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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SyFy has cancelled Eurkea.

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

Woman Arrested in Dubai For Wearing Bikini At Mall

In Sex and the City II Samantha Jones was arrested for having sex on the beach in Dubai. It takes a lot less than that to get arrested there-such as wearing a bikini to the mall, or kissing in public. The Daily Mail reports:

A British holidaymaker has been charged with indecency in Dubai after walking through the world’s largest shopping centre in a bikini.

The woman was buying clothes and gifts in the Dubai Mall, fully dressed but in a low-cut top, when she was accosted by an Arabic woman and criticised for wearing ‘revealing clothing’.

The pair then became embroiled in a heated row in front of hundreds of bemused shoppers.

Incensed by the Arabic woman’s comments, the British woman told her to ‘mind her own business’ before stripping out of her clothes and ‘taunting’ the locals by walking around in only her bikini, it is alleged.

Fortunately the charges have been dropped. There are signs up warning about dress in the malls, and other offenses have also led to arrests:

There are numerous signs around the Dubai Mall urging women to ‘wear respectful clothing-Similar messages are flashed up on LCD screens in most shopping malls across the United Arab Emirates.

Dubai, which attracts more than one million British tourists a year, tends to operate a more lenient policy than other Arab states.

However, officials in the Gulf state have prosecuted several British tourists for indecent behaviour over the past two years.

Earlier this year estate agent Charlotte Adams, 26, and Ayman Najafi, 24, were jailed for a month by a Dubai court for kissing and fondling each other in a restaurant.

The pair, from North London, always maintained that the embrace was nothing but a ‘peck on the cheek’.

They were arrested in November last year at a busy burger restaurant after a 38-year-old local woman claimed she spotted them kissing on the lips and stroking each other’s backs.

Cynthia Nixon Protesting Stupak Amendment

While everyone has been concentrating on the positive and negative aspects of the Senate health care bill, the big problem with the House bill has almost been forgotten. Cynthia Nixon has been speaking out against the Stupak amendment:

It’s been a little more than a week since Cynthia Nixon flew back from filming “Sex and the City 2” in Morocco, and she’s already diving headfirst into the debate surrounding abortion and health care reform.

Nixon, a longtime abortion rights activist, says she can’t keep quiet about the recent health care bill amendments that would limit insurance coverage for abortions.

“It’s a very basic female right that we need to protect,” Nixon said. “What’s so frightening about this Stupak ban is that he’s found a backdoor way to basically not cover abortion for the vast majority of American women.”

The Stupak-Pitts amendment, written by Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan and Republican Rep. Joseph R. Pitts of Pennsylvania, is a point of contention in the House health care bill. The amendment would limit funds in the health care bill, preventing subsidies from directly paying for abortions and also from paying for any insurance plan that covers abortions.

The prohibition excludes cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger.

CNN interviewed Nixon about her protests of the Stupak amendment:

CNN: You’ve been very outspoken in the past few years about LGBT issues and rights, but not as much about reproductive health. When did you start becoming vocal about being pro-choice?

Cynthia Nixon: I’ve been involved since I was 15, so we’re talking almost 30 years now.

My mother had an illegal abortion pre-1973, and it’s something that I would never want to face or want my daughter to be facing or any of her friends. Abortion is a right I feel must not go away, and I feel like people aren’t mobilizing so much because it’s so complicated and it’s difficult to understand.

CNN: But some say that all the Stupak-Pitt amendment does is essentially hold up the current law that restricts federal funding from providing abortions.

Nixon: That’s patently false. The new people coming in would be people making less than $88,000 a year in a family of four and would be getting their insurance in the form of tax credit. That credit is coming through the federal government.

[For] the majority of women who have health insurance now, abortion is covered as a complete given. Once these new people come in, we’re looking at adding 36 million people to these tax credits, and they will not have abortion offered as an option on their health insurance. That’s a really large chunk of people, but the thing is also how it will affect the marketplace. …

They’re saying you could buy [a rider] additionally, but for how much? It’s going to be exorbitantly expensive, and it’s not a thing people are going to do.

By the very nature of abortion, nobody intends to have one. Nobody intends to get pregnant by mistake, nobody intends to be raped, nobody intends to be [a victim of incest], and no one intends, in the course of a wanted pregnancy, to have a catastrophic event that requires an abortion.

SciFi Weekend: Surprises on Dollhouse and Lost (Penelope Widmore is Sally Harper!)

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There were several surprises this week. Some of the surprises were actually anticipated but this isn’t necessarily bad as it could indicate that the writers did a good job of setting up the surprises as opposed to bringing in things out of left field. Spoilers released earlier in the season also made some more predictable.

Briar Rose, this week’s episode of Dollhouse, began with one surprise as Ballard dumped Mellie. At first I was surprised he would to this but the moment we saw Mellie back with her handler the reason became clear. I had no doubt that Ballard was following and that this would be how he found the location of the Dollhouse.

While Ballard was hunting for the Dollhouse, the obligatory Echo story showed yet another use for the Dollhouse’s technology as this was used to help an abused child. It was not clear how this organization, which generally sells their services to millionaires, wound up helping this child (or how they could find the Dollhouse when the FBI could not).

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The real surprise of the episode was that Kepler turned out to be Alpha, but I actually expected that even before they made in inside of the Dollhouse. This guess was helped both by knowing that the season would end with a confrontation with Alpha and as Joss Whedon had already hinted that we would first see Alpha in a different identity.

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The show started out with problems, probably because of the interference from Fox, but is ending the season strong from a creative if not ratings standpoint.  Briar Rose set up a the finale, which will hopefully be a season as opposed to a series finale, with Alpha taking Echo. It turns out that both Ballard and Alpha are obsessed with Echo/Caroline. Of course after her nude picture in Allure (above) , I imagine there might be lots of guys who are obsessed with Eliza Dushku.

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Lost had its 100th episode, centering around Daniel Faraday. The Variable probably foreshadows the final episodes of the season as they move on from living with the Dharma people. The show could turn out to be a real game changer if it does turn out that people are variables which can change events, contrary to what we were previously told. The ultimate surprise could turn out to be that everything changes.

The surprise in this episode which came as no surprise was seeing Daniel Faraday get shot by his mother, Eloise Hawking, after going back in time before he was born. (It would have been far more interesting if instead he shot his mother before he was born, but presumably time could not be altered in that manner). We had already known that a major character would die before the end of the season and, being gone for a while, Faraday certainly seemed expendable. Seeing him enter the hostile’s camp after outright telling Jack and Kate that any one of them could be killed made his death so obvious that I told my wife that he was about to get killed with total certainty.

There are suggestions that there could be variables which change time, but it does not appear that changing Daniel’s fate is included. Eloise Hawking seems to know more about time travel and the island than anyone else. If she had sent Daniel back to the island, knowing that her younger self would kill him, she must be very certain that time could not be changed. Perhaps she had everyone else go back in the hopes someone else would be killed or events could have been chaged in a different way, but if she really thought she could change events the most sensible course would have been to keep Daniel from returning (unless there are other reasons this was not possible). It is conceivable that, like Ben, Daniel will survive the shooting but I will be very surprised if this is the case. What remains to be seen is whether Jack or anyone else does can change the sequence of events which have taken place on the island, leading to the crash of Oceanic Flight 815.

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While somewhat contrived, they made use of a story featuring Daniel and Eloise to show that Desmond is all right in the future as Eloise met with Penelope Widmore at the hospital. We also found, in a relatively minor surprise, that Charles Widmore was Daniel’s father.

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The biggest surprise of the week for me came when I obtained copies of the US version of Coupling. The show was based upon a BBC show which I previously discussed here.  The US version was intended to replace Friends but was actually a combination of Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City. The BBC version, besides being one of the greatest comedies ever made, is notable for being written by Steven Moffat, who will be taking over as show runner for Doctor Who when it returns on a regular basis in 2010.

The show was a flop in the United States but now that I’ve seen the BBC version I wanted to give the US version another chance. Seeing what the series turned into in the BBC version, I was curious to see the entire US run, especially as only four out of eleven episodes were aired here.

One problem the show had in the United States was the protests about the amount of sex discussed in the show. It was also probably hurt by the shorter length of the US version due to commercials. Typical episodes of Coupling were like many episodes of Seinfeld in which different stories often came together at the end. Taking an excellent script by Moffat and cutting out several minutes would be likely to ruin it.

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I’ve wondered if the problem could have been the quality of the actors. Here is where I had the surprise. Playing the beggining of an episode I found that in the US version Sally Harper was played by Sonya Walger. Walger also plays Penelope Widmore on Lost, was in the HBO series Tell Me You Love Me, and played Michelle Dixon on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

The presence of Sonya Walger alone does not redeem the US version of Coupling, but after seeing her in Lost on Wednesday I was surprised to see her face when I started to watch Coupling. Although it has an ensemble cast, Sally was far less significant to the stories as compared to characters such as Steve and Susan. The actor playing Steve also looked familiar, and I later tracked him down to be Jay Harrington, who currently is doing an excellent job as star of Better Off Ted (shown here with Portia de Rossi of Allie McBeal and Arrested Development). Presumably he has improved his comedy skills since staring on Coupling.

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SciFi Weekend: Star Trek & Lost Trailers; Beyoncé as Wonder Woman; Whoopie on Mars; and the Future History of the Obama Administration

Ain’t It Cool News has a couple of reports on a new trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie to be released next Friday. From one of the descriptions:

We start out with a muscle car tearing ass down a dirt road. Eventually it careens off a cliff, but not before the driver jets himself out – he’s a young boy, couldn’t be older than 11. Suddenly what I can only describe as a space-cop asks him, “what is your name sir?” The young boy replies, “James Tiberius Kirk.”

Then Chris Pine takes over as we see him being angsty, driving down the road on a motorcycle. We hear some voice over from someone else that confirms his angst saying things like, “You’ve never really been happy have you?” and etc. Then we see him drive up what looks like a smelting factory – probably more of that ship construction we got in the earlier trailer.

Then we really kick into trailer mode as we get quick images of Spock as a kid. Spock all grown up. Leonard Nimoy. A vulcan council. Space cadets. And the crew alone with some quick, flashy space fighting.

There is a financial cost to new and better technology. After first buying all the previous Star Trek movies on videocassettes and then on DVD’s it might be hard to resist getting them in Blue-ray. Reportedly they might come out on Blue-ray in 2009. At least the Blue-ray HD-DVD war is long over so there is no doubt as to which format to buy.

A new Lost trailer was also broadcast during the election night coverage on ABC. IO9 has the video.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Beyoncé is interested in playing Wonder Woman:

Beyoncé is ready for an Amazon-sized challenge — the pop superstar wants to be the first actress to wear Wonder Woman’s famed red, white and blue bathing suit on the silver screen.

“I want to do a superhero movie and what would be better than Wonder Woman? It would be great. And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It’s time for that, right?”

Beyoncé says that she has met with representatives of DC Comics and Warner Bros. to express her interest in a major role in one of the many comic-book adaptations now in the pipeline following the massive success of “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” franchises. Beyoncé’s acting to career to date has included a comedic role in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and two notable music world roles, the first as a quasi-Diana Ross character in “Dreamgirls” and as the defiant and heroin-addicted Etta James in the upcoming “Cadillac Records.”

I’ve previously noted that the ABC version of Life on Mars might not be using the same explanation as on the BBC series as to why Sam Tyler is in the 1970’s. The initial episode seemed to have people from the present talking around him, suggesting that possibly he is in a coma dreaming of life in the 1970’s. We’ve seen robots with no clear explanation.  From time to time the 1970’s and the present have blurred, such as with newspapers fluctuating between pictures of Richard Nixon and George Bush. This week’s episode, Things to Do in New York When You Think You’re Dead, suggests that Sam could be dead or in purgatory. While this has been entertaining so far I fear that they might be putting in different possible explanations without a clear idea as to where the show is going.

In the episode, Sam meets both his future mentor and Whoopie Goldberg. It is a shame that Whoopie wasn’t playing Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation. She showed in Yesterday’s Enterprise an ability to sense problems involving time and might be able to figure out what is going on with Sam.

This week included an election of great historical significance. Some with an interest in both politics and techniques of science fiction have already been looking at the “future history” of the Obama administration. Nerve takes a “look back” at the Obama administration:

Obama’s election marked the moment in American history when a human being could be judged not for the color of his or her skin, but for the content of his or her character. Not coincidentally, it also marked the moment when the United States turned definitively from a fortress of self-interest to a peaceful emissary of freedom and human rights. These are the principles that the pax Americana has been built on, and an inheritance that we hope to keep as a legacy for our children.

Future Blogger looks back on How the Nanobama Administration Accelerated Technology, but I believe he will reverse George Bush’s ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research soon after taking office as opposed to 2010 as in this post. The post looks back on the tremendous changes to come as a result, including nanotechnology, concluding:

Now, in 2013, as the Nanobama Administration embarks on its second term, it is clear that the benefits of nanotech have already greatly changed the lives of every human, and for the better. Still, the ethical and existential implications continue to boggle the mind.

In particular, the primary neo-luddite argument against the pursuit of nanotechnological development is the fear that intelligent machines will one day spell the doom of mankind. There could come a point, critics continue to warn, where tech ceases to be an extension of humanity, or worse, turns against it’s maker, a possibility made more dangerous by the likelihood that, by the time it happened, humans will have become complacent and helpless.

Still, it looks as thought the Nanobama forces will continue to embrace acceleration, sticking to the critical path laid out by Bucky Fuller. The argument is that the knowledge base of any intelligent species must expand proportionately to the growth of its population, to survive past a critical survival threshold (a potential confrontation with rogue AI?). It’s evolve or die, though that same evolution is likely to bring about the forces that could bring us to the brink.

While many are optimistic about a better world with Obama replacing the Republicans, Focus on the Family released a Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America prior to the election with scare stories of “Terrorist strikes on four U.S. cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts.”

Pushing Daisies is rumored to be at risk of cancellation. I think the idea would have worked far better as a movie than a weekly television series. I tried it both last season and then again at the start of this season. While somewhat entertaining I just couldn’t get into it enough to watch week after week. Rumor also has it that if the show is canceled Bryan Fuller will return to work on Heroes.

It was bound to be considered after the success of the first movie, and there are far more product placements to sell. Kim Cattrall has said in an interview that a sequel to the Sex And The City movie is planned. While possible, it doesn’t look like the other stars are on board yet. If they are to continue playing these roles it is a shame that they couldn’t have done an additional television season for HBO. The movie lacked much of what I found entertaining in the television show, but then I wasn’t the intended audience for the movie.

SciFi Friday: Moffat Wins Three In A Row; The Doctor Dates His Daughter

The Hugo Awards are out and Steven Moffat now won three years in a row for episodes of Doctor Who. This year he won for Blink, which I previously reviewed here. He previously won awards for The Girl in the Fireplace, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances. While I have long been impressed for Moffat’s work as a science fiction writer, I become even more impressed with him after seeing how well he did in a different genre. Coupling, which I wrote about here, is one of the best sit-coms I have ever seen, combining aspects of Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex And The City. I am hoping that once Moffat takes over as show runner for Doctor Who in 2010 he gives The Doctor three famale companions–Susan, Sally, and Jane from Coupling.

Here are some of this year’s Hugo Award winners:

Best Novel: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon.

Best Novella: “All Seated on the Ground” by Connie Willis

Best Novelette: “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Guide” by Ted Chiang

Best Short Story: “Tideline” by Elizabeth Bear

Best Related Book: Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction by Jeff Prucher

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Stardust

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Who: “Blink”

David Tennant is currently busy playing Hamlet to mixed reviews. Catherine Tate, who played Donna last season is currently appearing in the play Under The Blue Sky. Tennant was recently seen attending an appearance of the play accompanied by Georgia Moffett, daughter of Peter Davison (born Peter Moffett) who previously played The Doctor.  Georgia also played The Doctor’s Daughter in the episode of that name last season, making her the The Doctor’s daughter both in real life and on television.

Besides the work of stars such as David Tennant, and writers including, but certainly not limted to Steven Moffat, much of the credit for the new Doctor Who series and its spin offs must go to executive producer Julie Gardner. IO9 has an interview with Gardner, which includes a spoiler about the Sarah Jane Adventures.

SciFi Friday: Approaching the Moffat Era for Doctor Who

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Journey’s End, the season finale of Doctor Who and the final regular episode under Russell T. Davies aired Friday on the Science Fiction channel. My comments on the episode were previously posted here. Davies will still be doing a series of specials while David Tennant is performing in Hamlet, with the series resuming on a regular basis in 2010 under Steven Moffat. Among the episodes written by Moffett are the Hugo-award winners The Girl in the Fireplace, The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, and Nebula award winner (as well as nominee for this year’s Hugo award) Blink.

Moffat is working with Davies so that the specials lead into his planned episodes according to SciFi Wire.

“It’s all happening in this head,” Moffat said in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego on July 23. “I know where I want it to start. I don’t mean to make it sound very grand. It’s very simple, just where I want it to be when it takes off. So [Russell’s] arranged for that.”

Moffat, who has written some of the most popular episodes of the new series so far, said that his new role as executive producer will require him to approach writing from an entirely different perspective.

“There are a bunch of things I’ve always wanted to see in Doctor Who, yes, but now it’s slightly different–it’s very different in my new position,” Moffat said. “Obviously, I only turned up once a year, and practically my brief was to write, in effect, the Moffat episode–the one that’s very different, the one that’s a bit timey-wimey or a bit scary. And that’s all they were expecting. And they would just tell me, ‘Go, and do your thing.’ So I would do my Moffat-y thing–whatever the f–k that is–in a very, very pronounced way. But you couldn’t have a whole series like that. If you started a series with ‘Silence of the Library’ or ‘Blink,’ people would turn off. You can’t have that as the first episode. It’s just too grim. So it’s different contemplating it from this position, very, very different.”

The series will also continue to embrace a wide range of tones and genres, Moffat said. Rather than adapting the show to his particular writing style, he looks forward to experimenting with different voices to maintain the show’s variety.

Moffat discussed his plans for Doctor Who in an interview with IO9. One of the questions dealt with how future companions might be portrayed compared to the companions in the past few seasons:

One of the great innovations of the Russell T. Davies era was the idea of the companion being connected to her home and family, and keeping the family as a supporting cast. How do you keep that fresh with a succession of new companions?

You change everything, all the time. Even that element of the show has changed radically over the past four years… You don’t worry about doing things radically, in an a new way… [You] do what tells the story… It was very important that Rose, Jackie and Mickey were clear, developed characters. [When the show started] the Doctor was a ridiculous guide. [Audiences didn’t] understand who he is and what he’s supposed to be. But [now] it’s very different, because the Doctor is the most familiar character in the show. [Originally] we knew Rose much better than the Doctor, and now we know the Doctor better than we know Rose. And now we see Rose from the Doctor’s point of view, instead of seeing the Doctor from Rose’s point of view. You have to stay alive and stay lively, and Doctor Who is about change. Change is part of Doctor Who‘s formula. It must change.

Working on Doctor Who was Moffat’s childhood dream, and this was such a high priority for him that he turned down a £500,000 movie deal with Steven Spielberg so he could take the job:

Moffat said: ‘I know a lot of people won’t understand it but I’ve been dreaming about writing for Doctor Who since I was seven.

‘There are no bad feelings between Spielberg and me, but Doctor Who has to come before Hollywood.

‘The show has enjoyed a renaissance. I am working on scripts to be filmed next year. Russell T. Davies is doing four specials next and then my shows will begin. The show is all-consuming.’

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This isn’t the first time that Moffat gave up something in order to work on Doctor Who. He previously wrote the British sit-com Coupling. His interest in Doctor Who could be seen in the series as the male lead is named Steven Tayor, who had also been the name of a character on Doctor Who. An early second season episode had a brief reference to Daleks. Moffat wrote the series for four season, but turned down an offer to write a fifth season due to being busy with other projects, including his work on Doctor Who.

I recently started watching Coupling and highly recommend the show. In addition to being available on DVD’s it is being shown on BBC America. NBC had planned to have an American version replace Friends when it completed its run but it did not last long due to both poor adaptations and protests by some affiliates with the manner in which the episodes dealt with sex. The scripts were based upon the original scripts but execution was far inferior to the original. The BBC episodes also lack the commercial breaks of the American episodes, allowing more time for the plots to play out.

The extra time might be important as, while the show is often compared to Friends, Moffat was influenced even more by SeinfeldCoupling manages to combine the best of Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City. Instead of dealing with “nothing” as Seinfeld did, it deals with more exclusively with relationships and sex, but many characteristics of Seinfeld can be seen in the writing. This includes the manner in which topics are discussed, with some of the conversations sounding like they could be between Jerry and George. Coupling often takes this further with the male and female characters having two parallel conversations about the same situation, with quite different views. Coupling is also much like Seinfeld in the manner in which two or three different stories might be told during the episode which come together at the end in an unexpected manner.

While some are predicting that episodes of Doctor Who under Moffat will be scarier episodes such as those he has written previously, seeing his work on Coupling demonstrates the versatility of his talent. Coupling is quite different from Doctor Who, but should The Doctor and Captain Jack get together at a pub, Moffat is capable of writing quite interesting dialog between them. He also has the ability to write about relationships with The Doctor’s future companions which probably would not be allowed considering the appeal of Doctor Who to younger viewers.

SciFi Friday Part II: The Week in Review

Lost has benefited greatly from centering the final seasons around telling a story with a definite end point. They have also avoided using the exact same format week after week. This week’s episode got away from telling about one of the Oceanic Six in the flash forwards and instead dealt with Desmond, who is unstuck in time. There was even a brief homage to Billy Pilgrim from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, who was also unstuck in time.

We find that Desmond’s situation isn’t unique. Every episode lately tries to end with a surprise which is consistent with the events of the episode. This week’s ending suggests that Daniel Faraday’s problem is similar to Desmond’s as we see an entry in his notebook saying, “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”

The episode also verifies the earlier hints that something strange is going on with time. The helicopter with Desmond and Sayid left the island at dusk and landed mid day, with those on the island finding a delay which did not surprise Faraday.

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Jericho is becoming increasingly political, with some aspects of the United States resembling Iraq, and other aspects containing allusions to the Bush administration. We’ve already seen that the Cheyenne government is pushing a new flag, a new Constitution, and even a new right wing history. This week’s episode has many comparisons to Halliburton and Blackwater with Jennings & Rall being involved in everything, including government functions. Meanwhile Ravenwood is being used as a private army. Does it mean anything that the new government and Dick Cheney both come from Wyoming?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles remains mixed in quality but is doing an interesting job of applying aspects from the original movie series to current plot lines. A new twist is being added as it is unclear if the cyborg Cameron (Summer Glau, above) can be trusted. The final two episodes of the season are being aired as a two-hour episode on Monday.

Torchwood as aired on BBC America remains behind the BBC showings, but delaying SciFi Friday at least allows me to comment on the more recent episodes while avoiding spoilers for episodes which have not aired yet. Last week’s episode, Adam, involved an alien who lives off of false memories planted in others. He gives the members of the Torchwood team false memories of him having been one of them for years, but in the process disrupts their memories and changes them. Gwen loses all memory of her fiancè Rhys and thinks he is a stalker when she finds him in her apartment. Owen undergoes the biggest change, becoming a real geek. The most dramatic actions come when Adam gives Ianto false memories of being a serial killer after Ianto notes that there is no mention of Adam in his diary.

The episode might be most notable for providing information on Jack’s childhood, but those memories, as well as all other memories involving Adam, must be removed in order for Adam to be eliminated. At the end nobody has memories of Adam but there are clues that he had been there. I did find it a little unrealistic that they would not want to investigate the last couple of days which were missing from their memories.

This week’s episode, Reset, works in three different groups which are involved in studying aliens. Besides Torchwood, there’s UNIT which lends a medical specialist, and there’s a medical center which uses aliens in an unsafe manner to attempt to cure human diseases. The UNIT medical specialist happens to be Martha Jones, who finished medical school very quickly after returning from her adventures with The Doctor. The episode ends with Owen being shot, which will lead into the events of the subsequent two episodes which have already aired in the U.K.

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Looking at television beyond science fiction, Saturday Night Live has managed to be in the news several times after returning last week. Last week’s episode began with a skit based upon the Texas debate, which Hillary Clinton mentioned during the Ohio debate (video above). There was some controversy over having a non-black cast member play Obama’s role. The episode also included a defense of Clinton by Tina Fey who argued that it is bitches who get things done. Mike Huckabee also had an appearance.

This week they began with another debate in which Clinton argues that she can get the most done by being so obnoxious that people will just give up on opposing her. This is followed by an appearance by the real Hillary Clinton (video here). Rudy Giuliani also had an appearance in which he compared his campaign to a Saturday Night Live skit which starts out strong but goes nowhere. The musical guest was Wilco, a big supporter of Obama.

There’s good news for fans of Scrubs. While NBC has never shown the show much respect, ABC is now negotiating to pick up eighteen episodes to allow the series to be completed as planned.

A high definition trailer for the Sex and the City movie is available on line here. We find that Carrie and Big do get engaged, but things might not go well at the alter. Charlotte is pregnant, as was seen in earlier pictures, and Steve admits to Miranda that he cheated on her once.

The Other Boleyn Girl opened to mixed reviews. Any movie with both Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson can’t be all bad. There’s one minor coincidence I noted in the cast when comparing this with Showtimes’s version of the story, The Tudors. Scarlett Johansson appeared in the Woody Allen movie Match Point with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays Henry in The Tudors.

Season two of The Tudors begins on March 30. During season one, Mary, followed by Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer), worked to seduce Henry. Anne always found ways to ensure that Henry would not be satisfied until they married, as can be seen at the end of season one. Video is available here (definitely not safe for work).

One of the things I watched during the strike was the DVD set of Arrested Development. It is certainly understandable that there were a lot of protests when the show was canceled. Plans have now been announced to make a movie version of the show.

SciFi Friday: Emmy Awards, Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Spoilers for 24 and Sex in the City, and Does Vanessa Go Wild?

There were several Emmy nominations for genre shows, but the only winner last Sunday night was Terry O’Quinn who won as Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in Lost. While some were disappointed, the nominations themselves are also a form of recognition. I think they got it right in including Ron Moore in a group of top writers including David Chase, but it was no surprise that Chase came in first. Similarly Heroes is a good show and did well to get a nomination, but it didn’t stand a chance to win as best drama against Sopranos. While Battlestar Galactica got shut out on the main Emmy night, they did pick up a “Creative Emmy” for Outstanding Special Visual Effects. The award came for showing Galactica falling through the planet’s atmosphere in Exodus, Part 2.


TV Week reports that SciFi Channel is continuing to consider dividing up the final season of Battlestar Galactica for financial reasons:

As is often the case with the lavishly produced series, the issue is “the money people,” as one executive put it. Since “Battlestar” eats a considerable portion of the Sci Fi programming budget, the network might be forced to spread the resulting product across two seasons.

Showrunner Ron Moore shrugged off the issue. “It doesn’t affect my job either way, since we’re shooting it straight through,” he says. “It might be better to get it all done [in the same year] for the fans so they don’t have to wait.”

Waiting might be difficult:

With “Battlestar” fans already waiting about a year for the return of the series — not counting the two-hour “Razor” stand-alone movie coming this fall — returning with only 10 episodes could spark a revolt.

Moore’s storyline also could make fans demand rapid closure, one person close to the project says, since “when people see the ending of the 10th episode, they’re gonna freak out.”

The final decision might not come until January. A key factor is what new shows are in the pipeline that could be paired with “Galactica” – and how much those shows will cost.

Among the shows being considered is Caprica, the prequel to BSG. They are also considering filming the two hour pilot to sell on DVD regardless of whether they produce the entire series, especially if this fall’s BSG movie does well.

SciFi Pulse has an interview with Rod Roddenberry, son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. He is concerned about the movie being a prequel:

I am concerned about them doing a prequel because it’s always tricky to do a prequel. There were a lot of issues with Enterprise because Enterprise was going against pre – established things and it’s always tough when you go against pre – established things. So I’m happy he’s doing it. I’d prefer them, when I say them I mean Paramount and everyone to wait a few years. I’m hesitant on the prequel. You see I have not read a script. Paramount does not have to give me a script; no one has to give me a script to read to get my approval. I would like to read it but I think they know that I speak my mind for the most part. So if I thought it were a bad script I would probably say something along the lines of, ‘Huh you know it’s a good Star Trek’ as apposed to ‘Yeah everyone has to go see it. Everyone has to go see it.’ And the fans have given my family a lot of clout and I think that to some degree has given me a lot of clout. So I think that a lot of people respect what I say to a degree and if I didn’t have anything good to say about it I think they’d be scared.

I was opposed to doing an entire prequel series as with Enterprise, but for the movie I don’t think they have much choice. As there isn’t a recent successful television show to base the next movie on, the best chance for a mass market success comes from returning to the most well known characters including Kirk and Spock. If the movie does well, I hope it leads to a new Star Trek television series, preferably taking place on a Starship and occurring after the events of Voyager and Deep Space Nine. A television show can build a new following, but a movie does not have that luxury.

A web site for the Doctor Who spin off, The Sarah Jane Adventures, is now on line and they are no longer blocking those of us outside of the UK from seeing it. There’s no word as to whether it will air on American television. Currently the SciFi Channel carries Doctor Who, BBC America caries Torchwood (as well as previous seasons of Doctor Who) and HDNet carries Torchwood nine days after the episode is seen on BBC America. Therefore, unless I get to the point where I cannot wait to see what happens next, posts on Torchwood will be postponed until after it is shown in HD. Of course if it turns out to get so good that it becomes difficult to wait, I’ll just download the first season as I did to avoid waiting to see Doctor Who this season. The consensus appears to be that the show gets much better over time.

Tonight SciFI Channel broadcasts Utopia, which leads into the final two episodes of the season on Doctor Who. I previously reviewed Utopia here. Many items from earlier in the season play a part in the season finale, including even more than I first suspected from Utopia. The episode is also notable for the return of Captain Jack for the final three episode arc, taking place after the first season of Torchwood.

Geeks of Doom has a preview of the new version of The Bionic Woman:

Jaime Sommers (Michelle Ryan) is having a tough time of things, but she’s making it work for her. She has to deal with her bratty little sister (Lucy Hale), a crappy job, and not much of a future, but she has a nice guy in Dr. Will Anthros (Chris Bowers), a noted professor who works in prosthetics and reconstructive surgery. Things take a turn for the worse when Jaime and Will are in a terrible accident. Will is fine, but Jaime has massive injuries, and ends up losing her legs, right arm, right ear, and right eye. That’s when the boyfriend goes to work, and gives her new body parts. Of course as happened to Steve Summers in the Venture Brothers, the government expects her to pay for her new limbs. Do you know how long it takes to pay back 50 million dollars on a government salary? But seriously, she escapes from the hospital only to run into another bionic woman (Katee Sackhoff) and becomes embroiled in a variety of mysteries. Who is her new boss (Miguel Ferrer)? What is the other bionic woman’s agenda? What do some of these other scenes mean?

What the creators have done well here is create a good mystery series. There are conspiracies within conspiracies, and a lot of things to keep the viewer coming back for more. There’s so much going on that I discovered new connections on a second viewing. The angle with Jaime working for the organization that gave her the powers sets up a decent enough storytelling engine, as long as the creators can come up with valid threats for her to fight on a weekly basis. Fights with other enhanced people could wear thin quickly though, so they’ll need to come up with various enemies that are legitimate challenges for her. But it’s the underlying mystery that really drives the drama forward. Much like BSG, the big questions make me want to watch the second episode, and if done well, will keep me on for the third and the fourth and the whole season. I’m forced to keep coming back to BSG, but the creators have borrowed so heavily from it that it’s hard not to make the comparison (especially since creator David Eick is also a producer on BSG).

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Google searches for Vanessa Hudgens are greatly surpassing Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in hits to the site following the item two weeks ago on the nude pictures of the star of the High School Musical being released on line. Disney is still sticking with her. After all, compared to former Mouseketeer Britney Spears, Vanessa still looks respectable. There are rumors floating around that Hudgens is considering posing nude in a men’s magazine and that she has been offered $500,000 to appear in a Girls Gone Wild video. I suspect there is a limit to what Disney will forgive. Besides, how much will people really pay to see what has been available on line to see for free?

Fox has issued a press release with a minor spoiler about the upcoming season of 24:

Bauer’s day gets off to a shocking start when former colleague Tony Almeida (played by Carlos Bernard), last seen in Day 5, returns after being left for dead by a terrorist conspirator in CTU’s infirmary.

The Sex and The City movie started filming this week, taking place four years after the events of the television show. Thanks to a cell phone camera we have a spoiler from the filming. The picture shows a very pregnant Charlotte talking to Big:

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