SciFi Weekend: Star Trek Discovery Season 2; Two Star Trek Movies Planned; The Return of Westworld, A Handmaid’s Tale, and The 100

Star Trek: Discovery season two has gone into production and CBS has released the video below with some glimpses, including brief views involving the Enterprise. Unfortunately we do not see very much. There is a picture of the uniforms, with some updating.  There is no good view of the bridge and only a quick glimpse of Anson Mount as Captain Pike.

It also appears that Paramount is proceeding with two Star Trek movies. One would be the Quentin Tarantino movie, rumored to be based upon either an episode of the original show or Star Trek The Next Generation.  This would not take place in the Kelvin timeline from the J.J. Abrams’ movies.

The other movie would be a continuation in the Kelvin timeline as a follow up in the J.J. Abrams series. This reportedly would involve Captain Kirk meeting his father, again played by Chris Helmsworth. As George Kirk was killed in the first Abrams movie, it is not known if this will involve time travel. I’m hoping that Kirk prevents Nero from killing his father, and then repairs the entire time line. The movie will be directed by S.J. Clarkson, making her the first female to direct a Star Trek movie. Clarkson has worked on television series including Orange Is The New Black, Dexter, and Jessica Jones.

I only have time for an abbreviated version of SciFi Weekend today, as will likely also be the case next week. Three genre series did return which I will briefly note, and will probably discuss all three series in more depth later in the season.

Westworld is back with the story again being told in more than one timeline.  Much of the episode appears to be taking place just after the events of the first season finale. As would be expected in the season premiere, there were many questions raised. I’ll just mention a few thoughts today, but there was far more worthy of discussion in the episode.

It appears that Delos has been harvesting the DNA of its guests, along with all the other information they record. It looks like something Mark Zuckerberg might have come up with. Are clones next? As opposed to the movie, in which the robots were more clearly the villains, the first season often had us rooting for the hosts. I wonder if, even after all the killings, the show will remain ambiguous as to who to support.

In a scene taking place two weeks after the massacre of the first season finale, we see dead hosts floating in water and Bernard saying, “I killed them. All of them.” He did not definitely say who he killed. He is most likely referring to the dead hosts, but could he be talking about the guests? Presumably much of the season will deal with how we get to that scene.

Maeve is still searching for her daughter. I can’t help but wonder what will happen, assuming she does find her. Will the daughter know her, or see any connection between them? As Maeve has not played that role for a year, will the daughter have a new mother?

Hulu released two episodes of A Handmaid’s Tale. The first deals with Offred, showing what happened after she was taken away in the truck in the first season finale. Her story progressed from there, with the eventual revelation of where she is  playing well into the changes in society.

The second episode also spent a lot of time with Alexis Bledel’s character Emily. This included both her backstory as a college professor and her life after being exiled to the Colonies. They are now beyond the book, but the first two episodes showed that this world provides a lot of material to continue with. However, considering how bleak it is, I hope that rather than continuing this for several seasons, they offer some hopeful signs for change in this society.

The fifth season premiere of The 100 primarily dealt with how Clarke spent the last six years, leading up to the point seen in last year’s season finale. We saw a little with the group in space. The most surprising portion came at the end with Octavia in the bunker. That story will be told in greater detail next week. TV Guide did speak with Jason Rothenberg about this:

“Obviously we saved that for the end as a big holy sh– moment to tee you up for the story we’re telling in [Episode 2],” Rothenberg tells TV Guide. “It was really important to me for that environment, for that fighting pit that we see in [the premiere], to feel believable and to tell a story in the next episode that explains how we got there.”

Next week’s episode will be focused entirely on how Octavia went from winning the Conclave into becoming this Mad Max monarch, and while Rothenberg doesn’t want to give too much away about that journey, he does reveal that Octavia’s intentions were never anything but to keep her people safe. “We realize ultimately that Octavia needs to find ways to keep her kru, her new people, Wonkru, together. And she kind of forges this clan in her own image, in a sense,” he teases.

What is The 100 if not a tale of people doing terrible things with good intentions? But as the show has reminded us time and time again, good intentions don’t always mean these actions are just. And after six years of peace, discovering this culture of violence that Octavia has created in the bunker will come as a huge shock to Bellamy and Clarke when they eventually reunite.

“It will be mind-blowing, to say the least, because it’s not at all what they expect. Bellamy will definitely understand some of it based on his knowledge of his sister and what they read together as children and things of that nature,” the showrunner says. “But certainly, they have no idea what to expect when they open that bunker. They don’t know if anybody is going to be alive, let alone strong. And so it could have felt like opening the doors of a concentration camp where everyone was wasting away and barely hanging out, but instead there’s a powerful fighting force down there.”

While Bellamy and Clarke will be understandably horrified to learn of the fighting pit, the fierce warriors Octavia has cultivated in the bunker will prove to be quite useful now that there’s another war on-hand. But whether that justifies what Octavia did to create these warriors will be the question that plagues both Octavia’s friends and family, but also the fans this season.

“It’s fairly remarkable that she was able to keep that, to create that, to forge that steel in the fire of what they lived through down there,” Rothenberg says. “So ultimately that’s all due to Octavia. And the question for people will be, ‘Do we like her or do we hate her or fear her?’ But I think ultimately, we have to respect that she did it, she made it happen. And they will too.”

SciFi Weekend: Hannibal, Jessica Jones, Humans Renewed, Defiance, Mr Robot, Under The Dome, Continuum Trailer, Utopia, Xena Reboot

Hannibal And Women Clothed With Sun

The Hannibal episode this week, And The Woman Clothed With The Sun…, continued with the Red Dragon storyline, and like last week, family was important. The family was the extended family which the main characters of the series have become, even including a Verger baby.

The episode included the “family reunion” between Will and Hannibal. When he surrendered, Hannibal made sure that he would always be where Will could find him. For Will the reunion was about getting Hannibal’s input into the Tooth Fairy. “I’m more comfortable the less personal we are,” said Will. Hannibal got more personal:  “You came here to have a look at me, to get that old scent again. Why don’t you just smell yourself?” Before Will left he added,  “You’re family.”

The episode also included flashbacks to the events leading to the season finale, filling in the gaps as to what happened with Abigail. Even this considered family:

Abigail: “How would you have killed me?”

Hannibal: “I would have cut your throat. Like your father did.”

Abigail was complicit in Hannibal making it appear she was killed, even asking, “Can I push the button?” I couldn’t help but wonder if Dexter Morgan would have been fooled by the spray of blood used to fake her death.

Hannibal is now following Red Dragon fairly faithfully, meaning that the structure of the series has changed, with each episode being more a piece of a book. This might leave less to say after each episode, but does not mean the show is any weaker.

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The success of Daredevil has many Marvel fans anxiously awaiting Jessica Jones. Executive Melissa Rosenberg told Entertainment Weekly that Jessica Jones will be different from Daredevil:

“Jessica Jones is a very, very different show than Daredevil,” Rosenberg said. “We exist in a cinematic universe, [and] the mythology of the universe is connected, but they look very different, tonally they’re very different… That was my one concern coming in: Am I going to have to fit into Daredevil or what’s come before? And the answer is no.”

But the contrasts don’t stop with tone. “My show’s called Jessica Jones,” Rosenberg said, noting that Cox may get a break during stunts. “There is no mask. Krysten Ritter is the hardest working woman in show biz.”

Jessica Jones is expected to be released in the fourth quarter. Netflix CCO Ted Sarandos discussed the plans for releasing the Marvel-based shows:

“I think ideally there will be a rhythm of about every six months you’ll get a new season or a new series from the Defenders group. And then they’ll crossover into a combined [Defenders] season once we’ve launched the first season of each of the four characters.”

He also said, “Some will selectively have multiple seasons as they come out of the gate. So they’ll probably be two launches a year.” It was previously announced that Daredevil has been renewed for a second season.

Episode 2.L-R Anita (Gemma Chan) and Toby Hawkins (Theo Stevenson)

Humans completed the first season in the U.K. tonight and is a couple of weeks behind in the U.S. I am holding off until I complete this post to watch the finale, but the show remained strong through the penultimate episode which I downloaded last Sunday. Channel 4 has announced that they are renewing the series for a second season, and AMC plans to once again show it in the United States.

I am also waiting to watch Friday’s episode of Defiance, but must note that last week’s episode, My Name Is Datak Tarr and I Have Come to Kill You, ended one storyline on a very strong point. At first I was a little disappointed in how they suddenly came up with a relatively easy way to destroy General Tahk’s camp, even if it probably involved a suicide mission for one character. I then became willing to overlook this in light of how well this tied into Datak’s story. I was really wondering what would happen as they showed flashbacks of Datak as a child. This often foreshadows a character’s death on television. Instead of killing him, or have him betray the plan to save himself, Datak managed to find a way, even if extreme, to both carry out the plan and save himself. I am now wondering if the loss of his arm will be a serious problem, or something easily replaced. Regardless, it was an unforgeable scene.

Mr. Robot had one of the stronger episodes of the season on Wednesday. The episode also had real consequences, and at the end spent quite a long time showing Elliot’s reaction.

Under the Dome continues to have serious flaws, but somehow remains interesting. Lately they have shifted into an Invasion of the Body Snatchers storyline, and appear to have shown the destruction of the world outside of the dome in an attempt to make it look like the random bits from the first season, like talk of pink stars falling, were actually part of a grand plan. Earlier in the season they hit a big resit switch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is done again. The statement from “Junior” about  the “destruction of our homeworld” does confirm alien involvement, but does not exclude the possibility that what we see outside the dome is either a trick, or not necessarily characteristic of what is happening in the rest of the world.

The final season of Continuum starts September 11 on Syfy and one week earlier on Space (which like so many foreign-made shows, will complicate covering it here.) The above trailer has been released.

Deadline reports that the planned remake of Utopia on HBO might not make it due to budget issues. I remain unclear as to why it is necessary to remake shows recently shown in the U.K. as opposed to running the originals here.

A Xena reboot might be coming, but without Lucy Lawless.

SciFi Weekend: Parenthood Finale; The Marvel Cinematic Universe; The 100; Arrow; Allegiance; The Americans

Parenthood Finale Table

Parenthood concluded with one of the best television finales of all time. This was an easier show to conclude than some others. It did not have the problem of shows such as The X-Files and Lost, which became so burdened by its mythology that it was impossible for the finale to be satisfying without giving up hope that it would really make sense. The Parenthood finale remained true to the stories to date, not tempted to throw in a surprise which did not fit the series, like with How I Met Your Mother or Dexter.

The final episode concluded the major story lines of the season. Most were handled well, but the solution to Adam search for the job of his dreams was the most contrived, with Kristina suddenly having an opportunity at a non-profit which left the position of headmaster at Chamber’s Academy open for Adam. It made sense for Crosby to run The Luncheonette without Adam. Accountants and attorneys could provide some of the business advice he received when Adam was there full time, even if it didn’t make any sense when Crosby said he would be Adam and Amber would be Crosby. It was rather sudden for Julia and Joel to be offered the chance to adopt Victor’s sister, but such an offer coming suddenly did not seem as unnatural as Kristina’s sudden job opportunity.

There were two other story lines which were more important during the season, and which dominated the finale. Sarah’s wedding turned out to be a perfect way to end the series. Besides being a major event for Sarah, the wedding provided a way to get all the characters together as budget limitations required the absence of characters for parts of the season. Besides being the obvious ending for Sarah’s storyline, it provided a good end point for Max, who got the job as wedding photographer and was also “in the picture.” He even got to dance with a girl. Plus the scenes of Max taking the family pictures was a good way to just get a look at the cast members.

The other major storyline of the season was Zeek’s heart problems which, no matter how much fans tried to deny it, was inevitably going to lead to his death. Any lingering doubt that this would occur were eliminated when I read that it would jump ahead to show the Bravermans in the future. It would have been dishonest to not have Zeek die at some point. His death was handled well as he died peacefully at home a few months after he walked Sarah down the aisle, as can be seen in the video above.

Instead of a sad funeral we jumped ahead to see Zeek’s ashes spread at a baseball diamond, and then the Bravermans did what Zeke would have wanted them to do–play baseball, with the series theme song, Bob Dylan’s Forever Young playing. Then, in one of the greatest endings in television history, we had a combination of how Jason Katims ended his previous show, Friday Night Lights with the ending of Peter Krause’s previous show, Six Feet Under.

The show jumped ahead, also in the video above to show the broad outlines of what happens to the Bravermans. There was no ambiguity as in The Sopranos. Adam does become headmaster, eventually handing Max his high school diploma. Crosby does run The Luncheonette. Besides adopting a third child, Julia winds up becoming pregnant with a fourth, and even gets a puppy. Julia and  Joel recreat the original structure of the Braverman family with a younger brother and sister and an older brother and sister. Camille makes it to to inn in France which Zeek had wanted to take her to.

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Amber’s future is the most exciting. After having her child with Ryan, aka Luke Cafferty of Friday Night  Lights (Matt Lauria), Amber winds up marrying Jason Street (Scott Porter). Ryan even gets his act together and is part of their lives. Scenes with their courtship were shot but got cut from the finale, with Scott Porter’s character named Peter:

“There’s a scene where they meet. Peter and his daughter are at what amounts to a Kidtown, like an indoor jungle gym playtime place. Peter has his daughter and Amber has Zeek. Zeek [named after his grandfather] gets lost in the ball pit and Peter goes bravely in to save him and brings him back to Amber.”

They clicked right away. “They have similar kinds of pasts,” Porter explains. “Both were a little bit wild at one point, and both have kids they maybe weren’t expecting but that were perfectly timed for them. They’re single parents who met and were immediately drawn together.”

While no wedding was actually shot, Porter had no problem imagining the nuptials.

“I imagine it was a very small, intimate wedding. These are two people who are very protective of their families. So pretty small, except for the Braverman side — they come in numbers that most families don’t come in anymore.”

This and other deleted scenes are bound to show up on the DVD set, and some deleted scenes can be found online here.

Matt Lauria and Scott Porter were just two of many former stars of Friday Night Lights who appeared on Parenthood over the years. Yahoo has a slide show, starting with Minka Kelly who both tutored Max and slept with Crosby.

Parenthood - Season 6

This very well might be the end for quality dramas such as Friday Night Lights and Parenthood on network television as I discussed last week. Fortunately cable and streaming networks are doing more quality shows. This topic came up in an interview with Jason Katims at Variety:

It’s unique as a family drama on TV right now. Can you imagine trying to sell it today?

It would be a hard sell to go out and sell a family drama that doesn’t have some sort of twist. There are lot of shows about family, but they’re all couched in other things. This is a straight family drama. It’s unusual in that way. But honestly it was not easy to sell it five years ago. It’s not like anyone was saying let’s have it then. But the TV landscape is changing so rapidly. There’s so much opportunity now, so many different types of outlets — you never know. I’m hoping that there’ll still be a place for shows like this.

The finale provided a broad outline, but also leaves things open to return to their story in the future, either during the period seen or afterwards. Katims is interested, and the new outlets make this more likely in the future.

Given the wealth of platforms on the TV landscape, could you imagine ever revisiting the Bravermans down the road?

Yes, absolutely. Everyone who is doing the show — our writers, our actors, our directors, our producers — we all love doing the show. Everyone would want to do more. There is no one who is angling to get out of doing this thing. I personally would be interested in seeing what happens a few years down the road. I want to know what happens to these people, these characters. If you asked me three years ago, I would say it’s not going to happen. But now there are so many ways of doing things that it’s possible. I would very much be open to that.

Parenthood - Season 6

He also discussed this with E! saying, “I love the idea of doing a reunion movie like Boyhood, where every year, everybody commits a week to doing this project.,” he said. “Maybe it’s not that crazy to think that we could pull something like that off.”

Of course the old episodes are all easily available, both on Netflix and Amazon. I rewatched the pilot later on Thursday night, and this provided a real feeling of going full circle in an episode which introduced the characters. The pilot both had major life events for members of Team Braverman and featured the family at baseball games.

The Bravermans are a fantasy family. It is a family nobody actually has, and it is hard to imagine how Adam and Kristina could have afforded to live in Berkeley, hire private tutors for Max, and afford to send Haddie to Cornell. This universe is still more grounded in reality than the Marvel cinematic universe, with both types of fantasy enjoyable to watch. Digital Spy has some spoilers regarding Avengers: Age of Ultron (trailer above) with more in the full post.

We won’t see the Avengers assemble again (which hopefully also means we’ll be spared a silly alternative UK title). “This movie starts off and the team is together, on a mission, they’re working in tandem, and there are new relationships between them,” explains producer Jeremy Latcham. “Time has passed, so you pick up right in the middle of an action sequence and start trying to catch up.

“I think that’s fun for an audience, to try and figure out, ‘Wait, those two are funny together now, there’s something going on with them, maybe there’s a little tension over there’. You’re showing up at a party when it’s already a little bit started.”

“Bigger” and “darker” are two of the most clichéd terms you can apply to a franchise sequel, but Age of Ultron looks set to earn both – according to Ruffalo, it “makes the first Avengers look like Waiting for Guffman“.

Latcham expands on this by reminding us that much of The Avengers was shot on a small soundstage in Albuquerque, and that its New York City was created “in an old abandoned train station where we’d hung green screen and built part of a bridge.”

Not only are the locations real this time – they’re also global. “The Avengers saved New York, but the Avengers aren’t just about America,” Latcham says. “They’re here to protect this blue rock that we all live on.”

Hence Age of Ultron‘s globe-trotting remit, which sees various strands of the gang show up in South Africa, Northern Italy (playing as Eastern Europe) and South Korea among other places. In preparation for one particularly spectacular set piece, producers asked the South Korean government for permission to shut down Seoul’s equivalent of the M1 for two weeks. They complied.

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The movie adds Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch to the Avengers, but they start out on Ultron’s side.

New recruits Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) initially join forces with James Spader’s Ultron against the Avengers, creating a very different balance of power than solo villain Loki. “Instead of Ultron giving a lot of speeches so everybody knows what he’s thinking, it’d be nice if he had some allies,” Latcham explains.

“The story that Joss put together with these two kids is really sweet and poignant, and you really understand why they would start on this side of the line. It’s a great journey that they go on, from being these rough and tumble kids in Eastern Europe who blame the West, and the Avengers for the plight, the power structure of the world that keeps kids like them down. Over the course of it they realize maybe the Avengers are here for good reason.”

But the brother-sister duo have legitimate beef with one Avenger in particular. “Our characters have a lot of anger, especially towards Tony Stark, and we want revenge,” says Olsen. “We meet Ultron, and he’s someone who preaches peace and… believes what we believe, which is that the Avengers create destruction and that Tony Stark’s bomb is responsible for killing our parents.”

Unsurprisingly, their alliance with Ultron ends up turning sour, and Olsen reveals that “my character ends up really having to deal with her ignorance. A lot of problems that happen towards the end of the film are her responsibility.”

Age of Ultron also leads into the next Captain America movie and the situation leading to the upcoming civil war is explained:

Much of the Avengers’ problem boils down to their lack of a clear leader post-Winter Soldier. “SHIELD has fallen apart, so this movie becomes Tony Stark and Steve Rogers trying to put the Avengers together without a parental unit like Nick Fury hovering over them,” explains Latcham. “What you realize is that these are guys who work best with rules, and probably do need some adult supervision.”And as anybody who watched the first film can guess, Tony and Cap aren’t an ideal leadership pairing. “Tony has been paying for everything, designing stuff, building new toys, he’s the benefactor of the whole thing. But Steve Rogers is very much in charge of operations and missions, he’s the moral compass,” Latcham goes on. “But how long can Tony Stark have someone else be in charge?” In other words, groundwork is being distinctly laid for the Stark vs Rogers core of Civil War.

Avengers Age of Ultron Spoilers

Joss Whedon has helped create a fantastic universe with the Marvel characters but has been talking about moving on, and creating a new universe:

“I would never rule anything out, because I like working here. By the same token, the biggest thing for me is that I need to do something that I create myself. It’s been way too long since I created a universe. The last thing I did before The Avengers was [directing an episode of] Glee, and in between I did Much Ado About Nothing. So I haven’t created my own universe for over five years. That feels wrong.”

The Marvel universe is not limited to the Avengers and other movie series from Marvel Studios as other studios have the rights to some of the Marvel characters. Fox has the rights to X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and there is talk that their worlds will ultimately intersect. Information on the upcoming X-Men and Fantastic Four movies here and here respectively.

Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man and we learned during the recent leaks of their email that there was talk of Marvel Studios getting partial rights to the character. Blastr argues that it might have actually been a good thing that Marvel Studios did not own the rights to all of the Marvel characters:

It’s easy to forget that back in the mid-2000s, Marvel Studios was one heck of a risky proposition. After partnering with outside studios for years, the company finally decided that, if they wanted good movies based on their comics (and the winner’s share of the box-office bucks that come with them), they’d have to make ’em themselves. There was just one problem: They’d already sold off any franchise with obvious big-screen potential, most notably Spider-Man, X-Men and the Fantastic Four.

So Marvel decided to dig deep. The comic universe has always thrived on variety and a world populated with extremely interesting and damaged heroes, so they decided to apply that model to film. Iron Man and Hulk were arguably the most bankable heroes left on the bench, so Marvel pumped every dime it had into those two projects and prayed for a hit. Luckily for all of us, Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau caught lighting in a bottle with Iron Man in 2008. More than $585 million later, we were well on our way toward The Avengers.

Since Marvel didn’t have the luxury of a sure-fire star like Spider-Man — who is currently the most lucrative comic-book character in existence, with more than $1.3 billion in licensing revenue in 2013 alone — they had to work with characters who might not have ever gotten a shot otherwise. Just think: If Marvel could have made splashy Spider-Man and X-Men movies, do you think we’d have ever gotten something as creatively quirky as Guardians of the Galaxy (or Ant-Man), or the risky period-set romp that was Captain America: The First Avenger? Maybe somewhere down the line, but a lot of the limited focus (and release slots) would almost certainly be eaten up by those larger properties. 

Yes, Marvel would probably be making better movies than what’s out there now (especially on the Spider-Man front), but for me, I wouldn’t trade the epic Marvel Universe we have now for the chance at some better Spider-Man movies. Not by a long shot. The fact that Marvel didn’t have Spider-Man in its stable was the catalyst to bring characters like Iron Man and Thor to life, and gave Marvel the confidence to try something as seemingly insane as a film starring Rocket Raccoon and Groot. The only thing they could control was making the best movies possible, and since the characters were mid-tier, they had to be extremely good.

He has a good point that the way Marvel built the Avengers with characters starting with lesser characters like Iron Man worked out well. However, now that this has been established, Marvel Studios (as part of Disney) is probably big enough to hire the crew to put out an even larger number of movies. Plus it would be worth sacrificing some of the planned movies with minor characters if it meant having Spider-Man movies of the quality of other movies from Marvel Studios.

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Briefly looking at other shows on last week, I was glad to see that the cast and crew of The 100 agree that the plan for Bellamy to infiltrate Mt. Weather “sucked.” I can accept writing a script with characters doing foolish things, as people do foolish things, as long as the writers are doing this intentionally. More on upcoming plans for The 100 in the linked interview.

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I am also glad that it was intentional that Team Arrow was so weak without Oliver. It would be especially unrealistic if Laurel was suddenly an effective crime fighter like her sister, who had years of training. Marc Guggenheim discussed Arrow and The Flash in an interview with Assignment X. Guggenheim also tied Arrow into contemporary politics:

AX: How much do you weigh referencing ARROW as a modern-day Robin Hood?

GUGGENHEIM: There’s an interesting thing that’s happening in the country right now, where you’re talking about one percent versus ninety-nine percent, haves versus have-nots. Poverty and whatnot has become a political issue, which is interesting, because to me, it was always an issue on both sides of the aisle, how we distribute wealth in this country. It’s a little scary to me that it’s become this polarizing political thing. That’s not the country I grew up in, so it’s weird also to be writing on a show that’s clearly dealing with that issue head-on. Obviously, GREEN ARROW is inspired by Robin Hood and we’re playing around with those elements, but you go it’s more about social justice than it is about politics. At least, that’s what the show should be about.

AX: Aren’t social justice and politics sort of the same thing?

GUGGENHEIM: Well, the point I’m making actually is that social justice has become a political issue in a way that it never has been in this country. Obviously, yes, there’s always been a political divide, we’ve always had disagreements in terms of how to address these issues, but it just feels like the disagreements have become so vitriolic and the differences have become so severe that it’s taken on a different cast than it used to have.

NBC plans to air Allegiance on Thursday nights in place of Parenthood. It sure sounds like a rip off of The Americans, even if its producers deny it. I’m sure there will be differences, like on The Americans the Russians are after the daughter, but on Allegiance they want to turn the son into a spy. It seems better to place such a scenario with undercover Russian spies in the 1980’s, like The Americans, as opposed to present day.

The Americans started its season with another excellent episode, and is ranked by may critics as the top show currently on television. I doubt that Allegiance will be anywhere as good, either as a spy show or as a family drama. If you haven’t seen it, call in sick for the next two days and binge on the first two seasons on Amazon Prime to catch up.

And, finally, a nine year-old in Texas was suspended from school for threatening to make a classmate disappear. He had just watched The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies and claimed to have the one ring to rule them all.

SciFi Weekend: Continuum; Orphan Black; Fargo; Game of Thrones; Sin City; DC Movie Schedule Rumors; HBO Passes on American Gods; Casey Kassem Dies

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Continuum, Orphan Black, and Fargo are all heading towards their season finales and all had major events this week. Continuum had a real game changer with 3 Minutes To Midnight. While the most significant revelations happened at the end, a lot also happened earlier in the episode. The storyline about Halo raises further questions about both the abuse of technology and as to whether Kiera chose the right Alec. We saw the other Alec still alive in one of those Freelancer glass cages. They make for interesting scenes, but they don’t look all that practical for long term incarceration. How do the prisoners even go to the bathroom? Jason went out in search of the time travel device from the Alex from the original time line, but how did he know where to look? Julian, now the Vice President of Social Responsibility at PIRON, finally learns about all the time travel going on. I loved how Kellog thought Brad was a car jacker when it turned out that Brad was turning to Kellog for help–as it turned out that a future Kellog had sent Brad back in time. Kiera ultimately caught up with Brad when he went to a hiding place at an old home and saw his younger self, apparently with no negative repercussions. He did confess to Kiera how he shot the other Kiera, and was fortunate that at this point she didn’t really seem to mind.

The climax was set up with, as Travis described it, “It’s like Wylie Coyote finally catches the roadrunner.”  There are further comparisons to the Terminator series. It is not clear as to why Liber8 was going after capturing Kiera at this point, or if they even knew about Brad. Once captured, Brad’s story did become the main matter of interest. Liber8 learned that they were successful in preventing the development of the Corporate Congress, but the result was worse in the time line which Brad came from. They also found that they were all pawns. Garza was working for Sadler, Kellog had his own agenda, and Chen was working for the Freelancers.

Simon Berry gave a clue as to what this might all mean in this interview with the Canadian TV Guide. The second paragraph is essential in considering  how time travel plays into the story:

TV Guide Canada: Last week you told us this Sunday’s episode was going to have people talking and you were absolutely right. When did you guys decide you were going in this direction and have no one able to control the future?
Simon Barry: When we were breaking Season 3, the idea that this new timeline–were it to be exposed beyond just Kiera and Alec to Liber8 would kind of create an existential crisis–was something we loved the idea of as a concept. We realized as Kiera was coming around and waking up about her reality that at the same time she was able to sort of come to terms with the truth about where she came from, we could also allow Liber8 to learn the truth about their circumstances so that everyone would at the same time go through this mental reality check. Here’s what the rules really are, here’s what is actually going on.

In terms of time travel, when you believe that you’re the last time traveler, you have this assumption that you’re in control of the situation. When you discover that someone else has actually time-traveled after you, you realize you’re a pawn in someone else’s game. It can be a profound and very disturbing realization that your efforts have been trumped essentially. The time travel trump card is whoever has traveled most recently. [Laughs.] For Liber8, it was important for them to have a catharsis and for reasons that will be revealed in Episodes 12 and 13, this moment of realization fundamentally shifts Liber8′s perspective.

So where do we go from here? Does Kiera and/or Liber8 try to fix this time line? Can that even be done? If it is the last time traveler who is in control of the situation, it is not clear if Kiera or Brad is the last. Will next season move on to yet another time line where Kiera or someone else is in control of the situation? This week’s episode opened up so many possibilities.

Orphan Black Bone Marrow

On Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done, Orphan Black advanced the story lines for most of the clones (although no sight of Tony, who was introduced last week). It appears that Alison watched Dexter but not Breaking Bad when she discussed the disposal of Dr. Leekie’s body. She rejected Donnie’s idea of dumping him under water (“Do we have a boat?! Have you ever seen Dexter? Random scuba divers are finding everything!”). She didn’t consider destroying the body with acid. She decided upon burying him in their garage, but this does mean that the evidence will always be around and there should also be a difference in the concrete the shape of a burial plot. Just when it looked like Donnie was of little value, he suddenly grew up and took on both Vic and Angie.

Helena remains a psychopathic killer, but this season has been a psychopathic killer for the good guys/clones. I almost feel sorry for Henrick, and we don’t know the fate of most of the people at the Prolethian compound. Helena certainly would not have left the kids to die, and reportedly there was a scene which was cut for time in which she did help them escape. We also don’t know for sure whether Helena, Gracie, or both really are pregnant, and if they will keep the babies if they are.

Back at Dyad, Rachel continues to manipulate Delphine (the new Leekie) and Cosima. Poor Delphine tried to help Sarah but turned out to have been manipulated by Rachel (who has an awesome media room). There was yet another scene in which one clone impersonated another–this time Rachel playing Sarah to kidnap poor Kira following the bone marrow donation. In a way the penultimate episode placed us where we incorrectly assumed we were at the end of season one with Kira captured by Dyad.

John Fawcett answered some questions for Entertainment Weekly heading into the season finale:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This episode was very heavy on insemination and people in stirrups. What’s up with that?
JOHN FAWCETT: It wasn’t something that we were purposely trying to do, but there is a nice mirroring thing of Helena at the beginning and then kind of matching that and having Gracie have the same procedure happen. It just gets to this creepy ongoing saga of the Proletheans and their grand plans for Helena.

EW: Speaking of people in stirrups, I suppose it’s time to offer a eulogy for the dearly departed Henrik. Why decide to take him out and in such a painful fashion?
FAWCETT: He kinda got what we deserved, don’t you think? Listen, it’s a fun and a sick way to dispatch one of your villains. And I think Helena has had a little revenge on her brain for a while.

EW: The Proletheans have been such a big part of this story for the first two seasons. With Helena torching that place and taking out their leader, are they now not going to be a big part of the show? Are we sort of done with them, or will they continue to be a part of this saga?
FAWCETT: We have not seen the last of the Proletheans. What this represents is a kind of a win for our team. But it’s definitely not a “we’re done with them.” It’s not the end of the empire. Darth Vader’s still spinning off into space.

EW: Is this kidnapping a case of Rachel trying to recreate her lost childhood and have the family unit she felt she never did?
FAWCETT: Rachel’s a little creepy, there’s no question. That could be an aspect of it. It seems to me from all the conversations that Kira is very important to Dyad, from a biological point of view. But also, this has become personal between Rachel and Sarah, and we begin the season with a war between Sarah and Rachel and this war is basically coming to a head with Rachel taking Kira. So you can imagine that this is not going to go well at this point. Especially considering that this ongoing war is really the framework and A story of season 2.

EW: Okay, now’s your chance to tease the finale. We still have a lot of balls in the air. What can we expect next week?
FAWCETT: Sarah is obviously going to have to deal with Rachel. We know who took Kira. It’s not like we’re trying to figure out who took her. We know who took her. So this is going to come to a bit of a showdown between Sarah and Rachel and that’s going to be the exciting thing to watch next week.

EW: There are some people we have not seen in a while. We haven’t seen much of Paul, who is off somewhere. Might he pop back up again?
FAWCETT: We’ve done a lot to bring all the storylines all together for the season finale, so there’s a chance you might see him.

Fargo s01e09 Malvo

Fargo’s penultimate episode, A Fox, A Rabbit, and a Cabbage, sets up what is billed as a bloody finale. Lester both remain foolish and ethically descends into a full Heisenberg. Flashbacks brought us up to date on why Malvo was pretending to be a dentist in order to track down the brother of a dentist in witness protection. His plan was disrupted when Lester appeared, insisting he knew  him. Malvo gave him the same choice he gave him in the first episode: “Yes or no?” Lester showed he learned nothing in answering “Yes,” leading Malvo to kill everyone else in the elevator. “That’s on you.” Lester made another foolish mistake in making a dangerous enemy out of Malvo by hitting Malvo but leaving him alive. This led  Malvo to warn him, “See you later, Lester. See you soon.”

Until this point it appeared that Lester could get away with everything he did a year earlier. Of course, unknown to him, there was again danger from Molly solving the case now that the two FBI agents were taking her seriously. Plus there were new suspicions with Lester having been in Las Vegas at the time of the murders in the elevator.

Lester returned home, hoping to leave the country with his wife Linda. After hearing Linda tell Lester how she always loved him and felt like Cinderella, it was obvious that she was doomed. Suspecting that Malvo was waiting for him at his office, where their passports were stored, Lester had Linda wear his parka with hood up. I doubt that Malvo really confused Linda for Lester when he shot her. If there was any doubt that Lester deserves to either be captured by Molly or killed by Malvo, this resolved it.

In comparing the television adaptation with the movie, I initially saw Lester as more being the victim of circumstances and, despite killing his wife in a fit of rage, not being evil in the sense that William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard was. While things got totally out of hand for both Lester and Jerry, the difference was that Jerry had planned a crime from the start. Lester, like Walter White, became more evil as the series went on, previously framing his brother for his wife’s murder, and now setting up poor Linda.

Lester’s fate might have been determined by the poor decision he made in this episode. Poor decisions often wind up influencing the direction of television shows. For example, tonight we will probably learn the fate of Tyrion on tonight’s season finale of Game of Thrones. He has been sentenced to death after Oberyn was killed by the Mountain in the trial by combat two weeks ago (but I wonder if he gets off on a technicality if both are dead). It was clear that Oberyn would be killed when he made the terrible decision not to kill the Mountain when he had him down, instead demanding a confession. While Oberyn was a fool in that episode, it was good to see Sansa mature, and finally act in control of her fate (somewhat similar to how Donnie acted on Orphan Black).

The above trailer has been released for Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

Current rumors regarding upcoming DC superhero movies:

May 2016 – Batman v Superman
July 2016 – Shazam
Xmas 2016 – Sandman
May 2017 – Justice League
July 2017 – Wonder Woman
Xmas 2017 – Flash and Green Lantern team-up
May 2018 – Man Of Steel 2

HBO decided that an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods was too much to take on:

I think we’re all huge fans of the book, and I think the script just didn’t — we couldn’t craft the script as good as we needed it to be. I think we knew going in that it would be a challenge; every good book is a challenge to adapt it and find the level you need for it. The bar is high now for great dramas. And to find that bar — we tried. So it was a huge disappointment […] We tried three different writers, we put a lot of effort into it. Some things just don’t happen. We have to trust at the end of the day, if you don’t have a star with a great script, you’re just not going to go through with it.

In other entertainment news, Casey Kasem has died at age 82.

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

Breaking Bad Series Finale Elliot and Gretchen 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dexter and Hannah

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

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

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

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

 Hannibal Season 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SciFi Weekend: Breaking Bad; Dexter Finale; Sleepy Hollow; The Blacklist; Agents of SHIELD; Orphan Black; How I Met Your Mother

breaking bad granite state

If the television shows I watched this week really reflected reality, many of the characters would be talking about the Breaking Bad finale, with some catching up on Netflix and the AMC marathon. Breaking Bad has done what few shows can do in increasing interest, and ratings, as it approached its finale. Breaking Bad has succeeded against its rivals the same way that Walter’s blue meth has–being superior to the competition. The show has also become as addictive as blue meth. This is primarily due to basics such as high quality acting and writing, but Breaking Bad has also been assisted by modern technology. The ability of many people to catch up at no additional cost on streaming services such as Netflix has helped increase the audience over past years. High definition big screen televisions are necessary to fully appreciate the camera work.

Things appeared to be as bad as possible for Walt and Jesse at the end of Ozymandias. Matters got even worse in Granite State. Walt lived alone in isolation in New Hampshire, unable to spend his money on anything other than supplies from Ed, along with an extra hour of his company for $10,000. Couldn’t they at least give him a pile of good novels and a radio to listen to? Ed even provided chemotherapy. I wouldn’t expect such intermittent doses with no monitoring to be the best way to treat his cancer, but Walt did appear far stronger when he returned home than on his first attempt to walk into town, even if he became so thin that his wedding ring slipped off his finger. Walt’s attempts to save his family have failed, and he hit bottom with the the total rejection from his son, who wished he was dead. This was enough to get Walt to decide to surrender, until his pride took over when he heard Gretchen and Elliot deny him credit for his work creating Gray Matter Technologies on television.

Meanwhile things were so bad for Jesse that he wished Todd and the neo-Nazis had killed him rather than keeping him alive as a slave to cook blue meth. At points Todd appeared to be less than 100 percent evil when he spared Skyler’s life and gave Jesse some Ben and Jerry’s but showed what a psychopath he really is by so coldly killing Andrea (nothing personal).

This brought us to the scenes which started both halves of Season 5. So far we have seen a couple of possible endings–Walt living happy and retired from the meth business at the start of Season 5, and more recently exposed and arrested by Hank. Now we will see a third, and final, ending. We know Walt is well-armed and has retrieved the ricin from his old home. There are many predictions as to what will happen. The overall arc of the show has been for Walt to become increasingly evil, but some signs of goodness have remained from trying to save Hank to his continued concern for his family.  Will Walt be punished for his crimes, or will he survive? Vince Gilligan left us to wonder with comments on the ending such as “I feel like this ending represents on some level, however small, something of a victory for Walter White.”

Beyond coming out of this alive, the biggest potential victory for Walt would be to find a way for his family to be cared for and Skyler to escape prosecution. Perhaps he will force Gretchen and Elliot to give his family the money from Gray Matter which he believe should have been his (although he certainly was not interested in their money back in the first season).

Presumably Walt will get his revenge over Uncle Jack and Todd. The neo-Nazis must be punished. However, as this is so predictable, either it will occur quickly and the finale will concentrate on other things, it or the outcome will include an unexpected element. How Jesse and Walt will react to each other remains a big question. Perhaps Todd’s demise will involve Lydia as opposed to Walt or Jesse. Unlike on his role of Landry on Friday Night Lights, Jesse Plemon’s character is unlikely to get the girl this time. It would come as no surprise if either winds up killing the other.

What is Walt planning to do with the ricin? Perhaps it is intended for Gretchen and Elliot. Maybe we will even see a flashback which more clearly shows what happened between them and Walt. If a flashback does show them screwing Walt out of what should have been his share of the company and a fortune, I would assume that the two wind up dead.

The ricin might also be for Lydia, should Walt want to undo what he has done and shut down the distribution of blue meth. Yet another possibility is that Walt saved it for himself to ensure that he will not wind up living in prison, after being in a situation as bad as imprisonment in New Hampshire. Maybe he will take the ricin, and then arrange a deal where he goes to prison in return for a deal not to prosecute Skyler. There are also several other characters who might knock off Walt sparing him from going to prison beyond the obvious ones, including Skyler, Marie, and perhaps even Walt, Jr. Perhaps Marie deserves the honors, considering how much she was hurt by Walt while never becoming tainted as was the case with Skyler.

At this point I suspect viewers are mixed regarding their hopes for Walt. If the evil characters are punished, this should include Walt, but the show has always been about rooting for Walt to triumph. Jesse wasn’t initially intended to survive past the first season, and now having Jesse survive would be welcomed by fans. Jesse’s survival could also provide an answer to Brock’s fate. There are lots of other characters to wonder about. Will Saul return from Nebraska? At least we know why Better Call Saul will have to be a prequel show. Did Huell ever get out of that room? Is Baby Holly fated to one day take up chemistry?

While we won’t know what happens to Walt and Jesse until Sunday night, we do know what is next for Vince Gilligan. He will be doing a crime series for CBS next season taking place in Battle Creek. I’m not sure if I’m more disappointed that he will be on network television or that it takes place in Battle Creek, but most likely Gilligan will exceed expectations for such a scenario.

Dexter Ending

While most have high hopes for a satisfactory ending to Beaking Bad, the series finale of Dexter was a disappointment–as was much of  the final season. The two problems are interconnected. A better ending would have meant a better lead up during the season. There were two possible satisfactory scenarios. Dexter could have been caught at the end and the final season could have been about Dexter desperately trying to cover his tracks while at risk of being uncovered. Alternately we could have had a big bad who eventually killed Dexter, but there was nobody this season who was big enough to provide a satisfactory conclusion in this manner. A variation of this would be Hannah being the enemy who kills Dexter, but the season did not play out in a way to make that plausible. Instead we saw a number of potential menaces pop up during the season, but none provided a compelling enough story to justify them being the one who beat Dexter.

The finale was disappointing on a couple additional levels. Having Dexter survive at all seemed implausible until we were reminded that Dexter did have a small life boat available on the Slice of Life. While the final episode did blatantly foreshadow the fact that Dexter would never see his son again and that Hannah would be raising him, they might have given a small clue that the life boat existed nearer the conclusion.

The big disappointment is that Dexter’s decision just made no sense. He has brought doom to some people around him, especially Deb, but Deb died because he changed and did not kill Saxon, not because of his dark passenger. His decision would have made more sense if Dexter’s killing someone is what had led to Deb’s death. Besides, leaving the country with Hannah and getting a fresh start would seem to be a reasonable solution, while still allowing him to be with his son. Even after having Dexter fake his death, it would have been more satisfactory if the ending was like The Dark Knight Rises and Dexter was eating with Hannah and Harrison in an outdoor café in Buenos Aires.

There were so many implausible elements in the finale beyond Dexter’s decision to lead a solitary life. He spared Saxon, leaving him to be killed by the state, and then risked everything to kill him. There was no guarantee his connections with the police would lead to those viewing the film to so easily go along with Dexter’s story. I predicted that Saxon would cut off the guy’s tongue after he said he knew he would not speak, but how did Saxon avoid getting covered in blood? A hospital might be in chaos during an evacuation, but not likely to the point where Dexter could turn off Deb’s life support and carry her out of the hospital. Is it really wise to trust that Hannah will give up killing forever and make a good mother for Harrison?

Scott Buck defended his idea for the finale in this interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Clyde Phillips, show runner in earlier seasons, had a better idea as to how the show should end:

“In the very last scene of the series,” Philips explained, “Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think, ‘Oh, it was a dream.’ And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then we realize, ‘No, it’s not a dream.’ Dexter’s opening his eyes and he’s on the execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They’re just starting to administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation gallery.”

And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed—including the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he was responsible killing, Doakes who he’s arguably responsible for, Rita, who he’s arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there.

“That’s what I envisioned for the ending of Dexter. That everything we’ve seen over the past eight seasons has happened in the several seconds from the time they start Dexter’s execution to the time they finish the execution and he dies.  Literally, his life flashed before his eyes as he was about to die. I think it would have been a great, epic, very satisfying conclusion.”

Phillips further explained that his idea for the ending was inspired by An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge, the 1890 story by Ambrose Pierce about a Confederate soldier that is famous for its time-altering, plot-twisting ending. When the soldier is hanged, the rope breaks, he falls into the river, swims to shore, runs toward his family, see his wife and children and right before they are reunited, the rope catches and he dies. It turns out that the entire story takes place in the two to three seconds between the soldier’s initial drop and his neck snapping.

As SciFi Weekend is supposed to be about science fiction (even though I frequently cover other show) it is time I returned to science fiction in the video above. It is an animated version of Badger’s idea for an episode of Star Trek as presented at the start of the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad. The humor as well as the drama of Breaking Bad will be missed.

I will wait a while longer to come to any conclusions about the new season. Sleepy Hollow showed promise in the first episode, but after the second I’m not sure that I really want to devote an hour a week to it. One thing which might keep me interested is that John Noble will have a recurring role. Nicole Beharie answered questions about the show here.

So far The Blacklist looks like the best new show, with all the twists providing a perfect vehicle for the talents of James Spader. The show does remind me in some ways of Hannibal. A key difference is that with Hannibal we know the broad outline of where the show is going. We were left with lots of questions on The Blacklist.

SHIELD premiere

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a recurring mystery of its own regarding what really happened to Agent Coulson. In some ways it is a light, Disneyized version of Torchwood. Torchwood, in the early seasons, dealt with a team working in a universe where people knew about the Doctor and experienced alien invasions, while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has a team working after the events of The Avengers. Both introduced their agents by recruiting from the outside–Gwen on Torchwood and Sky on SHIELD. Both pilots even used a sci-fi serum at a pivotal point but in far different ways–Retcon to cause amnesia on Torchwood and a truth serum on SHIELD.

I do have one nitpick about the pilot for SHIELD. (Two if I mention how obnoxious Fitz is). I realize that we must accept a lot of implausible things related to fictitious science and superheroes. There are things which none of this should change from our reality. I have been in many hospitals and have never seen one with big open windows in patient rooms which would allow someone with superpowers to leap out and jump to the ground.

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Orphan Black has started filming for the second season, with Sarah once again trying to get reunited with her daughter.

Lilly met the mother on  How I Met Your Mother and we got a scene from a year later showing her with Ted. She does look like the right woman for Ted to wind up with, and now that it has started I think that a season long wedding will work out fine.

SciFi Weekend: Under the Dome Finale; Atlantis; Agent Carter; Breaking Bad; AMC Spin Offs; Downton Abbey Premiere; Orphan Black; Revolution and Blacklist

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The season finale of Under The Dome has been widely criticized by reviewers. We were promised some answers about the dome but instead we got what felt like a bunch of random scenes. After more meaningless butterfly scenes, the big revelation was that Julia is the Monarch, not that we know what that really means. The beings behind the dome spoke in the body of Norrie’s dead mother and declared that the intention was to protect them and apparently we are to believe they are good because they say they are. (They really are intended to be protecting the humans per this interview with executive producer Brian K. Vaughan).  There is no indication of what the dome is protecting Chester’s Mill from, and they show a funny way of providing protection when the dome turns black. Of course we don’t have to worry for long because somehow Julia was right in deciding that the way to protect the egg was to dump it at the bottom of the lake, leading to pink stars rising and the dome turning white. There was no explanation as to why the beings behind the dome even require a human to protect the egg.

The interview noted above tells more about the plans for the series but beware that it also spoils aspects of the book if you intend to read it between seasons. That is pleural seasons. There was a limit to how satisfying any revelations about the dome might be with a plan is to continue the series for several years. This would probably work much better as a single season show with a clear ending, but that is not how network television operates. Regardless, the writers knew there would be a break for the season and might have come up with something more sensible.

Ultimately the dome is just a mechanism to drive the conflict between the various human characters. We might have forgiven holes in the mythology if it actually drove good stories, as with Lost and Fringe. I already discussed many of the flaws in the story here. The cliff hanger hardly provides any suspense, knowing that they will not kill off Barbie as they have killed off less important characters. Potentially better writing might have made the plot line more  believable. Stephen King will be writing the second season premiere. Hopefully he can get the story back on track, and the show’s regular writers can carry on from there.

Atlantis

With Merlin finishing its run last year, The BBC is starting Atlantis, which reimagines Greek mythology.

The action packed series brings to life the vast store of Greek myths and legends re-imagined for a new generation.

From the creators of the hit show Merlin and the creator of BAFTA award-winning series Misfits comes a thrilling new thirteen part adventure series: ATLANTIS.

When Jason sets out to find his father, he could never have anticipated where his journey would lead…

Far from home and desperate for answers, Jason washes up on the shores of an ancient land. A mysterious place; a world of bull leaping, of snake haired Goddesses and palaces so vast it was said they were built by giants – this is the city of Atlantis.

But under the surface of this enticing place is a dark and simmering past, a complicated web of treachery and deceit, with which Jason himself seems inexplicably bound. He soon finds himself embroiled in a perilous game of politics and power from which there is no escape.

Aided by the studious young Pythagoras and the overweight, overbearing Hercules, Jason embarks on a voyage of discovery and salvation which sees him brush shoulders with Medusa, come face to face with the Minotaur and even do battle with the dead.

As the series’ progress, this unlikely but engaging trio will take us on a journey through the vast store of Greek myths and legends, which provide the bedrock of western literature. A treasure trove of extraordinary tales re-imagined in a thrilling and unexpected way for a new generation.

Atlantis was created by Julian Murphy (Merlin, Hex, Sugar Rush), Johnny Capps (Merlin, Hex, Sugar Rush) and BAFTA award winning Howard Overman (Merlin, Misfits, Dirk Gently). BBC Executive producer is Bethan Jones.

Starring Mark Addy, Jack Donnelly, Robert Emms, Sarah Parish, Juliet Stevenson, Jemima Rooper and Aiysha Hart.

Den of Geek has a spoiler-free review of the first episode.

Agent Carter

The Flash is being introduced as a potential DC Comics television spin off of Arrow, and Marvel isn’t far behind. Although the first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t air for a couple more days, a second Marvel television series is under consideration. The second one is on the career of Agent Carter after her boyfriend Steve Rogers (Captain America) gets frozen in ice.

AMC is especially interested in spin off shows with two their major shows concluding soon. With Breaking Bad ending next week, they are developing a spin off, Better Call Saul. There had been talk for a while of a Mad Man spin off, potentially based upon the California office opened last season, but this plan is off. AMC will at least drag out Mad Men for another year, dividing the final season into two seven episode parts. At least they might extend it to eight as Breaking Bad has done. AMC is also working on a companion series to Walking Dead based upon another group in the same universe.

I do wish they weren’t airing the Emmy Awards opposite the final episode of Dexter and the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad. That was quite an episode last week as Walt lost virtually everything, including his family, Jesse, most of his money, and even his identity. We knew since the start of the fifth season that he would ultimately return with a new identity and lots of weapons (including returning home to retrieve the ricin).

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Presumably the major remaining business for Walt is go go after the neo-Nazi’s and possibly save Jesse in the process. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t found that Jesse is being forced to cook for the neo-Nazis. Perhaps while hiding out in New Hampshire he finds out about pure blue Meth still being produced and realizes that only Jesse could be cooking it. There remain many other questions such as what becomes of his home and family and whether Skylar will follow Walt if he survives in light of how he acted to protect her in that phone conversation. Last week we also saw that there was still some good in Walt as he tried to save Hank along with Skylar. On the other hand, he also turned Jesse over to the neo-Nazis and unnecessarily told Jesse about watching Jane die. Of course if Walt thought more, he wouldn’t have fallen for the fake pictures of the money, and previously wouldn’t have left that Walt Whitman book sitting around where Hank could find it. Considering the nature of the relationship between Walt and Jesse, it wouldn’t surprise me if either the two join together against the neo-Nazis or if one kills the other. I’m also sure we haven’t seen the last of Lydia, and Saul might have some role in how this all ends. Finally, is Huell still sitting in that room, afraid to answer the phone?

Michelle Dockery

Besides Dexter, Breaking Bad, and the Emmy Awards, tonight also marked the season premiere of Downton Abbey. Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary) didn’t look as good on the show as she did in this photo shoot to commemorate the fourth season premiere. I’ll avoid any real spoilers. It should come as no surprised that Lady Mary starts out the episode quite depressed in an era where Prozac has not yet been invented. Very early in the episode viewers also learned about the first major crisis of the season as a servant left without giving notice. At least two of the characters were quite unlikeable.

Orphan  Black recently started on BBC Three. Digital Spy asks if it lives up the hype. After seeing the full first season, the answer is yes.

Trailer for the second season of Revolution above.

With James Spader staring, Blacklist is high on the list of new shows to try.

SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Batman, Star Wars, JK Rowling, SHIELD, Sleepy Hollow, Utopia, Breaking Bad

Doctor Who

The BBC has released the above poster for the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who, to be named The Day of The Doctor. It will be the second from last episode staring Matt Smith, also staring David Tennant and John Hurt.

Steven Moffat discussed filming the final episode with Matt Smith at the TV Choice Awards, where Doctor Who won for Best Drama Series. David Tennant won the Best Actor award for his role on Broadchurch. Miranda Hart of Call the Midwife won for Best Actress. (Jessica Raine,who plays Jennie Lee on Call the Midwife, played Emma Grayling in the Doctor Who episode Hide and has a role in the upcoming movie on the development of the series, An Adventure In Space And Time.)

Peter Davison

Peter Davison will be appearing in the 50th Anniversary episode of Doctor Who. While he has confirmed the appearance, he states he is unable to give any specifics. My suspicion is that he has a cameo role in the special but does not reprise his role as the Doctor unless the story can give a plausible explanation for showing a former version of the Doctor who has also aged. Pictures appeared on line of Tom Baker in his scarf starting rumors that he would also appear but it turns out it was to film a skit for another show.

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In follow-up of the controversy I mentioned last week, TrekMovie.com has posted another opinion arguing that Star Trek is Not  Broken. Those who are not happy with how J.J. Abrams is handling Star Trek might be happy to hear that he will not be directing the next Star Trek movie now that he will be busy with Star Wars. I fear that this won’t change many of the problems cited by fans but at least it might mean less lens flare.

There has been even more controversy over the choice of Ben Afflect to play Batman in the Man of Steel sequel. The CEO of Warner Brothers defended the choice, describing this Batman as “kind of tired and weary and seasoned and been doing it for a while.”

Besides the upcoming Star Wars trilogy, Disney is going to take advantage of buying the rights by putting out additional movies. Variety reports that they will be origin movies. There will be a lot of Star Wars as “one ‘Star Wars’ trilogy film or ‘origin story film’ would also appear on the release schedule each year, starting with the seventh installment in the ‘Star Wars’ saga that J.J. Abrams will direct and Disney releases in 2015.”

Warner Brothers is returning to a recent major source of income for the studio. J.K. Rowling is going to write a new movie series taking place in the Harry Potter universe. After recently reading The Cuckoo’s Calling, I think she does have a better future in writing such movies then detective novels, although the two aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s not that I didn’t like the book, but I read several far more entertaining novels over the summer, and there are plenty of similar mystery series already out there.

Grant Gustin of Glee will play The Flash on Arrow, and potentially on a spinoff show.

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Cult Box has a spoiler-free review of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Gawker reports that some of the scripts were not very good and Joss Whedon had to rewrite them. The web site for the series is now on line.

The Detroit News reviews another new genre show, Sleepy Hollow. More on the show at TV Line.

ABC is working on an alternate reality series which sounds interesting. The show, entitled The Thirteen, takes place in an alternative present day in which the colonies did not win independence from England and are still fighting the English for independence.

Paul Krugman and John Amato both recommend Orphan Black, which I certainly agree with.

utopia

Utopia writer Dennis Kelly has discussed conspiracy theories, over population, and the second season of the series:

There’s going to be a second series of Utopia isn’t there?

There is. It’s currently being written. It’s being filmed in two months [speaking on the 22nd of August]. I’ve got two months before the first block. You film it in two blocks so episodes one, two and three, and then four, five and six. Marc Munden who directed one, two and three, and really set up the look for Utopia – and that’s what people talk about a lot when they talk about Utopia – he’s a brilliant director, more like a filmmaker than a TV director really, and he’s fantastic to work with. He’s come back and he’s going to do the first block again. He has a much more involved role in the whole series, which is great.

Can you give us any ideas about what series two might contain?

We’ve got a very odd first episode, which people are either going to really like or really say ‘what the fuck did you do that for?’ and I’ve got no idea what the reaction’s going to be. Some of the characters are coming back, you’ll definitely see Arby again, and Jessica. There’s a lot of people dead unfortunately and a lot of people will die [laughs].

Do you have a finite end for Utopia in mind?

I think I do, I think so, yeah. Not necessarily a good one. [Laughs].

Luc Besson is interested in doing another movie in the world of The Fifth Element.

Trailer for Last Days on Mars posted here.

The cast of Dexter teased the finale.

Joking Bad, Jimmy Fallon’s parody of Breaking Bad, can be viewed above. The series ends this month. A spinoff is being considered based upon Saul Goodman before he became Walt’s lawyer. The Hollywood Reporter lists Saul’s top moments.

SciFi Weekend: The 12th Doctor; The Next Batman; SHIELD And The Avengers; Captain America; Star Wars; Star Trek; Homeland; Dexter; The White Queen; Piracy

Last week white smoke emerged from the BBC and soon afterwards Peter Capaldi was introduced as the 12th Doctor on a show simulcast in the U.K., the United States, Canada, and Australia (video above). BBC America has a run down on the news coverage. The Guardian introduces Capaldi to non-Brits.

Every time there is a regeneration, there is speculation that the next Doctor might not someone other than a white male. Neil Gaiman claims that a black actor has turned down the role. Steven Moffat, Matt Smith, and Jenna Coleman discussed the transition in this interview. An excerpt:

Is writing that final story for Matt Smith’s Doctor the biggest pressure you’ve faced, in doing this show?

MOFFAT:  The biggest pressure will always be introducing a new Doctor.  And I can’t imagine it will ever be tougher than with “The Eleventh Hour” because everything changed.  It’s not an ideal way to run television.  It really isn’t.  That was mad.  All the execs left, the producer left, and all the stars left.  You think, “Christ, how do you get away with that?!”  We’re not in that situation this time, and it’s good that we’re not.  People say, “It must have been great and exciting and marvelous that you had all that new stuff,” but not really.  But, we got away with it.  I just remember thinking, “Are people going to buy that this is the same show, when it clearly is not?”

Do you wish that you could just introduce the new Doctor via the show, when he finally shows up?

MOFFAT:  I’d love to, but that’s physically impossible.  It was Russell’s plan not to tell anyone that Chris [Eccleston] was going to change in the last episode, but it leaked after one week.  I wish it were possible.   The fact is that those actors’ agents have to say that they’re available.  They have to take jobs.  It’s going to leak, so you have to take command of that story.  It’s annoying.  I’d far rather not tell anybody anything, seriously.  If you’re telling a joke, you don’t want anybody telling the punchline before you get to the end.  Sadly, I don’t think it’s possible now.  Everybody wanders around with cameras now.  A few years ago, no one had a camera on them.  Now, every little human being goes around with a camera on their phone.  How am I going to keep secrets with that?!  It’s tough.  It can be irritating, but what can you do?

Moffat started with a new cast with both Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. With Jenna Coleman still being relatively new to the series, the show with Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman will have a different feel than during most of Moffat’s tenure with Matt Smith and the Ponds.

Now that we know who will play the next Doctor, the next major succession is who will play Batman when he appears in the next Superman movie. Rumor has it that Orlando Bloom is the leading contender.

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Joss Whedon discussed synergy between Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the universe of The Avengers:

Speaking at the recent TCAs, Whedon said fans will spot some synergy in the run-up to Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World. “There will be as much as we can allow,” he said. “We’re still working that out. It’s a fun opportunity, but it’s not the reason for the show. It’s not an Easter egg farm, we want people to come back.”

The pilot kicks off with Angel alumnus J August Richards as an “unregistered gifted” that the SHIELD agents must track down. Don’t expect a superhero-of-the-week show, though, “There could be a device, a mystery,” Whedon continued.

“There’s so many aspects as to what’s happened since everybody in the world found out there’s a superhero team and aliens invaded New York. We want to be able to change it up every week: spy stuff, hero stuff, heartfelt stuff. We want to make sure the humor is there, but every week, you get something that feels a little bit different.”

Disney has also released a full synopsis for Captain America: The Winter Soldier

After the cataclysmic events in New York with The Avengers, Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier finds Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, living quietly in Washington, D.C. and trying to adjust to the modern world. But when a S.H.I.E.L.D. colleague comes under attack, Steve becomes embroiled in a web of intrigue that threatens to put the world at risk.

Joining forces with the Black Widow, Captain America struggles to expose the ever-widening conspiracy while fighting off professional assassins sent to silence him at every turn. When the full scope of the villainous plot is revealed, Captain America and the Black Widow enlist the help of a new ally, the Falcon. However, they soon find themselves up against an unexpected and formidable enemy—the Winter Soldier.

These Avengers-themed sex toys will definitely never be sold at the many stores around the Disney theme parks, even should the Avengers characters be moved from Universal to WDW in the future.

ABC is in talks to bring another genre show to television–a live action Star Wars show. I really hope this happens, not because I care whether there is a weekly Star Wars show but because maybe this would lead CBS (who appears to own the rights, but it is somewhat murky) to counter by returning Star Trek to television. Star Trek worked far better as a weekly series than intermittent movies which are forced by market demands to be big action movies.

After Disney purchased the rights to Star Wars, there was talk of expanding the Star Wars presence at the Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park. I expressed skepticism over speculation that they would  get rid of Muppet Vision 3D and the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Playground for this expansion. Earlier in the week I was looking at the refurbishment schedule at Walt Disney World and noticed that Muppet Vision 3D is closed August 6 through September 2 for refurbishment. In addition, the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Playground will be closed September 3 through November 19 for refurbishment. They might not be around forever, but it doesn’t appear likely that they plan to remove them in the near future. As is usually the case at WDW, other areas will also be closed during these times. The most significant is that Spaceship Earth will be closed August 18-24.

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On Orange is the New Black, Kate Mulgrew ran the prison kitchen instead of the Starship Voyager. She was interviewed by Vulture, and told about one Star Trek reference thrown into the show:

At one point Natasha Lyonne has a line, “I thought I was your Spock.”
Yes, they threw that in. I’m sure they’ll do some more of that. I think that was intentional and very clever!

Speaking of Star Trek, Blastr describes how the show was saved by Lucille Ball.

In 1965, Roddenberry got a pilot order from NBC and produced the original Star Trek pilot “The Cage.” It was rejected by the network, reportedly because it was “too cerebral,” and for most shows that’s where the story would have ended. Luckily for Roddenberry, he had Ball on his side. The story goes that she still thought the Star Trek idea had legs, and used her considerable influence in television to push for NBC to give Roddenberry a second chance. The network made the exceedingly rare move of ordering a second pilot from Roddenberry, who overhauled almost the entire cast of characters from “The Cage” and eventually produced “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” That pilot was accepted, the show was given a series order, and the rest is history.

Damian Louis interviewed about his role on Homeland in the video above.

Anna Torv returns to television following Fringe in a show expected to air on HBO next year. Torv will play a lesbian yoga instructor.

Yvonne Strahovski as Hannah McKay (Season 7, episode 6) - Photo: Randy Tepper/Showtime - Photo ID: dexter_706_0087

We don’t know yet how Dexter will end but executive producer Sara Colleton realizes that she can’t make everyone happy.

“This has been the ending that we have talked about for years,” she said. “So to us, it feels right for our show and how we feel about it. I hope fans will think it’s right [too].”

The exec conceded that there is no way to make “everybody happy” with the conclusion of the Michael C Hall series.

“At the end of the day, we know that you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t,” she said. “There will be people who hate it, but we can’t try to anticipate that or put it through the lens of any other show’s finale – because that was another show.

“This is our show. This is Dexter.”

It is hard to believe that things will end well for Dexter Morgan. Multiple routes to doom have arisen this season. So far this has included Dr. Vogel and Deb when she is in a crazy mood. Last week episode showed two additional threats. He has decided he wants to be a mentor to Zach Hamilton, but Zach appears unhinged enough to turn on Dexter. Then there was the return of Hannah McKay.

Having a hard time waiting until Game of Thrones returns? The White Queen on Starz might help.

Piracy drops when there are legal ways to view shows. It comes as no surprise that piracy has spiked in response to the Time Warner cable blackout of CBS.

SciFi Weekend: SDCC Part 1–SHIELD, Matt Smith, Sherlock, Big Bang Theory, Hannibal, Dexter, Orphan Black, Veronica Mars, Game of Thrones, and More

There’s a lot of news coming out of San Diego Comic Con. Here’s some reports on panels held so far, with more to come.

The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. panel is above. They also showed the pilot at ComicCon.  A description of the pilot can be read here.  Cobie Smulder will be reprising her role as Maria Hill in the pilot, and will have further appearances throughout the season.

Blastr has more:

The unofficial gag order surrounding the details of ABC/Marvel’s new drama, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., finally lifted at San Diego Comic-Con. With the unveiling of the pilot episode and the first press tour at the Con, we have a better sense of what the show will revolve around, aside from the mysterious return of assumed dead Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg).

According to executive producers Jeff Bell and Jeph Loeb, the series will focus on the humanity and smaller scale heroics dished out daily in the S.H.I.E.L.D trenches.

“To me, the movies have always been about people,” Bell explains. “There are all these giant monsters and heroes, but there have always been really interesting humans. Nick Fury is just a guy.”

Loeb adds, “Out tagline is “not all heroes are super” and that’s really important to us. It’s not just a tagline but it talks about the human condition in a way that is really important.”

Bell continues, “Jeph has a thing that I really like, although we can’t say [mutant] on our show because that’s not part of our world, but he says every person has a mutant gift and your job in your life is to figure out what your mutant gift is and how best to use it. I think that’s really cool.”

The embodiment of that everyday heroism is Coulson, a character that has become beloved to audiences.

Why? “Easy,” says Bell. “Clark Gregg. He showed up in the first Iron Man with a couple of lines and people watching said he was interesting. Along the way, he got in a little bit more. In The Avengers they made him a fan. He liked the cards and S.H.I.E.L.D. history. He was the audience surrogate in the movies. You could be this guy who shows up and does his job around these superheroes and is taken for granted. The way Clark presents the lines, people love it, so he is our way into the world.

Matt Smith makes his final appearance as the Doctor at the Brave New Warriors Panel.

Geek Tyrant on the Sherlock Panel:

They dove right into last season’s cliffhanger: How did he survive? They aren’t telling, but they did know how it worked before they filmed it, so they aren’t just flying by the seat of their pants. It is a rational answer, not black magic. Depsite reports that Andrew Scott was back on set to film scenes for the third season, they swear Moriarty is actually dead. “What, did they fake suicide at each other? Were you faking? I was faking, too!” That’s not going to happen. As for speculation that he can’t be dead because they didn’t show the back off his head come off–sorry to say they just aren’t allowed to show that level of violence on BBC1.

Moffatt knows people are excited to learn how Sherlock managed it, but he doesn’t think it’s that interesting. That’s just an answer. But when John Watson realizes that Sherlock is alive, when they come face to face again? “That moment is electrifying.” And it’s funny. Moffatt calls it “the showstopper of the season.”

Moffatt always gives hints about what Sherlock Holmes stories the next season will hit, and for Season 3, he’s said, “Rat, Wedding, and Bow.” The first episode is called “The Empty Hearse” and is very slightly based on “The Adventures of the Empty House.” It is mostly an exploration of the affect of Sherlock’s “death” and reappearance on the people who loved him. The writers realized that there would be a lot of fallout from the events of last season, but they couldn’t spend all of this season talking about last season, so it sounds like they’re going to deal with it in this episode.

Episode 2 is called “The Sign of Three,” and seems to focus on Watson’s wedding, and you guys? They showed us a clip, and it was amazing! They asked us not to even tell anyone about it, but eff that noise! We’re at Watson’s wedding reception, and Sherlock is beginning his toast. Yeah, amazing. He begins awkwardly (of course), “John… John Watson…” and explains that when Watson asked him to be his best man, he was confused. Then it flashes back, to Watson walking in on Sherlock appleying a blowtorch to a disembodied eyeball, which he promptly dips in his cup of tea. Watson says that they need to talk about the best man, and Sherlock starts going on and on about who he thinks the best man is. Watson interrupts and says he means the best man at his wedding. Sherlock starts talking about one of Watson’s friends, Watson says not him, then another, Watson says that he isn’t his best friend, and says that at his wedding he wants the two people who are closest to him and mean the most to him by his side, and tells Sherlock that it’s him. Sherlock’s jaw drops. Cut back to the wedding, and Sherlock is explaining his reaction, how he told him how he was touched and honored… cut back to Sherlock still standing there, speechless. He knew it would be an important and difficult task… cut to Sherlock, still standing there, speechless. Sherlock says he then realized he hadn’t said anything out loud. Sherlock accepts, and promptly drinks the eyeball tea.

There wasn’t much information on the third episode but it was subsequently revealed that the title will be The Last Vow.

Mark Gatiss will be appearing in Season 4 of Game of Thrones. If this sort of combines Sherlock and Game of Thrones, how about combining two other genre franchises? What if Ned Stark and Tony Stark were brothers?

There were reports that the cast of  The Big Bang Theory wouldn’t be present at SDCC due to other commitments but Johnny Galecki made a surprise appearance, posing as a fan in costume waiting to ask a question and Melissa Rauch hosted the panel. Steven Hawking had the recorded message above.

The Hannibal DVD and Blu-ray will be released September 24 (same day as the pilot of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. airs), including  a gag real (video above)  and an unaired episode. No specific news on the unaired episode, but I want to see it. Screen Rant has this news from the panel:

HitFix kept a comprehensive live blog of last night’s Hannibal panel at SDCC, which featured show creator Bryan Fuller, director David Slade, producer Martha De Laurentiis and stars Hugh Dancy and Aaron Abrams. The team were pretty brave going up against an audience of fans after the rage-inducing season finale that left poor Will Graham behind bars, Hannibal Lecter smiling at him from the other side, and a whole lot of people throwing objects at their televisions. If you think that Bryan Fuller was enjoying Will’s pain, you’re absolutely right:

“Will knows something no one else knows, and it’s a great place to put a character. One of the things I was most excited about in Season 2 was seeing Will Graham hit rock bottom.”

Given the fact that Will spent most of season one hallucinating, perspiring, or doing both simultaneously, it will be interesting to see what happens when he really hits rock bottom. Apparently he will be “scrappy” and “feisty,” though, so that’s definitely something to look forward to. Season two will begin with a two-parter that will serve as “a new pilot for what the season can be” now that the old dynamics are gone and Will is in jail, and the third episode, according to Fuller, “will be a trial.” That sounds ominous.

Video of the full Hannibal panel follows:

The Dexter cast made their final appearance before the show ends and, not surprisingly, there were no hints as to how the show ends.

Walking Dead stars on a bigger season.

The Federal Express truck pulled up with my copy of the Blu-ray of the first season on Orphan Black. I haven’t seen any of it, but the reviews I’ve read this week have sounded fantastic. I’m avoiding the details to limit spoilers, but here’s a report on news of the second season of the show. More here and here. Video of the panel above. (I’ll come back and watch after I finish the first season).

Report on the DC Comics Panel here.

DC has its greatest success in movie adaptations with Superman and Batman. It will be necessary to reboot Batman once again for him to appear in the Justice League of America and in further solo films. It now appears that Batman might return in a joint movie with Superman. As for the last reboot of Batman, a panel even considered the question of whether Bruce Wayne was crazy for dating Catwoman. The Flash is the next DC character to get a solo film.

The Marvel universe is divided in the movies, with Sony holding the screen rights to Spider-Man. Information on plans for this series here and here.

Sneak peak at the Veronica Mars movie above. Those of us who donated through Kickstarter to make this movie possible are acknowledged in the clip. More on the movie here.

In Memoriam–Those who died on Game of Thrones.

Update: More Comic Con news posted here.