SciFi Weekend: Claire Returns; 24 Movie; Captain America; Kaley Cuoco; Anna Torv

This was a pretty slow week. Several genre shows are on hiatus until after the Olympics. Caprica took one week off. Not terribly much happened on Lost until the final minute when Claire returned. The cast is out looking for new jobs with Daniel Dae Kim getting the lead role in a Hawaii 5-0 remake.

24 has been disappointing this season with rumors that this might be the last season on television, to be followed by a movie. This gives them two choices–remain in real time and have a two hour story or compress the events of twenty-four hours into a two hour movie. The word is that they are considering the compressed day idea.

There have been a few genre oriented posts out already this week, two involving Captain America. First there was a look at Captain America vs. The Teabaggers which actually is seen in the comic. This was followed by a look at Captain America vs. Iron Man and the Superhuman Registration Act.

Earlier today I had a post which showed a connection between Gilmore Girls and Big Bang Theory. There was more news this week regarding Big Bang Theory with Kaley Cuoco appearing in Maxim (above). In addition, nude scenes of Lucy Lawless in Spartacus have hit the internet and Anna Torv of Fringe appears topless in Esquire:

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SciFi Weekend: Dollhouse and FlashForward Picked Up For Season; Deaths on Heroes and True Blood; Trician Helfer, Grace Park, and Ashley Green

dollhouse

One frustrating thing about getting involved in a show on network television is that genre shows often do not do well in the ratings leading to early cancellation.  There was news this week about two shows which will at very least remain around for the season. Dollhouse, which almost was canceled after its first season, will have at least thirteen episodes aired this season. Any decision as to whether to renew the show or purchase more than thirteen episodes this year will not be made until after the first thirteen air.

Reached by phone, Joss Whedon (who has a terrible-sounding cold — feel better!) said he’s writing the 13th hour to give fans a degree of closure.

“We’ll definitely have closure, but will leave some doors open,” said Whedon, who’s currently shooting the eighth episode. “When we got our first numbers, which were bad, the first thing [Fox president of entertainment] Kevin Reilly said was, ‘You’ll have all 13,’ which was great. They’re not going to pull the rug out from under us.”

Beckman said DVR results have played a role in the show’s fate, though wasn’t surprised by today’s results.

“It’s one of the reasons that we brought it back; we knew it was DVR friendly,” Beckman said. “We expected to see this, and hopefully we’ll see [the overnight ratings] increase from week to week … with some shows, you have to look at the bigger picture.”

Beckman also humorously characterized deciding the show’s fate as a bit of no-win situation when it comes to dealing with Whedon’s passionate fans.

“If you cancel it, you’re an asshole; if you renew it and then don’t put it back on, you’re an asshole,” he said. “I’m still paying for ‘Terminator.’ ‘Dollhouse’ has a small rabid fan base that in the world of social media seems bigger than it is. We gave them another season knowing full well we were going to burn in hell if we pulled it.”

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Things are looking even better for FlashForward with ABC deciding pick up the series for the full season.

TV Guide interviewed Sonya Walger, who has roles on both Lost and FlashForward. She doesn’t have clue as to when or if she will be in the final episode of Lost. She had this comment on her role on Flashforward:

TVGuide.com: We haven’t seen all of Olivia’s flash-forward. What can you tease about what we haven’t seen?
Walger:
In the flash-forward, the bit that you have seen is that Lloyd [Jack Davenport] gets up from the bed and gets a text message from someone. The person he gets a text message from is very, very unexpected.

TVGuide.com: Can Mark and Olivia’s marriage survive this flash-forward?
Walger:
Who knows? I think it’s completely fascinating that just the ghost of this might be what undoes their marriage, or it might be what strengthens them and keeps them together. It might be the tension of it alone [that] drives Mark to drink. It’s such an interesting idea that just the threat of something might be what leads you towards it. It may well be that they get to a breaking point and then say, ‘No, this isn’t happening to us. We’re going to make this work.’

TVGuide.com: Do you have any personal belief in fate?
Walger:
I don’t really. The word fate doesn’t really mean much to me in some ways. I think we make our own. Minute by minute you decide who you are and who you’re likely to be. You make the choices hour by hour, just in the present. I don’t believe there’s some roadmap laid out that we’re headed towards.

TVGuide.com: Give us a nice tease for what’s coming up for Olivia.
Walger:
She’s going to be forced quite soon to deal with whether or not you can change the future. She keeps being reminded — evidence keeps being presented all around her — that you can’t change it. Every time she thinks she’s seen the last of Lloyd and that she’s managed to avoid it, he keeps coming back.

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Watch With Kristin reports that there will be a major death on Heroes. It will involve a male who was part of the original cast, and may or may not be one of the four in the picture above.

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True Blood has been picked up for a third season:

While the rollercoaster relationship of Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) remains front and center, Ball revealed that several supporting characters will be sharing even more of the spotlight. “Definitely Eric has broken out and is a big important character now. Jessica and Hoyt are still trying to deal with everything that happened to them, and Arlene and Terry are going to have a little bit more of a life and more of a presence on the show.”

There’s also room for guest stars, like Evan Rachel Wood’s vampire queen of Louisiana. “She’ll be back,” promised Ball. “Maybe Zeljko Ivanek, who played the Magister in Season 1 – he might be back. And we do have a lot of fun new characters.”

Sam Trammell, who plays the hapless but heroic bar owner/changeling Sam Merlotte, added that Season 3 is “going to explore my relatives and the sort of sketchy, shapeshifter-y people in my family, and that’s going to be more torture for Sam. I’m sure they’re not going to be good people.” But will Sam’s still-burning torch for Sookie also be a source of torment? “Well, I hope he still has a shot with Sookie, but who knows? Probably not.”

Alan Ball has also told TV Guide that at least one character will die next season, which is hardly surprising considering the nature of the show.

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Tricia Helfer and Grace park are on the cover of Maxim prior to the upcoming release of the Battlestar Galactica movie, The Plan. With the movie being released on DVD prior to its showing on television it will be possible to have more explicit scenes as was done in the DVD release of Caprica. Rumor has it that the main nude scenes involve extras in a shower scene. Tricia Helfer will also be appearing in an upcoming episode of Two And A Half Men.

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There seems to be a lot of actresses from genre television shows in movies in magazines this month in addition to the above. For example, Ashley Green of Twilight has a photo shoot in Men’s Fitness.

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The Maxim Hot 100: Lindsay Lohan Tops List, Beats Mitt Romney in Unfavorability

Maxim’s Hot 100 list has been released. Some of the women on the shows followed in our television posts are included:

Yunjin Kim (Lost) 98
Ivanka Trump (The Apprentice) 83
Evangeline Lilly (Lost) 68
Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) 57
Kristin Bell (Veronica Mars) 46
Moon Bloodgood (Daybreak) 40
Jennifer Garner (Alias) 35
Elisha Cuthbert (24) 25
Ali Larter (Heroes) 6
Jessica Alba (Sin City, Dark Angel) 2

And the winner is Lindsay Lohan, who is being compared to Mitt Romney in other reports. (Comments on a recent post look at the question of whether Romney is hot.) Fewer people know who Mitt Romney is than know who Lindsay Lohan is. The two have similar favorability (in the 20s), but Lohan has almost double the unfavorability rating (41% vs. 22%). I could bring in Lohan’s Disney connection, such as with the remake of Parent Trap. There’s even a fantasy film connection, even if weak, with Freaky Friday as well as a connection with politcal movies in Bobby. But we all know that Lindsay Lohan’s is primarily known for her inability to keep her clothes totally on in public.

(Updated Warning: Viewing of this picture might subject you to reprimand from the Thought Police at The Democratic Daily. View this photo, and think for yourself, at your own risk.)

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SciFi Friday: Doctor Who Meets The Beatles, Nominated for Hugos; Scotty Returns to Space; and Veronica Mars is No. 11

Doctor Who might be between seasons, but there are still clips available. In this 1995 clip the TARDIS crew comes back from the future to see The Beatles perform. One girl from the future mentions that she’s heard of the Beatles and has even visited their memorial in Liverpool. She is surprised that they performed “classical music.” It would have been really eerie if she had made reference to the Beatles splitting up, or John Lennon getting shot.

Doctor Who dominates the Hugo Award nominations for Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. The show received nominations for Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, Girl in the Fireplace, and for School Reunion. Battlestar Galactica received a nomination for Downloaded, and Stargate SG-1 received a nomination for 200.

The nominees for Dramatic Presentation, Long Form are Children of Men, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Prestige, A Scanner Darkly, and V for Vendetta. The nominees for best novels are Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik, Glasshouse by Charles Stross, Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, and Blindsight by Peter Watts.

Doctor Who has been renewed for a fourth season, but it has not been announced whether David Tennant will return. The third season starts on BBC One on March 31, with Freema Agyeman as the Doctor’s new companion, Martha Jones, to replace Billie Piper (Rose). The role of companion became more significant with Rose. While much of The Doctor’s backstory was no longer meaningful with the death of the other Timelords, Rose became the first companion to have a real life shown beyond traveling with The Doctor. The replacement of Rose with Martha Jones could provide for a new situations if they utilize Martha in a similar manner. There is no word as to when the fourth season will be aired in the United States, but the first episode should be available for download using bit torrent by later this weekend.

Startrek.com reports that Scotty will be returning to outer space in April:

The first rocket launch to memorialize James Doohan by taking a portion of his cremated remains into space has been set for Saturday, April 28, in New Mexico, with a public memorial planned for the day prior.

The memorial service will be held at the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo on Friday, April 27. The Saturday launch will take place at New Mexico’s new “Spaceport America” location adjacent to the White Sands Missile Range. A specific time of day has not yet been set for either event. Both the memorial and viewing of the launch will be open to the general public. Doohan’s widow, Wende, will be present at both events, and other special guests may be announced later.

“While ‘Scotty’ lived this, Jimmy lived for this,” Ms. Doohan said in a press release. “I will be there to see the launch, knowing that Jimmy is participating in an industry which he loved so very much.”

Space Services Inc. (SSI), aka Celestis, provides the memorial spaceflight service by partnering with a launch provider and attaching a canister of modules containing a “symbolic portion” of each participant’s ashes — seven grams or less — to a rocket vehicle, usually as a “secondary payload.”

The Battlestar Galactica third season DVD is expected to be released in August. There have been three posts earlier this week on Battlestar Galactica which include information from Ron Moore regarding some of the mysteries left in the season finale. The post-finale posts on BSG are here, here, and here.

Lost might be joining shows such as Battlestar Galactica and 24 next season in showing all episodes in a single block following the holidays. This week’s episode featured more needless destruction, but this time we can’t blame Locke. We find that the Others aren’t necessarily the most despicable characters now that we have the full story on Paulo and Nikki. The flashback shows that they poisoned the director of a show Nikki guest stared on in order to steal diamonds from him. Most of the flash backs actually occur after crash. The moment that Nikki mentioned that those spiders will paralyze their victims the outcome with the two winding up buried alive was obvious. It was bad enough that Nikki didn’t account for the possibility of being bitten by the spider which bit Paulo. At very least she should have recalled being told that the spider would attract others. Incidentally, that junior high science teacher was quite an expert on very rare species. If only he had been smart enough not to blow himself up.

Seeing what worthless scoundrels the two were made it easy to accept their fate. Paulo certainly had no interest in anything beyond the diamonds. Things might have turned out quite differently for several characters if only he told someone else about the conversation he overheard about how the Others planned to use Michael to capture Jack. The one surprising act of needless destruction was burying the diamonds along with Nikki and Paulo. They could come in handy if ever rescued, and might even be of value in negotiating with the Others.

This was also the second recent episode in which the flashbacks were used differently from the usual scenario of showing a character before they came to the island. This week the flashback took place primarily on the island, A few weeks ago the flashbacks of Desmond were also handled differently. As they are not stuck with the format of always using true flashbacks to the past, I’ve wondered if, in the final season, they might substitute views of the characters after leaving the island instead of flashbacks. This way they could both end the series with a rescue, while also answering questions about what happens to the characters when they return home, with many having left at critical points in their life.

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My wish of two weeks ago for Seventh Heaven to be put out of its misery has been fulfiled as word is now out that the show is to be cancelled. I bet there is no last minute reprieve this season. The fate of Veronica Mars is still up in the air with many expecting them to skip forward and show Veronica training to work for the FBI if the show returns next year. Checking the stat counters, I found that the picture of Kristin Bell in SciFi Friday from two weeks ago is beating search engine hits here for Britney Spears, which I guess shouldn’t be surprising considering that Bell has been named #11 on Maxim’s Hot 100 of 2006 list. I imagine her photos in Maxim were to get her fans prepared for her bathtub scene in Pulse.

While it isn’t official, Slice of SciFi quotes David Duchovny as saying that he and Gillian Anderson are in the final negotiations to star in a second X-Files movie. There is no script yet, but reportedly the plan is for it to be a stand-alone story and not part of the alien mythology. It would be easier to write such a story, especially considering how convoluted the mythology stories became, but I think there would be far more interest in seeing what happens after the first movie ended with warnings of an alien invasion to come.

The cover art for the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, has been revealed:

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Will Liberals Really Take Away Your Guns?

In response to my previous posts arguing that at present liberals are far closer to libertarians than conservatives, some Republican-leaning libertarians have cited out dated ideas as to the views of liberals on the right to own guns. Some echo conservatives in arguing that liberals will take away their guns (but at least don’t repeat the conservative claims that liberals will also take away their bibles). We see evidence of the lack of such a desire among liberals in the reaction to the federal appeals court’s ruling on Second Amendment rights in Washington, D.C. While some courts have argued that the ambiguously-worded amendment only pertains to a right to maintain a militia, this ruling interprets the amendment as giving the right to own guns to individuals. I would assume that ultimately the Supreme Court will decide upon this issue.

In reviewing the reaction in the blogosphere it is clear, as anticipated, that intensity of support for the right to own guns is greater on the right. While this is a lower priority on the left, the sentiment is also with the rights of the individual. Even where bloggers have not commented it is noteworthy that there is no outrage over the court’s decision as would be expected if restriction of gun ownership was really a goal of liberals. Liberal blogs have expressed some of the following views:

Taylor Marsh:

Personally, I can’t imagine a city law banning all guns in private homes. It’s absurd. I believe it is also unconstitutional. As for my gun expert husband, he simply wouldn’t live where guns were banned by law. No American should be forced to; not with the Second Amendment as law.

Good for CATO…

It’s not over by a long shot, but I hope that the ruling stands and that D.C. residents get the right that all Americans deserve under the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Keep fighting.

Guns are not for everyone. If you don’t like them, don’t own one. Of course they need to be regulated, with background checks for owners mandatory. But they should definitely not be banned.

The Gun Toting Liberal:

Looks like they got it right, folks. It IS a “right”, and perhaps, even a responsibility to protect oneself and one’s loved ones via the “great equalizer” as well as one of our few civil liberties we have somewhat left to us. On top of it all, with the far-right’s attempts to install a theocracy all around us, we just MIGHT want to think about that little “tyranny” comment by Judge Silberman for a moment. While “tyranny” is not exclusive to the right, there is little doubt that the tyrants of the far-right are armed to the “T’s” compared to the tyrants on the far-left.

Talk Left:

Good news for those who, like me, believe the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today holds it does.

(more…)

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