SciFi Weekend: Torchwood, Merlin, Hot Actresses Dig Star Trek, Rumors Karen Gillan Leaving Doctor Who, Sex and the City

 Torchwood: Miracle Day episode 6, The Middlemen, showed the aftermath of Vera’s incineration. The episode also  explored the conspiracy behind the miracle without providing any answers. Jack encountered a PhiCorp  executive who was suspicious but knew very little. He’s only a middleman in the whole matter.  One reason he didn’t know much was that an investigator he sent out wound up leaping from a building to create permanent unconsciousness–the closest thing left to suicide. The conclusion of the episode put Gwen in a situation where she had to betray Jack to save her family, with the U.K. preview of episode 7 , Immortal Sins, above. Rumors has it that the seventh episode starts to reveal what is going on.

There have been complaints in the U.K. about the Americanization of Torchwood. John Barrowman says the show is still true to its British roots:

“Yes, it’s a bit more glossy. We have other actors in it. We’re filming over there so we have to have other American actors in it. But it’s still 100% core, the heart of it is still British,” he told the Daily Star.

“It’s now partly made in America and partly made in the UK. Throughout the entire series we always return to Wales or some place in the UK. Anyone can turn it on and know exactly that they’re watching Torchwood.”

“The global success… I’m just as bowled over by it as everybody else.”

He added: “I’m never going to give up the roots and the core that I have in the UK. UK’s home. This is where I got the start, this is where my doors were opened. And I’ll never turn my back on it.”

Merlin has been picked up for a fifth season, with the fourth to air on the BBC this fall, and later in the United States. In the upcoming season, Arthur will be taking a leading role in place of Uther.  Here are some additional spoilers as to season 4:

-We can expect series 4 to be darker and to see the return of Excalibur.

-New series of Merlin looks great! Much darker, lots of action and a hint of the sword in the stone!.

-With Uther a broken man, Prince Arthur has the emotional dilemma of either taking charge or waiting for his father to recover.

-Uther is a brokem man this series. This leaves a power vaccum in camelot which leaves arthur with a choice .

-Knights are proper knights now, Morgana looking after an injured Morgose, The return of “old Merlin”, lots of sword fights!.

-We’ll see a lot more from Arthur’s knights as their characters are explored.

-The creator said they have a specific mythiological end point for s5 which they have always been working toward.

The very last shot of series 4 has been filmed already (plenty of scenes to be filmed yet though.

While some authors have been trying to keep them off the internet, spoilers are not necessarily bad.  The BBC reports on a study which showed that knowing the ending of a book can enhance enjoyment as opposed to ruining it. The experience would often be different, but not necessarily better or worse. Instead of reading a mystery trying to figure out who did it, readers instead might instead enjoy watching to see how the author gets to the ending they know is going to happen. Rather than worrying about spoilers leaking out on the internet, it would make more sense to encourage web sites to clearly label major spoilers to enable the reader to decide whether or not they want to know the ending.

It looks like hot actresses dig Star Trek. Karen Gillan recently said she is a Trekie during an interview at the San Diego Comic Con. Now Olivia Wilde says she’d do anything to be in a Star Trek movie:

While promoting her latest film Cowboys & Aliens, actress Olivia Wilde professed that she would be willing to paint herself outlandish colours to star in Star Trek XII.

“[Paint myself] green? That’s fine, I’ll do anything!” Olivia laughed to Cover Media.

Olivia grew up watching sci-fi television and films and finds the characters very inspiring.

“I grew up watching Star Trek with my family,” Olivia recounted. “There have been great female characters in Trek over the years.”

“Captain Kathryn Janeway, she did it well,” Olivia explained. “She’s got that voice I could never compete with.”

Karen Gillan also stated during Comic Con that she will be returning to Doctor Who next season but now there rumors that she will be leaving at the end of this season.

SyFy has cancelled Eurkea.

Sex And The City was  an enjoyable television show on HBO, but the movies have been rather lame.  I think they are figuring that out. Sarah Jessica Parker might produce a new television series (with new cast) before going ahead with a third movie.

SciFi Weekend: Torchwood, Fringe, Catwoman, Cowboys and Aliens, Banned SF, Friday Night Lights, Big Bang Theory, Community

This week’s episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, The Categories of Life,  has a new twist on death panels, taken from Nazi Germany. The episode speeds up the pacing of the series, but I want to reserve judgment how this plays into the full series until it has completed. I did have a couple of nitpicks about this week’s villain, Colin Maloney. He turned to quickly from one-dimensional buffoon to one-dimension villain, and it is not believable that he would be so shocked by a female physician. (The UK trailer for the episode is above).

Peter Olivia Walter Fringe

John Noble has some teasers on the upcoming season of Fringe and what happened to Peter Bishop:

“Because we finished off with the season so powerfully what you’ll see now is thread in through a mini arc of four episodes,” explained John Noble during a one-on-one with the the TV Addict in Los Angeles. “We thread in the feeling, the presence of and finally the manifestation of Peter.”

And while it probably won’t come as much of a surprise that Peter does in fact return, (Joked Noble, “Josh [Jackson] is our leading man of course he does [return!]“) what sure as heck will is that Peter’s reappearance may not mark the return of the Peter fans (Not to mention the two Olivias!) have come to know and love over the course of the past three seasons.

“What we do is find a way to bring Peter back in…. but not in the way he was before,” revealed Noble. “It’s grand for Josh because it gives him a chance to finally do another version of himself, which he hasn’t had before. So it’s a great pay off for Josh and it means that we get to rebuild somehow in a different way.”

But just how different will be Peter Bishop 2.0 (Peternate?) be? Noble, not surprisingly, was playing coy. To the point that the only thing he would tease is that the start of FRINGE’s fourth season will be eerily familiar to fans of the show who has stuck with it since day one.

“That wonderful humanizing element that we’ve had in FRINGE of Walter and Peter getting to know and love each other again and build up their relationship… we start the season without that,” said Noble. “”[When the season starts] Walter is still in the lab but he’s quite insane, agoraphobic, obsessive compulsive and under the guardianship of Olivia and Astrid. He’s just locked in and won’t go out of the lab, so that’s an interesting restart from my point of view.”

The first pictures have been released of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman.

Olivia Wilde discussed her dirty scenes in Cowboys and Aliens.

The Republic, Missouri school board has banned Slaughterhouse Five because “they teach principles contrary to the Bible.”

As for the modern classic Slaughterhouse Five, the book is no stranger to censorship. One of the first literary acknowledgments that homosexual men, or “fairies” in the novel, were victims in the Holocaust, school classrooms and libraries frequently ban the book for its use of profanity and depictions of sex. The Supreme Court actually considered the First Amendment implications of the removal of this book, among others, from libraries in the 1982 case Island Tree School District v. Pico. The Court’s plurality concluded that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’” Minor’s reason for removing the novel? “The language is just really, really intense…I don’t think it has any place in high school…I’m not saying it’s a bad book.”

It looks like there really is a chance of a Friday Night Lights movie, taking place after the conclusion of the final season of the television show. I’m still waiting for the Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls movies which were discussed after those shows ended.

The two Thursday night genre comedies were both represented at the San Diego Comic Con two weeks ago. Above is an interview with the cast of The Big Bang Theory.During the shows panel,  Bill Prady  said that they will resolve the situation between Raj and Penny and explained that the show is not really a show about nerds:

“We’re not doing a show about nerd culture. We’re doing a show about people we liked,” he said.

“About extraordinary people,” fellow co-creator Chuck Lorre said.

More exchanges, including a terrific question about Sheldon:

Of course, a fan asked when Sheldon will lose his virginity, but asked in a great way: “When is Sheldon going to go through Pon farr?” (For the non-Trek oriented, this is when a Vulcan basically goes into heat.)

“Sheldon seems singularly devoted to science — only time will tell,” Prady says.

On the difference between Sheldon and Amy’s characters, Prady says: “Amy’s game. She wants to have the experiences she hasn’t had — and some of them burn between her loins.”

Parsons says his character’s famous Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock scene took the most takes of any scene he’s ever shot. “It nearly broke me as a man.”

There was also a lot of news about Community. Next season the cast will be taking Biology together. The stories will become more serialized. There will be more themed episodes, including one containing three different time lines. The vice-dean of Greendale’s air conditioning repair annex, played by John Goodman, will become an important and powerful character. Señor Chang will also return to a position of authority.

SciFi Weekend: Torchwood, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Likely To Receive R Rating, Olivia Wilde in Cowboys and Aliens, Fringe, V, Lost Epilogue, Big Bang Theory

We have much more information on the upcoming season of Torchwood which airs next summer:

“Torchwood” picks up a while after the events of “Children of Earth,” but still deals with Capt. Jack Harkness’ (John Barrowman) state of mind after those devastating events that left him dispirted. Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) will also be back. A new character, CIA agent Rex Matheson — who’s yet to be cast — will serve to introduce new audiences to the world of “Torchwood.”

“Rex has no idea what Torchwood is and has to investigate,” explains Davies. “Torchwood has been destroyed. It’s ike a legend now, it’s almost ceased to exist a long time ago and is spoken only of in whispers. We also have a watch analyst at the CIA called Esther. The two of them become embroiled in the Torchwood legend and investigate what Torchwood is or was and they find themselves on the run and meeting Captain Jack and Gwen, having to decide whether they’re friends, whether they’re enemies. It’s a decision that takes a long time to be decided. That’s part of the 10 episodes is the two teams coming together, a lot of sparks, a lot of excitement.”

Among other things we learn:

  • Rhys Williams (Kai Owen) will be back with their baby.
  • Sorry Capt. John Hart fans, but James Marsters is not going to be in this 10-episode season, but he’s still in good with Davies for possible future participation.
  • The new series continuous and very arced.
  • Scheduling of the new “Torchwood” will be “very close” on both sides of the pond.
  • Since the show is on a premium cable network, “Torchwood” can have nudity in sex scenes, but Davies is only sold on that if the story demands it. “There’s nothing worse than a great big global international thriller that stops for a sex scene. Get on with it please.”

I was also happy to read that the American movie version of The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo will probably receive an R-rating like the original version. It think this would be necessary to be true to the book. Now if they can only get the mess over Stieg Larsson’s fourth book settled.

Adam Beach created a lot of buzz  from mentioning Olivia Wilde’s upcoming nude scene in Cowboys and Aliens during an interview in the Toronto Sun:

“We just finished shooting Olivia Wilde naked in front of a bonfire in front of 500 Apache warriors,” Beach says. “That was beautiful. You won’t get to see what I saw, but you’ll get a glimpse.”

Asked about the nude scene, Wilde laughs. “Did Adam Beach talk to you? Adam Beach is the best. Last night, we did a scene where I’m naked in front of a group of couple hundred Apache. Pretty amazing, pretty interesting.”

Not that she’s only wild west cheesecake in the film, due out next July. “I do kick-ass in this. I love doing action movies … This movie is so much fun for me.”

The above picture is of Oliva Wilde from Elle.

The alternative universe will be a bigger part of Fringe next season, with much of the action taking place over there. Jasika Nicole says that Astrid will have a larger role. Her job did seem more significant over there, and back here she becomes closer to Walter since he lost both Peter and the Olivia from our world.

Anna Torv claims that the alternate Olivia is much like the Olivia from our universe. Actually the alternate Olivia was much hotter, but beyond that I’ve been wondering if there is some meaning to this. Is she hinting that the alternative Olivia is really one of the good guys, and in the end will help set everything straight? Or maybe I’m putting too much meaning into a comment made in an interview. It’s like how I assumed that Juliet saying “it worked” in the final season premiere of Lost was important and it turned out she was probably only talking about getting the candy bar out of the vending machine in the sideways universe.

Jane Badler, the original Diana from V, returns to the series in a recurring role as Anna’s mother. There’s also major spoilers regarding the meaning of the red sky and other upcoming events:

How does the season begin?

Season 2 begins with the panic that results from the red sky, the vistors cut off their communications with the humans completely and most visitors on earth return to the mother ship. Anna refuses to answer to anyone and earth panics and takes pre-emptive measures to prepare for war. The panic intensifies when red rain begins to fall.

What is the real purpose of the red sky?

The red sky is later revealed to be a “gift for humanity” spreading life on earth making deserts green. The true purpose behind the red sky is to improve human fertility and prepare them for mass breeding with the visitors.

What is Marcus’s agenda?

At the end of the first season it appeared Marcus had his own agenda with reviving Joshua and contacting Hobbs however in season 2 it appears all this was done with Anna’s knowledge as Anna is aware of Joshua’s revival however, Joshua is back missing memories and human emotions and is no longer a member of the fifth column, nor does he remember working with them. Marcus takes orders from Anna and then blackmails Hobbs into carrying them out.

What happens to Ryan in season 2?

In season 2 Ryan’s main goal is to be with his daughter. Anna seperates him from his daughter and simply sends him back to earth planning to use the hybrid child to force Ryan into spying on the fifth column .

Does Anna experience any more human emotion?

Throughout the second season Anna struggles to control and hide her human emotions.

Why is Anna so interested in Tyler?

Tyler’s humanity comes into question as Erica connects complications with her pregnancy with Tyler to materials in the red sky.

The New Man In Charge, the twelve minute epilogue to Lost which is appearing on the DVD and Blu-Ray sets, leaked out last week. I have linked to clips and, in the update, a site which Disney didn’t manage to force to take down the full clip. The post also contains a summary of the key points. The clip explains several points including where the food drops came from, what the Hurleybird was, why there were polar bears on the island, why there were problems with pregnancies on the island, more about the relationship between Dharma and “the hostiles,” and Walt’s fate.

The stars of The Big Bang Theory are trying to renegotiate their contracts to increase their salaries from 60,000 per episode to $250,000. Compared to Friends these seems quite cheap. Reportedly Jim Parsons was trying to get even more than his co-stars. That’s just like Sheldon to think he is worth more than his co-workers.

It doesn’t look like these negotiations are interfering with filming. Bill Prady tweeted a few days ago that production has officially started on season four.