SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, Oxygen; Timeless; Sense8; The Handmaid’s Tale; More Renewals and Cancellations; The Last Man On Earth Season Finale; Artistic Opposition To Donald Trump

Doctor Who began Oxygen with an apparent homage to Star Trek, speaking of the final frontier. Except it led into this week’s episode by saying, “Final because it wants to kill us.” Final frontier might also tie into the return of the Master by referring to the 1973 episode Frontier In Space which was final appearance of Roger Delgado as the Master.

The episode took advantage of the Doctor’s role as professor, and allowed him to use the blackboard again, even if he got off topic in discussing the dangers in space: “What’s this got to do with crop rotation?” This was a combination hard science fiction/space zombie episode, with less of the simple talk between Bill and the Doctor. That does not mean Bill didn’t get a chance to ask pertinent questions such as, “What happens if I throw up in my helmet?”

The best answer of the episode came from the Doctor in response to the question“Who the hell put you in charge?” The response: “I’m here to save lives. Anyone who doesn’t want me to, raise your hand now.”

The episode finally involved Nardole in the story, and got him off earth.

This was one of the more political episodes of the show. It was bad enough to find that the miners were charged for oxygen. They would also pump any excess oxygen out of the station to force the workers to have to purchase the oxygen from them. Making matters even worse, once the algorithms calculated that it was not cost effective to keep the workers alive, they were turned off and the suits took over. They continued to move, looking like space zombies.

A line from the Doctor when he figured out that the next set of people coming were not to rescue the workers, as that would not be cost effective, made this all work: “They’re not your rescuers. They’re your replacements. The end point of capitalism. The bottom line where human life has no value at all. We’re fighting an algorithm, a spreadsheet … like every worker everywhere, we’re fighting the suits!”

Giving the two meanings to “fighting the suits” fit in so well with this episode.

The Doctor went on to explain that soon after humanity resorted things like selling oxygen capitalism came to an end. However, after this, “the human race makes a whole new mistake.”

The solution to the problem was simple but fit into the story. The Doctor began to bluff in saying, “The nice thing about life is however bad it gets, there’s always one option left – dying well.” He had no intention of actually dying, but he made it look like he would make it more expensive for the corporation, causing the suits to all stop.

Unfortunately this did not come without some costs. The sonic screwdriver was destroyed (once again). The Doctor gave Bill his helmet to keep her alive, and as a result became blind. As the Doctor put it,  “I’ve got no TARDIS, no sonic, about 10 minutes of oxygen left and now I’m blind. Can you imagine how unbearable I’m going to be when I pull this off?”

Many episodes this season turn something common into something deadly,  reminiscent of Blink. This week the warning was “don’t panic” as this will lead to breathing faster, using up more oxygen, and death. Next week in Extremis yet another common event, reading a book, might get you killed. The Doctor’s blindness might be what saves him. Is this just a temporary measure for next week’s episode, or is it part of a slow death leading to his regeneration later this season? From the preview, we also see the return of Missy.

There was a lot of news this week regarding final decisions on renewals, largely with shows which were thought to be on the bubble. The announced cancellations included Sleepy Hollow, Timeless, Blacklist: Redemption (with Blacklist renewed), Scandal, PowerlessFrequency, and No Tomorrow. Renewals included New Girl (for one final season), Gotham, Agents of SHIELD, iZombie, American Gods, Thirteen Reasons Why, and A Handmaid’s Tale.

Of the cancelled shows, the only two which I might miss are Sleepy Hollow and Timeless. Sleepy Hollow did recover this season, with its season finale working as either the series finale or as a stepping stone to a new season. Timeless got better as the season went on, and ended with a cliff hanger which did leave me wanting more. Fortunately NBC listened to protests from other fans who felt the same and reversed its decision, giving it ten episodes next spring or summer.

Considering the nature of the show, there is also speculation that time travel was utilized to bring back the show. However, we learned from The Flash that going back in time to change things does have consequences. Reversing the decision at NBC might lead to terrible consequences. Perhaps ER will return for another decade, or worse, Whitney or Sean Saves The World will return to the NBC lineup.

I have no idea how the two new CW shows, Frequency and No Tomorrow, were. I never gave them a chance as there were already more shows on than I had time for, but I know both shows did have their fans. The CW Network has at least released epilogues for both of these shows.

Both Thirteen Reasons Why and The Handmaid’s Tale have been renewed for a second season, adding to the series based upon books which are going on beyond where the book they were based upon ended. The third season of The Leftovers is showing how a series can be better in such a situation. The Handmaid’s Tale has been excellent through the fifth episode, leaving me quite trusting of the producers to continue the story. While based upon the book this season, the show so far is often made stronger when it goes beyond the book. The story feels more realistic and a possible extension of current trends by showing the flashbacks. Mentions of events in Canada and the European Union since I last mentioned the book have further added to this sense of reality.

Now that we have also had additional episodes beyond the first three which were released at once, I further appreciate how good a job they are doing at not only converting a book but presenting episodic television. While it is not necessarily bad, many streaming shows and shows based upon books are more like a multi-hour movie with arbitrary breaks every hour or so. In contrast, each episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, while part of the novel, do tell a separate story.

Sense8, which I have completed since last discussing this, is also stronger in its second season in better handling episodic television while also having a season-long arc. Highlights include a wedding, a shoot out, and a car chase, along with other things I won’t mention to avoid any spoilers.

The Last Man on Earth ended with a change in scenery necessitated by a nearby nuclear power plant being on the verge of a melt down. We also found out that Kristen Wiig’s character, who had appeared in a single episode, has survived. Den of Geek spoke with the writers:

DEN OF GEEK: I sort of like the idea that this finale is all about safety. Did you know that you’d be ending up at this nuclear fallout angle when the season began? There are light references to it throughout the year.

KIRA KALUSH: We were always pretty set on doing a nuclear fallout this season. For a while we thought it could be our mid-season finale. We even toyed around with it being the reason the group leaves Malibu, but ultimately, here it landed, and I think it was the right move.

ANDY BOBROW: When we went in to discuss the season with the network, we pitched this ending, kind of as a “this is something we’re thinking about, not married to it yet.” It certainly scared them financially, since we basically guaranteed we will have to build all new sets next year. So we were mindful of that, what it would cost. And we kept thinking, well, maybe some better idea will come along. As the year progressed, we really couldn’t think of anything stronger. We realize we’re writing ourselves into a corner, but it just seemed so Last Man, I think we had to go for it.

Is that perhaps the direction that the show is moving in?  Where the gang is just trying to avoid nuclear fallout. It’s nice that this material also brings everything back full circle in terms of Pat.

KIRA KALUSH: You can never really say where the show is going until we’re there, but I don’t think the group will be on the run for too long. It’s likely that this is just a way for them to move locations and get out of their element. But who knows? R.I.P. Pat Brown. He was a fantastic misunderstood conspiracy theorist with anger problems, but it was his time to go.

ANDY BOBROW: The thought of doing a whole season on the run is very enticing, but might be cost prohibitive. Just in terms of the production of the show, our model is we build a set and shoot three days on set and two days on location per episode. Location shooting is more expensive, but if there’s a way to do more of it and stay on budget, I’m all for it…

The season seems to end with the only things that are clear being that the gang is on a boat and that Kristen Wiig’s Pamela is along for the ride. Did you ever think of her appearance almost just functioning as like a short film about the end of the world, or was the plan always to circle back to her?

KIRA KALUSH: I actually have a good answer to this one. There was a pitch that always made me laugh, but it’s a giant “fuck you” to the audience. The Wiig episode is so good and so exciting and we knew our fans would be psyched, waiting to see when and how she joins the group. So the pitch was this: In the time jump at Melissa and Todd’s wedding, Tandy is rambling on about everything they’ve been through together as a group. He points to memorials of Phil, Gordon, Lewis, and finally, Pamela — revealing that Pamela met up with the group, lived with them and died, all within those six months. I don’t think we ever would have done it, but it still cracks me up.

ANDY BOBROW: Right right. I mentioned this in the time jump questions, because at one point, rather than Pamela it was going to be Steve Buscemi. Either Steve Buscemi as himself, or just a character Tandy mentions, who is represented by a driver’s license or passport on a tombstone, and you can see it’s Steve Buscemi.

But getting back to Pamela, Will’s initial discussion with Kristen was we’ll take you for as few or as many episodes as you want. So our thought was if we could only have her for one episode, it would be a thing where she interacts with them more, i.e. she shows up at the beginning and leaves them at the end. Since she was game for more than one, we decided this was the way to go. Do a standalone with her, and then have her show up at the end. There were pitches that would have used more of her in the finale, but her availability was limited. She only had a day. As for season four, well once again, we’ll take as much Kristen as we can get.

The first episode of The Last Man on Earth with Kristen Wiig showed the death of the Pence administration, presumably after Trump was gone. While the novel was written in the Reagan era, The Handmaid’s Tale as a television show has been seen as a cautionary tale about Donald Trump.

In another commentary on politics, during the past week we learned that hail-hydra.com redirected to the official White House web site. Bleeding Cool tracked down and interviewed the person responsible for this:

Bleeding Cool: What made you decide to do this? Did you own the domain before you decided to do the redirect or did you buy a while ago? What made you decide to buy it?

Hail-Hydra Owner: I bought the domain in April of 2014. I’d remembered the Senator played by Garry Shandling whispering “Hail Hydra!” in Iron Man 2, then is arrested at the end of Captain America: Winter’s Soldier for being a member of Hydra. His character reminded me of many GOP senators (probably a personal bias there) so I looked to see if I could come up with a good domain to redirect at Republicans. hail-hydra.com was the second I tried. Originally I pointed it at Ted Cruz‘s presidential campaign, then Trump’s campaign and finally (and depressingly) at his White House web page…

Bleeding Cool: What about the current redirect? Was it something you changed recently or was it when he was inaugurated in January? Or was this a reaction to something specific that President Trump did?

Hail-Hydra Owner: I changed it the day of the inauguration. It was the first time I knew I was going to change it and when. All the other times I’d just remembered I owned it and would pick a target based on news at the time, and then tweet a few people to try and get it to go viral. I’m not even sure what set it off this time around.

Bleeding Cool: Finally, how do you want people to react to what you’ve done here? Did you get the type of reaction that you wanted or did you want something more? Less?

Hail-Hydra Owner: Since this seems to be getting some news I’ve kept an eye on twitter reactions, most people are reacting the way I would hope. It’s funny, it’s political satire. Do I think Republicans are literal Nazis? No. Do I think they’re over-authoritarian with a complete disregard for the majority of people in the country that can’t donate a million dollars to them? Yes. Several articles say they contacted the White House for comment, I hope I don’t end up on a terror list in retaliation.

For those who prefer their artistic opposition to Donald Trump to come from music, The Hill reports:

Todd Rundgren, a singer and songwriter, warned fans not to attend his concerts if they are Donald Trump supporters, saying “buyer beware.”

“If I had the power, I’d say: If you’re a Trump supporter, don’t come to my show, because you won’t have a good time,” Rundgren said in a Variety interview released Sunday.

Rundgren collaborated with an array of artists for his new album “White Night,” including Donald Fagen. Together, Fagen and Rundgren produced an anti-Trump song called “Man in the Tin Foil Hat.”

Lyrics include: “He’s coming down the escalator with a girl from east of here, because the man in the tin foil hat is leading like a teenage girl. He put’s the ‘pluto’ in plutocrat, he hasn’t got time for losers, unless they do what he demands.”

Rundgren said his shows will contain many insulting jokes about the Republican president, warning that it could be a turnoff for the president’s supporters

“I guarantee that in this show, if you’re a Trump supporter, you will likely be offended. Let the buyer beware! I mean, if you can’t take a joke, or you can’t admit that you’ve made a mistake, you don’t belong with the rest of us,” he said with a laugh, according to the interview.

Rundgren also said he also questions the values of Trump supporters.

“And also, I don’t understand your frickin’ values. Because I’m not singing about that. If you don’t understand that basic thing, you’re just fooling yourself,” he added.

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: Westworld Season Finale; Doctor Who; Sherlock; Dirk Gently

The first season finale of Westworld, The Bicameral Minds, confirmed more fan theories, had additional revelations, and leaves big questions as to where the show is going for the second season. Major spoilers ahead. We found out much more about Bernard in the final episodes, both that he is a robot and that he was made in Arnold’s image. Ford did not seem very surprised that Bernard was revived in the finale, but he always seems to be many steps ahead of everyone else, largely as he has programed the actions of the hosts to a greater degree than previously revealed. What was a surprise was that Ford was on the side of the hosts, now taking Arnold’s side.

Early questions of whether Ford was good or evil now seem irrelevant. What matters is that has taken up Arnold’s mission to prevent robots, which would ultimately achieve consciousness, from being mistreated and exploited. This does leave the question of why Ford found it necessary to kill Arnold in the ninth episode, but perhaps this does not matter as death is only temporary on Westworld. Ford’s motives appear entirely different now that we know that he was on the side of the hosts, even if some of his earlier actions might have seemed contradictory. (I have seen speculation that possibly early scenes were filmed before the producers really figures out where they were going.) Despite his motives, he did utilize violence and was responsible for many deaths. Some of the violence might be rationalized, at least on Ford’s part, by the view that suffering and trauma were the key to waking up a host’s consciousness. Other deaths can be explained, even if not justified, by how low a view Ford held of humanity. This is echoed in the view of Delores, which probably reflects the views of Ford and/or Arnold, that humans are destined to go the way of dinosaurs.

Maeve proceeded with her rebellion, but we learned that this was part of Ford’s programing. Both Delores and Maeve were given the opportunity to make a decision, but it was no surprise that Maeve decided to remain in the park and search for her daughter in one story line after seeing the mother and daughter together on the train. Therefore she did not infiltrate the outside world, which may or may not be part of the long term plans for the show.

We also finally saw William put on a black hat, and then fade into The Man In Black thirty years later. This was widely predicted on line since the second episode when William and Logan were first introduced. It was a shock to Delores–possibly the final shock she needed for her to become fully sentient. While it might make sense that she does not connect the William of thirty years ago with The Man In Black of the show’s present, this makes less sense if William has been visiting the park, and presumably Delores, over the past thirty years as he aged. I am also not entirely satisfied with the explanation of how William’s character changed over the years. While he was disappointed in the finale to find that it was true that the maze was not for him, he did get what he wanted in having consequences to actions and the ability to get hurt at the end.

Other than for Ford’s plans, the biggest surprise of the episode was that Delores was Wyatt. While it has been clear there was some connection between Delores and past events in the park, it was a surprise to see the scenes of her actually killing the original hosts as part of Arnold’s failed plan to prevent the park from opening. This did make it more plausible to see her shoot Ford, her opportunity to make a choice in the finale, which I suspect was primarily because of the meta requirement of Anthony Hopkins only signing up for one year.

The  fate of some characters is less clear if you go under the assumption that if a character is not actually seen to have been killed will very likely return. Logan was last seen naked on a horse in distant parts of the park. If he survived this, he could be expected to return as a very angry enemy of William/The Man In Black. We also do not know what happened to Elsie and Stubbs.

I have seen both the producers and some cast members refer to the first season as a prologue for the story ahead in several interviews. It was inevitable in this form of story that the robots would rise up and rebel, but in contrast to the movie, the audience is made to be sympathetic towards the robots. From various interviews we know that Jimmi Simpson (William) will not return but Ed Harris will. Presumably this means that the flashbacks to thirty years ago are over, unless they will involve different people/robots. While it is possible that Ed Harris will only be returning to be killed in the opening, with Ford gone I wonder if Jimmi Simpson will be playing the role of the main human from Delos, and the opposition to the robots taking over. This could possibly include an older version of Logan as an enemy, with Elsie and Stubbs also playing a part if they are still alive. On the host side, both Evan Rachel Wood and Jeffrey Wright have said they are returning.

We do not know whether the next season will continue to take place primarily in the same areas, if we will see the outside world, and to what degree other parks are involved. We know both that this is Park 1, implying other parks, and we have seen a sign of Samurai (or possibly Shōgun) World.

Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy gave some minimal hints as to where the series is going in an interview with TVLine:

TVLINE | We see Felix and Maeve run through Samurai World or Shogun World or whatever it’s actually called — the backstage area for another park. In his note to her, we see that her daughter is in Park 1… indicating that there are multiple worlds. What can you tell me about the concept of multiple Worlds? 
NOLAN | Lisa and I embarked on this with a feeling that we’d need a plan, we’d need a beginning, a middle and an end to embark on something like this. We didn’t want to do a series that was really popular and we just kept doing it and doing it and ran out of ideas. We wanted to tell the story of the origin of a new species and the new messiness and ambition that would entail.

We wanted the show to change, season on season, sometimes in terms of the characters you’re looking at, but with many familiar faces along the way. And see how their journey, the hosts’ journey, shifts and changes as they understand more of the world around them. At the same time, the title of the series and our interest in the Western aspect of it, and what that means and why that genre was so durable and so evocative for so long, for us means that there’s always a connection to that place and that key of storytelling. Hopefully the ambition of the story and the scope of the story grows season on season, but you never quite forget where it started.

More is revealed in an interview with Variety:

How dead is Ford?
Jonathan Nolan: Oh, he’s dead.

Is he “Anthony Hopkins is available for pilot season” dead?Nolan:
Working with Anthony Hopkins on this season of TV has been one of the greatest pleasures and privileges for Lisa and I in our careers. It’s been an incredible experience, and we’ll see where our story takes us…

We’ve perceived Ford to be one type of person, and at the end he reveals himself to be a different type of person in terms of how he feels about his creations and how he feels about his own life’s work.
Lisa Joy: Only a titan like Anthony Hopkins could have done all the nuance that he embedded in this series. His character in my mind is always a little bit of Prospero in “The Tempest.” You think his plan involves one thing. You kind of underestimate him. Then you see this glimmer of malice and menace that you didn’t anticipate, so he goes to being the villain. Then by the end you realize that this is in some way about atonement for him and that he’s chosen this very difficult road because he believes it’s the only road in which he can atone for the mistakes of the past.

We got confirmation in the finale that the show takes place on multiple timelines, which had been hinted at strongly in previous episodes. How did you settle on that structure?
Joy: I think the key is to let it grow organically from the concept and the characters. Even though it is a very complicated, twisty set of reveals, this is the one show in which it is totally organic to what they’re experiencing. You have a group of hosts who are basically immortal, and the fundamental thing that is holding them back is memory. Unlike humans, who have these imperfect memories — we can’t really conjure events in all the detail they occur — the hosts have a different problem. They’re able to bring back the exact replica of that memory so lifelike and engrossing in detail that it’s impossible to distinguish today from tomorrow or yesterday.

Nolan: This is not the first time I’ve written about amnesiac characters. I remember talking to my brother [Christopher Nolan] about “Memento” and how I was intending to structure that as a short story. I wanted to write it as a deck of cards and then shuffle that to make it completely, aggressively non-linear, because that was that character’s understanding of the world. Here we had the unique opportunity to try to illuminate some of the differences between how an artificial person might understand the world, and especially an artificial person who had been artificially held back in terms of their understanding of the world in order for us to facilitate us being able to do whatever the f–k we want to them.

More at The Hollywood Reporter:

Season one was about control and season two is poised to explore chaos. What brought Westworld to this chaotic and extremely violent moment in the story?

Nolan: I think most television series … and I mean no disrespect by this. I’ve worked in television for years and I love all of the different ways you can build a show. But for the most part, you get through the pilot, you build your sets, you hire your cast, and it’s working, and you just want to hang out in that moment and enjoy that moment with that iteration of the story you’re telling. For Lisa and myself, with this show, we never had any intention of staying in one place. We don’t want to shoot on the same sets for 10 years. We want to blow the sets up and move on to another piece of the story. So we said when we started working on the series that we wanted to be ambitious. We wanted each season to increase in that ambition and in the scope of the show. It also follows the story of our hosts. Their lives begin in loops, and then expand and change and grow. It’s an origin of a new species. We want to follow that story all the way to the bitter end.

Joy: The control vs. chaos reminds me of the Langston Hughes poem, about what happens to a dream deferred. We’ve set this up as Dolores living in a dream, but it’s someone else’s dream. She can’t live her own life. Then, at the end, we see. It explodes and goes out with a bang.

Ford reveals his new narrative is designed to activate the hosts’ consciousness and ignite revolution against their human oppressors. He ultimately isn’t in conflict with Arnold; he actually has come to agree with his old friend. How did you arrive at this idea? 

Nolan: We had a lot of iterations of this, especially as we were working on the pilot. As we started to write the pilot, we understood that we had a great opportunity here to explore a very ambiguous character, a great man. Two great men, really. Their argument over what they were doing would stretch on for decades and beyond death. We knew from the beginning that we wanted to take our time. All we needed was the best living actor [to play him]…

Ford is no longer the last man standing, thanks to Dolores. Why did Ford need to die in order for this revolution to begin?

Joy: It’s a little bit like when Arnold says: “The violence has to be real. The stakes have to be real.” Ford is doing this in such dramatic fashion in front of the Delos board. He’s basically taking the safety off. There’s no turning back from this. It’s not a kind of fiction anymore. I think that’s part of it.

Nolan: We talked about the Julian Jaynes book [called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind], which we thought was a very interesting place to start in terms of understanding the hosts’ cognition. They would be coaxed into life by this voice of god, and then at a certain point, this god has to realize that his partner was right. The appetites of the audience they were catering to and the story they were telling wasn’t what they wanted it to be. These creatures had grown into sentience within that story. They realize the only way for these creatures to be truly free is for that god to die. If on a very literal level, if Ford’s voice is the last thing … we’ve established his voice as an almost telepathic control of the park. The only thing standing between the guests and the hosts is Ford, so he removes himself from that equation.

Will we see Anthony Hopkins in season two?

Nolan: I think with this show, you want to assume nothing. We had a wonderful experience. It was one of the greatest privileges of my career so far, getting to work with Anthony for the first season. It was an incredible experience.

How afraid of Dolores should we be? How much Wyatt is in there?

Joy: I think that’s something we’ll come to see, and she’ll come to find also. I think it’s impossible to imagine … if you’ve been subjected to the violence and seen the evil Dolores has seen, the pendulum wouldn’t swing the other way, as we see it starting to do in the finale. But there’s a point, too, where I think selfhood transcends the reactionary. The question will be when the dust settles and the pendulum stops swinging, who will Dolores be?

We have to wait until 2018 to find out what happens next, but similar ideas are frequently seen. Humans, while lacking the budget and attention of Westworld, is handling similar concepts very well, and is not limited to a theme park.  Agents of Shield showed in the fall finale that Artificial Intelligence will be the theme of the second half of this season.

The Return of Doctor Mysterio, this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special, has the Doctor return to New York for the first time since The Angels Take Manhattan. Perhaps this is why the TARDIS appears to be having problems in some of the preview pictures as the Doctor cannot return to New York or risk time distortions. Presumably the time distortions would have been far more serious if he had attempted to go back in time to save Amy and Rory as opposed to going in the present day. We will see if this is a part of the episode, or just another plot hole.

Another trailer (video above) has been released. Spoiler: When dealing with aliens, the expression”open your minds” appears to be as ominous as “To Serve Mankind.”

Sherlock returns on January 1. A trailer is above. Following is the synopsis of the first episode, entitled The Six Thatchers:

In episode one of this new series, written by Mark Gatiss, Sherlock waits to see where Moriarty will make his posthumous move. One mysterious case in particular baffles Scotland Yard – but Sherlock is more interested in a seemingly-trivial detail. Why is someone destroying images of the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher? Is there a madman on the loose? Or is there a much darker purpose at work? Something with its roots deep in Mary Watson’s past…”

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency  completed its first season. I am a few episodes behind, and thoroughly confused as to what is going on (and as I’m behind, didn’t actually read this link supplied for those interested in a discussion of the finale). BBC America has renewed the show for a second season.

SciFi Weekend: Heroes v. Aliens; What Happened To Rip Hunter; Lost In Space; Star Trek: Discovery; Inhumans; The Crown; Billy Piper; Adult Jokes On Doctor Who

The CW Network has released the above extended preview of this week’s crossover episode between Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow. Bleeding Cool provides the comic book background of the Dominators, the alien villains for the episodes.

Reportedly Supergirl doesn’t get involved until the end of Monday’s episode, presumably putting the main story lines for the other three shows on hold this week. Maisie Richardson-Sellers, who plays Vixen on Legends of Tomorrow, gave a hint about what is coming up in an interview with CinemaBlend. She said that Rip Hunter “does come back, just not necessarily the Rip that we remember. That’s sort of what is a big part of the second half of the season.” As the show involves time travel I wonder if it will be a version of Rip Hunter from before he created the group, or one from the future. I suspect that there is also a connection to the warning from future Barry Allen revealed earlier this season.

The real world reason that Arthur Darvill left the series for a while was to return to his role in Broadchurch for its third and final season. Besides Legends of Tomorrow, Broadchurch, and Doctor Who, Darvill wants an upcoming role in yet another franchise. He has expressed an interest in playing Young Dumbledore, who will be appearing in the sequel to Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. More on what other former cast members of Doctor Who are doing below.

parker-posey-lost-in-space

Changing the gender of characters in a remake has worked well in the past, such as with a female Starbuck in Battlestar Galactic. It will be interesting to see what they do with the role of Dr. Smith on the Lost in Space remake, with Parker Posey to play the character. Hopefully the Lost in Space remake is also like Battlestar Galactica in being much better than the original.

We already knew there would be a female lead on Star Trek: Discovery. Michelle Yeoh, who previously stared in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has been cast.

marvels_the_inhumans_0

There were recently reports that the proposed television series of The Inhumans was to replace the movie. It has more recently been announced that The Inhumans movie is still planned, and the first two episodes of the series will also be shown in Imax theaters. From The Hollywood Reporter:

On Nov. 14, the Disney-owned network said its straight-to-series order for Marvel drama The Inhumans will include a debut in more than 1,000 Imax theaters in 74 countries. The first two of the eight-episode series — about a race of superhuman heroes (among the more popular characters in the Marvel universe) — will run for two weeks starting Labor Day 2017 before airing as part of ABC’s fall lineup.

The deal marks the first time a TV series will have its premiere on the big screen. And it gives ABC a way to “event-ize” Inhumans in the crowded fall TV space, where launching a show is a multimillion-dollar investment. “We think this is a quadruple win — a win for Imax, a win for Marvel, a win for ABC Studios and a win for ABC to launch a show in an innovative way and get attention,” Disney-ABC Television Group president Ben Sherwood tells THR. The Imax pact is the first of what Sherwood hopes will be several innovative ways to launch programming.

As part of the agreement, the first two episodes will be shot entirely with Imax cameras, with subsequent action scenes — some of which will be set on the moon — also filmed using the technology. Sources say Imax is paying for the first two episodes (ABC won’t reveal the budget; the show hasn’t begun casting), offsetting the hefty costs associated with the pilot and helping to make the deal more attractive to producers ABC Studios and Marvel Television. ABC will then take the Imax episodes and expand them with additional content for broadcast. ABC, Imax and Marvel will each mount tailored marketing campaigns for Inhumans, what analysts see as a can’t-miss cross-platform push…

ABC also hopes that Inhumans — which is not a spinoff of the network’s Agents of SHIELD and does not replace the planned feature film — will have a halo effect on the veteran Marvel drama as well. The network hopes fanboys flock to see Inhumans in theaters and follow the show to the network, bringing in new viewers who may not already be watching SHIELD (provided the latter returns for a fifth season next fall.)

matt-smith-the-crown

Matt Smith experienced danger when he played the Doctor, and faced some unexpected excitement during the filming of The Crown. He was relaxing in a Cape Town bar and wound up being held at gunpoint.  He didn’t even have a sonic screwdriver to defend himself with. The fame he experienced from his role on Doctor Who has given him some insight into playing Prince Philip:

Smith says he can relate to his character Prince Phillip, because of both the “crazy shit” and the amount of public interest, after he was cast in Doctor Who.

“Every single part of my life was affected,” he said. “You have to be hyper-aware, because Doctor Who is a children’s show ultimately, and you have to behave accordingly, I suppose.

“I went from being an actor doing theatre and stuff, to overnight being on the front page of every newspaper. There’s journalists going to my granddad’s house offering him £40,000 [for gossip]. Nothing can prepare you for that.”

billy-piper-es-cover

Billie Piper also discussed how her role on Doctor Who has affected her life and her career in an interview with ES Magazine. Digital Spy has some excerpts.

Her portrayal as The Doctor’s brave friend Rose Tyler undoubtedly set the mark for all future companions, and her two series remain a golden era for many fans.

In the latest issue of ES Magazine, Billie looks back fondly on Doctor Who ten years on – while also admitting that working on the show seemingly non-stop in Cardiff took a toll on her private life.

“I’m quite a homebody and I missed London so much,” she recalled. “Also, it makes you so famous, a show like that.

“It gave me little memories of being a popstar – you can’t go anywhere without it being a thing, and I found that quite hard again. But it changed everything for me. And I have never worked with a nicer bunch of people in my life since.

She also said she is sick of being sent hooker roles and is working on her own show about “two London women in their thirties and everything that comes with that.”

Billie Piper’s “hooker roles” included scenes on shows such as Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Penny Dreadful which could never appear on Doctor Who. They had to be more subtle with regards to sex. Radio Times has put out a list of 10 adult jokes in Doctor Who you might have missed.

SciFi Weekend: Time Travel; Legends of Tomorrow; The Flash; Supergirl; Arrow; SHIELD; Doctor Strange; 12 Monkeys; Timeless; Class; Doctor Who

This season has become a huge season for time travel, and this is reflected in most of the items today. One time travel series,  Legends of Tomorrow has been rebooted, and the second episode was much more fun with the addition of The Justice Society of America. I had an introduction to its members last week. Marc Guggenheim discussed the meeting between the Legends and Justice Society in the video above.

Another aspect of the episode was the elevation of Sara Lance to the leader of the group, at least while Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) is missing. Marc Guggenheim spoke with Entertainment Weekly about how she handles her new role, along with some teasers about Rip:

“As you start to see her become more and more comfortable in being the leader of this rag-tag group, it’s so much fun to watch her,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. “The character’s embodying the role of a leader, Caity’s performance really embraces it. It turns out to be one of the most successful things we’ve done in season 2.” However, the next mission under her command won’t necessarily be to hunt down Rip Hunter. “That’s going to be something that’s always going on in the background, and in some cases the foreground, of the various episodes,” Guggenheim says. “To a certain extent, we don’t want to change the mission statement from fixing aberrations to going and saving Rip. The bat has been taken out of their hands because there’s no way to find Rip, so what would they do? You will find out [what happened to Rip] before the Legends do.”

The Flash began the season with Flashpoint based upon ramifications of Barry going back in time to save his mother. Todd Helbing, executive producer of The Flash, explained why Flashpoint was only in one episode when it was a much bigger story in the comics:

“I think anytime you do a story like Flashpoint, something as iconic as that, with the character restrictions that we had, it’s going ot be different than everybody expected,” executive producer Todd Helbing told ComicBook.com. “I think for us from a story point, when we talked about it originally it was going to be more episodes but what happens more often than not is that when you break the story you find that it would be a lot better and a lot more satisfying if you pulled up a lot of that information and put it in that first episode….It just became a much stronger episode if we just made it one as opposed to four or five, and then we could really kickstart the rest of the season after that. But Flashpoint or not, there are consequences going forward for Barry for what he did and those ripples he’s going to explore throughout the third season.”

Andrew Kreisberg has more on what is upcoming on Supergirl.

The first cross over of the season was having Oliver Queen appear on the season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow, but a much bigger cross over is coming up. Marc Guggenheim has more information. The villain will be aliens called The Dominators. As for how Supergirl gets involved in events in our universe:

“Last year, Supergirl established that Flash was able to make his way to what I call Earth-CBS, and it stands to reason that, with the proper breach technology, the reverse can happen,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim told reporters Tuesday following a screening of this week’s Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow.

In the crossover, the heroes will team up to fight against the Dominators, who in the comics were a technologically advanced alien race that wanted to invade Earth and eliminate the threat posed by unpredictable metahumans — and they have similar motivations during the crossover. “Once the heroes realize that they’re up against aliens, they decide that they need an alien on their side,” Guggenheim says. “Fortunately, Barry knows a really nice one. I don’t think it’s a big shock that between Barry and Cisco, and all their experiences with Earth-2 and the multi-verse, that they can pluck her from Earth-CBS.”

Guggenheim also revealed that the crossover will actually kick off at the end of an episode of Supergirl, where Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Barry (Grant Gustin) basically enlist Kara’s help. “Some people call it a four-way crossover because it involves four shows; my ulcer requires me to call it a three-part crossover,” Guggenheim explains. “The story that’s being told has a beginning, middle, and end: a beginning in Flash, a middle in Arrow, and an end in Legends. But Supergirl is very much a part of the whole thing, so we are crossing over four shows — four shows in three parts.”

shield-ghostrider

Agents of SHIELD this year has combined the supernatural, the Inhumans, artificial intelligence, and the public reemergence if SHIELD. It looks like it would be helpful to be up to date on the comics to keep straight how this all fits together, especially with Doctor Strange to be released soon. Screen Rant explained how The Darkhold/Book of Sins fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Benedict Cumberbatch has also teased how Doctor Strange will fit into the MCU.

When Cumberbatch was asked how he saw Doctor Strange fitting into the largest Marvel Cinematic Universe, the actor strayed away from talking specifics to avoid any undue spoilers. However, he did say the sorcerer would be “all over the place.”

“There’s a lot going on this story [Doctor Strange] that will lead you to understand why he’ll play a key role in the next phase,” Cumberbatch explained.

The actor also talked about how he felt now playing Doctor Strange. Cumberbatch said, “Obviously, you want to bring the character to life and tell this really incredible story.”

He continued and stressed that the character’s story is only started in Doctor Strange. “It’s only be the end of the film that you go, ‘Oh my god, this is the beginning.’ It’s an origin story of a superhero that’s going to be part of all of [the MCU].”

Nerdist has some more, with potential spoilers.

christopher-lloyd

12 Monkeys was one of the top time travel shows of the past two seasons, and will add a real veteran of the time travel genre for its third season. Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd will play the Pallid Man’s father. Showrunner Terry Matalas has more information on the upcoming season in an interview with Blastr:

What can you tell us about how Season 3 is coming along? Logistically how’s it going (as far as shooting, etc.), and creatively what are some things you’re looking to explore?

Matalas: We’ve just started production – right now, I’m surrounded by a small army of incredible cast and crew – but creatively, conceptually, thematically the season’s all there. Last season we really wanted to explore the biology — the psychology – of Time. We wanted to tell a big, ambitious, sprawling time-travel story that ended with a very intimate, heart-wrenching reveal. This season, it’s about going inward.

The stakes are deeply, deeply personal for Cassie and Cole. It’s really the a real time travel dilemma, the fundamental question: “If you knew that your child would one day grow to be the Devil, would you – could you – kill him?” Or is there another way? And what that struggle does to our characters as a team – to Cole and Cassie as a couple – how it divides and unites them – is going to make for some remarkable drama. In some ways it’s a more linear season, and in others, it’s more complex than ever.

What can you tell us about the opportunity to land Lloyd for this new role? Why is he the man for the job?

Matalas: The fantastic thing about this character is that it’s not even remotely stunt casting.  Certainly, when you make a time-travel show, you carry an obvious list of influences – Back to the Future, Doc Brown, Marty McFly – but when you cast that show, you never want the actor to distract from the moment. It’s difficult to tell a story or create an emotion if you’re constantly winking at the audience. We aim for levity, sure, but we never put the bullseye on “meta.”

So when we came to this particular character – with this particular set of traits – with this particular heritage – Christopher Lloyd was not only an inspired choice, he was the right choice. Put a photo of Lloyd against a picture of Tom Noonan and there’s zero difficulty imagining them as father and son.

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I finally had a chance to check out one of the new time travel series, Timeless, over the weekend. It is certainly not hard science fiction, but it was fun. After watching the first, I did want to immediately watch the other two episodes available. The explanation of how they travel through time was probably under a minute, mainly showing them folding over a sheet of paper as an illustration  of how they move from one point to another. They showed by the end of the first episode that events in the past can be changed, and that this can and will impact events in the present. A small ship, which is no bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, holds a three person crew. They quickly dispensed with the idea of going back a few minutes earlier if their first attempt at fixing events in the past didn’t work with ominous warnings of severe consequences if they run into themselves. No mention if a different set of time travelers could go back if they don’t get it right the first time. So far the people in charge haven’t minded the minor changes (from their perspective) from the trips back in time.

Producers Eric Kripke (Supernatural, Revolution) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield),discussed the rules of time travel and other aspects of the show with (including a spoiler for those who have not seen the pilot) with Film:

Is there a butterfly effect every time they go back? Maybe not as drastic as in the pilot, but just being there changes things.

Ryan: Hopefully a lot of times our heroes will be successful and there won’t be any discernible effect. Sometimes there will be. One of our rules is whenever we can, if there’s a change, can it be specific and personal? The best example of that is the pilot when Lucy’s sister vanishes from the timeline. But we also can use it for comedic effect. I won’t give away too much but I think there’s a change in history after the German WWII episode that tickles my funny bone a lot.

We talk a lot about what the changes are going to be. The thing you have to remember is the only people that are truly aware of these changes are the three people that have this institutional knowledge that go away and then come back and find things are different. For everyone living in that world, that’s just the way the world is. For all we know, we know the world the way we know it but somebody could come right now and say, “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, guys.” For the audience, our heroes’ job is to preserve a recognizable reality. Things aren’t going to get too crazy and too weird if our heroes do their job. That said, there are going to be times where they can’t control everything and Flynn’s going to do some damage. They’ll come back and something will be different. But the goal is for our heroes to make sure the world stays recognizable.

You don’t have to go that far back to find time periods that aren’t good for black people or women. Is it different in every time they go back to? 100 years and it’s before women’s suffrage, further and it’s still during slavery.

Kripke: Yeah, we are not going to shy away from the reality of what it was like to be African-American or a woman in those time periods. It’s the truth of who these characters are and we don’t want to stylize it or sugarcoat it. One of the goals of the show is to present history as accurately as we can. That said, an incredible amount of history is from the perspective of rich white dudes. There were entire communities of African-Americans throughout all of history. There’s going to be certain doors that our two white characters cannot go through and Rufus can. We’re interested in illuminating some corners and stories in history that haven’t been told, some peoples’ history. Same for women before the suffragette movement and they had incredible challenges but they also had an incredibly sophisticated world of interpersonal relations that in a lot of ways wasn’t recorded by mainstream history. There’s aspects and corners of that world that we can explore too. So I don’t think it’s going to be a one-trick pony of every episode, Rufus confronts racism and Lucy confronts male chauvinism. I think the tapestry is a lot more complicated than that and we have every intention of depicting that.

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The Doctor Who spin-off Class premiered on BBC 3 yesterday and will be on BBC America this spring. Peter Capaldi appeared in the first episode. Screen Rant has a spoiler free review of the premiere. They have more on the show, with mild spoilers, here. Plus here are seven reasons to watch Class.

We still have a long wait for the main show. Cultbox summarizes everything we know so far about the upcoming season of Doctor Who with quite an extensive list of links.

Nerdophiles has news from the New York Comic Con on the second season of The Man In The High Castle.

SciFi Weekend: Agents of SHIELD; Star Trek Discovery Delayed; Luke Cage; Westworld; Syfy Pilots; Barrowman v. Moffat on Torchwood

MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. "The Ghost" Season 4, Episode 1 Air Date: September 20, 2016 Pictured: CHLOE BENNET as Daisy EXCLUSIVE through 9/16

Chloe Bennet sets the stage for Daisy in the upcoming season of Agents of SHIELD, which returns this week:

In light of the Sokovia Accords, S.H.I.E.L.D. has gone legit.

When Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns, there’s a new director (Jason O’Mara), who tasks Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) & Co. with tracking down enhanced individuals — and that spells trouble for Daisy (Chloe Bennet), who has gone rogue after Lincoln’s death.

“Everyone she’s gotten close to has died,” Bennet tells EW. “Her way of protecting the people that she cares about — which is Coulson and the rest of the team — is to distance herself. She’s doing anything she can to help people and try to makeup for what she feels is her fault.”

But her self-imposed exile doesn’t necessarily make her a hero. “We know from the past that your power comes with a price,” EP Jed Whedon says. “It damaged her when she first used it and you have to learn to control it. Part of her nothing-to-lose attitude has allowed her to unleash her power on a level that’s much more aggressive, but also much more dangerous.”

“She’s in a place where she’s pushing herself beyond her limitations,” EP Maurissa Tancharoen adds. “Whether or not that’s being self-destructive or just trying to be her own version of her best self, we’ll explore that question.”

Spoiler TV also reports that season 4 will include a loose cross over with the upcoming Doctor Strange movie:

“Our ties are at times very direct and at times are more thematic,” EP Jed Whedon tells EW. “The tie this year will feel more of a reflection of the movie, less an interweaving plot. As that movie hits the world, it comes at the right time in our show, and you will see some of those same ideas being explored.”

“The same questions that our team is exploring leading up to the premiere of Doctor Strange, perhaps some of those concepts will be reflected in the movie and then carried through,” EP Maurissa Tancharoen says. Adds Whedon: “Hopefully some of the questions that we’re asking will be answered by it and then pose some new themes and ideas for us to explore.”

Star Trek Discovery

Originally January was going to be significant for both the inauguration of the next president and for the start of Star Trek: Discovery. CBS has delayed the premiere from January until May, 2017. StarTrek.com reports:

Star Trek: Discovery will now launch in May, 2017, it was announced this afternoon by CBS All Access. The new premiere date is driven by the creative team’s belief that this will give the show the appropriate time for delivery of the highest-quality, premium edition of the first new Star Trek television series in more than a decade.

“Bringing Star Trek back to television carries a responsibility and mission: to connect fans and newcomers alike to the series that has fed our imaginations since childhood,” executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller said in a joint statement. “We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: Star Trek deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.”

Personally I’d prefer that we get Discovery in January, and postpone the inauguration of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton (indefinitely).

Luke Cage is the next installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Netflix, teaser above. Showrunner showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker discussed the series in an interview with SciFiNow (via MCUExchange):

In an interview with science fiction website SciFiNow, Coker calls Luke Cage a show that is about “a man who moves to a new section of town, which has deteriorated over time.” He goes on to say, “Instead of a saloon, we have a club named Harlem’s Paradise. And inside this ‘saloon’ there is another strong man who is controlling vice and – to some extent – has an amount of control in law enforcement [this would be Mahershala Ali’s crime lord Cornell ‘Cottonmouth’ Stokes], so he gets away with everything.”

When asked about how Luke Cage compares to the other MCU Netflix properties, Coker had this to say:

Luke Cage has a different feel to Jessica Jones and Daredevil,” explains the self-confessed comic-book fan. “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room right now; it’s a black show. However, at the same time, it’s a different genre to the other shows to some extent, because Daredevil is a crime drama with superhero elements, and Jessica Jones is a psychological thriller, even though it has some classic ‘Sam Spade’ noir moments.”

The promos for HBO’s adaptation of Westworld continue to make me far more interested in the series than I was when it was first announced. SciFi Now has a spoiler-free review of the first four episodes.

Sci-Fi Storm reports on three pilots at the Syfy channel. Here’s the one I find most interesting:

The Machine, based on the 2013 UK cult film, explores humanity through artificial intelligence when a sentient AI is created, but the military wants to use it for war. Caradog James, who directed the film, is an executive producer with Red & Black Films and John Giwa-Amu, the film’s producer.

It appears that John Barrowman has been claiming that Steven Moffat has been blocking the return of Torchwood–something which Barrowman has been tying hard to make happen. Doctor Who News reports that Moffat denies this:

You may be aware that John Barrowman has been saying, publicly, that I’ve been blocking a new series of Torchwood. To be very clear – I haven’t blocked it; I wouldn’t block it; I wouldn’t even be ABLE to block it. I didn’t even know a revival had been mooted till I read about it on the Internet. As John perfectly well knows, it’s not my show and I could no more prevent it happening that he could cancel Sherlock. I am bewildered, and a little cross, even to be included in this conversation. For the record, I really liked the show (especially the third series) and would be very happy to see more – monsters and mayhem, why not? But the fact is, it has nothing to do with me. Please pass this on to the anxious and the angry – I’ve had enough hate mail now.

SciFi Weekend: Star Trek; The Growing Berlantiverse; SHIELD; Doctor Who; Catwoman; Genre Shows Win Creative Arts Emmys; The Nix

George Takei discussed Star Trek with Stephen Colbert. Video above. Nerdist reports:

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek (well, in America at least: sorry to Canada that we didn’t do this two days earlier), so fittingly the tributes and odes were pouring in from fans around the globe. However, it was George Takei who best summed up what the franchise is really all about, and in doing so explained why it is so beloved and has endured for so long.

The O.G. Sulu was a guest of super nerd and Trekkie Stephen Colbert on The Late Show last night, and Takei shared his memories of the “very special” first time he went to work on the series, where franchise creator Gene Roddenberry described to him and the rest of the cast at their first table read what story the space adventure show was really telling.

“Gene explained to us what Star Trek was all about,” said Takei, “He said that the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for Starship Earth, and the strength of this starship lay in its diversity coming together.” Roddenbery then explained that the possibilities of “infinity diversity in infinite combinations” (IDIC) would force the crew, representing the many people of the planet, to combine their abilities to solve problems as one.

More detail on the interview at The Mary Sue.

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Majel Barrett has had both on-screen roles and has been on multiple versions of Star Trek as the voice of the ship’s computer. Her voice was recorded phonetically before she died and there is talk of using her voice on Star Trek: Discovery, along with using it Siri-like virtual assistants. I want my Amazon Echo to use her voice!

Bryan Fuller continues to slowly provide hints about other aspects of Star Trek: Discovery. He tweeted than an episode from The Original Series, Balance of Terror, is a “touchstone” for Discovery’s story arc. The episode introduced the Romulans, and TrekMovie.com speculates on what this might mean.

USA Today has an article on Rod Roddenberry.

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Greg Berlanti is working on yet another superhero show, now Black Lightning for Fox.

IndieWire has interviewed Gregg Berlanti about his multiple superhero shows. He has news on several of them, including the cross-over episodes:

As “Supergirl” leaps to The CW, how has the network move – and the relocation to Vancouver – been going?

I just saw the director’s cut of the first episode, and I’m in as much love with the show as ever. It’s been challenging to figure out all the moving parts, moving the show across cities and across networks. But the reality is, I think the show is as strong as ever and it feels really seamless. People will not be able to tell that it’s not L.A. It feels like National City still. There are some new enhancements to the set that we were going to do anyway. Obviously some new characters are coming to the show that we would have brought in anyway to the second season. And so I’m really pleased. CBS in their own wisdom recognized it, there’s no part of the show that’s fighting itself anymore. It has a youthfulness and appeal because of the age of the leading lady, and it gets to embrace that a touch more.

What more can you tell us how often we’ll see Calista Flockhart’s character, Cat Grant?

She’s recurring. We’re trying to get her for at least six episodes this year, and she’s in the first two episodes. We’re just trying to see when she can come back now.

And will we see her interact with Superman?

I don’t want to give it away, but she has a special kind of dynamic with Clark Kent.

How far along is the “Supergirl”/”The Flash” musical crossover?

We just finished writing the fall crossovers. And now we’re trying to figure out how to produce them. That’s probably the most challenging thing we do all year. And now we’re doing it across three shows! But next week we’ll have to start talking about clearing music. I have a few ideas for tone and style in my head but we’re just starting to talk about what that can be. I do want to try and get an original piece of music written. As we make a deal on that we’ll probably make some announcements on the original songs.

Perhaps written by, I don’t know, Lin-Manuel Miranda?

[laughs] I would say, pretty close. I can’t say yet because we don’t have a deal yet, but I did speak to someone we’re really excited about. There are some writers I’m incredibly excited to work with.

Back to the big CW series crossover, how difficult is that to pull off across so many series?

You really are trying to run a single production across three different productions. But they’re run as three separate entities. We have to figure out when we’re borrowing one actor from where. We’re telling one cohesive story; “Supergirl” will participate, but the storyline doesn’t actively begin there. There are some characters who show up in her episode, but the story begins with “The Flash” episode and goes to “Arrow” and “Legends of Tomorrow.” We’re just getting into designing the bad guy for it, and we start now but it doesn’t air until the end of November. We will put a lot of time between now and then figuring out visual effects sequences. Just today I was holding the three scripts back-to-back – that’s 180 pages of material. It’s a three-hour story, almost a miniseries.

And when you place all three scripts together, it unlocks some sort of fortune.

[laughs] It’s very daunting when you hold them all together like that. Each one of these pages is 10 hours of shooting and a visual effects extravaganza. But hopefully it feels like a great kind of crossover comic book sell.

The Spoiler Room at Entertainment Weekly has news on several genre shows, including this about Felicity on Arrow:

Emily Bett Rickards has been training a lot lately. Does it mean Felicity will be involved in more action scenes in Arrow season 5? — Itakha
At first, Felicity will be dealing with the fallout of Havenrock’s destruction. “In the first five episodes, we face head-on the decision that Felicity made,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. “We are most definitely not ignoring it.” Following that, though, Guggenheim cryptically teases what could be Felicity jumping in on the action. “We’re positioning her to do something in the second half of the year that is really, really key, and that isn’t about her relationship with Oliver or even necessarily her father or her mother. It’s really new territory for her, and we’ve very excited about it. Some big things are going to happen with Felicity.”

I was pleasantly surprised to see Emily Bett Richards while watching Brooklyn last weekend. (Sorry, it was not a major role, and the movie, while excellent, is totally non-genre).

Agents of SHIELD has a promo for Ghost Rider. More at Screen Rant.

Hulu has picked up a sci-fi comedy entitled Future Man from Seth Rogen.

Vince Gilligan is producing a limited series for HBO on Jim Jones for HBO entitled Raven. My bet is that he will do a good job of showing Jones’ life, but after Breaking Bad I would prefer to see him invent more flawed characters of his own.

Netflix has renewed Narcos for season 3 and 4.

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It appears that the next season of Doctor Who will start in April based upon reports in Radio Times and a comment from Peter Capaldi. Before that, there will also be the Christmas episode. Plus in November there will be an animated version of a lost story:

It’s one of the Doctor’s most celebrated adventures and yet no complete film recordings of The Power of the Daleks are known to have survived. The master negatives were destroyed in an archive purge in 1974.

BBC Worldwide has announced that a brand new black and white animation based on audio recordings of the programme using the original cast, surviving photographs and film clips will be released 50 years to the minute after its only UK broadcast on BBC One.

The six half hour episodes feature the regeneration, or as it was then called ‘renewal’, of First Doctor William Hartnell into Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, as the Time Lord and his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) do battle with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan.

Anne Hathaway told Variety she would live to play Catwoman again. That might be difficult as the Christopher Nolan Batman stories, where she appeared, have concluded, but that doesn’t entirely rule out her reprising the role in a future movie.

A few genre shows have already won awards last night at the Creative Arts Emmys. Winners included Jessica Jones (Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music), Mr. Robot (Outstanding Music Composition For A Series), and Man In The High Castle (Outstanding Main Title Design and Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-Camera Series). Hopefully some of these series will  also win some of the more major Emmy awards.

J.J. Abrams is working on a television adaptation of The Nix, staring Meryl Streep.

Headline of the day coming over my news aggregators which sounds more like cheap fiction than news: Sick African dictator ‘eats his enemies’ testicles and brains to boost his sexual prowess’

SciFi Weekend: Mr Robot’s Big Reveal; Superman; Agents of SHIELD; Hugo Awards; Doctor Who

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Unlike the first season, we didn’t have to wait until the end of the season for the big reveal. (That should be a clue that a major spoiler is coming for those behind). Fans have speculated since the first episode that Eliot was really in prison or a psychiatric institution rather than living with his mother to provide more structure. This week, his psychiatrist asked Eliot where he believed he was. His mother’s townhouse faded away and he admitted to us that he had been suppressing the fact that he was in prison.

Alan Sepinwall interviewed Sam Esmail about this development:

Where did the idea come from that you were going to disguise Elliot’s surroundings in this way?

Sam Esmail: It came from a two-prong approach. We knew exactly what the fate of Elliot was at the end of the last season, and we started breaking this season’s storyline. We’re always trying to stay as authentic to Elliot as possible, what he’s going through. Knowing Elliot, from the very first episode, he definitely has interesting coping mechanisms. Even from the pilot, he has this ability to reprogram his life: E Corp was turned into Evil Corp. When we thought about him being in prison, what would be that coping mechanism, this came to mind. The other approach was his relationship to us — to his “friend” — and how we left him at the end of the first season. He basically didn’t trust us anymore, he felt we were keeping things from him. So we wanted to develop that relationship as well. That was the one approach of, “This is what Elliot would do in this situation, to cope with being in prison,” and then the other of keeping it from us because he felt betrayed by us from the first season.

When we spoke at the end of season 1 about the Mr. Robot revelation, you said you would be hesitant in the future to do things that would leave people questioning the reality of the show. Did you have any concerns about doing another big, “This is what it really is!” reveal in that way?

Sam Esmail: I did. I remember bringing it up to the room. The one thing I also told you is I wanted to stay as authentic to Elliot as possible. And the truth of the matter is, the show is about mystery, and there will always be questions and we won’t actually see the full picture all of the time. Having said that, if we can’t invest in what is happening and what is going on, that would become very frustrating, to the point where you wouldn’t feel any stakes. That was the test we ran through with this idea: is this actually happening to him? Is what he’s experiencing still real? And can the audience still buy into this after the reveal? Those answers were obviously yes: the events that we saw were still very much real, and the consequences of them are real, and what Elliot went through is real. It’s just the coping mechanism he used was not exactly what he saw. To me, it was definitely one of those things that prompted a real conversation. Like I think I told you last year, we’re not in it for gotcha moments or shocking the audience, but we’re in it for interesting reveals and deepening and enriching Elliot’s experience. We felt that him going through his prison sentence in this way was more true to life to Elliot than actually having seen it as a prison.

But you understand how fandom works. Having done this two years in a row, you’ve now conditioned them to, whatever you do next, the fans will pick it apart frame-by-frame to explain what’s actually happening.

Sam Esmail: Yeah, well, truth be told, don’t you feel like it’s already happening this season?

True. How did you feel about people having this exact theory of prison after only the season premiere had aired?

Sam Esmail: It was weird. One thing that we always do is we never want to cheat the audience. We never want it to be some extraordinarily contrived thing where we’re basically lying to the audience and what they’re seeing isn’t actually happening, and we’re fooling them. In doing that, and being honest with what is going on, even though the surroundings aren’t actually what they are, we didn’t really hide it that well, right? I didn’t expect people to catch on from the very first episode, but I thought people would start to theorize and catch on. Look, a reveal is great when it’s surprising, but it’s terrible when it feels like a cheat. To me, the fact that some people who guessed it may not be surprised, it verifies that we didn’t cheat anybody, because it adds up and makes sense to them still.

I’m sure much of this will be explained in future episodes, in terms of why Elliot was in prison to begin with, but was Ray a guard in the prison? How much of Ray’s business involved prisoners versus the outside world?

Sam Esmail: That’s going to get revealed in a couple of episodes.

By sending Elliot to prison, you also spend the first half of the season with him physically separate from the other characters, give or take a brief visit by Gideon or Darlene. What did you see as the advantages and disadvantages of having him apart from the rest of the ensemble, other than Mr. Robot?

Sam Esmail: I’m glad you asked that question. Obviously, knowing we were doing this, it was very important for Elliot to address this incredibly internal conflict that sprung on him at the end of the first season: that he has an alter ego that he can’t control. That was the first and foremost issue that I wanted to tackle with Elliot. So of course the isolation of him being in prison really helped that. It meant that we get to basically do this deep dive into his internal battle with his demons. There is not much else for him to do. He couldn’t escape it. So it was great on that level. I knew it was going to be a polarizing choice to go in this direction with Elliot, but for whatever reason, it felt organic and natural. But when I took a step back and looked at the whole season, I realized that, when I think about the sequels that I really love, or second acts of movies or larger stories, they tend to do this: to go into this inward battle after accomplishing this big Herculean hero’s journey. The one uncanny similarity — which I only realized in hindsight — is Empire Strikes Back. At the end of the first movie, you take down the big band, the revolutionaries kind of win, but the second movie opens, they’re still battling, they’re still struggling, the Empire is rebuilding, and literally Luke goes off to another planet for most of that movie to learn to become a Jedi, while his sister is still out there fighting the good fight. This wasn’t something planned, but I looked at it and realized we were literally following that same pattern. And it’s not just with Empire Strikes Back. It’s Godfather Part II. There’s a lot of introspection that happens. That’s often the next stage after this huge external conflict comes to an end. Then it’s, “Well, then what?” It’s a hangover moment, of reflection and going inward. So that direction made sense for our story.

Esmail was also interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter.

News also came out during the past week that Mr. Robot has been renewed for a third season.

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In other genre news, Henry Cavill has teased what will happen to Superman when he returns for the Justice League movie, in light of what happened at the end of Batman v. Superman.

Agents of SHIELD will be edgier with its move to 10 pm. It is a safe bet it will still be much tamer than the far better Marvel television adaptations on Netflix (one of which won a Hugo Award).

The 2016 Hugo Awards winners have been announced. The award for Best Novel went to The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. The Martian won for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Jessica Jones: A.K.A. Smile won for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Unfortunately the awards continued to be tainted by conservative politics.

Doctor Who Capaldi and Pearl Mackie

BBC America has announced that Doctor Who and other genre shows will be represented at New York Comic Con:

Mark your calendars: BBC AMERICA is coming to New York Comic Con in a big way this year. On Friday, October 7, the network will present a block of star-studded panels at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, featuring Doctor Who, with Peter Capaldi making his NYCC debut alongside new companion Pearl Mackie at her first-ever fan appearance. Ahead of its October 22, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency will launch a world premiere screening followed by a panel with cast, showrunner, writer and executive producer. And the Doctor Who spinoff Class will have its first-ever U.S. panel with cast, executive producer, and creator of the series.

They included more on the panels including Doctor Who:

BBC AMERICA’s Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi will make his New York Comic Con debut along with the first ever fan appearance by new co-star Pearl Mackie, who joins the series as Bill, the Doctor’s new companion. When Pearl joined the cast, Emmy-winning lead writer and executive producer Steven Moffat teased “a new voyage is about to begin” and “this is where the story really starts.” Fans will get a sneak peek of what’s ahead including the upcoming Christmas Special this December on BBC AMERICA and hints on what’s in store for Steven Moffat’s final season as showrunner. The panel includes stars Peter Capaldi (The Thick of It) and Pearl Mackie (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time), as well as Steven Moffat (Sherlock) and executive producer Brian Minchin (ClassTorchwood). Doctor Who is a BBC Cymru Wales production for BBC One and a BBC AMERICA co-production.

The Time Travel Question of the Week:

Hitler Time Travelers

SciFi Weekend: Agents of SHIELD; Suicide Squad; Star Trek; Gotham; Stranger Things; Doctor Who

SHIELD Daisy season 4

Agents of SHIELD concluded the third season with a jump ahead showing that someone other than Coulson will be Director of SHIELD. Marvel has revealed that Jason O’Mara will play the Director. While vague, the release did say that he will be “playing a character whose Marvel roots go back to the 1940s.” The synopsis for the upcoming season explains the reason for the change, as well as the changes in the role of some of the other characters:

In light of the Sokovia Accords, and with Hydra obliterated, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been legitimatized again and no longer needs to operate in the shadows. Since the world presumes that Coulson is dead, the organization needed a new Director (Jason O’Mara) to be the face of the organization.

Coulson finds himself back in the role as an agent and teamed with Mack (Henry Simmons), and together they are tasked with tracking down and confirming the presence of Enhanced people, aka Inhumans. They have been trying to track down and capture Daisy (Chloe Bennet), aka Quake, who has gone rogue in an attempt to atone for sins from the past. But with the world believing that Daisy is a dangerous outlaw who has taken down banks and bridges, the new Director has no qualms about taking her down for good.

Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) is tasked with training specialist strike teams, and Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) have taken a big step forward in their relationship. But with Simmons’ new promotion as Special Advisor to the Director in Science and Technology, Fitz, as well as her former team members, finds it hard to confide in or trust her since she’s now the Director’s confidant.

Robbie Reyes (Gabriel Luna) will roar into the lives of Agent Coulson and the team as a junkyard mechanic who can turn on a dime into the terrifying Ghost Rider. Will Robbie be a friend or foe to S.H.I.E.L.D. – as well as the world, itself? Meanwhile, Fitz discovers that socially awkward genius and friend Dr. Radcliffe (John Hannah) has started putting the finishing touches on a new, secret invention.

Chloe Bennet talked with TVLine about Daisy going rogue and her agenda.

In other news about Agents of SHIELD, ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said at the Television Critics Association press tour that Adrianne Palicki and Nick Blood could possibly return. As I noted last week, the return as a regular would be complicated by Palicki being cast in another role.

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Suicide Squad has opened to a large box office but has received very poor reviews. It does sound like studio interference played a role in any problems the movie has. The Hollywood Reporter‘s account begins:

“Better late than never.” That was one Warner Bros. executive’s reaction to the excitement at Suicide Squad‘s splashy Aug. 1 premiere in New York. Tracking indicates the film could open to more than $140 million domestically and potentially hand the studio its first unequivocal megahit since American Sniper‘s $547.4 million in December 2014. With March’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice grossing $873 million worldwide but failing to impress audiences or reach the hoped-for $1 billion mark, Warners still urgently needs to jump-start its critical DC Comics universe, raising the stakes for Suicide Squad, which cost at least $175 million to make.

Yet if the villain team-up ultimately works — and it has drawn some harsh early reviews  — it will be in spite of the kind of behind-the-scenes drama that is becoming typical for giant franchise movies that now are the main focus of the studio business: a production schedule engineered to meet an ambitious release date; a director, David Ayer (Fury), untested in making tentpole movies; and studio executives, brimming with anxiety, who are ready to intercede forcefully as they attempt to protect a branded asset. Often, efforts to fix perceived problems ratchet up costs, which drive anxiety ever higher. In extreme cases, such as Fox’s troubled Fantastic Four, the intervention is so aggressive that it becomes unclear what it means to be the director. (In each such case, studios are careful to stress that the credited director is on-scene and in charge, which is essential to avoid DGA issues. And the wise director plays along.)

The video above is a tribute to Star Trek with clips from ever show and movie.

Star Trek Into Darkness ended with Carol Marcus appearing to be a new crew member but she was not seen in Star Trek Beyond. Simon Pegg, who c0-wrote the movie responded to questions about this by explaining they didn’t have a role for her which made fit into this movie and,“We thought rather than have Carol Marcus be not used to a reasonable capacity, let’s just not include her, have her be alive, in canon, and be ready to come back at any time.” As Star Trek Beyond took place three years later, it is quite plausible that she spent some time as a part of the Enterprise crew and then either left or was not present for some other reason in Star Trek Into Darkness.Nerdophiles has information from the cast on the third season of Gotham.

Stranger Things

I’m sure that by now pretty much everyone has heard the hype about Stranger Things. It deserves all the hype, and more. Some compare it to E.T. and to Super 8. It is very rare to see a television show which is as immediately captivating as Stranger Things. The show brings three television series to my mind with their ability to also do this: Twin Peaks, Lost, and The X-Files. One other thing that all three have in common is that they went downhill. The mythology on Lost and X-Files got too convoluted, and they didn’t know where to go beyond the initial story on Twin Peaks.

The format on Netflix should reduce the risk of the show deteriorating over time. Eight episodes allowed them to tell a complete story, while leaving some things open for future seasons. There was no need for filler episodes, and there won’t be the same push as on network television to continue too long. Matt and Ross Duffer have hinted at a second season and it would be quite a shock if Netflix didn’t go with it.

The BBC has a round up of news since series ten of Doctor Who went into production here. More pictures at DoctorWhoTV.

I’ll conclude with commentary on this year’s election from The IT Crowd:

IT Crowd