SciFi Weekend: Tuesday Shows Go Dark (SHIELD and Person of Interest); Sleepy Hollow; Under The Dome (“Nothing But A Giant Suck Hole”); Doctor Who; Outlander; Arrow; Gotham; Shatner Star Trek Rumors; If Ayn Rand Wrote Buffy

Shield Go Dark

Tuesday night featured the return of two television shows which have both changed for the post-Snowden era, Agents of SHIELD and Person of Interest. On each show the heroes are now working in secret, or even greater secrecy than they had operated in the past.

The premiere of Agents of SHIELD was not as good as the final episodes of the first season following Captain America: The Winter Soldier but did show promise of setting up a far better second season than the first was.  A couple problems from the first season are now solved. No longer can the team theoretically call upon the vast resources of SHIELD. This group is also easier to root for in the post-Snowden era. There is no doubt that the old SHIELD would have been listening in on our phone calls, reading our email, and have no problem with extraordinary rendition or even torture. That SHIELD no longer exists. We can dislike General Talbot as the nominally good protagonist (wondering if Bruce Banner is also in the neighborhood) and root for SHIELD in opposing him.

The episode started with a flashback of Agent Carter, including a glimpse of a green being in a box, suggesting the alien which was used to save Coulson, and later Skye (who works far better as an agent rather than the outsider) along with connecting to Guardians of the Galaxy.The show now makes mention of multiple Marvel characters, and included a super-villain, which gives the show much more the feel of being in the Marvel universe than seen in the first season. Lucy Lawless made her appearance as Isabelle  Hartley and lost her arm if not her life. There is certainly the possibility of her return on a show where two characters have returned from death or near-death, and now we have Dr. Whitehall, who hasn’t aged since seen in 1945.

While we don’t know whether Lucy Lawless will return, there is news that Adrianne Palecki of Friday Night Lights (and who almost became Wonder Woman) will be guest starring as Mockingbird later this season.

There were additional consequences to the events of last season beyond the breakup of SHIELD. Fitz is more interesting than last season now that we found that he did not recover from the lack of oxygen to his brain, and is imagining that Simmons is with him after she left. I would anticipate some recovery on his part and probably a Fitzsimmons reunion down the road. Agent Ward is also a bit nuts compared to last season, and may or may not really know anything about Skye’s father. I suspect he really does, and we might be in store for some Hannibal/Clarice type scenes between Ward and Skye this season.

Person of Interest s04e01

Go Dark was the strategic order from Director Coulson on Agents of SHIELD, and also describes the strategy Root devised with the Machine to keep everyone alive and hidden from Samaritan on Person of Interest.  The increased concern over the dangers of the surveillance state has been fortuitous for the show. Initially the Machine’s surveillance was primarily a gimmick to get the heroes into the story of the week, but last season the show transitioned far more into a series about the dangers of government surveillance and artificial intelligence in the wrong hands. The show has largely been rebooted this season, and shows promise of being even better than previous seasons.

Series co-creator Greg Plageman compared artificial intelligence to the creation of the atomic bomb at San Diego Comic-Con:

I think when we started out this show we were answering a lot of questions about the Orwellian surveillance state and people asking us if that was science fiction and now, in a post-Snowden era, no one’s asking those questions anymore. So what does the show become now?

I think the most interesting question in terms of our show and technology that is emerging is artificial intelligence. We’re living in a world now where not just nation states—Israel, United States, the Russians, whoever—are trying to build an artificial intelligent. The thing closest to this was the Manhattan Project, the greatest existential risk the world has ever faced: the development of the atomic bomb, and the race to get it, and who was going to get it first and what that meant in terms of ending World War II.

We are now at a similar crossroads with artificial intelligence. The only difference is it’s not just DARPA. It’s not just nation states. It’s a bunch of billionaires in their 30s up in Silicon Valley who are buying up all the artificial intelligence companies. It’s fascinating. Look up ‘Deep Mind,’ see what’s going on. No one really knows.

Harold Finch built a machine, an artificial intelligence, that he supposed was sympathetic to humankind. But what if someone built one that didn’t take that into consideration at all? And I think we’re dealing with the next great existential risk to the world and I think that’s something our show can deal with in a really cool way.

The Blacklist was among other shows which returned, once again turning what would otherwise be a mediocre show into a hit due to the presence of James Spader. Mary Louise Parker makes an excellent addition as his ex-wife.

Sleepy Hollow also returned with a strong season premiere. This is a series which I am reluctant to write much about as any description of the show sounds absurd. They manage to pull off its absurdities very well (far better than Under the Dome does). It is always fun to see what they come up with to tie early American history into their mythology, such as revealing that they key used on Benjamin Franklin’s kite is used to unlock Purgatory. As I said, it sounds like it makes no sense, but the show is so much fun.

Under the Dome Season 2 Finale

Under the Dome ended and the series could be summed up by what Noreen said: “It’s nothing but a giant killer suck hole!” The giant suck hole appeared the previous week after Melanie, a character who came back from the dead, was apparently killed a second time. In other recent episodes there was a tunnel under the school in which people could jump off a cliff and appear in another city, until Big Jim messed that up. Recently it became cold and nobody in town had any warm clothes to put on. The Dome started contracting, and when they began to time the contractions I wondered if next they were going to say the Dome was pregnant.

In the second season, and hopefully series, finale, everyone in town who could make it went through a tunnel where the giant suck hole had appeared. The final moment showed Melanie once again back from the dead, saying “Follow me, we’re going home.”But isn’t Chester’s Mill their home? If the show returns next summer, we will presumably see where Melanie leads them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they follow her, perhaps to an intermediate destination, and they ultimately wind up back in Chester’s Mill, like Patrick McGoohan trying to leave The Village. I imagine that if it doesn’t return, we can just assume that they escape, possibly coming back to rescue those who didn’t make it.

Doctor Who The Caretaker

On Doctor Who, The Caretaker returned to its 1963 roots at Coal Hill School, and Gareth Roberts, writer of episodes such as The Lodger, once again showed the Doctor attempting to blend in with humans. The killer alien story was weak, and primarily existed as a vehicle to have the Doctor finally meet Danny Pink. Along the way the Doctor got mislead when seeing Clara speaking with a fellow school teacher wearing a bow tie, thinking that she had fallen for someone who looks like his previous regeneration. While we had long been led to believe we will have another couple in the TARDIS, with Clara and Danny replacing Amy and Rory, it now looks like there once again might be two schoolteachers and a student, with Courtney joining along, at least temporarily, despite being a disturbance:

Clara: “I would say, yes, I’m afraid Courtney is a disruptive influence.”

Response: “Yeah, but last year you said she was a very disruptive influence. So I suppose that counts as an improvement.”

Courtney discovered the TARDIS after ignoring the Doctor’s sign to keep out, or more precisely, “Go Away Humans.”

The meeting between the Doctor and Danny Pink didn’t go very well. The Doctor continues to object to soldiers, apparently forgetting all the time he spent with UNIT, along with many other individual soldiers over the centuries. Danny sees the Doctor as an arrogant aristocrat, concentrating on the Lord part of Time Lord. He also wondered about about Clara (“Are you a space woman?”).

The episode also introduced another gadget for the Doctor, an invisibility watch. This raises the question of why this was never used on many occasions when it could have come in handy in the past, and whether it will be used again. Another plot hole which we will just have to ignore.

Among other top lines of the episode:  “You’re running out of time.” “For what?” “Everything! Human beings have incredibly short lifespans. Frankly, you should all be in a constant state of panic. Tick tock, tick tock.”

After not seeing this in recent episodes, The Caretaker also showed a character who died in the episode wind up in the Nethersphere, or perhaps Heaven.

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Saturday night’s other time travel series, Outlander, got deeper into time travel in the mid-season finale. Frank heard of the possibility of time travel at Craig na Dun, and by the end of the  episode was willing to accept it as a possibility. In addition to seeing a poster with a reward for information related to Claire, there was another poster in Frank’s era seeking information about someone who sure looks like Jaime, suggesting that he might also wind up traveling in time.

It was surprising that a spy like Frank would fall into such an obvious trap when seeking information about Claire, but he was quite well prepared to take care of himself. He seemed to enjoy beating up his attackers too much, perhaps intending to show a comparison between the violence of his evil ancestor and Frank. Are we to question which husband Claire is really best off with?

The episode had a tease that Claire might return home. At very least she did hear Frank calling out to her through time, but it was intentionally left ambiguous as to whether Frank could hear Claire calling back. Just before getting a chance to return, she fell into the hands of Black Jack once again, with her attempts to deceive him failing. We don’t know  how Jaime managed to get into his window, but he came to attempt to save Claire just before she might have received an involuntary mastectomy. We will see what happens next when Outlander returns in April.

Arrow Oliver and Felicity

Arrow returns October 8 and Marc Guggenheim has discussed the upcoming season:

“He is going to get some new toys to play with,” Guggenheim said. “One of them is a new bow that looks identical to the old bow, but it does something that you’ve never seen before.” Guggenheim disclosed that the explanation behind Oliver’s new equipment will be detailed in DC Comics‘ currently unfolding digital-first series “Arrow: Season 2.5,” taking place between the second and third seasons.

While “Arrow” has traditionally been more grounded, the show’s second season embraced superpowers a bit more, both in laying the groundwork for spinoff “The Flash” and in Slade Wilson and his Mirakuru-fueld army that served as primary antagonists. With “The Flash” now its own series on The CW, Guggenheim stated that “Arrow” will return to a more realistic direction.

“We’re not really planning on revisiting superpowers or enhanced abilities during season three,” Guggenheim told Weiland. “We are really returning to the show’s roots of a very grounded world where it’s very realistic. We may take occasional artistic license with things, but for the most part, everything is pretty well and truly grounded in real-life things and real-life science.”

Another DC comic-based series began with the premiere of Gotham. I think we will need to see more to determine if is worth watching a show with Bruce Wayne before he became Batman. While it includes the origins of several villains, I think we will have to view this as another version of the legend, not connected chronologically with other Batman stories. While we think of the murder of Bruce’s parents as occurring years ago, Gotham appears to take place in the present (or a parallel universe were cell phones have been around a lot longer).

Syfy has renewed both Defiance and Dominion.

CaptainKirkShatner_1

There have been a number of rumors, denials, and perhaps an admission that J.J. Abrams has spoken to William Shatner about doing a cameo for his third Star Trek movie. I have my doubts as to whether it is a good idea, but it is more plausible now than in the first Abrams movie in which Spock from the original time line went back in time. Kirk could not do that because in that time line he was dead. However this doesn’t prevent a future Kirk from being seen from the Abrams time line.

There is yet another rumor that the next Avengers movie will be split into two parts.

If Ayn Rand wrote Buffy The Vampire Slayer

SciFi Weekend: Torchwood: The New Earth; Doctor Who; Two New Versions of Superman; Wil Wheaton & Lesbian Sex on Big Bang Theory; Lost

IGN has interviewed Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner about the upcoming Torchwood Series, The New World. The discussion also included questions about future cross over episodes of Torchwood and Doctor Who now that they no  longer have the same show runner.  Here is a portion of the interview:

IGN: We’ve heard this new CIA character, Rex, is somewhat the entry point of The New World. Will we get to Jack and Gwen pretty quickly?

Davies: Too soon to say, but I’m very aware of that. I will enjoy playing with that and I can see already that a slight myth is going to build up of sorts, saying that Rex is our only entry point. When we first see Gwen, you will see what it essentially was in the series [before]. There are no super powers, there’s no credits, no money, no special privileges. You’ll see an ordinary woman whose life is about to take an extraordinary turn. So there will be an awful lot of new viewers where if you’ve never seen Gwen Cooper in your life, you will see a woman with a husband, a baby, thrown into a threat and you’ll latch onto her immediately. Even the way that Captain Jack is introduced is written so that you’ll latch onto that as well.

IGN: What is the dynamic with Rex and the other new character, Ester? What kind of sensibilities do they bring to Torchwood?

Davies: I don’t want to give away too much. Rex certainly brings dynamism and energy and hostility towards Torchwood. He wants to know who the hell they are and why the hell they’re so important and they can get out of his way… at first. There’s a great, fun, sparky, sexy sort of antagonism to the whole thing. Ester is much calmer, but through the course of the story, she suffers some great, powerful, emotional stories as it goes on. In some ways, she’s a bit of an innocent abroad and soon learns not to be. And that plays off Gwen’s experience with these things. The fact that Gwen still is the most ordinary woman in the world, and Jack’s huge perspective of things, having lived for thousands of years… Just telling Rex that he can’t die is a hilarious scene. There’s a lot of fresh material there that we’ll mine, but again the new story will always move us forward.

IGN: Are you looking at this as Series 4 or Season 4 of Torchwood? Or is it a new project with characters we know?

Russell T. Davies: It’s funny, you can’t deny it’s Series 4. There’s a whole fan base and a whole legacy and a whole mythology that I would hate to contradict. Fortunately I have sort of done this before with Doctor Who, when I re-launched that in 2005. It was absolutely imperative to keep everyone who loved Doctor Who on board and to bring in a new audience – it was an even bigger task than this, to be honest. And frankly, I think that went very successfully. I’m an old hand at this. I do know how to do it.

I think these subtitles help, because we don’t actually refer to it as series 4. And we didn’t actually refer to Children of Earth as Series 3. We referred to it as Children of Earth. Now this is The New World, so that takes the curse off of it sounding old. Obviously, you know your stuff – you know your television and I imagine your readership knows their stuff, so we can freely talk about the past. If this was an interview with, say, a more general and generic site, I would avoid talking about the past. So you [move] in-between those points. Because there’s nothing worse than reading an interview and thinking, “Well, I won’t watch that, because it’s on Series 4.”

Gardner: Also, if you look at the history of Torchwood in the UK, it’s moved three channels in three years. It started on the digital channel BBC3 and moved to BBC2 and finally Children of Earth moved to BBC1 which is like the UK’s network channel. Each time, particularly with Children of Earth, Russell reinvented it for a new audience. We didn’t go into Children of Earth thinking that everyone had seen what had gone on before, but very much with that title, it would reward the audience that was there before. There would be references and nuances that they would pick up on that a new audience wouldn’t, but it was done very very much to welcome in people.

Davies: Frankly, it’s gotten bigger and better with every series, and if we ever get to a Series 10, mankind would have to live on the moon to make room for it. So it’s a good plan. [Laughs]

IGN: Now that Doctor Who has done its latest big reinvention with Matt Smith, do you think the two series have completely split off at this point, or do you think another crossover is possible?

Davies: Steven [Moffat] knows the plot of The New World. As a courtesy, I sent him a synopsis and said, “Is that going to clash with anything you’re doing?” We both have enough awareness of each other’s worlds to avoid that. And I still executive produce The Sarah Jane Adventures in Britain. I’m still working on that, and that works in synch with Doctor Who. So we are still very much aware of each plans, without spoiling each other’s news. We’re very careful to make sure that we behave within the Doctor Who world, while still being completely free to tell our own stories.

IGN: I think the curiosity fans have is how Jack would react to this Doctor, since he had a specific relationship with the previous one.

Davies: Well, Steven said he’d love to see Jack in Doctor Who. So if Steven says that, Steven will make it happen, I would think. That’s not inside information, but I bet one day it will happen. I’d love to see it. It would be marvelous.

New York Magazine had a recent interview with Steven Moffat on topics including sex in the Tardis following the selection of a bad girl like Amy Pond to be the current companion. Moffat also reports he will be revealing more about River Song’s identity. He is currently working on an episode in which The Doctor finds out who she is. I previously posted excerpts from the interview here.

Deadline has some casting news, including that Arlene Tur of Crash will join the cast as as a surgeon named Vera Juarez (picture above).

The title for this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special has been announced: A Christmas Carol.

There are a couple of new interpretations of Superman. J. Michael Straczynski is giving up regular writing for the Superman and Wonder Woman comic books to concentrate on graphic novels following the success of his recent Superman graphic novel. I09 has a review of Straczynski’s version of Superman:

Every time the Superman franchise jumps to a new media, we inevitably get some iteration of his origin story (i.e. baby Kryptonian crash-lands on the Kent farm, is raised to be a homespun demigod). Given that it’s a modern update of the Superman story, Superman: Earth One doesn’t stray wildly from this formula. When artwork of the hoodie-clad Clark Kent hit the internet, there was chatter that the picture (top) portended a gritty or emo Superman. Luckily, the Earth One Clark Kent is a good guy, and the book makes a strong case that the Kents are the reason he doesn’t grow up to be like that creepy god-child from The Twilight Zone.

How does the origin story in Superman: Earth One diverge from traditional portrayals of the hero? First off, Clark’s powers manifest the minute he crawls out of his escape pod. The Kents also hide Clark to protect themselves. They discover his downed spaceship while camping and hightail it once black helicopters begin investigating the vessel. This book is the diametric opposite of Straczynski’s 2003 Marvel series Supreme Power, which starred an alien infant pressganged into superheroics by the US government. The Kents encourage their son to be an übermensch, but he’s raised without any knowledge of Kryptonian heritage — he knows he’s an alien, but being human is all he’s got.

Straczynski’s emphasis on Clark’s alienness is the book’s strongest point, and artist Shane Davis rightly gives the book a photorealistic look to drive home that this is more science fiction than superhero romp. There are no pastels, other heroes, undulating bosoms, or juiced deltoids. Clark is a lithe guy in a gray and brown world, and he only dons the S as an emergency. There’s a certain amount of disbelief that must be suspended here (a.k.a. Clark’s a humanoid), but this is a Superman story — he’s not going to look like a space walrus or lion

Zack Snyder also plans for some changes in his upcoming Superman movie. Digital Spy reports:

Zack Snyder has promised that his Superman movie will be “different” from previous Man of Steel incarnations, yet stay true to tradition.

In an interview with Empire, the Watchmen director said that David Goyer’s script doesn’t alter the DC Comics “canon”.

“It’s a different story,” Snyder said. “I won’t say there’s a break from the canon or anything like that, but there is definitely an approach that makes you go, ‘Okay, that’s a way to get at it.'”

He continued: “David is very respectful of the canon and stuff like that. It has its roots in the canon and again, like I say, it has a point of view about who he is. I’m being cryptic, I know, but it’s the best I can do.”

Asked if his movie will track the Man of Steel’s early years, Snyder replied: “I think it’s early to say. I don’t know.”

The director also described rumors of the comic book hero facing General Zod as “just wrong”, adding that “the internet has no idea what’s going on”.

Wil Wheaton returned to The Big Bang Theory this week (clip above). Big Bang Theory also almost matched the recent oil fight between Britta and Annie on Community. While the guys were trying to get into a showing of Indiana Jones, the girls were having a slumber party as Kaley Cuoco, Melissa Raunch, and Mayim Bialik  had a pillow fight, and Mayim Bialik decided to experiment with lesbian sex.

In its worst decision since running the awful remake of The Prisoner, AMC has decided not to renew Rubicon. I was looking forward to a second season to see the aftermath of the unraveling of the conspiracy. There were many loose ends, such as whether Spangler would commit suicide after receiving the clover, or whether he would survive to fight both those who were exposing him and his former associates.

Apparently Spangler is still alive and tweeting about API being shut down from the screen grab above. Several other characters from the show also are on Twitter.

Gregg Sutter has an interview with Carlton Cruse of Lost. Here’s a portion:

Gregg: For you personally, what was LOST about?

Carlton: On the surface, LOST was a show about a group of people who survive a plane crash and find themselves lost on a mysterious island. But much more importantly, it was a show about how these people were metaphorically lost in their lives and searching for redemption. Viewers talked a lot about the mythology but for us making the show, it was always first and foremost about the characters.

Gregg: Early on, did you feel like you were doing something special, something that had never been done before?

Carlton: Absolutely. Internally we all thought we were onto something cool. We were shattering a lot of the commonly held beliefs about what you could or couldn’t do on TV and that was an exciting feeling. Of course at that point, no one else believed the show would work as a series, so we talked a lot about how if the show did bomb after the 12 episode initial order, it would hopefully become a cool classic like Twin Peaks, which ran for 30 episodes — or The Prisoner, which ran for 17. We hoped, worse case scenario, that LOST would be the kind of show that gets passed around from geek to geek with people saying, “Hey, have you ever seen this show LOST?”

So with the idea that failure was okay, Damon and I asked ourselves one fundamental question to start: If someone handed us the DVD of the 12 episodes of LOST what would we want it to look like? We decided we’d make a show that the two of us thought would be cool.

Gregg: And you ended up breaking a lot of the traditional rules of narrative in TV.

Carlton: Yes. We did. We showed that it was possible on network TV to tell a highly complex, serialized narrative with intentional ambiguity — leaving the audiences room to debate and discuss the meaning and intentions of the narrative – and still find a large audience. This made it a game-changer, in my opinion.

Rubicon Canceled

In its biggest mistake since running the awful remake of The Prisoner, AMC announced today that they are canceling Rubicon. Is it a conspiracy? Now we’ll never find out what happened to Spangler after his former associates sent him that clover.

Update: It turns out that Truxton Spangler is alive and tweeting about the API Shut Down:

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SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who; The Prisoner; The Fringe Observers; and Katee Sackhoff on 24

There were two special events in genre television this week, with one turning out to be excellent and the other horrible. I’ll start with the Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars. As it does not air in the United States until December 19 I’ll try to avoid any significant spoilers and return to this episode in the future.

The previous Doctor Who specials were mediocre episodes which merely served to fill in time between the end of the last full season and the concluding episodes. This episode was excellent and, while it is not obvious from the beginning, this episode does serve to move us towards the conclusion of the David Tennant/Russell T. Davies  era.

The story starts out with the feel of another stand alone story somewhere in space. The Doctor winds up on a Mars space station where the staff is threatened by a parasite. The difference between this and just any stand alone story is that The Doctor realized that he knew the fate of the people he was encountering. This raised questions as to tinkering with time. There is much to consider about the choices made both by The Doctor and a key person on the episode but I will leave that until after the show airs in the United States to avoid any serious spoilers.

Most fans already know that the two-part finale will bring back characters from The Doctor’s past. This begins in this episode with a brief flash back involving Daleks and with the return of a species The Doctor had previously encountered at the end.

The conclusion of The Waters of Mars leads into the two-part finale for David Tennant, The End of Time. The above clip from the episode was first shown on the BBC on the Children in Need special and is also being distributed by BBC America. The BBC will be showing the first part of The End of Time on December 25 and BBC America will be showing it the following day. The second part will be shown on the BBC on January 1 with the US date not yet announced.

After the conclusion of the remake of The Prisoner aired I indicated I planned a fuller review. At present I don’t see any point in writing much more than I said here. The critics universally gave it poor reviews. The blogs were full of not only terrible reviews but many sites were attacking AMC for wasting their time by airing such a terrible show. Well over half the viewers abandoned the show after the first night. I don’t think anybody really cares to read a more through discussion of the miniseries.

As I previously mentioned, the remake ignored those aspects which made the original so great. The original series was not just about a man taken to a Village but about ideas. Taking some of the images and a few scenes from the original and writing a story with a totally different message (to the limited degree this had a coherent message) was pointless. Part of the problem is the timing. The original series worked best during the Cold War when it could deal with issues such as totalitarianism and raising the question of whether the West was also infringing upon the rights of the individual. While stories can always be written about totalitarian governments, it is far less relevant when not fitting as well into current events. Dealing with a corporation does not carry the same weight.

Fringe has successfully been mixing stand alone stories similar to the stand alone episodes of The X-Files while also gradually developing its own mythology. We have seen the observers in past episodes but did not know hardly anything about them until this week. I09 listed some of the things we learned about them–check out their post for the full list

They can catch bullets. The ability to catch bullets probably comes in handy when you hop around time observing significant (and often violent) moments in history. But August’s Superman stunt is just another sign that the Observers aren’t human (or if they are, they are extremely altered), and that they can be powerful, even if those powers are rarely used.

They know the future (to some extent). August says that he can see Christine’s future, and he knows both what she is about to say before she says it and when the report of the crash will come on TV. And the Observers watching Olivia and her niece comment that it’s a shame things are going to be so hard for her. On a side note — are we supposed to automatically assume they’re talking about Olivia, or could they be talking about her niece?

They can still be surprised. At least, they’re surprised when August interferes with the natural order of things. Are Observers the only ones with free will, or do they observe to see how individuals react to these big, important situations.

Their writing is culled from various civilizations. So it turns out that the Observer language isn’t a language at all, but simply words written in various languages from throughout human history (and perhaps other people’s histories as well). It’s got to be a handy way of communicating exclusively with people who have an encyclopedic knowledge of all languages ever written.

They appear at important moments in history. We actually know this from the promo campaign, but the episode makes it official. Also, the increasing frequency of Observer appearances suggest that the most important event in human history is about to occur.

They eat fancy peppers. We already knew the Observers were fans of the hot stuff, but hot peppers are a handy way to track them. Will the apocalypse be marked by record sales of hot peppers?

Katee Sachkoff of Battlestar Galactica has an upcoming appearance on The Big Bang Theory and will be a regular on 24 next season. She was interviewed about her role by SciFi Wire:

Katee plays Chloe’s boss. Chloe has never let authority stop her from getting the job done, but she’s never dealt with anyone like Dana before. “Dana is permanently happy,” Sackhoff said. “I think that also pisses Chloe off, because Dana’s like, ‘Oh, no, it’s totally fine that you don’t get it. Let me help you. It’s great. I’ll do that. It’s fine. You don’t need to figure it out, because I’m good enough to do both our jobs.’ So that really pisses Chloe off.”

Dana kicks ass. But intellectually. Starbuck fans might be disappointed they don’t get to see Sackhoff beat up terrorists. The show’s writers have a different idea for utilizing Sackhoff’s talents. “I wanted to just blow s–t up, and they were like, ‘I don’t know if we can do that,'” she said. “I came in and sat down with the producers and writers, and we had a discussion as far as what they wanted from me and what I wanted to do, and hopefully we’ll all [meet] in the middle, so we’ll see.”

You’ll see Sackhoff in a whole new light. Dana may be locked inside the CTU offices all day, but the premise is that she’s had an earthbound life. That allows Sackhoff to finally get some sun. “The first thing I thought was, I’m going to constantly have a tan, which is fantastic for me, because I spent the last five years on a show that you were in space, so you weren’t supposed to have a tan,” she said. “So this is, like, the orange [stage light] bounces off your skin, and everyone just has a nice little glow. You’ve either just been to Mexico, or you’re pregnant, so it’s perfect. It’s really nice, and just new. Orange looks good on me, so it’s exciting. I went from a show where color was bad to you’re now in an orange set, which is awesome.”

Something happens at CTU. Gee, thanks for the big tip. Sackhoff’s allowed to reveal that something’s going on at CTU. “I was like, ‘Seriously? I don’t know if anyone thinks that’s actually a big secret,'” Sackhoff joked about her gag order. “Could you imagine? So this is a 24 episode, and the whole season is just about nothing. No controversy, nobody dies, nobody gets beat up, Jack Bauer doesn’t do anything. He might not even show up, and for 24 hours that would just be what it is. Could you imagine?” That might actually be funny for like the first six hours. “It would, and then people would go, like, ‘Are you serious?’ Just office lives. I’m handing my files to Chloe. They show us at lunch.”

Continuity is easy. A lot may happen in a day on 24, and by episode 20 it can be hard to remember what you were playing in episode 2. At least her wardrobe doesn’t have to change. “It almost makes it easier, because it all takes place in the same day,” she said. “It’s one of those things where the continuity as far as your wardrobe doesn’t change, so it’s like, ‘Something’s [off]… my watch isn’t here.” Because you’re so used to wearing it that it becomes kind of like the gunbelt from Battlestar. It would seem very odd to not have it on. You have to remind yourself what room you were in last, not what happened last episode, because it all is taking you to the exact same place at the end of the day, kind of. So I found that easier.”

She’s still got a potty mouth. The word “frak” might not exist in the world of 24, and the Fox network has stricter language guidelines for broadcast than did Syfy, but behind the scenes, Sackhoff still talks dirty. She endeared herself to the 24 crew right away by sharing a dirty story about Battlestar. While Edward James Olmos was shooting The Plan, he reveled in the chance to include nudity on the DVD release. “There’s a scene in the Head where everyone’s just naked, and Eddie on the day is going, ‘Zoom in on the c–k. Zoom in on the c–k,'” Sackhoff recalled. “The camera guy’s like, ‘I can’t zoom in the c–k. He keeps covering up the c–k.’ They’re like, ‘Zoom in the c–k. Get him to do something else with his hands. Make him shave.’ So then he’s shaving, and he’s like, ‘Now, zoom in on the c–k.’ That’s on the daily. That is so Eddie. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. ‘Zoom in on the c–k’ in Eddie’s voice. I think I told that story my first day here, and the crew was like, ‘We like you.'”

BTW, what really happened to Starbuck? Here’s Sackhoff’s theory about her ambiguous conclusion on Battlestar Galactica. “So when she at the end was saying goodbye to [Anders], I think that she was saying goodbye to their bodily forms,” she said. “I think she knew, especially if he says, ‘I’ll see you on the other side,’ I think she’s with him. I think they’re both dead, but I think she’s with him. That was a decision that we made, because I selfishly wanted her at peace, and the only way to do that was to have her with someone at the end, or to be with the person she wanted to be with. I don’t know. That’s kind of where I think she is. She’s with Michael Trucco playing pyramid in the sky somewhere.”

Gregory Itzin will also be returning to 24 to reprise his role as the Nixonian former president Charles Logan.

Senate Health Care Bill Posted On Line

The full text of the Senate health care bill is now on line. It is 2,074 pages. I don’t think I can handle reading through all of this and watching all six hours of  the remake of The Prisoner the same week. I think I’ll watch Glee tonight and wait for Fox or the right wing blogs to review the plan. Then I’ll assume that the actual facts are the opposite.

Tonight’s Television

What a relief. The remake of The Prisoner is over. Now I can catch up on Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars, Monday’s episode of Heroes, and then later watch Glee.

Update: The Waters of Mars was fantastic. Sadly it leads us towards The End of Time and the end of David Tennant’s run as The Doctor, but I also anticipate great things from Matt Smith with Steven Moffatt becoming show runner after The Doctor’s next regeneration.

Update II: In the past twenty-four hours I have watched Doctor Who and The Prisoner. I also bought a copy of the Star Trek movie. Ignoring the fact that there was no Blu-ray back then, I feel like I’m back in the 1960’s. I never would have guessed around 40 years ago that I’d be watching the same shows now which were showing back then. While more recent, in the past day I’ve also watched V.

Patrick McGoohan Explaining The Prisoner

Warner Troyer interviewed Patrick McGoohan in 1977, discussing the meaning of The Prisoner. After watching the dreadful remake on AMC, this is a good reminder of the brilliance of the original:

Possibly The Worst Remake Ever

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Well, I’ve now made it through all six hours of the remake of The Prisoner. It wasn’t easy. As a huge fan of the original I had to see this, but it was a real bore. I’ll probably write a more detailed review later, but the main problem is that it totally missed the meaning of the original. A lot was thrown in which simply made no sense. In the end the Village revealed to be helping people but besides being a radical change from the original this did not even seem consistent with the prior episodes.

Some remakes make sense but this did not. It didn’t matter that Ron Moore totally changed the concept of Battlestar Galactica in his remake since the original was such a weak show, but there’s no point in re-imagining a show as great as The Prisoner and minimizing what made it great. This included aspects such as the attempt to discover why Six resigned and, more importantly, the underlying theme of fighting for the right of the individual to be individual.

The remake took as much from The Matrix as from Patrick McGoohan’s original version of The Prisoner. The two actual sequels to The Matrix were already pretty bad.  This was worse. Besides similarities from the pills to the Village existing in the mind , this remake and the sequels to The Matrix have something else in common: they should never have been made.

The Prisoner Concludes Tonight (Fortunately)

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We’re two-thirds through the remake of The Prisoner on AMC and Patrick McGowan is undoubtedly rolling over in his grave. I’ll wait until the mini-series concludes to give my final judgment on it. At this point it is clear that it has not maintained the underlying meaning of the original and it is no where as entertaining to watch. At least it does have me curious enough to see where it is going to make sure I watch the final two hours tonight.  If it was planned as a series going over several weeks, as the original was, I doubt it would hold on to an audience.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who; The Prisoner; Star Trek; Dollhouse Canceled (Whedon Starting Binge Drinking); Captain Jack Returning; And Sellling Caprica with Nudity

Prisoner AMC

It is going to be a busy week for science fiction. The Doctor Who special, The Waters of Mars, aired today on the BBC  and I’ll be reviewing this soon. The remake of The Prisoner starts a three day run on AMC tonight. I have my doubts as to how good a remake of such an excellent show will be, fearing that any attempts to answer the questions it left will be a disappointment. There is no doubt I’ll watch, but some early reviews, such as at IO9 have been disappointing.

The big event of the week for movies will be the release of the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie on DVD and Blu-ray, with lots of extras. The Blu-ray release of the third season of the original show might be disappointing due to the deterioration in quality that season. There will be an unexpected extra–a recently discovered alternate version of the pilot episode, Where No Man Has Gone Before. This second pilot was written after NBC found the original pilot episode, The Cage, to be too cerebral. It is believed that this lost version is the one actually watched by NBC executives deciding upon whether to pick up the show, with some changes having been made by the time the episode actually aired to fit into the reworked series. A clip, including the original opening for the show, is above.

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It comes as no surprise that Dollhouse was officially canceled. The series finale will air January 22, with the final two episodes still be be filmed, giving a chance at some degree of closure. Joss Whedon states he plans on starting new internet ventures and binge drinking in response to the cancellation. He also teases, ” By the time the last episode airs, you’ll know what my next project is. But for now there’s a lot of work still to be done, and disappointment to bear.”

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It is looking likely that there will be a fourth season for Torchwood with Captain Jack returning. Via Airlock Alpha:

“The recession has hit British television,” he explained to TV Guide magazine. “But fingers crossed, it will be a go. We expect things to start to move in January.”

Davies has always insisted that he has a plan for the future of the show, and even when the miniseries concluded, he revealed that he even had an idea for the fourth season ready to present to the BBC should they give him a call. Of course, it comes as no surprise that the Beeb is very much interested in an additional season of the show thanks to some stellar ratings which grew as the five-part adventure unfolded earlier this year.

“We’ve got great ideas for the show,” Davies said. “I think there’s a further lease on life for many years to come, but certainly for a [fourth season].”

While some might be questioning whether or not star John Barrowman will return to reprise his role as Capt. Jack Harkness, Davies made it clear that this is the star of the show.

If 2010 is too long to wait for a Capt. Jack fix, however, fans have no further to look than “Doctor Who.” Barrowman has a role in the final episodes of David Tennant’s tenure and will help smooth over the transition of introducing a new Doctor.

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Caprica begins January 22 on SyFy. Cylon sex was always a big part of Battlestar Galactica, and nudity was included in the DVD release of the pilot for Caprica. They are continuing to try to use sex to sell the series, as can be seen in the promotional poster above featuring a nude Zoe Graystone.