SciFi Weekend: Abrams On The Next Star Trek Movie; Wil Wheton on Big Bang Theory; Shocking Finale for Dexter; Lauren Graham; Olivia Wilde; Kristen Bell; and the PB & J Wedding

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J.J. Abrams has talked more about the sequel to his Star Trek movie in an interview with Cinematical:

Since you were able to wipe the slate clean with your prequel, do you plan to come up with something completely original, or is there a possibility you will reference some of the existing creatures or races in the next installment?

Abrams: The fun of this movie series is that we will have the opportunity, given its alternate timeline, to cross paths with any of the experiences, places and characters that existed in the original series. We have to be really careful, obviously, doing that. I don’t want to do something that is so inside that only die-hard fans will appreciate.

Will the first film’s alternate timeline affect what you can leave in and what can’t be a part of subsequent films?

Abrams: The trick in doing any movie, but especially something like this that involves some weird alternate reality-time travel thing is that you don’t want to not explain it, but you don’t want to explain everything. I think you have as much fun with the missing pieces as you do with the pieces you get. So, for me, not knowing every detail, allows me to get inside of the story and start to fill in the blanks. When everything is spoon-fed, typically I feel like you’re being pandered to, or it’s too expositional. It’s always a balance.

You managed to contemporize what was an aging franchise, with your work on Star Trek, and you talked about including more current events in the sequel. Do you think that Star Trek is evergreen, or is it something that needs to be continuously updated for each generation?

Abrams: It’s hard to give a blanket answer to that question. I do think that, whether it’s Star Trek or anything, whatever is being investigated, created or produced now, in movies or TV, needs to consider the context in which it is being distributed. It’s not a vacuum. There are certain universal themes of love, conflict, loyalty or family that are everlasting and that need to be presented in a way that makes it feel relevant, even if it’s a period piece. You need to consider what context that film, that story and those characters are being seen in. But, having said that, with Star Trek, it’s not like we’re looking to make the second movie some kind of heavy political allegory. I think that it’s important that there is a metaphor to what we know and that there is relevance, and I think allegory is the thing that made shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek resonate and still be vital today.

But, because the first movie was so much about introducing these people, and it was very much a premise movie about how to bring these people together, it made it difficult to also have the film go as deep as it could, about certain conflict, certain relationships and the heart of who some of these characters are. I think it was successful in what it needed to do, to introduce these people, but I feel like, now that we’ve done that, it is the job of the next film to go a little bit deeper. It shouldn’t be any less fun or take itself too seriously, but consider who these people are now and grow with them, and just examine them a little more closer, now that we’ve gotten through the pleasantries and introductions.

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Wil Wheton will be guest staring on the October 19 episode of The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon holds the role of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation against Wheton. TV Fanatic reports:

“As much as Sheldon loves Star Trek, Wil Wheaton is the only person associated with the franchise whom Sheldon has sworn eternal enmity toward,” the actor said when asked about by TV Guide Magazine about his role.

So, why does Sheldon have such animosity for Wheaton? The character apparently did not enjoy an autograph experience with Wil many years ago.

“The Wil I play in the Big Bang universe is not such a nice person,” Wheaton said. “But in real life, I go out of my way to be kind and patient. My motto is: ‘Don’t be a d—!’”

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The BBC has released the new logo for the upcoming season of Doctor Who, including the use of DW in the shape of a Tardis.

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Julie Benz, in an interview with CinemaBlend, has revealed that a real shock is planned for the season finale of Dexter:

Your character has really developed into a pivotal part of the show. What can we expect from Rita this season?
Wow, this season. Obviously at the beginning of the season we see Rita has it all. I mean, she has everything she’s ever wanted. She has the perfect husband, the great kids, the new baby, the dream house in the suburbs but you know, just like anything, nothing great lasts forever. We have an amazingly shocking ending this season. I mean, it’s so shocking that – it’s just shocking is all I can say. It shocked the whole cast.

So you’ve already filmed the last episode?
We are in the middle of filming it right now.

Any chance Dexter will let her in on his secret?
Oh! I don’t know about that. I don’t want to give away any spoilers but you know, you definitely see worlds collide; everybody’s world collides in this season.

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So far I haven’t been very excited about the new television season. At present the only new shows I’m watching are Flash Forward, Modern Family, and Glee.  There are some new shows to come including remakes of V and The PrisonerParenthood, based upon the Ron Howard movie, has been delayed due to Maura Tierney developing medical problems. She is to be replaced by Lauren Graham, who will play the part of a single mother. She is well prepared for this role after staring in Gilmore Girls. Any chance they can get Alexis Bledel to quest star on an episode and reunite the pair?

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Ausiello reports that “Olivia Wilde and Peter Jacobson’s trailers have not been emptied out” and predicts that they will reappear on House.

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Kristen Bell has been busy since leaving Veronica Mars and Heroes. Couples Retreat has just been released and she has now been signed to star along with Christina Aguilera in Burlesque:

The story follows a young small-town girl (Aguilera) as she ventures into the city in the hopes of becoming a star. Soon she discovers an L.A. burlesque bar, where the men are fast and the women faster. She quickly uses her amazing voice and burlesque dancing to become the joint’s new star.

Bell plays the club’s big-shot dancer who doesn’t take a liking to the new girl’s sudden success. Also starring are Cher, as the nightclub’s experienced owner, and Stanley Tucci as the man who helps Aguilera find her moves.

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Heroes is still struggling to recover, this week resorting to a lesbian kiss between Hayden Panettiere and Madeline Zima. While this has created some buzz for the show, it is doubtful that it will do anything to help the show get back on track. Zima is better known recently for her role along with David Duchovny in Californication.

CALIFORNICATION

The big television event of the season so far has been the wedding of Pam and Jim on The Office. While hour long episodes of The Office have often not worked very well, feeling like two stories merged together, this episode worked very well. The episode included take offs of a couple of popular You Tube videos. I’ve previously posted the video of the JK Wedding Entrance Dance which inspired the entrance at the wedding ceremony. The episode also showed Dwight wearing a Three Wolf Moon t-shirt:

SciFi Weekend: D. Gibbons Is A Bad Man; Feelings from Dollhouse; Shiksa Goddesses; and The Prisoner

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FlashForward remains the best new show of the season. Accidentally on Purpose didn’t deserve the second chance I said I would give it, but actually looks half way in comparison decent after watching an episode of Cougar Town. Modern Family is the only new comedy I plan to watch at this point. I’m still undecided about Glee, having caught up on four episodes but not having decided yet as to whether to watch last week’s episode. I was disappointed that the portrayal of high school life wasn’t more comparable to Friday Night Lights (with glee club instead of football team) or Fame (1980 move version–I never did watch the television sh0w or remake). Glee is disappointing when compared with these, but I might give the show another chance, partially due to a storyline in which the president of the Chastity Club (motto: tease, don’t please) becomes pregnant. I do wonder if her idiot football player boyfriend ever figures out that he could not really be the father just because he once ejaculated when she got him excited in a hot tub while they were both wearing bathing suits.

While I have my doubts about the other new shows which have premiered to date, I remain impressed with FlashForward after seeing the second episode. (First episode discussed here). We saw some progression with regards to figuring out what happened, along with new questions. Presumably one, if not both, of the D. Gibbons will be important, but why does Charlie know that he is a bad man? The flashes were quite brief to explain both why she knows this and along with her strong connection to Dylan.

One of my nitpicks about the pilot was partially answered. I found it strange to see that, after everyone on earth had blacked out, so many helicopters were in the air. I still find this strange as they had no way to know whether this would happen again, but at least we found that commercial air flights were grounded.

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With its poor ratings, I fear Dollhouse will have a tough time surviving beyond the thirteen episodes which Fox has purchased. This would be a shame as the show is looking far better now that they are getting more into the mythology as opposed to a simple Echo adventure of the week. This week Echo revealed that she continues to have the feelings, if not actual memories,  from the identities she was programed with. There was also a return appearance by Madeline/November following the major development with Whiskey/Dr. Saunders last week. The previews suggest something which might lead into the future seen in Epitaph One. The preview has Topher saying he can not wipe someone remotely. Does this begin the development of the technology which leads to the conditions in Epitaph One?

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Fringe is also developing is mythology slowly. It is clear that they guy in the bowling alley knows far more than he has told Olivia. The previews indicate that Olivia should be regaining some of her memories of the parallel world she traveled to in the next episode.

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On Monday night it remains uncertain as to whether Heroes will recover. In some ways each volume can be seen as a movie. Volume one, taking place in the first season, was like the first movie in a series. The first volume was great as all the characters were new and there was a good story to use them in. The subsequent volumes are the sequels which are far inferior to the first movie as the writers are unable to come up with a story to compete with the original.

At least there is one genre show on Mondays which remains excellent–The Big Bang Theory. This week Penny and Leonard managed to get over their awkwardness in a moment at the end of the episode. Sheldon got in another great line at the expense of Texas:

Raj: “What happened?”
Sheldon: “Obviously another carnal fiasco with the ‘Shiksee’ goddess.”
Howard: “Shiksa. Shik-Sa.”
Sheldon: “Forgive me. Yiddish was not spoken in East Texas. And if it was, it wasn’t spoken for long.”

AMC has set the dates for their reboot of The Prisoner (trailer above). It will air for two hours a night for three consecutive nights starting on November 15. If anyone has not seen the original, I would highly recommend doing so.  The episodes are available on line here.

SciFi Weekend Part I: Doctor Who and The Prisoner

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There’s a lot of news coming out of Comic-Con this weekend. Because of all the news and a chaotic schedule this weekend I’m going to alter the usual format and post SciFi Weekend in installments, beginning with information on Doctor Who and the upcoming Prisoner miniseries.

Among the Doctor Who news, it does not look like the rumored movie is going to be movie, at least for now. The rumors that John Simm will return as The Master have been confirmed. Io9 has interviewed David Tennant about why his version of The Doctor acts as he does:

I think he feels guilty. I think he’s in a very difficult position. He has to make the hard choices, and he’s riddled with remorse for what happened to his people, and the part he played in that, which we’ll learn a little bit more about before I disappear. [Laughs] Not that much, just a little bit. It’s not the three-part miniseries staring [former 1990s Doctor] Paul McGann. But I think he’s tortured, and he travels time and space trying to make it better… but some of the side effects of that are not as we’d wish them to be.

After leaving his role as The Doctor,  David Tennant is being considered to play Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming movie adaptation of The Hobbit. That will be the strangest regeneration of all time.

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A number of pictures of Matt Smith and Karen Gillan playing the next Doctor and his new companion are appearing on line now that they have begun filming episodes for next season. Additional pictures can be seen here and here.  Note that Alex Kingston is also in the above picture. Is she reprising her role as River Song to complete the story about her relationship with The Doctor? While it has been stated that Stephen Moffat is not likely to use the supporting characters from past seasons, the episodes with River Song were written by Moffat making it more likely he would use the character again.

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I09 also has a lot of information from Bill Gallagher who is writing the reboot of The Prisoner for AMC. He was asked if  he pictured original series lead Patrick McGoohan when writing the series:

No, I deliberately didn’t do that, I didn’t think of an actor at all… I won’t cast it in my head, because then I box myself in, and I can’t do that. It has to be this imaginary character. I didn’t have McGoohan in my head because [this Prisoner] is a different kind of Number Six, he’s a different character, he has different attitudes. In the beginning of the series, Six wakes up the middle of the desert, no idea where he is, no idea how he got there, no idea what to do, and immediately he’s hurled into an event, which is this old man is trying to escape, he’s being pursued by soldiers. And he rescues this old man. For me, in my head, that’s McGoohan, the old Six. And that old man dies. In my head, he dies to allow us to imagine a new Number Six. McGoohan said that the end plate on the old series should’ve said “The Beginning,” because the cycle goes on, and so in my imagination, [that scene is where] one cycle ends and another cycle begins. And so that scene allowed me to imagine my own Number Six.

There will be some reminders of the original show:

There are lots of little things. Some of them are visual, some of them are story, stories that we were inspired by, and also some of them are little lines of dialogue. One of the difficulties we have is that we’re aiming for 45 minute episodes and some of them come in very long, we have to cut for story, so some of that gets lost, unfortunately. But there’s still a good deal of it in the show. Partly as a way of building on that series, partly as a little fun thing, and partly thematic… This bloody place goes on and on and on, you know? In episode two, Six gets involved in a trip to a place called Escape Resort, and when you go to Escape Resort, it’s like the original Village, and people are dressed like they were in the original Village.

On the conclusion of the miniseries:

The final episode has a climax, it has a conclusion, there’s a reversal, and there’s explanations and revelations, but they’re not conventional, and I hope they’ll be shocking, you know, that people will not expect this ending at all. What I hope is that, what we get in the end is more disturbing than where we were at the beginning… When we get to the end, what I hope is that people will get challenged by it, and disturbed by it, in the way that the original challenged and disturbed. What I hope people will feel is that there’s a sense of, ‘I know what that’s about, I think I know, oh my God, this was that and that was this, so that’s how it works. But I don’t like it.

The New No. 2

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With remakes of The Prisoner in the works, this old cover of Time caught the attention of Jesse Walker at Hit & Run. It is fairly old, from when Gerald Ford was appointed to be Vice President after Spiro Agnew’s resignation. I actually recall both when this cover came out and making the same allusion to The Prisoner.

No Extraordinary Rendition By Obama

Yesterday I noted that some liberal bloggers were justifiably concerned about a report in The Los Angeles Times which gave the false impression that Barack Obama plans to continue the extraordinary rendition policy of George Bush. Conservative bloggers also tried to use this misinformation to attack Obama. Some blogs got out the true story yesterday and Scott Horton has this explanation today:

The Los Angeles Times just got punked. Its description of the European Parliament’s report is not accurate. (Point of disclosure: I served as an expert witness in hearings leading to the report.) But that’s the least of its problems. It misses the difference between the renditions program, which has been around since the Bush 41 Administration at least (and arguably in some form even in the Reagan Administration) and the extraordinary renditions program which was introduced by Bush 43 and clearly shut down under an executive order issued by President Obama in his first week.

There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside of the criminal justice system and otherwise unaccountable under law for extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S. law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.

The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition. Moreover, Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program.

Update: As seen in the trackbacks, QandO showed their lack of understanding of support for principle as opposed to blind partisanship as they incorrectly predicted that civil libertarians would object to this action by the Justice Department. They also  tries to create a false equivalency between the Obama administration’s actions in a suit which hinder prosecution of Bush sponsored torture with continuing the policy itself. The pretense by Bush-apologists that Obama is doing the same does not hold up, but such conservatives rarely care about the facts.

While the Justice Department was wrong, and liberal bloggers have had no reluctance to speak out against the Obama administration on this matter, this does not change the fact that Obama has ordered that extraordinary rendition not be used in the future. It is disappointing that Obama is so reluctant to see legal action against those who committed such crimes in the past.

SciFi Weekend Part III: Doctor Who, Torchwood, 24, and the Television Returns of Lorelai and Lizzy

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Part I reviewed the return of Battlestar Galactica and Part II featured information on Lost. I will conclude this expanded version of SciFi Weekend with briefer comments on additional shows, as usual moving beyond science fiction.

There is some information available on the next Doctor Who special, which will air around Easter.Tardis and Torchwood Treasures previously posted this information:

The name of the next special is Planet of the Dead and the episode itself has been written by both Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts. It is expected to air around Easter and filming for the episode will begin on the nineteenth of January next year. The episode will feature two characters called Malcolm and Christina and U.N.I.T will also be making an appearance. Rumours also suggest that parts of the episode will be filmed abroad in Tunisia.

Additional information was provided by Russell T. Davies, who also says it is time to introduce new monsters after the last two episodes involved Daleks and Cybermen:

“After the events of Journey’s End and The Next Doctor, I think it’s time to get away from the past and have an adventure with lots of new elements. And lots of fun too! The next Special should be a nice antidote to Christmas, with a bit of sunshine if we’re lucky. And with not one but two alien races that you’ve never seen before.”

American viewers of Doctor Who either must wait months after episodes are broadcast on the BBC or illegally download the episodes. The third season of Torchwood will consist of only five episodes to be broadcast this summer on consecutive nights, but they have finally figured out the only way to reduce  illegal downloads. BBC America will broadcast the episodes a few hours after they are broadcast in the U.K.

24 returned but despite the decision to shut down CTU and move the show to Washington, the show rapidly returned to a similar format with Jack teaming up with Tony,  Bill Buchanan, and Chole. The twist is that they are working on their own due to conspiracies in the goverment which have infiltrated the White House and the FBI. There is more question this season as to whether Jack’s use of torture is right or wrong.

Sometimes viewers take the show too seriously, forgetting that it is only a television show. Media Matters notes that some conservatives even have tried to use a fictional show to justify their support for torture. On the other hand, I sometimes receive comments that I should not cover 24 due to its portrayal of torture. While liberals who argue this do have a point, they also must remember this is fiction, and that hopefully most people can still consider the real issues surrounding torture. Not even all conservatives blindly believe everything they see on the show. Conservative blogger Rick Moran has discussed the question of whether this television show increases the use of torture, and of whether torture works:

Jack Bauer may be the first fictional character ever to be accused of inspiring real life war crimes. This charge was not made by some obscure left wing blogger but by U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with several senior FBI and CIA agents who have conducted thousands of interrogations in their careers. Their verdict was simple and straightforward; the torture scenes in the show were affecting the way that cadets at West Point as well as troops in the field were approaching the interrogation of prisoners.

Finnegan said that he’d like to see a show “where torture backfired.” All the experts agreed that torture, even when used in the show’s “ticking bomb” context, would never work. They pointed out that the fanatics, knowing that the bomb would go off soon, would simply hold out, secure in the knowledge that their suffering couldn’t last much longer.

They also pointed out that terrorist prisoners actually looked forward to torture as the first step towards martyrdom. An interrogation professional would never use it and would, instead, take the opposite tack of trying to build a relationship with the prisoner, drawing him out gradually by gaining his trust. Besides, the “ticking bomb” scenario itself was totally unrealistic and would never happen in the real world.

It is a dubious proposition that a fictional TV character would cause our soldiers to forget their training and their upbringing just to imitate Jack Bauer. The evidence is purely anecdotal, presented by people with an obvious agenda. But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that they felt compelled to speak out against Bauer’s almost casual approach to violating the law and their concern that people get the wrong idea about the best way to interrogate prisoners.

As the show questions the fantasy of torture being effective, it also might even question the ultimate fantasy of the show–that Jack Bauer is invincible. Kristin reveals that there might only be one additional season of the show, there might be a movie after the eighth season, and that they might even blow up the whole world, and Jack Bauer with it.

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24 might not be the only show which concludes with movies. A movie version of Jericho is in the works, and if it is a success perhaps the show will be brought back once again. Jericho was canceled after the first season but returned for a second season after protests from fans. Moonlighting might be returning as a television movie for its 20th anniversary.  Bryan Fuller is also hoping to have a movie of Pushing Daisies to wrap up the show. Meanwhile, fans of Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Eli Stone will have to wait until summer to see the final episodes of these canceled series.

Heroes returns with a new chapter, and after problems with the last chapter Tim Kring is hoping viewers will return. The next chapter. Fugitives, was written so as not to require knowledge of previous stories. Fringe is also returning, and Sci FI Wire has some spoilers on the conclusion of the season.

Previously Mad Men had been renewed but series creat0r Matthew Weiner had been holding out on returning. After months of negotiations a deal was reached in which Weiner will return for two seasons for a seven figure deal.

Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls will be returning to television. Entertainment Weekly reports:

We’re one step closer to getting another weekly TV date with Gilmore Girls‘ Lauren Graham. (Pause for cheers. And… we’re back.) Though we were under the impression NBC was developing a comedy for the actress, Variety reports that ABC has greenlit production on an untitled half-hour pilot in which Graham will play “a self-help guru who teaches women how to live a stress-free life — but struggles to follow her own advice when her boyfriend dumps her.” The show, which features Will & Grace‘s Alex Herschlag and Arrested Development‘s Mitchell Hurwitz among its exec producers, sounds promising, right? I know we can’t let our Gilmore love lead us blindly into TiVo season passes (see: Amy Sherman-Palladino’s ill-fated The Return of Jezebel James), but this set-up could give us Lauren the way we like her: smart, supportive, sarcastic, self-deprecating, slightly neurotic, seriously funny, and above all, at the center of the story. In movies, she’s been “the wife.” On stage, she’ll be “the girlfriend.” (She’s expected to make her Broadway debut as Miss Adelaide in a spring revival of Guys and Dolls.) But on TV, she’ll always be “the star.” Make her self-help guru a fast-talking pop-culture connoisseur, and it’s my favorite show.

Hilary Duff also returns to television in Barely Legal. It sounds like the concept is something along the lines of Lizzy McGuire goes to law school so she can sue Doogey Houser.

Several characters from Veronica Mars are being reunited in Rob Thomas’  new series Party Down, and Kristen Bell might even make an appearance.

Number Six’s Final Escape

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Patrick McGoohan, who created and stared in The Prisoner, died yesterday at age 80. Although only seventeen episodes were made of this miniseries in 1967, McGoohan will always be best known for his role of Number Six.  He played a spy (loosely based upon his role in his previous series, Danger Man) who was apprehended and taken to The Village after he attempted to resign. The series remains one of the best television works to examine the theme of the individual versus authority, and is currently being reimagined as a new miniseries to be aired on AMC. In preparation for their new miniseries, AMC has the original series available on line here.

McGoohan also won two Emmys for his appearances on Columbo, and more recently appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film Braveheart.

SciFi Weekend: Barack Obama, Superhero; Sarah Connor Rumors; Flash Forward; The Prisoner; and Jack is Back

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Barack Obama  will appear on the cover of a special issue of Spider-Man to be released on January 14. Peter Bart of Variety calls Barack Obama America’s last Action Hero.

There’s no new “Spider-Man” or “Iron Man” on the immediate horizon, but the superhero genre is alive and well. As evidence, consider next week’s inauguration.

Historians cannot remember a moment when a president has arrived amid such lofty expectations. Barack Obama will not simply be sworn in; if he’s not careful he will be enshrined.

Back in 1932, there were vague hopes that Franklin Roosevelt might help solve the Great Depression, but FDR was an unprepossessing patrician who spoke funny and sat in a wheelchair. Voters were more puzzled than expectant.

But today, in the eyes of the world, Barack Obama is nothing short of the Last Action Hero. (He even makes an appearance in a bonus issue of the “Spider-Man” comicbook coming out on Jan. 14.)

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Later Bart describes what Obama can learn from the superheroes:

If Barack Obama is going to bring this off, perhaps he should take note of a few of the traits of the superhero fraternity.

“Iron Man’s” gift is that he has a strong moral compass. And he knows how to handle the military-industrial complex (it’s part of his family).

“Spider-Man’s” relevant gift is that he can swing from situation to situation with amazing dexterity, never quite leaving a mark. That’s good politics.

“Batman” is smart at choosing his battles. And, as he reminded us this last outing, he’s damn good at generating box office. Obama take note: Ticket sales are like votes.

We can skip “Superman.” His outfit is a bit embarrassing and his ambiguities toward women keep getting in the way.

Will the superhero franchise come through for Barack Obama? Anyone who starts off with a trillion-dollar economic package needs all the showbiz tricks he can mobilize.

There are lots of rumors going around regarding upcoming events on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Reportedly Jon meets his father, Kyle Reese in an upcoming episode. I assume that either this will be on a diffrent time line from the movie series, or maybe this will be an eariler trip back in time (from Kyle’s perspective) prior to the events of the first Terminator movie. Reportedly Riley did not die as it appeared at the mid-season cliff hanger, but such an outcome of a cliff hanger would hardly be a surprise.

Shows such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles have problems building an audience as many potential viewers are reluctant to come in on a story in progress. At the start of the season a decision was made to make each episode more of a stand-alone story. I doubt this would matter in a series such as this which has developed such a detailed mythology that new viewers would still have trouble keeping track of what is going on. Now they have decided to return to a more serialized format, which probably will work better in a series of this type.

Sci FI Wire interviewed Brannon Braga on his planned show Flash Forward based upon the novel by Robert Sawyer. the show is planned to follow Lost and will even have one actress in common with roles on both shows–Sonya Walger.

Brannon Braga, the onetime Star Trek executive producer, says that his ABC sci-fi pilot Flash Forward—in which the Earth’s inhabitants have a simultaneous glimpse of their futures, then must live with the consequences—is designed to reset itself each season, starting with a new flash and ending when the premonitions come true.

“Yeah, the structure’s not dissimilar from 24 [on which Braga is a co-executive producer], and we want to reset the show at the end of each year, where we’ll do another flash forward at the end of the first season, and then potentially another flash forward at the end of the second season, each one kind of resetting the core characters’ visions of the future and introducing new characters,” Braga said in an exclusive interview on Tuesday, Dec. 6, at the Hollywood premiere party for 24‘s seventh season, which kicks off this weekend.

Braga—who developed Flash Forward with producer/writer/director David Goyer and Goyer’s wife and producing partner, Jessika Borsiczky Goyer—adds: “One of the cool things about the show is you have 5 billion potential storylines. And we plan to tell the stories of people all over the world. Obviously they’ll be focused on mainly people here in L.A., but we’re going to go all over the place.”

The pilot follows a group of characters around the world who have to deal with the consequences of a 2-minute, 17-second glimpse into the future. The series is loosely based on Robert J. Sawyer’s novel Flashforward.

“The core concept is very much the same as Robert Sawyer’s novel,” Braga says. “That was the impetus for it and the idea of the entire world blacking out at the same time for a discrete amount of time, and everybody on Earth having mysterious visions of the future. Same idea. Obviously, to do a TV show, you have to sustain potentially—and God willing—100 episodes or more; you’ve got to change the concept a little bit. His novel had people having visions of the future 20 years from now. We change that to five months from now and kind of narrowed down the scope a little bit and made it a little bit more of an intimate epic. But essentially the concept is the same.”

The show features an ensemble cast, led by Joseph Fiennes, Sonya Walger, John Cho, Christine Woods, Jack Davenport and Courtney B. Vance, and is envisioned as a companion to Lost. Goyer directs the one-hour pilot, which goes into production in February in Los Angeles.

“We just finished casting the pilot right before the holiday, and we just went into … official prep on it two days ago, so David is busy getting ready to direct, and we’re going to shoot it next month, right after President’s Day,” Braga says.

Ultimately, the show will deal with the theme of free will vs. fate, Braga says. “Absolutely,” he says, adding: “Thematically that’s what the show is about, for sure. Yeah, and seeing how these people’s visions come true or not come true or come true because they tried to not make it come true. Some people want it to come true. Some people don’t want it to come true. It’s a fascinating concept. We’re very excited about it.”

Sci FI Wire has information on the reimagined minseries, The Prisoner, which AMC will air next November:

American Movie Classics has shot a six-hour miniseries re-imagining of The Prisoner for modern-day audiences. One of the biggest changes in this re-imagining is that Six is now American, played by Jim Caviezel.

“I don’t think it makes any difference,” director Nick Hurran said in a press conference Jan. 8 in Universal City, Calif. “It’s a mixed-nationality cast. It’s a very global Village. I think we accept that now. We’re so used to a society being of every culture, every race, that it would have been quite parochial to go and do a British thing.”

This Village is set in the middle of a desert, as opposed to the seaside Village of the original. “Epic is absolutely the right word,” Hurran said. “The vistas that this prison gives, setting it in the Namibian desert or the nonspecific desert that we don’t know where it is, the character Six runs away to get free, to escape, and just keeps running and keeps running, and there is more sand than I have ever seen in my life. It gets to places you never knew you had.”

The desert turned out to be a production nuisance when the filmmakers had to re-create location shoots in Namibia. The majority of production was based in Cape Town, South Africa. “My overriding memory of this production is sand, no matter where we were,” Hurran said. “It returned, even in South Africa, when we had to try and re-create some locations to make them look like they were still in the Village. We needed to import sand and carefully, painstakingly lay it across the streets of Cape Town. Unfortunately, Cape Town’s very windy, and the wind certainly blew and blew all of the carefully laid sand about 100 meters into front yards and people’s letterboxes. So sand remained with us forever.”

Die-hard fans of the original Prisoner will notice some familiar tidbits. “There are a number of, of course, homages that the keen eye will see in what’s said and what’s worn, in pieces of architecture,” Hurran said. “Of course, there are a number of salutes that we made to the fantastic piece that was created. I think it would be a shame to take it to the next generation and not acknowledge what an extraordinary piece of work that was. [It’s] enigmatic, I think slightly less surreal, but it is as bizarre, in a good way.”

The big event today is the first of two two-hour episodes of 24 airing today and tomorrow to start the season. Sci FI Wire gives eight reasons why 24 is really science fiction.

SciFi Weekend: Terminator Risks Termination, Fringe Renewed, Heroes & Lost Spoilers, Red Mars

Sarah Connor has problems even more serious than robots trying to kill off humanity. Ratings have fallen to the point that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is at risk of cancellation with production being halted after thirteen episodes. From Entertainment Weekly:

Question: How bad are the ratings for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles? — Dean
Ausiello:
Armageddon-like? An SCC insider tells me that if the show’s numbers don’t start to climb, Fox is unlikely to order any additional episodes beyond the 13 currently in the pipeline. At Saturday’s EW pre-Emmy bash, Thomas Dekker remained hopeful that they could hold off doomsday at least until the end of football season. “We¹re up against Monday Night Football,” he sighed, “which is tricky because we have a lot of football fans.”

Last week’s episode was mixed. We did learn more about John and Cameron’s past/future. (Tenses are so hard when dealing with a show based upon time travel.) Cameron loses her memory while in a supermarket and reverts to memories of a girl named Allison who was/will become involved with John. Cameron was/will be made to impersonate Allison to get close to John. This means that while John might not get involved with Cameron before Judgment Day, in the future he will be involved with Allison who will look like Cameron.

While the episode was mixed, I09 had an advanced view of tomorrow’s episode and report that it is the best episode of the season, and possibly of the series. Hopefully word gets out and this improves ratings, protecting the show from early cancellation–a common fate for genre shows on Fox.

While Sarah Connor Chronicles is in danger of cancellation, Fringe has been renewed for the full season due to high ratings in the 18-49 demographics. Apparently I’m a bit too old, and came very close to deciding to give up on the series until the final moments of last week’s episode when John Scott (Mark Valley) came back from the dead. This has me curious enough to check out at least one more episode.

Sylar and Noah make for an interesting pair on Heroes, with Noah hoping to kill of Sylar as soon as he can figure out how. Sylar is acting more human and Watch With Kristin reports that we will see an alternate reality for Sylar which may or may not come about. In other spoilers, Kristin writes that Hiro and Ando are going to dig up Adam.

Kristin also has some spoilers about Lost. We won’t find out about Jin’s fate until the fourth and fifth episodes. Did he survive the freighter explosion, or will he only appear as a ghost or in flash backs? TV Guide has a little more about Lost:

When I spoke with Michael Emerson at the Emmys, he told me, “Ben’s mission has changed, time has passed, he has different resources… and he moves around a lot.” He also hinted that he might have a scene with Desmond coming up, which begs the question: Desmond’s back?

While I’ve only seen one episode of Mad Men, between watching this and its Emmy Awards there is no doubt that AMC is capable of airing a quality show. I’ve previously reported on their plans for a remake of The Prisoner, and now they are planning a show based upon Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Red Mars:

“Mars,” a 1992 novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, chronicles the inhabitants of the first human colony on the planet. Hensleigh (“Armageddon”) is the writer and will executive produce alongside Michael Jaffe and Howard Braunstein of Jaffe Braunstein Entertainment (“The Memory Keeper’s Daughter”) and Vince Gerardis, Ralph Vicinanza and Eli Kirschner of Created By (“Jumper”).

“This fits in with our bigger vision of wanting series that feel like cinematic one-hour movies,” said Christina Wayne, senior vp original series and miniseries at AMC. “We’re always looking for big genres but to do them in slightly different ways so they feel fresh and new,” she added, noting as examples the network’s Western mini “Broken Trail” and crime-themed series “Breaking Bad.”

Jeremy Elice, vp original programming series, added that the project will be character-driven. “It’s not the spectacle of sci-fi that you typically see,” he said.

John Kerry: Palin Pick Shows McCain is Prisoner of the Right Wing

I’ve always felt that John Kerry would have made a far better president than presidential candidate (not that I agree with all the exaggerated criticism which is inevitable for any losing candidate). Once again John Kerry is showing that he is making a stronger surrogate for Barack Obama than presidential candidate, taking advantage of what he learned in 2004. Via Digby, here check out this interview on This Week:

KERRY: […] And now, now, George, you have a choice, where John McCain has proven that he’s not a maverick, he’s erratic. He’s crossed the line from maverickism to — I mean, it’s unbelievable what’s happened, because he himself said…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But let me — let me stop you right there. What do you mean — let me stop you right there, Senator Kerry. You said he’s erratic. What are you talking about there? Is that referring to the choice…

KERRY: Well, I’ll tell you exactly…

STEPHANOPOULOS: … of Governor Palin?

KERRY: I will tell you — absolutely, because what has happened is John McCain — you know, we’ve been warning against the third term of George Bush. With the choice of Governor Palin, it’s now the third term of Bush-Cheney, because what he’s done is he’s chosen somebody who actually doesn’t believe that climate change is manmade. He’s chosen somebody who has zero — zero — experience in foreign policy.

The first threshold test of a president of a nominee in choosing a vice president is to prove to the American people that the person that you’ve chosen can fill in tomorrow, that they come with the requisite experience to lead the nation in foreign policy and in national security.

You know, she may be — I mean, I’m sure she’s a terrific person. I’m not attacking her. I think John McCain ‘s judgment is once again put at issue, because he’s chosen somebody who clearly does not meet the national security threshold, who is not ready to be president tomorrow.

And there’s just no way to…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: You heard Senator Graham, though. He said that she has more experience than Senator Obama.

KERRY: That’s just ridiculous on its face. I mean, John — you know, Barack Obama has been in the United States Senate. He has not been absent more than he’s been there. She’s been a governor for, what, the two years now, Barack Obama and the four years?

But, moreover, Barack Obama has traveled abroad. Look at the trip Barack Obama took. I mean, it is remarkable to me that the Republicans would try to denigrate a trip that a candidate for president takes where he attracts more — more attention, more support, if you will, than a sitting president of the United States of America.

That’s what you need in leadership for a president. You need somebody who can go to Europe and say to them, “We need more help in Afghanistan.” He actually called the Europeans to account on their — on their need to be, frankly, more front-and-center in the effort to deal with Afghanistan than President Bush has.

I think that’s leadership, and I think the United States of America is well-served if we have a president who’s able to do that.

But coming back to this choice for a moment…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Kerry…

KERRY: … let me just say…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you another question right now…

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: … because, Senator, Howard Wolfson — excuse me. Let me just ask you another question. Howard Wolfson, Senator Clinton’s former communications director, said that this pick might just work to draw women to the Republican ticket. Are you worried about that?

KERRY: Well, with all due respect to Howard, you know, I have much more respect for the Clinton supporters than that sort of quick- blush take with — I mean, how stupid do they think the Clinton supporters are, for Heaven sakes?

Do they think Clinton supporters supported Hillary only because she was a woman. For Heaven sakes, they supported Hillary because of all the things she’s fought for, because she fights for health care, which John McCain doesn’t support; she fights for children and children’s health care, which John McCain voted against; she fights for a windfall profits tax on the oil company, which John McCain opposes.

I mean, for Heaven sakes, the people who supported Hillary Clinton are not going to be seduced just because John McCain has picked a woman. They’re going to look at what she supports.

The fact that she doesn’t even support the notion that climate change is manmade — she’s back there with the Flat Earth Caucus. And I don’t see how those women are going to be fooled into believing — I think it’s almost insulting to the Hillary supporters that they believe they would support somebody who is against almost everything that they believe in.

STEPHANOPOULOS: OK.

KERRY: What John McCain has proven with this choice — this is very important, George. John McCain wanted to choose Tom Ridge. He wanted to choose Joe Lieberman. He wanted to choose another candidate, but you know what? Rush Limbaugh and the right wing vetoed it.

And John McCain was forced to come back and pick a sort of Cheney-esque social conservative who’s going to satisfy the base.

What John McCain has proven with this choice is that John McCain is the prisoner of the right wing, not a maverick.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Kerry, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for today. Thank you very much for your time.

KERRY: Thank you.