SciFi Weekend: Breaking Bad; Dexter; Hannibal; The Blacklist; Sleepy Hollow; The Americans; Community; True Blood; Broadchurch; Doctor Who

Breaking Bad Series Finale Elliot and Gretchen 1

Vince Gilligan ended Breaking Bad just as most would have predicted if not for feeling that this was too obvious and trying to throw in a twist. In the end, Walt killed the Nazis, rescued Jesse and then died. Jesse escaped, Lydia was killed, and plans were made to get money to Walt’s family. Realistically Walt’s death was the most probable end-point for the series since the first episode. Initially it might have been from the cancer. Events since then changed how it most likely to occur. It became inevitable that he would face a violent death, but also achieve some measure of victory.

The only surprises in the finale were the details in how everything would be accomplished, such as threatening Elliott and Gretchen with assassination by “the two best hitmen west of the Mississippi” who were really Skinny Pete and Badger armed only with laser pointers. There was no need for a surprise ending, and certainly not a gimmick such as a dream or fading to black. Breaking Bad feels more like a continuous story in a novel, leading to the most likely conclusion. The finale has received universal praise, showing that no gimmicks were needed. Hopefully writers of future series will learn from this.

The success of the finale of Breaking Bad led to inevitable comparisons to other finales. To be fair to other show runners who fell short, the structure of Breaking Bad lent itself to coming to such a definite and obvious conclusion. While I was not satisfied with the ending to The Sopranos, an ambiguous ending was more in line with that show than Breaking Bad. After the full run of the series, it was realistic that Tony Soprano had made enough enemies that one would just walk up to him and shoot him in a diner. It would similarly be realistic to interpret this otherwise and see Tony Soprano continuing as he had for years, as with Sam Malone on Cheers. Breaking Bad had a clear storyline leading to an inevitable conclusion.

Damon Lindelof was blasted on Twitter during the Breaking Bad finale for not providing such a satisfactory conclusion to Lost. While I think they could have done better with Lost, a key difference here is that Lost had developed such a complex mythology that there was no realistic way to end the series. Lindelof defended his ending in The Hollywood Reporter, which was more a plea for everyone to stop talking about it.

The remaining questions are trivial compared to the questions raised by Lost. There was no question to the motivations of the main character. Walt revealed to Skyler that he was doing this all for himself. Did Walt initially plan to kill Jesse, and then change his mind when he saw how he was enslaved? That change in motivation is suggested in several interviews where Vince Gilligan compared the ending to The Searchers:

On the story inspiration for Walt, who was hellbent on killing Jesse, saving his ex-partner out of sudden instinct 
“A lot of astute viewers who know their film history are going to say, ‘It’s the ending to The Searchers.’ And indeed it is. The wonderful western The Searchers has John Wayne looking for Natalie Wood for the entire three-hour length of the movie. She’s been kidnapped by Indians and raised as one of their own, and throughout the whole movie, John Wayne says, ‘I need to put her out of her misery. As soon as I find her, I’m going to kill her.’ The whole movie Jeffrey Hunter is saying, ‘No, we’re not — she’s my blood kin, we’re saving her,’ and he says, ‘We’re killing her.’ And you’re like, ‘Oh my god, John Wayne is a monster and he’s going to do it. You know for the whole movie that this is the major drama between these two characters looking for Natalie Wood. And then at the end of the movie, on impulse, you think he’s riding toward her to shoot her, and instead he sweeps her up off her feet and he carries her away and he says, ‘Let’s go home.’ It just gets me every time — the ending of that movie just chokes you up, it’s wonderful. In the writers room, we said, ‘Hey, what about the Searchers ending?’ So, it’s always a matter of stealing from the best. [Laughs]“

Did Walt have any plan for after he killed the neo-Nazis if he survived? It did not appear that he did. If not for the last-second decision to save Jesse, I wonder if he had planned to jump to the floor, or remain standing and die with everyone else in the room.

We know Jesse is free but from there it is all speculation:

“We always felt like the viewers desired Jesse to get away. And it’s up to the individual viewer to decide what happens next for Jesse. Some people might think, ‘Well, he probably got two miles down the road before the cops nailed him.’ But I prefer to believe that he got away, and he’s got a long road to recovery ahead, in a sense of being held prisoner in a dungeon for the last six months and being beaten to within an inch of his life and watching Andrea be shot. All these terrible things he’s witnessed are going to scar him as well, but the romantic in me wants to believe that he gets away with it and moves to Alaska and has a peaceful life communing with nature.”

Unfortunately it wasn’t realistic to have Jesse wind up raising Brock, providing him with a true happy ending.

What was going through Jesse’s mind when he didn’t shoot Walt? Was this the outcome of Jesse previously saying he would never do what Walt told him to do again, a desire to be done with killing, or did a remnant of his old respect for Walt prevent him from pulling the trigger? Would he have shot Walt if he didn’t see that Walt already had a gunshot wound?

Will Walt’s scheme work and will Gretchen and Elliott really get the money to Walt, Jr.? There’s no way to know. On this show many elaborate schemes have worked well. It was quite fortunate for Walt that Lydia kept to her old schedule and was the one to take the pack of poisoned Stevia. Everything also had to go right for his plan to kill the neo-Nazis to succeed. While throughout the series many elaborate plans were successful, not everything went right for Walt. Most notably, Walt ruined his plans by leaving the Walt Whitman book out in his bathroom, and easily fell for Jesse’s plan to lead the DEA to the money. We also do not know if his plan for Skyler to negotiate with the coordinates of  Hank and Gomez’s bodies will save her, with his previous phone call not appearing to have helped her very much.

In comparing the recent finales of Breaking Bad and Dexter, it seems like the Breaking Bad finale was planned from the start while Dexter‘s finale decided late in the series. The opposite turns out to be true. Vince Gilligan had no idea about some major aspects of the ending, and has revealed other endings under consideration.

Dexter and Hannah

It was the opposite for Dexter. While Clyde Phillips, the original show runner, had a different idea, current show runner Scott Buck and longtime executive producer Sara Colleton told Entertainment Weekly that this ending had been planned for years:

Before the season started, you said the core idea behind this finale has been in the works for years. What was the original concept?
BUCK: The kernel idea were the last few scenes. They were what I pitched a few years ago. The main idea was Dexter is forced to kill Debra. And there are many ways that could happen. But those final scenes were pretty much unchanged.
SARA COLLETON: From the very beginning the paradox was here’s a guy who doesn’t feel he’s a human being, who has to fake it. But in faking it, he’s a better brother, boyfriend, colleague that most real people. People think of him as a monster, but he yearns to be human. We’ve seen him go forward on this journey every year. Now we found out what the final price was. What sums up the entire journey was the scene on balcony of his apartment before going on the boat to put Deb down — that’s horrible to say aloud. The voiceover: “For so long all I wanted was to feel like other people … now that I do just want it to stop.” It’s the horrible awareness of what it was to be a human being and how overwhelming that is for him. His punishment is banishment. He sends himself into exile. Killing himself is too easy. When he turns and looks into the camera at the end he’s stripped everything away.

Were there any other versions of the ending that you rejected?
BUCK: The only real variation was what he would be doing. I knew he would be in a self-imposed prison that would be as far from Miami as possible. We’d find him working in some solitary environment where even if other people were around he would make no contact and not talk to anyone. We would follow him home and he would have no human contact.

In a way that’s his new code — avoiding human contact.
BUCK: Yes. For us, that’s the tragedy. The one thing we felt Dexter wanted more than anything was human connections. Even in the first season we see him trying to get with Rudy. Now that he’s finally made that journey and he’s almost poised to have a real human life, he has to give all that up to save Harrison and Hannah.
COLLETON: He went into an absolute shutdown. He no longer has even his voiceover.

 Hannibal Season 2

The above poster was released for the second season of Hannibal. Bryan Fuller explains: “After a horrifying descent into madness in season 1, this image ironically represents the perspective of a scrappier, clearer-minded Will Graham in season 2.  The scales have fallen from his eyes and he finally sees Hannibal Lecter for the monster he is.”

The Blacklist remains the best new network show so far, and has become the first to receive a full 22-episode pick-up.

Sleepy Hollow will remain with a thirteen episode run this year, and has been renewed for a second 13-episode season.

The Americans was one of the best new shows last year. Creator/executive Joe Weisberg and executive producer Joel Fields discussed the show at PaleyFest.

Nathan Fillion will guest star on Community, making Firefly references inevitable.

Rob Kazinsky says True Blood “kind of ran out of ideas and now they’ve got an idea again and they’re trying to finish stronger than ever… which they’re going to do next season!”

David Tennant will reprise his role as star of Broadchurch for a US adaptation from Fox. It was an excellent show, but I’m not sure why we need a second version. I imagine that many US viewers neither have a way to  pick up British shows and don’t watch BBC America, leaving an untapped audience for Fox.

David Tennant will also be staring in Day of the Doctor, the 50th Anniversary episode of Doctor Who. Current plans include simulcasting the show in 75 countries.  Steven Moffat has also discussed the upcoming regeneration from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi:

If you haven’t seen it, there is a particularly fine interview Steven Moffat has given to Nerd3 in which he discusses, well, a lot of things you don’t often hear Steven Moffat discuss.

One section is devoted to regeneration, and the fact that it would not be a break with Whovian tradition for the Twelfth Doctor to look a lot like someone the Doctor has already met. In fact Peter Capaldi has been in Doctor Who (as Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in “The Fires of Pompeii”) and Torchwood: Children of Earth, and Steven has already had a chat with Russell T Davies over how this will all work.

He said: “We are aware that Peter Capaldi’s played a part in Doctor Who before and we’re not going to ignore the fact. I’ll let you in on this. I remember Russell told me he had a big old plan as to why there were two Peter Capaldis in the Who universe, one in Pompeii and one in Torchwood. When I cast Peter, [Russell] got in touch to say how pleased he was, I said ‘Okay, what was your theory and does it still work?’ and he said ‘Yes it does, here it is’. So I don’t know if we’ll get to it… we’ll play that one out over time. It’s actually quite neat.”

If they try to be too clever I  suspect they might run into problems analogous to explaining why the Klingons look different in different versions of Star Trek. There’s a simple explanation–the same actor played three different roles. Sure, you could come up with an explanation which includes the Doctor taking the form of people he encountered in the past when regenerating. Then how do we explain Karen Gillan’s appearance, as she also appeared in The Fires of Pompeii as a different character before playing Amy Pond?

J.J. Abrams has apologized for all the lens flairs in Star Trek Into Darkness.

And finally, this video on the finale and a farewell video from the cast of Breaking Bad:

Saturn Award Nominations Released

The 2012 Saturn Award nominees are out. I wonder if this has ever happened before–two movies up for best movie in the Fantasy category were also nominees for an Academy Award. My choice as top genre movie of the year, Midnight in Paris, is one of them. Hugo is also nominated. While I’m not going to bother second guessing categorization, I don’t really see Hugo as qualifying as a fantasy movie, but as it is in contention I wouldn’t be surprised if it beats Midnight in Paris. I also wonder how well the last Harry Potter movie will do, but personally I was very disappointed in it. Going beyond the Fantasy category, another Oscar nominee is also in contention for a Saturn award–War Horse.

My choice for best hard science fiction movie of the year, Source Code, didn’t make it into the nominations for Best Science Fiction Film. I had predicted the ending early, but did enjoy watching it play out. The Adjustment Bureau was also enjoyable, but The Twilight Zone handled the same idea much better in the past. I find it interesting that X-Men and Captain America were nominated under Science Fiction while Thor was considered Fantasy. Again, I’m not going to dwell over categorization and am more interested in seeing the top genre movies recognized, regardless of category. I should also point out that my choices for top movies are limited by the fact that I’ve seen most but not all of the nominated movies.

Here are the nominations in various categories for best film:

Best Science Fiction Film:
The Adjustment Bureau
Captain America: The First Avenger
Limitless
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Super 8
X-Men: First Class

Best Fantasy Film:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Hugo
Immortals
Midnight in Paris
The Muppets
Thor

Best Horror/Thriller Film:
Contagion
The Devil’s Double
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Grey
Take Shelter
The Thing

Best Action/Adventure Film:
Fast Five
The Lincoln Lawyer
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol
Red Tails
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
War Horse

Moving on to television, I’d choose Doctor Who as best over all if that was a choice, but it is limited a nomination as a youth-oriented show. I’d pick Fringe as Best Network Television Series, and is there any doubt that Game of Thrones will win for Best Presentation on Television (10 Episodes or Less)? I will abstain from making a pick as  Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series as there are a couple of shows listed which I’ve heard very good things about but have not seen yet.

Best Network Television Series:
Fringe
A Gifted Man
Grimm
Once Upon a Time
Supernatural
Terra Nova

Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series:
American Horror Story
Breaking Bad
The Closer
Dexter
Leverage
True Blood

Best Presentation on Television (10 Episodes or Less):
Camelot Starz
Falling Skies
Game of Thrones
The Killing
Torchwood: Miracle Day
Trek Nation
The Walking Dead

Best Youth-Oriented Series on Television:
Being Human
Doctor Who
The Nine Lives of Chloe King
Secret Circle
Teen Wolf
The Vampire Diaries

There are multiple other categories in play including best actor and actress, but I won’t bother with those tonight in protest over the absence of Karen Gillan among the nominees. The full list can be found here.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who; Interview with Karen Gillan; Torchwood: Once Upon A Time; Fringe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s4Czla6tXc&feature=player_embedded

The above video was recently posted featuring the cast and crew of Doctor Who from a video played at the wrap party at the end of the David Tennant era.

Above is the audio of an interview with Karen Gillan from Graham Norton’s Radio 2 show. Here’s some highlights:

Karen Gillan has said she will welcome the next Doctor Who companion “with open arms” when her time is up on the show.

Speaking on Graham Norton’s Radio 2 show yesterday, she said: “I know the time is going to come when Rory and Amy have to leave. It’s inevitable and that will make me really, really sad. But that’s the nature of the show and what’s so good about it. What keeps it exciting is the fact that it’s reinvented all the time with new people. I think that’s a really great part of the show, so I will welcome the new companion with open arms.

“I don’t know what type of companion [the Doctor] would have next.”

Gillan also said her future was still “up in the air,” adding “I know that I’m going to be coming back, but I’m not sure when.”

Mark Sheppard hints that Canton Delaware might return to Doctor Who:

Speaking in an interview with Stuff, Sheppard reflected on his involvement on Series 6 and teased “To emerge that Canton is in fact one of the friends that the Doctor deemed should be present at his death eludes to perhaps some further involvement…”

An interview with the cast of Torchwood: Miracle Day from London Comic Con/Memorabilia MCM Expo in the video above.

Kristen Bauer, who plays Pam on True Blood, will be playing Malificent on Once Upon A Time. A couple questions from a recent interview:

What can you tell us about Maleficent’s relationship with Lana Parrilla’s Evil Queen?
The most interesting thing about their relationship is that the writers decided to make them frenemies. It’s just a minefield of evil goodness. It was me, Lana Parrilla and a green screen and we just had so much fun. Two chicks who are loving playing bitches, who liked each other and went, let’s just play chess. The great thing about playing with another person who is a good player is that you don’t always have to play the obvious and hopefully, what we did is put in different colors that show a history. These two chicks have known each other a long time and they’ve been coveting each other, helping each other and probably backstabbing each other quite often. We tried to get all that in there and we’ll see on Sunday if we succeeded.

How would you compare Maleficent to your other current role, that of Pam on TRUE BLOOD?
I’m not exactly sure yet. But so far there are a couple of difference in how I played it. Pam is very sarcastic and what you see is what you get. Pam to me is one of the only people who always tells the truth at this point, doesn’t suffer fools and doesn’t worry about being liked at all. When we get into the fairytale world with Maleficent it feels like we could have a bit more game playing and a bit more things are not as they appear.

More on the back story and sneak peaks about Once Upon A Time can be found here.

Fringe was preempted by some baseball game on Friday. They commented on this in the video above.

And, finally, here is a Happy Halloween card for our readers:

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, Let’s Kill Hitler & Torchwood: Miracle Day

Tonight we had a rare event,which will reoccur for a brief time: new episodes of both Doctor Who and Torchwood. Even rarer, both are at a point where they are starting to give answers. Who Killed Hitler gave a lot of answers regarding the season-long arc as well as the multi-season story of River Song. Major spoilers follow.

The story began with Amy and Rory near home, having built a signal for the Doctor in a corn field. There’s no explanation of how the two got back to earth after the Battle of Demons Run, and this is just one of many plot-holes which it is best to ignore to enjoy this over-the-top story. They are  joined by their childhood friend, Mels, who is obsessed with the Doctor and blames all evil in the world on the Doctor’s failure to fix things. This leads to a trip through time to kill Hitler, who spent most of the episode locked in the cupboard.

Mel’s attempt to kill Hitler was interrupted by the Tesselector, a ship full of time travelors disguised as a shape-shifting robot which tortures historical villains who otherwise went unpunished. They shifted their target from Hitler to who they described as the worst war criminal in history–the woman who killed the Doctor.

This is all interspersed with flashbacks of Mels growing up with Amy and Rory. The later two had a relationship just as we might imagine. Rory was infatuated with Amy but Amy, who really did like Rory, assumed he was gay because he never showed any interest in other girls. At least Amy did run after Rory when Mels pointed out the flaw in her thoughts about Rory.

Mels got killed in  Hitler’s office and regenerated into a confused version of River Song. Leave it to Steven Moffat to have Amy name her daughter after her old friend Mels, who was actually River Song/Melody Pond all along. In a strange way, Amy and Rory did get to raise their child.

River was programmed to kill the Doctor and kissed him with poisonous lipstick, with regeneration also somehow prevented. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory got miniaturized and beamed into the Tesselector. This set up Rory for one of the great lines of the episode:  “I’m trapped inside a giant robot replica of my wife. I’m really trying not to see this as a metaphor.”

Meanwhile the Doctor, who already had a new coat and who was now in the midst of dying, spent much of his remaining time getting dressed up in formal wear. We got the rumored scenes with post-companions, but they were just projections from the TARDIS. There continued to be adventure  aboard the Tesselector, which for some unknown reason was packed with giant killer jellyfish. Amy prevented the Tesselector from killing River by destroying the mechanism which kept the jellyfish from killing everyone aboard–both a morally questionable move as well as one with obvious dangers.

The Doctor convinced River she didn’t want to go through life knowing she had killed her true love before they even got involved. As the Doctor put it, ““She did kill me, and then she used her remaining lives to bring me back. As first dates go, I’d say that was mixed signals.”

By River giving up her remaining regenerations to save the Doctor, she set up her own death in Silence in the Library/ Forest of the Dead. I wonder if this also means the Doctor will have additional regenerations, providing one way for Moffat to get around the previously established (and certain to be bypassed) limitation on regenerations.

All this went on with very little of Hitler in the actual story. Here is Adolph Hitler’s reaction to his appearance in Doctor Who:

In this episode, the Doctor learned about his future death and presumably is now plotting some way around this. We learned that the Silence isn’t really a species but a religious movement obsessed with a first question reminiscent of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. There were further references to The Graduate with the relationship between River and the Doctor. There was even this poster referring to Silence at the school which Amy and Mels attended:

While there are still gaps, we now know much more about River Song’s life:

River was conceived in the Tardis after the Amy and Rory’s wedding, giving a whole new meaning to the episode title, The Big Bang. She was born on Demons Run and then raised in a creepy orphanage in the 1960’s, while being brainwashed to kill the Doctor.  At some point a picture was taken of her with Amy–perhaps we will see a trip to that orphanage sometime later this season to explain it. She escaped (perhaps intentionally allowed to escape) and wound up in New York where she had what was probably not her first regeneration. She wound up becoming a delinquent friend of Amy and Rory, ultimately getting aboard the TARDIS in this episode. After the  regeneration in this episode, River was left  with the Sisters Of The Infinite Schism. Somewhere along the way she has an affair with the Doctor as well as becoming imprisoned for killing him. The episode ended with her going into archeology so she could stalk the Doctor through time. I also bet she winds up assisting the Doctor in staging his death (or maybe the death of a Ganger) so that this fixed point in time can occur with the Doctor remaining alive.

Things also happened on this week’s episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, End of the Road, and we seem to be coming towards a conclusion, but generally things just sort of  happen. We don’t really see the Torchwood team taking the lead in solving the mystery as opposed to grabbing bits and pieces of information over time. Perhaps that will change in the final two episodes. While the previous episode featured Gwen capturing Jack because of her family being held captive, this week’s episode quickly dispensed with the threat. Why didn’t Angelo’s granddaughter simply call Jack (or deliver a message thru Gwen) that Angelo was still alive?

There were some good touches. Newman was exposed as a bad guy and Q arrested him. Oswald Danes was shown as really being creepy, but also likely to receive the punishment he deserves now that he is designated Category 0.  For long-time Torchwood fans, there was a reference to Ianto.

SciFi Weekend: Torchwood’s Immortal Sins; Doctor Who, Let’s Kill Hitler; The Doctor and Other Time Travelers Win Hugo Awards, The Hour (A Great Show To Watch While Waiting For Mad Men To Return)

This week’s episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, Immortal Sins,  is more Jack-centric, showing how his back story plays into the events of the Miracle, and presumably why there was a signal for Torchwood on the day that the Miracle began. The series has seemed to take a long time to move towards a conclusion at times, but I suspect that the pace will pick up in the final three episodes now that we have a better idea of where it is headed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d–_kOhavH4&feature=player_embedded

The episode even has two references to the Doctor in the scenes above. Those who complained to the BBC about the explicit gay sex won’t like this episode either. My only complaint is that there wasn’t a matching sex scene with a female as occurred earlier this season. Captain Jack gets the best line of the episode: “Forgive me father for I have sinned… so many times… and that’s just today!”

Season six of Doctor Who resumes next week. Above is a preview of the episode from BBC America. Karen Gillan also introduces Let’s Kill Hitler plus two clips from Doctor Who Confidential have also been released:

The Daily Mirror,  which is not the most reliable of sources, claims that Billie Piper, Freema Agyeman and Catherine Tate will all return in the episode. Consider how the Doctor left both Billie Piper (Rose) and Catherine Tate (Donna), this would seem difficult. Perhaps he meets them before his final encounters with them, or perhaps the actresses are there but they aren’t what they seem.

Doctor Who Lets Kill Hitler Amy Pond River Song

A prequel scene to Let’s Kill Hitler was released last week. The scene is posted here.

While nothing has been officially confirmed, based upon interviews with both Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill it appears like Amy and Rory will leave as regular companions at the end of the season, most likely to raise their newly-rescued baby, and a new companion will be introduced. Both have also said they will be returning in the future, and it is assumed they mean as recurring characters similar to how River Song has appeared intermittently.

Doctor Who Big Bang Pandorica Opens

Doctor Who, as well as other time-travel stories, did well in this year’s Hugo Award ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno last night. Black Out/All Clear, a pair of novels dealing with time travel to England during World War II by Connie Willis, won best novel.

The season five  Doctor Who two-part story, The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang, won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Two other episodes of Doctor Who, A Christmas Carol and Vincent and the Doctor, were also nominated this year.

The winning episodes were written by Steven Moffat, who previously won the Hugo Award for these episodes of  Doctor Who:   Blink in 2008, The Girl In The Fireplace in 2007 and The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances in 2006. An episode by Russel T. Davies, The Waters of Mars won in 2010 when there were only specials and no regular episodes written by Moffat.

Doctor Who was also responsible for a non-fiction award. Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea, won for Best Related Work.

Inception won for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. My interpretation of the movie was previously posted here.

Here’s something to watch if you can’t wait until next year for Mad Men to return. The Hour premiered on BBC America last week–trailer above.  The DVD set of the series will be released in September. After watching the first episode I quickly obtained episodes two through five, in preparation for the sixth and final episode of the season which airs Tuesday in the U.K.

There are several new shows which are trying to capitalize on the nostalgia value of Mad Men (but most ignore the fact that it is quality which made Mad Men a success). Both have a feeling of a previous era but one which is not all that different from today.  The creative type people on a news show in The Hour versus those in advertising on Mad Men, along with the drinking and smoking scenes, give the shows a similar feel. The third episode also reminded me of scenes from Brideshead Revisited.

American network shows trying to capitalize on the Mad Men feel such as Pan Am and one on the Playboy Club are also starting this fall, but I doubt they will show the same quality as either Mad Men or The Hour.

They are also very different shows too. Beyond its late 1950’s backdrop on a television news show, The Hour gets involved with a murder mystery and Cold War espionage. In some ways the show feels like a combination of the two AMC series, Mad Men and Rubicon. Being six hours has allowed it to develop the season-long arc without stretching it out too long. It is also reminiscent of Mad Men, which previously took place at the time of the  Cuban Missile Crisis, by dealing with the Suez crisis and Soviet invasion of Hungary.

The Hour has a superb cast. Best known to American audiences is Dominic West from The Wire. Romola Garai (pictured above) and Ben Whishaw are also excellent in their lead roles. Burn Gorman, who previously played Owen Harper on Torchwood, has a significant role. Now I can’t wait for Mad Men to return, and I know that once the series conclude its U.K. run on Tuesday I will be anxiously awaiting a second season of The Hour.

Quote of the Day

“Forgive me father for I have sinned… so many times… and that’s just today!” –Captain Jack Harkness (Torchwood: Miracle Day Episode 7, Immortal Sins)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SyFy has cancelled Eurkea.

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

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

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

Peter Olivia Walter Fringe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Olivia Wilde discussed her dirty scenes in Cowboys and Aliens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

More exchanges, including a terrific question about Sheldon:

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

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

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

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

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

Torchwood: Miracle Day Comic Con News & Episode 3 Comments

Above is the Torchwood Panel at Comic Con. By Part 4 of the videos, John Borrowman is singing.

I previously posted the season preview for Torchwood: Miracle Day presented at the San Diego Comic Con here.

There are also many videos on line with interviews with the cast and crew. In the above video, Jane Espenson discussed Torchwood, along with writing other genre television shows.

Reportedly the series gets darker by Episode 5, and major events occur in Episode 7.

There are some mild spoilers regarding Episode 3 below.

The third episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, Dead of Night, was the weakest of the season so far. Highlights include an homage to Doctor Who in the clip above. During a raid on PhiCorp, Jack remarks that it is “bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

The episode did build up the conspiracy more, but also was weakened by having two of the main characters wander off for a couple of gratuitous sex scenes. The scenes were cut from the version to be shown on the BBC this week. The scenes includes both homosexual sex between Jack and someone he picked up in a bar, interspersed with a heterosexual sex scene between Rex Matheson and Dr. Vera Juarez.  A video of the sequence is available here.

SciFi Weekend: San Diego Comic Con 2011

This week’s installment of SciFi Weekend was originally planned to be a compilation of news and clips from Comic Con, but there is too much material for a single post. In addition, there would continue to be new material after this was posted. Therefore I’m going to have a series of separate posts, and add links to the other posts on SDCC here. These will include panels on various shows, interviews, and preview clips for shows presented at Comic Con. This starts with a clip already posted on Friday:

Torchwood: Miracle Day Comic Con Preview

Game of Thrones Panel

Unaired Scene from Lost

Cast interviews from Doctor Who and the big news that Karen Gillan says she will be returning for Season 7

Merlin Renewed For Fifth Season

Doctor Who: The Second Half of Season 6

Doctor Who Panel (Post also includes link to the interview in which Karen Gillan stated she will be returning for Season 7.)

Matt Smith and Karen Gillan on Craig Ferguson

Video of Karen Gillan on Craig Ferguson

Torchwood: Miracle Day Comic Con News & Episode 3 Comments Videos include the Torchwood Panel Discussion and a link to the sex scene shown in the U.S. on Starz but cut on BBC.

Craig Ferguson Interviews The Doctor

Fringe (And Peter Bishop) At SDCC

Dexter at San Diego Comic Con

The Thursday Night Genre Comedies: Big Bang Theory & Community