Shocking: Russia Caught “Meddling” It Its Own Parliamentary Elections

Hysteria about Russia, fueled by Hillary Clinton’s drive to divert blame for her loss to Donald Trump, continues to spread. The scare about Russian Facebook ads and Twitter accounts looks ridiculous when the facts are seriously analyzed. We are repeatedly seeing hysterical headlines, sometimes claiming to contain the smoking gun, only to quickly find that the initial report was incorrect. A column at Bloomberg News looked at some recent examples, starting with the report that money was sent by Russia to embassies with the indication, “to finance election campaign of 2016.” To some that was seen as proof that Russia rigged the 2016 election. The more plausible response:

The Trump-Russia story is becoming surreal. It’s worth pausing for a minute and applying a tool that’s getting rusty from disuse — Occam’s razor, and specifically Isaac Newton’s take on it: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.”

Here’s a simple example. BuzzFeed on Tuesday came out with a story about the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation checking into 60 transfers sent by the Russian Foreign Ministry to embassies around the world with a note that the money was meant “to finance election campaign of 2016.” Russia says that meant the Russian parliamentary election that took place in September 2016, not the U.S. presidential election. The voting for that election was organized in 147 countries; some 1.9 million Russian expatriates could come to hundreds of diplomatic missions to cast their votes, though only some 216,000 ended up doing so.

This is an obvious, simple explanation for the transfers. If U.S. election interference was intended with the funds, would a Russian government agency openly transfer money to “finance” it and label it as such? Why would the Foreign Ministry transfer money for a U.S. election meddling effort to dozens of diplomatic missions far from U.S. shores? The transfers arrived in early August, just in time to organize the polling stations for the Sept. 18 Russian election. But BuzzFeed pumped up the drama: “Just as the U.S. presidential election was entering its final, heated phase, the Russian foreign ministry sent nearly $30,000 to its embassy in Washington.” After the story ran, the Russian Foreign Ministry provided the obvious explanation; BuzzFeed added it to the piece without altering its ominous tone.

So the latest smoking gun re Russia showed that Russia was “meddling” in the Russian parliamentary elections.

The same column looked at the exchange of email between Donald Trump, Jr. and Wikileaks, which fueled attacks on Wikileaks after one of the messages was  edited in a way that seems to play into the Clinton attacks that Wikileaks aligned with Russia. Their bogus claims tying Wikileaks to Russia leads to the false claims that Donald Trump, Jr. communicating with Wikileaks is an act of collusion with Russia.

The actual text of the exchange looks more like Wikileaks was trying to entice Donald Trump, Jr. into releasing his father’s tax returns by acting as if Wikileaks was trying to help Trump. It certainly would have made no sense for Wikileaks to have acted neutral or pro-Clinton in such negotiations. This is also consistent with Assange’s statements that he regretted that his releases of information on the 2016 presidential candidates were limited to Clinton, but Trump did not have a government record to expose. Releasing Trump’s tax returns would have certainly provided such desired balance. Unfortunately Donald Trump, Jr., who has shown a willingness to collude with not only Wikileaks but with Russia, did not fall for this. Hopefully Trump’s tax returns will be released instead as part of Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Of course Assange very likely did have a strong objection to Clinton considering how her record of both extreme hawkishness and extreme hostility towards government transparency conflicted with two of Assange’s priorities. He might have also been influence by the widely reported, but never verified, claims that Clinton had advocated killing Assange in a drone strike.

The Matrix made this offer which is relevant to current politics, even if the context is different: “You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

The number of people attacking backers of transparency such as Wikileaks and Edward Snowden again this week (including many faux-liberal Democrats) shows that far too many Americans (again including many faux-liberal Democrats) will take the blue pill over the red pill every chance they have.

SciFi Weekend: News From Comic Con Including CW Shows, Stranger Things, Star Trek Discovery, 12 Monkeys, Outlander, & Doctor Who; Briefs On Orphan Black and Other Current Genre Shows

There is a lot of news, and lots of videos, from San Diego Comic Con. Here are some of the highlights, with more likely to be posted next week.

The video above was released at the panel for The 100. TV Line has this information:

 “The prison ship [from the season finale] is from Earth,” Rothenberg revealed. “They’re from before the first apocalypse. They were in hyper-sleep for 100 years. They’ve come back to this planet that they don’t recognize. All that’s left is this Garden of Eden that Clarke’s been living in with her daughter.”

“It’s nice to be playing someone a little closer to my age,” Taylor said of the time jump. “It’ll be exciting to see her as a 24-year-old woman who’s been through so much, and is now taking on this maternal role.”

“Octavia doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing,” Avgeropoulos admitted, “but she doesn’t want to set off chaos with 1,200 people in the bunker. … You’ll see what her plan is to keep the peace and how she reprimands others in her own special way.”

“Raven is so special because she’s so smart,” Morgan said. “She’s a key ingredient in the mix for their survival. Her heart weighs on her a lot. The only reason everyone is in space is because of Raven.”

“All of us have to change up [in space],” Harmon said. “It’s freeing in a lot of ways. Over six years, a lot of therapy can happen. Murphy’s definitely going to change.”

“Harper is Monty’s main lifeline at the current moment,” Larkin said. “He owes her his life. She chose him. I don’t know if they’re still together. … Maybe Monty and Murphy are together. It’s been six years!”

New series regular Tasya Teles also arrived on stage to talk about Echo’s future: “I think about it a lot. Who will she become friends with? … I was thinking she’d get close to Raven for some reason. They’re girls who get things done. I see those two having an alliance.”

Rothenberg wouldn’t say whether any new couples have formed during the time jump, but he reminded us that “six years is a long time.”

Supergirl has new show runners, and it sounds like there will be more of Calista Flockhart. Entertainment Weekly reports:

Calista Flockhart will return as Cat Grant in the Supergirl season 3 premiere, new showrunners Jessica Queller and Robert Rovner told reporters ahead of the Supergirl panel at San Diego Comic-Con Saturday. She is expected to recur on the CW drama in the new season.

“The way that Calista appears in the first episode is really clever,” star Melissa Benoist told reporters.

Supergirl also intends to give up being Kara Danvers and be Supergirl full time, but I bet she changes her mind regarding this.

The trailer for The Flash shows a new team while Barry is in the speed force, with Iris left in charge. Caitlin Snow also appears to be back with the team, and the trailer does hint at Barry returning. SyFy Wire has this information from producer Todd Helbing:

According to Helbing, this season picks up six months after the events of the finale. Iris will be stepping up as team leader, trying to do what Barry told her to do. According to star Candace Patton, that means stepping back from her journalism career and taking over as leader of Team Flash at Star Labs. She’ll be playing a similar role to Felicity/Overwatch on their sister show, Arrow.

Wally will also be taking on new responsibilities this season as he goes from Kid Flash to just The Flash. That transition is a big challenge, though, says Keiynan Lonsdale. Wally’s relationship with Iris will also deepen as the two work through their respective grief over losing Barry.

And what about Barry? Well, it turns out we won’t be seeing him in the speed force at all, but we will see the effect the experience had on him. According to Grant Gustin, Barry spent his time in the speed force watching his life from start to end, and he’ll have much better insight into himself. He’ll also be a much lighter version of Barry in a much lighter season, a welcome reprieve from the darkness that has overtaken the show in recent years. Welcomed by both the audience and the actor. Gustin said Season 3 was hard on him, admitting that he sometimes went home and cried in the shower.

Helbing also stressed the lightness of the new season, saying they’ll also be taking a break from time travel this year.

The rest of the crew will be back too. Cisco will be further exploring his relationship with Gypsy this season, but he won’t be getting a new suit. Says Carlos Valdez, “My ass feels great in the pants.” Of course, the season won’t be entirely happy for Cisco. He’s feeling the loss of his friends and is working to bring them back.

Cisco isn’t the only one with romance in his future. Joe’s relationship with Cecile will also grow more. But, as always, Joe’s focus will be his children. According to Jesse L. Martin, while Joe is very proud that Wally was able to step into Barry’s shoes, he’s worried about all the pain Iris is going through.

Caitlyn fans, though, will apparently be the happiest of all this season. After succumbing to her Killer Frost instincts, Caitlyn ended Season 3 by leaving her friends to go soul searching, finding the balance between Caitlyn Snow and Killer Frost. Danielle Panabaker was particularly tight-lipped about what’s to come for her character, but she did say that she’s enjoying the opportunity to bridge light and dark.

Speaking of the darkness, what of this year’s villain, The Thinker? According to Helbing, he’ll be the big theme of the year. He did not elaborate, though, so anything beyond that will have to be left to the imagination.

Michael Emerson of Lost and Person of Interest will have a recurring role on Arrow next season, but there is no word about his role.

BuddyTV has this information on Legends of Tomorrow:

The quartet of villains who terrorized the group in season 2, The Legion of Doom is a large part of why Legends of Tomorrow was received so well in its second year. It is no surprise then then that in season 3, two of the four member of the group will make their reappearance. After the trailer which opened the panel, embedded below, the show confirmed that Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold and Neal McDonough’s Damien Darhk will be back.
Miller and McDonough will both be series regulars for season 3 but their characters won’t be exactly as people remember them. The Darhk of season 3 will less “silly” than the version from season 2. As for Cold, Dominic Purcell who plays Mick Rory, cautioned that the Snart of season 3 won’t be exactly be the same friend that Mick lost in season 1 (and to a lesser extent season 2).

While Miller and McDonough will stay on the show as series regulars, Arthur Darvill won’t be quite as prominent. The actor who played Rip Hunter, the team’s original leader, will still appear in season 3. Darvill will just be a recurring role rather than a series regular one, which is not that surprising since Rip did give up his spot on the team in the season 2 finale. Rip will still play a big part in the season as he is mentioned to have some big secret that he is hiding in the trailer.

E! summarizes Marvel news from Comic Con here. The trailer for Thor:Ragnarok is above.

A trailer for the second season of Stranger Things was released with this description: It’s 1984 and the citizens of Hawkins, Indiana are still reeling from the horrors of the demogorgon and the secrets of Hawkins Lab. Will Byers has been rescued from the Upside Down but a bigger, sinister entity still threatens those who survived.

TV Guide has this information from the Stranger Things panel:

1. The Duffer Brothers wanted to do TV because it’s more like movies now. “We were big movie nerds, and we started to get into television as it got more cinematic,” Matt Duffer told the room, crediting shows like True Detective. They thought about what would be the best “long movie,” and decided a Spielberg homage was the way to go.

2. They knew what the title font should be, before they even started. Producer Shawn Levy credited the Duffer Brothers’ clarity of vision coming in to the project as the reason Netflix decided to take a chance on the unknown filmmakers, citing that they even knew what they wanted the now iconic title to look like from their first meeting.

3. More Will in Season 2! Will was offscreen most of last season, but from Schnapp we learned that not only will, uh, Will show up more, but he’ll be “braver” and we’ll learn more about how the Upside Down affected him.

4. Eleven had less lines, but a harder job. Millie Bobby Brown cited the difficulty of acting with a minimal amount of lines — particularly around “boys who like to play pranks.” But ultimately it was about concentrating, and feeling inside what needed to be expressed — and then letting that come through just with her facial muscles.

5. Hopper may be connecting with Eleven. Harbour stated that his character’s arc in Season 2 is definitely “very different” than it was in Season 1, and “it all begins with some Eggos he’s leaving in the woods.” The actor added that we know he has some daughter issues from Season 1, and that may play out in Season 2. Chances are, Hopper and Eleven are gonna team up, right?

6. Meet the new guys! Dacre Montgomery is playing Billy, Sadie Sink is Max (“a.k.a. Mad Max” quipped Keery), and Paul Reiser is Dr. Owens. Max moves from California, Owens may or may not be evil (though he’s definitely brought in to “clean up Dr. Brenner’s mess”)… And that’s all the info we got on the new folks. This show is a big secret!

7. The new trailer dropped! The new trailer showed off bigger monsters, Halloween costumes, some Michael Jackson music — and Eleven is back! You can watch it right here.

8. No, Barb is not coming back. The first audience question was from — surprise! — Shannon Purser, who played fan-favorite Barb on the show. She asked if Barb was coming back for Season 2, which was, sadly, a resounding “no.” That said, Season 2 will deal with Barb’s death, and give us some #Justice4Barb. “She will be avenged,” swear the Duffer Brothers.

More at USA Today.

Star Trek Discovery trailer. From ScreenRant:

Viewers are told in the teaser that Klingons have been submerged in chaos for a number of years, but are coming back to the surface for a battle against Starfleet. They also get their first look at Rainn Wilson in the role of Harry Mudd, and it’s revealed that the invention of warp drive will somehow also play into the series. It’s a lot to take in, but Star Trek fans will be thankful for it.

The trailer for the final season of 12 Monkeys was released last week with discussion at SDCC covered here.

The cast of Outlanders took questions at SDCC with video here. Deadline interviewed Ron Moore:

MOORE: It’s a transitional season. You know, the franchise kind of pivots from this point because, it’s not really a huge spoiler, but essentially, the show will relocate to the American colonies after this season. So they’ll always have a foot in Scotland, because there’s always a piece of the story that will continue to play out in Scotland, but Claire and Jamie and their family really do kind of relocate to North America after this season and establish a place called Fraser’s Ridge, which is up in the mountains of North Carolina — and that’s where the rest of the season in the books takes place.

So this is a really important year because it’s leaving sort of one setting, traveling literally across the Atlantic Ocean. You know, we went down and shot on the Black Sails ships and sets in South Africa to do that section of the story, and then end up in the Caribbean, and then eventually into the American colonies. It’s a big transitional year for this show…

Looking at some of the genre shows currently airing, Orphan Black is moving towards its end game, and had probably its goriest scene ever this weekend. There has been some real change for the better with Rachel, and change which I’m undecided about with Allison. Krystal Goderitch finally returned the previous week. (Was the actress who played her unavailable until then?) Recent highlights also include Cosima and Delphine at a strange dinner party on the island. Pictures of Delphine released before the season led to rumors that the two were getting married. While that did not turn out to be the explanation, there are still a few episodes left.

I hope that the writers on Dark Matter aren’t running low on original ideas. In recent weeks we’ve had their takes on Groundhog Day and The Mattrix. There are a lot of interesting threads being developed which will hopefully culminate in something great (and original).

Syfy has renewed Wynonna Earp for a third season.

Now that Game of Thrones is back we can explain the last election in terms which fans of the show will understand. We were spared having Cersci Lannister take over, but got stuck with Joffrey Baratheon. For those disappointed that we did not get a female president, keep in mind that should the earth fall under alien invasion after the regeneration to the 13th Doctor on Doctor Who, she will become the President of Earth to deal with the invasion (if Chris Chibnall keeps this rather silly idea from the Moffat era).

Unfortunately there have been some complaints about Jodie Whittaker being given the role of the thirteenth doctor. The BBC has issued this response to complaints:

Since the first Doctor regenerated back in 1966, the concept of the Doctor as a constantly evolving being has been central to the programme. The continual input of fresh ideas and new voices across the cast and the writing and production teams has been key to the longevity of the series.

The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey and it has been established in the show that Time Lords can switch gender.

As the Controller of BBC Drama has said, Jodie is not just a talented actor but she has a bold and brilliant vision for her Doctor. She aced it in her audition both technically and with the powerful female life force she brings to the role. She is destined to be an utterly iconic Doctor.

We hope viewers will enjoy what we have in store for the continuation of the story.

It is impressive that the BBC has a site to take such complaints and that they do respond. It is less impressive that this casting decision about a fictional alien is bothering so many people.

There is help for those men who cannot handle a female lead despite having thirty-six seasons with a male lead, The Doctor Who Help Line. For those who don’t want to watch the full video above, the funniest lines include a man calling in saying he hoped that at least Jodie Whittaker will only be paid  seventy-nine cents on the dollar of what Peter Capaldi was paid, and a suggestion that she get her own show about a time traveling nurse. The BBC says that Jodie Whittaker will be paid as much as Peter Capaldi. At least as of now this will be her last appearance:

 “That’s it,” said Mackie. “The Christmas special is your last chance to see Bill. But I mean, hey, it’s Doctor Who, so never say never.”

The trailer for the Christmas episode released at SDCC, entitled Twice Upon A Time, reveals that, in addition to two Doctors played by Peter Capaldi and David Bradley, the cast includes Mark Gatiss and Pearle Mackie, returning as Bill.

Deborah Watling, who played the second Doctor’s companion Victoria Waterfield, died last week.

Update: More news from San Diego Comic Con here.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, The Lie of the Land; Class Finale; Sense8 Cancelled; A Week of Apologies; Wonder Woman

The Monks trilogy on Doctor Who was an excellent two and a half or so episodes. The Lie of the Land did start out great with the earth under the control of the Monks. It had an extreme take on alternative facts and fake news with a propaganda piece showing the Monks as having been here since before humans evolved.

This episode did feel a lot like a remake of The Last Of The Time Lords with a companion having to rescue the Doctor and free the earth. The episode was fine until they got to the part where Bill shot the Doctor and everyone laughed at how they tricked Bill to test her. This also included a fake regeneration scene which, while perhaps exciting for the previews, doesn’t fit well into the series. Sure we did see one incomplete regeneration before in The Stolen Earth, but in general, unless there is a very good reason for the story, regeneration energy should be reserved for regeneration into the next Doctor, not recovery of the same Doctor from bullet wounds. This scene was partially redeemed when the Doctor asked Nardole if the regeneration was a touch too much.

From some comments from Steven Moffat, I believe he might have taken three different story ideas by different writers, and then combined them into a trilogy. It was a clever idea for the Monks to rule by convincing everyone they had always been there, preventing thought of repelling the invaders who actually had only been there for six months. However this, along with how easily the Monks were repelled, did not fit with what was established in the first two episodes. This would not be necessary if they really only took over planets which requested their assistance, but if this was the only contradiction I might forgive it as humans beyond Bill and the dead generals did not really agree. I think that it would have been better if we had two different stories about different aliens to use the main ideas used in each episode.

Among the other questions raised, despite building such a detailed simulation of the earth in Extremis, did the Monks not think of trying to predict what dangers they could have with their occupation? In The Pyramid At The End Of The World we saw that the Monks had no problem removing a plane from the sky and a submarine from the ocean, yet the Doctor had no problem taking control of the boat. From there it was way to simple to enter the pyramid and defeat them.

The Missy story did progress, with her becoming an actual part of the main story line. The best line of the show, which only makes sense in its context was her saying “awkward.” It also appears that she might be trying to keep her promise to learn to be good. Even if she does keep to this, which is questionable, it appears that her view of being good will be quite different from the Doctor’s.

There is both considerable continuity and lack of continuity in this trilogy. Besides combining three different stories into a trilogy (even if flawed), they used the Doctor’s blindness from Oxygen and the pictures the Doctor retrieved for Bill of her mother in Pilot. There is also the possibility that the Monks could still return this season. On the other hand, everyone has forgotten the Monks. (“The Monks have erased themselves. Humanity is doomed to never learn from their mistakes.”) But what of the family and friends of those who died during the occupation, and those who were in the forced labor camps? On the other hand, it would be hard to both set Doctor Who in our modern world, and have people actually remember all the alien invasions. It would no longer be like our world if we did have memories of all the events shown.

Class also had its finale this weekend. I have not discussed Class on a weekly basis as I downloaded it during the U.K run and watched it last fall. In general, I thought the show was entertaining and worked as a brief stand alone series, but it was hardly essential for those following the Doctor Who universe. Ratings were poor in the U.K. and the show was not expected to return, unless it should do remarkable well on BBC America. The chances of revival are even lower with writer Patrick Ness saying he will not return to the show even if it should be renewed.

Netflix announced the cancellation of Sense8. Sadly there will be no third season, no continuation of the story from where it left off at the end of season 2, and, worst of all, we don’t get to return to see all those people and the world the show created.

The New York Times reports:

“Sense8” was a globe-trotting sci-fi drama made by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the filmmakers behind “The Matrix,” and J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of “Babylon 5.” It received generally positive reviews from critics.

“After 23 episodes, 16 cities and 13 countries, the story of the Sense8 cluster is coming to an end,” said Cindy Holland, the vice president for original content at Netflix.

She added, “Never has there been a more truly global show with an equally diverse and international cast and crew, which is only mirrored by the connected community of deeply passionate fans all around the world.”

There are attempts to bring it back but I fear that the cost to produce this is too high compared to the number of viewers.

In other entertainment news, this was a big week for apologies, first from Kathy Griffin, and then from Bill Maher. There was also the release of Wonder Women. I have not seen it yet, but the reviews have been excellent, and it sounds like it has corrected many of the mistakes of superhero movies, especially from DC.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, Extremis; Agents of SHIELD Season Finale; Legends of Tomorrow; The Flash; Arrow; Star Trek Discovery; Seth MacFarlane’s Spoof, The Orville; Gotham; The Magicians; Twin Peaks

Extremis was the best episode of Doctor Who so far this season, and it is just the first part of a three part story. There was a lot of misdirection in the episode, which is part of what made it so interesting.

The episode appeared to have two different story lines, but the conclusion revealed there were actually three. There were the flashbacks to the execution and the scenes with the Doctor outside the vault. It wasn’t reveled until the end that all of the other events were actually taking place in the shadow world, their version of the Matrix.

Even the execution scene had misdirection, as it was unclear whether the Doctor was intended to be the victim or executioner. Once it finally became clear that it was Missy to be executed, things did not turn out as planned. This gave plenty of opportunity for Missy to be Missy: “Please, I’ll do anything. Let me live. Teach me how to be good. I’m your friend.” She also had some words for her captors: “Get off, I’ve just been executed. Show a little respect” and “Knock yourself out. Actually, do that. Knock yourself right out.”

I am glad that they didn’t drag out the reveal as to who is in the vault any longer as pretty much everyone probably realizes by now that it is one of the versions of the Master. The Doctor is keeping his word to watch over her body, even if he mislead Missy’s captors in not going through with executing her. His decision to spare her life is consistent with the relationship which as developed between the two.

Any episode in which the events are in some way not real is vulnerable to criticism, but I was willing to accept it here. Being only the first part of a three part story helps minimize the problem the events being in the shadow world. There is also a legitimate pay off to the situation in which the Doctor outsmarted the Monks and got out a warning by email to the “real” Doctor. Or as the Doctor in the shadow world put it, “I’m doing what everybody does when the world’s in danger. I’m calling the Doctor.”

This reveal also allowed for some other genre references. This included the second Star Trek reference in two weeks, this time with Nardole saying the shadow world is like “like the Holodeck on Star Trek, or a really posh VR without a headset.” I also liked the explanation of people seeming to commit suicide when they realized the truth: “it’s like Super Mario figuring out what’s going on, deleting himself from the game, because he’s sick of dying.” There was also a reference to Harry Potter and portions of the episode felt like they were out of a Dan Brown novel.

Besides the simulation leading to the Doctor getting the warning about the invasion, it also gave the Doctor reason to encourage Bill to ask Penny out, reassuring her that she is not out of her league, knowing how it worked in the shadow world. While it only happened in the shadow world, presumably this accurately reflected the real world with Bill’s foster mother not realizing she is a lesbian, and therefore not realizing what was going on between the two girls. This included the exchange with Bill’s foster mother telling her “I have very strict rules about men” and Bill replying, “Probably not as strict as mine.”

The shadow world also gave us scenes at the Vatican, briefly at the Pentagon, at CERN, and with a dead president. This led the Doctor to wonder, “Particle physicists and priests–What could scare them both?” Plus there was the Pope in Bill’s bedroom: “Doctor, here’s a tip. When I’m on a date, when that rare and special thing happens in my real life, do not, do not under any circumstances put the Pope in my bedroom.”

There is plenty of additional grounds to nitpick, such as questioning whether a simulation so complex could not come up with a better random number generator. I am far more willing to accept potential plot holes which come up with thinking about an episode as opposed to glaring ones which cause a distraction while watching, such as with Knock Knock.

Continuity was also handled fairly well in this episode. They might have initially had the Doctor regain his vision at the end of Oxygen, but it worked out better to extend his blindness into this episode. This could also play into the upcoming regeneration, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if he encountered the Weeping Angels while unable to see.

The episode also showed how Nardole remained with the Doctor following the events of The Husbands of River Song, with him there at River’s request to prevent the Doctor from taking extreme actions following her death. Nardole even used a passage from her diary to influence the Doctor. While not seen on camera, Steven Moffat has said that one of the stories in his mind that he will not get a chance to tell is of the Doctor having Nardole going to the library after the events of The Forest of the Dead to recover River’s diary. There are also rumors that River will be returning this season. If so, this, along with her pictures on the Doctor’s desk, provides a good set up.

Agents of SHIELD also spent a lot of time in a version of the Matrix this season before the framework was destroyed in the season finale. IGN spoke with the producers about that space cliff hanger and that new role for Coulson:

IGN: Going back to the cliffhanger, that diner scene at first very much reminded me of the shawarma scene at the end of Avengers. Was there ever version of that sequence that didn’t have the cliffhanger, in case for whatever reason you didn’t get picked up?

Bell: It’s what it is. There was not a nice quiet shawarma version of it where they go, “Oh, it’s nice to be together.” It was always supposed to be, “Oh look, we’re finally together. Oh no, something bad happens.”

IGN: Which is sort of how it always goes for these guys, right?

Bell: It is!

Whedon: Man, SHIELD is not the coziest place to work, you know? I think they have a pretty good health plan, but other than that, it’s kind of up in the air all the time.

IGN: Well I hope so. They do keep coming back from the dead or near death at all points. I am excited we’re going back to space, though! Can you say how long it’s been in the show between when the team gets taken and when we pick back up with Coulson at the end?

Whedon: [silence] We can’t say.

Bell: We acknowledge there’s a time jump…

IGN: Going back a little bit, how long have you been planning for Coulson to be the Ghost Rider — and what was Clark Gregg’s reaction to finding out that news?

Bell: To say he was happy, it would be an understatement.

Whedon: I think what he said when we told him was, “I didn’t think I could geek out more,” but he was like, “It seems I can.”

Bell: Yeah, that was what he said.

IGN: Can you clarify: did Coulson make a deal with the devil to take on the Ghost Rider identity, or will we find out a bit more of the logistics of that deal that’s alluded to soon?

Whedon: We’ll find out more about it, but I think it’s safe to say he made a deal with the Ghost Rider, or the powers behind him. We’ll see what it all means, but it didn’t come for free. It wasn’t like, “Hey bro, can I borrow that? Can I just borrow that Ghost Rider thing for a second?”

Bell: Right, like borrowing a T-shirt.

IGN: Are you leaving the door open for more Ghost Rider?

Whedon: Well, first of all, he’s not dead — not that that means anything in our world. He also has shown that he has the ability to move in and out of realms and dimensions or planets or wherever he’s going. He’s a threat to pop up at any moment. Whether or not he will, I can’t say, but he’s out there…

IGN: I want to talk a bit about Fitz and Simmons. You’ve put them through the wringer over the past couple seasons, and my working theory is it’s because Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge always deliver such fantastic performances of those traumatizing events. Considering what they’ve gone through this year, are you considering them as a couple who will remain rocks for each other, or are you still planning to throw a bunch more terrible things at them?

Whedon: First of all, it’s the nature of the world. I think even this year with the flashbacks of May and Coulson and the rules we’ve stated through many seasons, that there are rules about agents not getting together for this very reason. Your love will be tested. That’s sort of the nature of the business. I think it’s safe to say from these past two episodes that they love each other and won’t love anyone else, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to repair their relationship and all that pain in between. One would hope that they could because everybody roots for FitzSimmons and the fans do and we do. We love the two actors, and so I think that seeing them together is a reward that the audience deserves, but how that happens, we’ll have to wait and see if it does.

Bell: I think the thing is people can have the forever love, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they get to end up together. They might, but you don’t know.

Whedon: But theirs is a forever love.

The CW Network has released a synopsis for the third season of Legends of Tomorrow, including the return of Rip Hunter and establishment of the Time Bureau, after they fractured time in the season finale:

After the defeat of Eobard Thawne and his equally nefarious Legion of Doom, the Legends face a new threat created by their actions at the end of last season. In revisiting a moment in time that they had already participated in, they have essentially fractured the timeline and created anachronisms – a scattering of people, animals, and objects all across time! Our team must find a way to return all the anachronisms to their original timelines before the time stream falls apart. But before our Legends can jump back into action, Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) and his newly established Time Bureau call their methods into question. With the Time Bureau effectively the new sheriffs in town, the Legends disband – until Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) discovers one of them in the middle of his well-deserved vacation in Aruba. Seeing this as an opportunity to continue their time traveling heroics, Sara (Caity Lotz) wastes no time in getting the Legends back together.  We reunite with billionaire inventor Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh), the unconventional historian-turned-superhero [Nate] Heywood (Nick Zano), and Professor Martin Stein (Victor Garber) and Jefferson “Jax” Jackson (Franz Drameh), who together form the meta-human Firestorm. Once reunited, the Legends will challenge the Time Bureau’s authority over the timeline and insist that however messy their methods may be, some problems are beyond the Bureau’s capabilities. Some problems can only be fixed by Legends.

Last week’s episode of The Flash appeared to show that Iris did die in the scene we’ve been seeing all season. It might have been premature for The CW Network to release this synopsis of season four, which appears to have a major spoiler as to  how the season ends (not that I’m all that surprised considering how this show has involved changing timelines, not to mention the imaging tool used):

Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) lived a normal life as a perpetually tardy C.S.I. in the Central City Police Department.  Barry’s life changed forever when the S.T.A.R. Labs Particle Accelerator exploded, creating a dark-matter lightning storm that struck Barry, bestowing him with super-speed and making him the fastest man alive — The Flash.  But when Barry used his extraordinary abilities to travel back in time and save his mother’s life, he inadvertently created an alternate timeline known as Flashpoint; a phenomenon that gave birth to the villainous speed god known as Savitar, and changed the lives of Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) and Wally West (Keiyan Lonsdale) forever.  With the help of his adoptive father, Joe West (Jesse L. Martin), his lifelong best friend and love interest Iris West (Candice Patton), and his friends at S.T.A.R. Labs — Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes), C.S.I Julian Albert (Tom Felton), and an Earth-19 novelist named H.R. Wells (Tom Cavanaugh) — Barry continues to protect the people of Central City from the meta-humans that threaten it.  Based on the characters from DC, THE FLASH is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (“Arrow,” “Supergirl”), Andrew Kreisberg (“Arrow,” “The Flash”), Sarah Schechter (“Arrow,” “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”) and Todd Helbing (“Black Sails”).

They have also released the synopsis of Arrow season six:

After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the North China Sea.  He returned home to Star City, bent on righting the wrongs done by his family and fighting injustice.  As the Green Arrow, he protects his city with the help of former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), computer-science expert Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), his vigilante-trained sister Thea Queen (Willa Holland), Deputy Mayor Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne), brilliant inventor Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum), and his new recruits, street-savvy Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez) and meta-human Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy).  Oliver has finally solidified and strengthened his crime-fighting team only to have it threatened when unexpected enemies from his past return to Star City, forcing Oliver to rethink his relationship with each member of his “family”.  Based on the characters from DC, ARROW is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (“The Flash,” “Supergirl”), Marc Guggenheim (“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “Eli Stone”), Wendy Mericle (“Desperate Housewives,” “Eli Stone”), Andrew Kreisberg (“The Flash,” “Eli Stone,” “Warehouse 13”) and Sarah Schechter (“The Flash,” “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”).

CBS has released the above trailer for Star Trek Discovery, which is to premiere this fall. Breakdown at TrekMovie. com and at Cult Movie News. Producer Ted Sullivan has reassured fans that it is definitely a prequel to TOS, and not a reboot or re-imagining.

The trailer for Seth MacFarlane’s spoof of Star Trek for Fox The Orville, is far more amusing.

Bruce Wayne’s transition to become Batman finally starts in season four of Gotham.

Trevor Einhorn (Josh) and Brittany Curran (Fen) have been promoted to regulars for the third season of The Magicians.

Twin Peaks returns tonight. The New York Times has a guide to where everyone was left after the original series. There’s another guide at Vulture.

Netflix has confirmed a fifth season of Arrested Development.

A revival of How I Met Your Mother in some form also continues to look possible.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, Knock Knock; American Gods; Sense8; The Flash; Ranking The Rolling Stones Songs

Knock Knock had some good moments but did not really work. Possibly the problem was timing. It attempted to be a plot-driven episode of Doctor Who and depended less on the interplay between the Doctor and Bill, but in doing so partially lost the strongest aspect of the season so far, while still having a plot which was rushed to the point of making little sense.

The story jumped too quickly from students looking for an affordable place to live to the first death. While the general premise of housing being too expensive was realistic, why did Bill suddenly need to find somewhere new to live, and why with these six people she barely knew? I’m sure students don’t read their housing contracts that closely, but I wonder if even a cursory reading might have tipped them off to what they were agreeing to. It is less plausible that not a single student would have looked into cell or internet access before quickly moving in. While I did like how they went from one student joking around to really being killed, it all felt too rushed. The student who hit on Bill this quickly was also acting in too much of a rushed manner.

There were some good scenes, but overall the threat from the bugs and the wood made little sense. Why did they keep Eliza alive, eat some students, and incorporate others into the woodwork? Things just happened without any real answers, or anyone figuring out much. While they did figure out that the Landlord must Eliza’s son and not father, this was not all that tremendous, and had little bearing on the outcome. Suddenly Eliza intervened to help, was able to control the bugs, and opened the shutters in time for the fire works. I was waiting to hear When You Wish Upon A Star as if it was the Magic Kingdom. Everyone turned out to be alive, but why did the insects release them? Presumably those eaten in previous years were too far gone, but it might have been an amusing scene to have groups of students from the past suddenly appear if they were going to show any victims come back to life.

Perhaps more time on the plot could have solved some of these problems, but that would have taken away even more time from Bill and the Doctor. The Doctor did mention regeneration, foreshadowing what we know will come later this season. He also mentioned the Time Lords. It was amusing to see the Doctor use the TARDIS to help Bill move in, but I don’t understand why Bill seemed to be embarrassed to let the others know about her relationship with the Doctor. She did claim he was her Grandfather. Is this somehow related to the pictures of Susan on the Doctor’s desk?

I’m surprised that they did not bring up the inability of the sonic screwdriver to work on wood, or make more use of its sonic abilities considering the importance of sound in controlling the bugs. Of course I don’t blame the Doctor for not being clear as to how that worked as I’m not too clear on it either after watching the episode.

At least the show sort of gets the history right, including Harriet Jones among the Prime Ministers of Great Britain.

This season we have seen a reflection and failing to smile become things to fear, and I wonder if the intent was to do the same with knocking, considering the title. If so, it didn’t work. Of course the classic example of Doctor Who creating fear is Blink, and this episode was filmed on the same property, but in a different house, as where Blink was filmed.

The episode concluded with the Doctor going inside to visit the person in the vault. The interaction we did hear has strengthened suspicion that it is The Master (very likely as Missy) inside. For that matter, is the vault the Master’s TARDIS and how big will it be on the inside?

In other Doctor Who universe news, there is a new design for K-9. There will also be a series five of Torchwood, taking place after Miracle Day, but it will be released as an audio series.

American Gods premiered last week. I wonder if this is the right format. The show is apparently very faithful to the book, while expanding on situations and characters. One review said that the entire first season covers only the first one hundred pages of the book. The show is basically set up for at least the first four episodes, making me wonder if television viewers who aren’t familiar with the book will understand what is going on and stick it out. This could be a situation in which it might not be best to be so faithful to the book. Otherwise it might be better to release this Netflix style and have it available all at once, so people can go through it more like reading a book, as opposed to watching the first episode, being confused, and possibly not returning. At very least it might have been better to release the first few episodes at once, as Hulu did with The Handmaid’s Tale.

Whether or not they understand what is going on, fans of  Bryan Fuller’s work will feel right at home with the visual. The lynching scene at the end felt like something right out of Hannibal. Fuller discussed the scene with TV Guide.

Neil Gaiman explained what the book and series is all about in an interview with Recode:

Many of you who are listening to this know what “American Gods” is because it’s a very popular book. Some of you have not read the book, so Neil, tell us what the book and the show are about.

The book — which was written in 1999, 2000 and 2001, and published in June 2001 — and the show, which is coming up, are both about America. They’re both about a man named Shadow, who is in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit and has been looking forward to getting out and getting back together with his wife, Laura, who he loves very, very much. In a one-two sucker punch, he learns that he’s being let out a few days early, and he is being let out a few days early because his wife was killed in a car crash. He’s on his way back to his wife’s funeral when he meets a peculiar old grifter on a plane, who offers him a job.

The job, which he winds up taking, throws Shadow into the middle of a battle, an oncoming battle, between all of the old gods, all of the things that people who have come to America over the years have brought with them and abandoned, whether it’s leprechauns, or the Golem, or things that people have believed in, come to America, as all of the people who are in America are the descendants of people who came here, or are people who came here, and also the new gods. The new gods are the things that demand our attention, that we give our time and our love and our attention to, whether it be the gods of podcast, or of those small glass and metal and plastic objects that we all stare at in rapt devotion…

This is a book you started writing in the late ’90s. You started making the TV show a couple of years ago, it comes out now, and it is about immigration, in large part?

Yeah.

Race is forefront. There is a lynching scene at the end of the first episode. The beginning of the second episode, it starts off on a slave ship, so obviously there is some timely stuff going on here. Do you figure that would’ve been timely no matter what?

The weird thing for me is that when I wrote the book, I did not see any of this stuff as controversial. When I wrote the book, I thought, okay, this is an immigrant country. Some of the people came here, their ancestors came here 20,000 years ago from Siberia, crossing the Bering Straights and stuff. Some people came here 400 years ago, and some people wanted to come here, and some people were sent as prisoners, sent as slaves …

Right, there’s no question mark at the end of it, it’s a full stop.

That one’s a full stop. This is an immigrant country, and furthermore, I don’t think it’s contentious or controversial to be pro Statue of Liberty, and the poem thereon. You’re going, “I think that is part of the American psyche, the American dream,” nor did it think it was, in any way, controversial or laudable to go, “I am writing a novel about immigration in America, therefore I am going to have a lot of people in my book of different races because there are a lot of different races in America. I will make a mixed-race hero, A) for plot reasons and B) because he embodies America.” That all seemed to me to be very …

Table stakes.

Yeah. It’s not controversial, and I don’t think we thought it was controversial when we were writing the scripts, and I don’t think anybody thought it was really controversial when we were shooting it.

Cut to 2017.

Suddenly, I’m describing the show … There was a point where I was describing the show to … I was on the Empire Film Awards red carpet and somebody put a microphone in my face, and I told them a little bit about the show, and I said, “You know, things have changed. We did not think this stuff was controversial, but now we seem to be occupying political territory. We’re willing to take that, but we didn’t choose it to be.” The headline, when it was published was, “Neil Gaiman, author of ‘American Gods,’ slams Donald Trump.”

I thought, “I didn’t slam Donald Trump.” If I wanted to slam Donald Trump and talk about what a peculiar, narcissistic, ineffectual joke he is, I could’ve done, but I didn’t. I don’t even think I mentioned the poor man’s name.

Empire On Line discussed the making of the show with Bryan Fuller and Michael Green:

So, what’s the story here? Do you guys go out of your way to just get weird with this stuff? Bryan, you did Hannibal, obviously, and that had its own surreal quality to it. It almost seems like you sit there saying, “How can we fuck with the audience’s mind?”

Fuller: No, not really [laughs]. I think our imaginations are fairly vivid and when we’re reading something that is as inspiring as Neil’s novel, it’s hard not to grab the baton and run. If anything, we’ve checked each other a couple of times where it’s, like, “Uh, that may be too big and too weird,” and for us to say that to each other, you know it’s big and weird.

Is this just the way your minds work?

Green: It’s more where we live and we have the opportunity to do it, but it’s also why we were drawn to Neil’s writing and specifically this book is that it allowed us to bring imagination to life, even if it was going to be lavish, difficult, expensive.

Michael, is that something that you’re naturally drawn to, that type of storytelling?

Green: Bryan and I share a lot of taste and style, but I will say as a fan of Hannibal and of Bryan’s in the intervening years when we weren’t working together, I would often get together with him and just ask him, “How do you accomplish these things?” Bryan as a producer has an incredible and enviable track record of taking the ideas in his mind and being able to share them with other people by actualizing them. That is as good a definition of producing as I can muster, where it’s one thing as a writer to take an idea in your head and get it on the page clearly so other people can experience that idea. It’s another thing to be able to do that with visual images.

There were images on the show, sequences on the show, that Bryan described to me when we were in the writing phases and I could imagine very vividly, but the process of being able to actually put that on the screen takes an incredible amount of work, dedication, clarity of purpose. Every idea can continue to get better as more time goes on. I’ve been very much enjoying working with Bryan and learning how he manages to extract from his own mind the best idea and extract from the talented artists we work with the visual representation of those ideas.

Fuller: One of the things that we’ve learned on the show is we needed a long runway, because a lot of these ideas that we’re working on required a certain amount of experimentation to get right, and there were alleys that we went down regarding some visual effects. When we got to the end, we’re, like, “This doesn’t work. We need to back up and try something else, because it’s not holding up to the standards that we have.” Or it was an ambitious idea that we thought we could pull off, but we couldn’t quite, so we had to do something that we could achieve. A lot of our conversations with the visual effects team are about, “What can we pull off? What’s too big for us to achieve in our time and budget?”

The interview went on to discuss several of the characters.

Netflix released season two of Sense8. (Technically the Christmas episode was the first episode of the season). I have a few episodes to go, which might affect my opinion, and I don’t want to say very much to avoid spoilers as this has only been available for a couple of days. Now that the first season established the back story, the plot so far does seem more coherent than in the first season, but that doesn’t matter all that much. I’d enjoy the show even if there was no real plot and we were just seeing that world for several hours. My suspicion is that the Wachowskis come up with great scenes and then J. Michael Straczynski figures out how they can be fit together into a fairly coherent plot. (Maybe the Wachowskis should have brought someone like JMS in to give a better storyline for the Matrix sequels). Like with American Gods and Hannibal, the imagery is important–with a totally different type of imagery here.

Again, avoiding spoilers, the conspiracy element reminds me a bit of Orphan Black. There is the return of Mr. Whispers, and the BPO (Biologic Preservation Organization), with more layers than in the first season, similar to how the conspiracy expanded on Orphan Black. There is more of a biological background given, and there are other clusters. While new characters are introduced, the story does continue to concentrate on the cluster seen in the first season, with their individual stories, both alone and when connected with others, continuing to be the strength of the show.

In other entertainment news, it was announced that both The Handmaid’s Tale and 13 Reasons Why have both been renewed for a second season.

Comicbook.com explains how the reveal of Savatar’s identity on last week’s episode of The Flash plays into the 2056 warning from the Flash previously played on Legends of Tomorrow. They are going to have to do a lot more to convince me that it is plausible to have a future Barry come back in time and kill Iris.

In a really ambitious project, Vulture ranked all 373 songs by the Rolling Stones. Number one is You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Lawyers, Guns & Money wants to argue over it. Vulture did point out some areas of potential controversy beyond the ranking of the songs:

The Rolling Stones have multiple songs that are lyrically reprehensible to women and people of color — often both at the same time. If I were questioned about this topic at the Pearly Gates, I’d suggest that the Stones’ offensive attitudes had more to do with a craven desire to be provocative than any fundamental malignant worldview, but maybe I’m a fool. Whatever the true motivation behind them, a handful of the band’s songs have been tarred by Jagger and Richards’s sex and race insensitivity. There’s no getting around it. Then there’s the matter of appropriation. Excepting perhaps Elvis, there is no rock act that benefited more from drawing on black music than the Rolling Stones, who have repeatedly talked with respect and deference about how much they’ve taken from their musical idols. I do think that once the band took flight, its music represents a synthesis of their influences, rather than mere mimicry or theft. That said, I don’t know what you do with all these issues other than acknowledge that they’re a problem.

SciFi Weekend: Music On Supergirl, The Flash, And Legends of Tomorrow; Legion; The Magicians; 12 Monkeys; Doctor Who; Agents of HYDRA; The Matrix Reboot; Westworld

The musical cross over of Supergirl and The Flash (and the Glee Reunion) entitled Duet will begin on Supergirl, with most of the story taking place on The Flash. The two are placed in a dream-like state by the Music Meister (Darren Criss). ScreenerTV reports that, “Kara and Barry wake up without their powers in an alternate reality where life is like a musical and the only way to escape is by following the script, complete with singing and dancing, to the end.”

Variety adds this information from Candice Patton (Iris West):

“You’ll see two versions of Iris in the episode,” she said. “The Iris that we know and love, and a person they [Barry and Kara (Melissa Benoist)] think is Iris but is actually a completely different character named Millie. She’s the sassy daughter of two gangsters — played Victor Garber and Jessie Martin — and she’s madly in love with Mon-El’s character (‘Supergirl’s’ Chris Wood), whose name is Tommy. They’re fighting for their love, because both of their families do not want them to be together.”

Writers of the music for the episode include Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who also wrote for La La Land.

Supergirl isn’t the only show in the Berlantiverse to feature music this month. On Legends of Tomorrow, Dr. Stein (Victor Garber) along with Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell) had infiltrated NASA during the flight of Apollo 13 and had to distract those there from seeing superheroes on the moon. They do it by singing Day-O in the video above.

Time travel shows typically have rules as to what can be done, and then frequently break the rules. Legends of Tomorrow has been fairly lax with their rules, but they will break the little that has been established for the season finale. Here is the official synopsis:

Aruba” — (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV) SEASON FINALE — As the Legends are about to take off for their next destination, a massive timequake rocks the ship. In order to try and fix what has happened, they are forced to break the one cardinal rule of time travel. But if they are able to destroy the spear, they will face the ultimate consequence. Victor Garber, Brandon Routh, Arthur Darvill, Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Franz Drameh, Nick Zano and Maisie Richardson-Sellers. Rob Seidenglanz directed the episode written by Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim (#217). Original airdate 4/4/2017.

Next season The Flash will break with its usual tradition of having the Flash’s life be dominated by others with super speed. The big bad next season will not be a speedster.

Legion, which has now been renewed for a second season, has been very strange recently, with Aubrey Plaza doing a fantastic job as “Dr. Lenny” last week. It makes a little more sense to those who know about the X-Men comic universe. I0-9 discusses the identity of the bad bad which has been inhabiting David’s mind:

A new promo for the show’s next episode, “Chapter 7,” sees the brainy half of the Loudermilk duo, Cary, confirm that Amahl Farouk—better known as the Shadow King—is the villain that’s been plaguing David as the yellow-eyed demon throughout the show.

It’s not exactly a huge surprise that Yellow-Eyed Demon, or Y.E.D., is actually the Shadow King. This has been hinted at for weeks. Over the course of the first season, Y.E.D. has been lurking in David’s mind, changing David’s memories and making him forget about every encounter they’ve had to keep his identity secret. Lately, Y.E.D. has taken on the form of Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), David’s friend from the mental hospital who was killed in the first episode—but when David was a child he pretended to be his dog, not-so-subtly named King. The Shadow King has actually been inside David for decades. David’s father (Professor X?) sent him away when he was a baby to protect him, but Farouk couldn’t be stopped.

 So, who is Farouk in the comics? First introduced in Uncanny X-Men #117 by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Farouk is the latest human host of the pure psychic energy being known as the Shadow King. The Shadow King has existed for centuries, feeding on the enslaved bodies of telepathic hosts from the dawn of humanity. Farouk has spent his life working in the shadows, first as a Nazi ally and later a crime boss in Egypt, before encountering Charles Xavier in ‘70s Cairo…

There is a large but finite number of ideas in science fiction and fantasy, and on Wednesdays we are seeing that with two excellent genre shows having a similar situation. While David on Legion appears to have a second consciousness in him since childhood, Quenton has Niffin Alice in him at present on The Magicians. While there is a similarity in the idea of two consciousnesses in one person, this is a more recent development on The Magicians, and perhaps Penny discovering this last week is a step towards resolving this problem. If not, who knows how much damage Alice can do with control of Quenton’s body for even a brief period every day.

Syfy plans to air all ten episodes of season three of 12 Monkeys over three days in May, between May 19 and 21. This sounds like the sort of thing a network might to do to quickly get rid of the episodes of a series it plans to cancel, but they have also renewed the series for a final fourth season. Perhaps this is their response to the trend towards binging shows, such as on Netflix.

While Syfy has renewed 12 Monkeys and The Expanse, there is no word yet on The Magicians. The Magicians is also impacted by streaming in a different manner. The episodes seem to be prepared for streaming, with an uncensored version of season one with limited commercial cuts made available after the first season aired. Besides all the f-bombs, the show is made without fading to commercials like a typical show, and instead have the commercials appear abruptly, making the episodes work better when repeated with reduced commercial breaks (or none when on Netflix). I would love to see The Magicians return for a third season on Netflix instead of Syfy so that we can see it this way from the start.

There is also news on the third time travel series to be discussed this week. Digital Spy reports that Doctor Who will have a three part episode involving The Monks, with Missy also appearing:

It’s been a while, but Doctor Who is resurrecting the three-parter for Peter Capaldi’s final series aboard the TARDIS.

New monsters The Monks were previously confirmed to be appearing in several episodes across series 10 – now Digital Spy can confirm that a trio of adventures (episodes 6-8) in the new series are linked.

Toby Whithouse, who’s written the concluding chapter, revealed: “Mine is the third part of a three-parter – Steven [Moffat]’s done the first one, Peter Harness did the second and I’ve done the third.

“It’s set modern-day… and I think anything more than that and Steven will come round and kick me in the shin!”

Sacha Dhawan, who played Jimmy Dillon on Mr. Selfridge, and has also appeared in Sherlock, Iron Fist, and An Adventure in Space and Time is among the names being discusses as a possible replacement for Peter Capaldi. Radio Times reports he is very interested in the role:

“Oh my God, I’d absolutely love to,” Dhawan told RadioTimes.com when asked if he was interested in the part. “I SO would love to.

“I’ve worked with [frequent Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss] quite a lot, and I think I’d bring something really exciting to it. It’d be incredibly nerve-wracking to do to be honest. It’s quite a lot of pressure.

“When the list came out, I was so honoured really that I was even considered,” he went on. “And that alone was kind of good enough. But who wouldn’t want to do it? It’s Doctor Who.”

The posters advertising the return of Agents of SHIELD reminds us that they are now in The Framework with a different reality. For those not watching, it is sort of like being in The Matrix.

There is also talk about rebooting The Matrix. The remake will apparently tell other stories in the same universe. If they go ahead, I hope they do a better job than they did in the two attempts to make a sequel to the original movie.

Den of Geek summarizes what is known so far about season 2 of Westworld.

SciFi Weekend: Timeless Finale; SHIELD In The Framework; The 100; Doctor Who Trailer; Sense8; The Discovery; Bill Paxton Dies

Timeless ended its first season on the bubble, and the season finale was written without knowledge of whether it will return. I am still waiting for Trump to actually do something useful, such as issue an Executive Order banning cliff hangers on shows which aren’t known to be coming back. If there must be one, it was handled well on Timeless. The season finale did wrap up the running story line of the first season, and could work as a series finale. It also had a huge reveal in the final minutes which changes how we see some of the season, and leaves a lot open for a second season, if the series is renewed.

Deadline spoke with Shawn Ryan, who co-created and executive produces Timeless with Eric Kripke:

DEADLINE: Up until the last few minutes, the series was heading to a happy ending. Why did you decide to add the major cliffhanger at the end?
SHAWN RYAN: We had thought for awhile about what the best way was to give some closure for Season 1 while also setting us up for a new dynamic in Season 2. We wanted to bring Garcia Flynn’s journey to some kind of end, though I’m sure we’ll see more of him going forward. So while many people might see our Season 1 conclusion as a cliffhanger, we see it as a wrap-up of Season 1 and a launch point for Season 2.

DEADLINE: Did you have an alternate ending that would serve as a series finale in case Timeless does not come back?
SHAWN RYAN: No. Eric and I planned for success. We’ve been working towards this ending ever since the season began.

DEADLINE: In the cliffhanger, Rittenhouse takes control over the time machine. What is the plan for Season 2? Will our heroes continue to chase the mothership, trying to prevent Rittenhouse from implementing their sinister plan?
SHAWN RYAN: We are working on our overall plan for Season 2 right now and we’ll pitch it to NBC in April, so I’m reluctant to get too much into it because we’ll want to take a deep breath and evaluate the whole season before we commit to what we want to do in Season 2. What I can say is the current plan involves our heroes traveling to the past to stop history from being perverted and changed too much…

DEADLINE: What will be Lucy’s mom role going forward, and why wasn’t she arrested along with 100+ Rittenhouse members in the government sweep?
SHAWN RYAN: Lucy’s mom will be influential in Season 2. We don’t presume that every member of Rittenhouse was identified and apprehended in the first 48 hours after our heroes returned from 1954, though the organization was definitely dealt a big blow. So we will owe an answer in Season 2 as to why Lucy’s mom was one of the Rittenhouse members not to be identified right away.

DEADLINE: Had she been onto the time machine project from the very beginning, including the arrangement of Lucy’s involvement in it?
SHAWN RYAN: Yes. Eric and I had it in our minds even from pilot stage that Carol was secretly a part of Rittenhouse and was keeping her eye on Lucy this whole time…

DEADLINE: Will Flynn resurface in Season 2 or did his story arc end with the season 1 finale?
SHAWN RYAN: Well, Goran was fantastic for us this season and I don’t think we’ve seen the end of Garcia Flynn on the show, though obviously his role would be different going forward

DEADLINE: How did Emma, seemingly a fugitive on a mission to take down Rittenhouse, turn out to be a Rittenhouse operative? Is she earmarked for a major role in the Season 2 developments?
SHAWN RYAN: We will definitely owe some answers and explanations for this in Season 2, but once again, it was always our plan that she was secretly Rittenhouse and she was hiding out in the 1880s for Rittenhouse reasons that we will need to explain. We’ll see what stories we want to tell and how available our actress is to be on the show…

DEADLINE: Will Lucy be able to get her sister back or will she succumb to her Rittenhouse fate as her parents suggested?
SHAWN RYAN: I certainly think she’s going to continue to try to get her sister back. We’ll see if her mother or father can persuade her otherwise.

I posted excerpts from an interview with both Eric Kripke and Shawn Ryan about Timeless last week.

It was only a matter of time until Agents of SHIELD found a way to bring Agent Ward back in some form. This is being done by having the show move into the Matrix. Actually it is called the Framework. The probably couldn’t call it the Matrix for copyright reasons, just as Ray Palmer said he couldn’t call his saber which used light a lightsaber for trademark reasons in the Camelot/3000 episode of Legends of Tomorrow. Jed Whedon discussed Agents of SHIELD with E! News:

How long was it in the works to bring Brett back? How long had you been planning on this?
Well, we knew that at the start of the third pod as we’re calling them, we were going to get into the Framework, so there were a lot of options of things to do there, but that was always sort of at the top of the list. We love him and the fans love him and so we didn’t want to undercut the stories we’ve told with him, but this felt like a way to bring him back in a thrilling fashion that didn’t negate what we’d done earlier with him.

Was there talk at the end of last season when he was written out that this was an option, or was this something that came about later?
His end was his end, but this is Marvel and our show is built upon the foundation of a man who was brought back from the dead. And we had actually done that with Ward. So, it’s always an option that someone can find a way to appear back on our show and I think that this next pod will prove that out.

How would you tease what this Framework version of Ward? Because he’s wholly an Aida creation, it would seem.
The Darkhold has given them this amazing ability to sort of recreate reality, but we know that some small changes were made, repairing regrets for everybody they’ve put in there, so that seems to have had some sort of ripple effect. Who Grant Ward is in this world, we’ll have to wait and see, but they set out to recreate our world in every way and recreate everyone in it and everything in it, so there will be some familiarity to the man when you get to know him right off the bat in the next episode.

Another big surprise was learning that Jemma isn’t alive in the Framework. Are we going to cut to poor Simmons waking up in a coffin when she enters the Framework? How will this work for her?
We’ll have to see, but she didn’t wake up in a warm tub, that’s for sure. We’ll have to wait and see how that plays out, but the two of them are going in and how she comes to be we’ll have to see. I have a feeling that she’s not gone from the series. That’s not how we would end Elizabeth’s run. [Laughs.] That’s a wait and see, as I have a feeling a lot of these questions will be…But that’s the fun part about the Framework. It’s a what-if world and we don’t really know what to expect.

Talk to me a little bit about the decision to have Hydra in control in the Framework. What is this Hydra going to be like and what was the thought process behind going in that direction?
Well, you know, Hydra is sort of the opposite of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the simplest version of the anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. And we’ve told a lot of Hydra stories, but this story is more about our characters and sort of dealing with questions of identity and the nature of reality and whether or not you have a true nature or whether or not you’re made up of your experiences. If you’re made up of your regrets. Is there a true you or are you just an assembly of your experiences?

More at TVLine.

Jemma’s death on Agents of SHIELD is only in the Framework, but it appeared that we were seeing a string of deaths on television. There was the death of Alice on The Magicians recently. Connie Britton’s character died on Nashville. In this case I assume it was a matter of Britton not wanting to commit to a series on CMT for more than a brief season after it was cancelled by ABC. The question now is whether the show can survive her loss. It reminds me a little of how Dallas couldn’t survive the loss of Larry Hagman after the revival of Dallas on TNT. The one difference is that Hagman’s death came as a surprise, as opposed to Herskovits and Zwick having planned on Britton’s departure from the start.

For a brief time I thought we also had a major death on The 100. I actually went into the episode expecting a death based upon headlines of articles I had put off reading. The 100 has a history of killing off major characters, including Lexa and Lincoln last season, but Octavia seemed too important to kill off. Between having a sword go through her body and falling off that cliff, she sure did look dead, but the rules for survival are different on television than in the real world. Perhaps the bigger question of how she survived this is how her horse managed to make it down the cliff to her.

At least I am glad that they did show her get on the horse at the end of the episode as opposed to leaving viewers with a false belief that she was killed if they did plan to keep her alive. Now the question is how long it will take for Bellamy to discover that the news he heard of his sister’s death was premature. Plus Clarke’s story line got quite interesting last week, reminiscent of the types of issues raised in the first season.

The above teaser has been released for Doctor Who series 10, which will premiere on April 15. It features the Doctor’s new companion, Bill, speaking about him:

The first time you meet him, he’s funny.The second time, he’s amazing. The third time, you realize he’s the most dangerous man in the universe. He says he’s a man of peace, but he walks in war. I’m having the time of my life, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world–even if it kills me.

As Pearl Mackie has only been signed for a single season, and there is talk about a clean slate when Chris Chinball takes over as showrunner, perhaps she actually will die.

In other Doctor Who news, the spin0ff Class has been cancelled after a single season due to low ratings. It aired in the UK last fall and will be shown in the United States this spring following episodes of Doctor Who on BBC America. I did download the episodes last fall and found it to be a decent show to watch while there was no Doctor Who available, but it is hardly must see for those who have not seen it yet. The eight episodes do wrap up a story for the season, so it can easily be watched as a stand-alone season.

Sense8 returns on May 5, after a teaser Christmas episode.  Here is the (rather vague) synopsis for the upcoming full season:

Picking up where season one left off, Capheus (Toby Onwumere), Kala (Tina Desai), Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre), Nomi (Jamie Clayton), Riley (Tuppence Middleton) , Sun (Donna Bae), Will (Brian J. Smith) and Wolfgang (Max Riemelt) come together both physically and mentally, plunged into the middle of each other’s tragedies and triumphs. On the run from Whispers (Terrence Mann), and forced to question their very identity, it’s a matter of survival as the Sensates must find a way to live with, understand and protect one another against all odds.

Some pictures have been posted on line. As we already got the obligatory orgy in the Christmas episode, I don’t know if there will be another in the full season.

Netflix has released the above trailer for The Discovery, a movie in which the afterlife has been scientifically proven to exist and millions of people commit suicide to get there. My bet is that there is a catch.

The 2016 Nebulla Award nominees have been announced.

In this time of peak TV we already have one excellent series by Noah Hawley running (Legion). A second will return soon as the third season of Fargo is schedule to premiere on April 19.

Starz has announced that the long-awaited series based upon Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods will premiere on April 30.

Looking at the winners of recent awards ceremonies can help predict the winners of the Academy Awards tonight. Based upon recent winners, I predict that La La Land will win Best Picture, and Rumor the German Shepherd will win Best in Show.

Bill Paxton has died at age 61 of complications of heart surgery. He starred in Big Love, and has had genre roles including Aliens and Agents of SHIELD. There are many comments on his death on Twitter today, including several from cast and crew of Agents of SHIELD, with TVLine having a compilation. He has also had lesser genre roles including being killed early in The Terminator. The Mary Sue points out the science fiction villains he has faced:

In the course of his career, Paxton faced three of science fiction’s most famous villains. In Aliens, he faced the xenomorphs; in Predator 2, he faced a Predator; and in The Terminator, he played one of the punks from whom Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character demanded clothes. /Film wrote that this makes him “the only actor to have been killed by a Terminator, a Predator, and a Xenomoprh,” and I personally can’t think of anyone else who can come for that title.

SciFi Weekend: Hannibal; Mr. Robot; Humans; Jonathan Strange; Sense8

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The third season of Hannibal was initially to be about Hannibal Lecter as a fugitive in Europe, mirroring the Hannibal novel. With Bryan Fuller realizing that this would probably be the final season of Hannibal on NBC, with its future after that still unknown, he reduced this to about half the season so he could move on to Red Dragon. That has probably worked out for the better as the first half of this season was the weakest in the show’s run, and I don’t know if they could have stretched this out for an entire season.

The Great Red Dragon skips ahead three years, and doesn’t have a recipe as its title. Hannibal is locked up in the  psychiatric hospital, which is seen as a sort of victory for him as, at least in the mythology of the show, Hannibal Lecter is not insane. He is a monster who operates under his own moral code. He is shown to be living in his mind-palace, continuing to share meals with those visiting him. He is even allowed to make desserts, although presumably without human ingredients. He is open about the meals he previously served, as in this exchange after Hannibal asked Alana if she still drinks beer.

Alana: “I stopped drinking been when I found out what you were putting in mine.”

Hannibal “Who.”

Hannibal “Who.”

Will now has a family, which is important as it was the manner in which the Tooth Fairy kills regular families, as Will now has, which led to Will rejoining the FBI. (And yes, I’m sure that Hannibal is right that he does not like to be called the Tooth Fairy). Once Will is back investigating the Tooth Fairy’s murders, the series feels much more like the first season, even with Hannibal having surrendered, and no longer fooling anyone.

HANNIBAL -- "The Great Red Dragon" Episode 308 -- Pictured: Richard Armitage as Francis Dolarhyde -- (Photo by: Brooke Palmer/NBC)

Richard Armitage was introduced as the Tooth Fairy, or Red Dragon. Unlike so many characters who were notable for their intellectual banter, the Tooth Fairy is capable of saying very little. Richard Armitage discussed the role with TV Line:

TVLINE | The first impression we get of Francis is someone who is completely tortured and conflicted. Even in the moment where he’s exiting the crime scene covered in blood, the horror in his own eyes is palpable. How did you come to play him in that way?
It was an organic process. We always had the novel to refer to, so everything that I found really came from Thomas Harris’ books, Bryan [Fuller] and my own interpretation. One of the things in my first episode that I found so interesting is that this man is so alone in the world, so isolated. There was a rejection in his childhood because of his disfigurement and because his character was orphaned; he was raised by his grandmother and abused by step-siblings.

But when we find him in this world, he works in a very isolated environment in the film-processing laboratory, and he lives alone. Thomas Harris describes him as having only set foot in two other people’s houses in his entire life — and certainly no one has ever come into his world. But for someone that is so alone, his mind is so busy and full of things. He has the subject matter of the films that he’s studying. He has voices in his head. He’s haunted by so many different things, like his mind is so far from silent, and that to me was something which was fascinating.

TVLINE | Your first episode is essentially wordless — which means much of what we learn about Dolarhyde is in the initial sequence of him doing physical exercises and contorting his body. There’s a sense he’s transforming into something else in that moment. Walk me through all that.
Yes, it’s really interesting the way it takes a long time before you hear Francis speak. He’s a man who is so uncomfortable in his skin, who is somehow at odds with his outer body and is almost outgrowing his physical form. So you see that conversation happening physically before you hear it verbally. And actually, for someone that has such trouble speaking and forming words, the first time we hear him speak is in Episode 9, and it’s a struggle. It’s really like baby steps when he speaks. And as an audience, we see him before we hear him, so we have a real sense of who he is or who he’s becoming and what it is that he’s pressing against or running away from.

TVLINE | What did you have to do to transform your own physique and your own way of moving your body to get in touch with the character?
Obviously, I read the book, and he’s described as a bodybuilder. So, before I got up to Toronto, I was in the gym doing intense workout sessions, since we needed to fill him out in the way that Harris wanted. But I also found something in the book where he’s described as moving in a very stylized way. Harris describes him as a Balinese dancer, so when he’s committing his crimes, I understood to be something of a performance for himself, that he’s trying to somehow be theatrical in his approach.

I couldn’t work out what that was, but then I stumbled on a Japanese form of a physical expression, an artistic art form called Butoh, which is sometimes called the Dance of Death. It’s a biological observation of the body in extremis, which I thought was perfect for this scenario. And so I used a lot of that. I also used some stress positions that I’d been working with previously on The Crucible, because I felt like the character was putting himself through something rather than changing himself for vanity sake. He’s wanting to torture his own body.

What you see in the opening exercise sequence, though, I put a metronome on in the room and just worked for 20 to 30 minutes, distorting my body and doing these exercises, and the crew just kept on filming.

TVLINE | In this episode, we get to see Dolarhyde after his second murder, out in the snow, covered in blood splatter. And there’s also that twisted but sort of artful scene where your character gets wrapped up in a film reel and is in this intense state of panic. How much of those moments were actually filmed organically versus post-production manipulation?
The filming in the snow was actually one of my first shots in the entire series, and it was about 17 below outside, a very cold night shoot. Very little of that is post-production. They used a sugar blood that stains black and thankfully, they heated it beforehand.

The scene with the celluloid wrapped around Dolarhyde’s head is a combination of digital work and some practical stuff. They did create a fake head. And they also wrapped celluloid around my head and we filmed it again. It was a bit of an exploration of literally, physically getting tangled up in his world of celluloid. It’s Bryan’s imagination at work in the best way, you know.

TVLINE | Looking forward to the coming weeks, how freaky-scary should we expect this arc to get? And knowing Francis is about to embark on a romance of sorts with a character played by True Blood’s Rutina Wesley, how will that work? What can you tease?
You know what, we really do honor the book, and so you see the full extent of that tragic love story. To me, really, the crimes aside — and remember, I never actually had to portray any of the crimes, so I suppose I compartmentalized them — Dolarhyde and Reba represent a tragic, romantic love story, which really doesn’t end well and escalates into a Shakespearian opera of the proportions that Thomas Harris really explores in the novel.

MR. ROBOT -- "Pilot" Episode 101 -- Pictured: (l-r) Rami Malek as Elliot, Christian Slater as Mr. Robot -- (Photo by: David Giesbrecht/USA Network)

In other summer genre shows, Mr. Robot was better this week after its one-episode slide when it spent far too much time on Elliot’s drug trips last week. Remember, Mr. Robot is the show which has no robots–its entire cast is human. The other top new genre show of the summer, Humans, is about robots. This is by far has been the best of the genre shows of the summer (although Hannibal might compete now that it is moving onto the Red Dragon storyline).

Humans is highly recommended but I am not writing about the episodes to avoid any risk of spoiling the story. I am watching by downloading the episodes from the U.K. where the show is ahead of the US episodes. So much is revealed every week and I do not want to discuss episodes airing in the US with my knowledge of what is revealed in subsequent episodes.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is in the same situation as I completed the series a couple of weeks ago from downloading UK episodes. It is also recommended.

Sense8

The same issue is present for shows on Netflex, which different people watch at different times. I held off on starting Sense8 due to variable reviews of the early episodes, but I did begin to watch after reliable sources advised that the first couple of episodes start slowly to introduce the characters, but the show becomes much more interesting once you get into it. I am quite intrigued by the story, which reminds me of the early episodes of Orphan Black, when viewers initially did not know what was going on at all. As I still have several episodes to go, I still wonder if they will satisfactorily explain what is happening.

The show was created and written by The Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski. Both have created excellent work with the first Matrix movie and Babylon 5. However after the initial setup, the two sequels to The Matrix were awful, and the explanation behind Babylon 5 was not entirely satisfactory. Complicating matters further, the show has a planned five year arc, and it is not known if Netflix will continue the show that long. At least there is a far better chance that Netflix will continue the show as long as there is interest than a network would.

Daredevil Teaser Trailer Released

Netflix and Marvel have released the above teaser trailer for Daredevil, the first Marvel show to appear on Netflix, which will be released on April 10. Showrunner Steven S. DeKnight, who previously worked on Spartacus, discussed the trailer and the choice of Charlie Cox of Boardwalk Empire for the title role:

We had all loved Charlie on Boardwalk Empire. We knew that he had the charm and the charisma but also could go to a darker place. When he came in for his audition, he just had a fascinating take on the character. It wasn’t quite the direction we were going in but it was so nuanced and well thought out that we called him back in and we talked to him and made some adjustments and he made fantastic adjustments and he had such a depth of character that we really responded to. He can exude such inner turmoil and pain that is really vital to Matt Murdock, not to mention the fact that when you’re looking for a lead, you really want number one on the call sheet to be somebody that people respect and want to be around for 14 hours a day and Charlie is just the nicest guy in the world.

He discussed the use of the black uniform, as opposed to the red one which he more commonly wore in the comics:

Really, the reason we start with this version — which is hugely influenced by Man Without Fear — is for two reasons. One, this really is the beginning, the formation of Matt Murdock a Daredevil. On the flip side, it’s the formation of Wilson Fisk becoming Kingpin. It’s very much a parallel arc. We didn’t want to start him in the [red] suit. We wanted the early days of him figuring out what he was doing and making mistakes and getting the crap beat out of him on a regular basis. His suit, which we call his vigilante outfit, in the beginning – we tried practically everything, design-wise. We experimented with a lot of different head pieces. One version was a ski mask with the eyes sewn shut. We tried everything until we found something that just felt right. And also, really going back to that Man Without Fear, I can’t say where his costume ends up, where it goes, but there is definitely an evolution.

Daredevil was also compared to Batman:

I always loved in the comics that also this is a guy that has heightened sense but no super powers. This is a guy who’s pushing himself to the limit who can get hurt and can get killed… I’m hugely influenced by the Frank Miller runs that I grew up with, where he was constantly getting the crap kicked out of him. Again, obviously there’s a bit of a heightened sense of reality that he can do what he can do and not end up in the hospital every other day. But we also touch upon why that is. Really, it’s like Batman without the money. He is just determined. It’s sheer force of will that keeps him going when a normal man would fall over and a lot of that I think, also in the Matt Murdock mythos, comes from his father and being a boxer and that kind of thing, where you just don’t quit.

daredevil_netflix

WhatCulture! further breaks down the trailer.

Daredevil will be followed by A.K.A. Jessica Jones later this year. Carrie-Anne Moss of The Matrix has been signed to play a potential friend and ally of the title character, played by Kristyn Ritter. According to Marvel.com, “Moss plays a no-nonsense woman who could prove a powerful ally to Jessica…if Jessica doesn’t completely alienate her first.”

More on the upcoming Marvel shows on Netflix here.

Quote of the Day: David Letterman On Jeb Bush Running For President

“I feel like Bush presidencies are like ‘Godfather’ films. You should stop at two.” –David Letterman

Actually I think Bush presidencies are more like The Matrix–they should have stopped after the first. (Except that the first movie was good, the first Bush presidency wasn’t, but the second was far worse like with the movies.)