeff is definitely back at Greendale Community College.

CBS is going ahead with a sequel to How I Met Your Mother entitled How I Met Your Father which will presumably be the same format from a woman’s point of view. I am glad that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas will be doing another sitcom but question whether network television can manage to be a little more original as opposed to doing the same thing over again. It was amusing when the original pilot, in which viewers expected to see how Ted met his wife, instead said it was how he met “Aunt Robin.” The actual answer as to how Ted met his wife took nine years and once seems to be enough to for that idea. At least the format is quite loose and does leave open the possibility of having unique aspects in the new show. There have been a lot of shows about a group of friends in New York since Friends left the air, and How I Met Your Mother was the best of them which I have seen.

THE BIG BANG THEORY

What Culture! has five reasons that Big Bang Theory is good for nerds. This includes the many prominent guest stars, such as Stan Lee in the photo above.

Garry Trudeau’s political comedy Alpha House has been released on Amazon video. Review at The New York Times.

They can’t kill The Killing. It will receive a fourth season, this time on Netflix.

Almost Human premiers on Fox tonight. Trailer above.

Amazon To Produce Garry Trudeau’s Alpha House

Alpha House

Cable television has been increasingly producing their own dramas and situation comedies, competing successfully with the networks in terms of quality if not ratings. Additional sources of original programming have been popping up. DirectTV kept Friday Night Lights alive, showing the show before NBC in its last few seasons. Netflix realized that there are many sources for old movies and television shows and that they had to produce their own shows to attract new subscribers. This year they put out shows including House of Cards and a revival of Arrested Development. This was done in a unique manner of releasing the entire season at a time so subscribes could view them at their own pace, similar to watching old shows on Netflix. Amazon Prime is trying to compete with Netflix, providing a combination of pay-for-view shows and shows available without additional charge to subscribers to the service which began as a way to get free or reduced shipping with an annual fee.

Amazon let subscribers chose among over a dozen pilots, airing those which attracted the most support. Yesterday Amazon announced that they will produce Alpha House, which received the most attention due to being created and written by Garry Trudeau, best known for “Doonesbury” and staring John Goodman. There are also cameo roles by Bill Murray and Stephen Colbert in the pilot.

The show, based on a real property in the District that has housed a rotation of various Democratic senators for years, has been the brainchild of Trudeau since about 2008. Inspired by a New York Times story about the house, Trudeau originally wrote the pilot for network television, but things didn’t pan out.

Last January, Alter, a close friend of Trudeau’s, brought up the idea of resurrecting the abandoned pilot. Trudeau’s response, Alter said, was something along the lines of, “Well, be my guest.” Although Trudeau was unsure about pitching the script to Amazon Studios, Alter said, Alter convinced him that an online series was the way to go…

Goodman plays Gil John Biggs, a brash, unfiltered senator from North Carolina who seems to be the leader of the alpha house. When he’s not making fun of his roommate-colleagues, he’s on the phone with his wife, back in his home district, who’s telling him to step up his game, because the beloved Duke basketball coach is planning to run against him in the next election. Goodman is joined by Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy and Mark Consuelos, who also play Republican senators.

(Trudeau went against the political affiliations of the actual house because, he said in a Washington Post interview, Democrats are currently pretty boring, while Republicans “are tearing themselves apart and will be for the foreseeable future.”)

The pilot skewers various aspects of Washington, cracking jokes at the expense of both conservatives and liberals. In one exciting coincidence, Trudeau penned a scene about an epic filibuster years before the 13-hour speech in March by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). At first, the writers of the show were worried that an all-night filibuster might seem unrealistic; after Paul’s performance, truth proved stranger than fiction, and the scene stayed.