text: SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos; Star Trek Discovery; Elseworlds CW Crossover; The Good Place; Agents of SHIELD; Timeless Finale
  December 16, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos was rather weak as a season finale of Doctor Who, but at least they get a second chance on New Year’s Day with an episode widely assumed to involve the Daleks. There were a number of interesting ideas, including loss of memory and characters being fooled into believing another is their God, but it never really flows into a coherent episode. This might be said about the first season as a whole. Being the season finale, the stakes were increased with the earth itself being in danger.
  Chris Chibnall decided to do stand alone episodes. This might have been a good idea in terms of bringing in new viewers if executed better. There is certainly an argument for getting away from the more complex story lines of the Moffat era, at least for Chibnall’s first season. Russel T. Davies might have been a better template, but Davies did add season long subplots when he revived the series. Seeing the various clues to Bad Wolf pay off in the season finale was far more rewarding than just seeing the return of Tzim-Sha from the first episode. It is not surprising that Chibnall turned the Stanza into more than a single-episode villain, but they were hardly developed enough to make their return a significant season-ending event.
  Again, fortunately we do have one more episode in which to redeem the season, followed by a wait for an entire year to see if some of the problems of Chibnall’s first season are corrected. Fortunately the cast, including both Jodie Whittaker and her three companions, all did a fine job. While the season did have its problems, the switch to a female lead was not one of these problems.
  The above trailer for Star Trek: Discovery season 2 has been released. There previously had been speculation that Burnham and Spock never meet in light of his failure to ever mention a sister, but the two are seen together in the trailer. Spock has also smiled in trailers released to date, consistent with the Spock of The Cage as opposed to his behavior later on the original show. Michelle Yeoh seen in her new role at Section 31, which might receive its own spin off.
  A second video released last week shows both the more cinematic mood of the show, along with its continued concentration on the characters:
  Alex Kurtzman has spoken with Entertainment Weekly about the planned series staring Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard:
  The mysterious upcoming Star Trek series bringing back fan favorite Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) is going to be very different in tone from previous shows in the franchise, and below, executive producer Alex Kurtzman explains exactly how.
  The writer-producer has worked on J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek films and is the current showrunner of CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery, as well as an executive producer on the Picard series. We asked Kurtzman how the spin-off will compare to Discovery and Stewart’s previous Star Trek series, The Next Generation.
  “It’s an extremely different rhythm than Discovery,” Kurtzman told EW exclusively. “Discovery is a bullet. Picard is a very contemplative show. It will find a balance between the speed of Discovery and the nature of what Next Gen was, but I believe it will have its own rhythm.”
  Continued Kurtzman: “Without revealing too much about it, people have so many questions about Picard and what happened to him, and the idea we get to take time to answer those questions in the wake of the many, many things he’s had to deal with in Next Gen is really exciting. ‘More grounded’ is not the right way to put it, because season 2 of Discovery is also grounded. It will feel more… real-world? If that’s the right way to put it.”
  This season’s Arrowverse crossover, Elseworlds, was limited to three episodes. Each episode was partially a self-contained story, with the three combining into a more complete story. Elseworlds did a better job of providing fun interaction between the characters with lots of Easter Eggs, and perhaps setting up next year’s cross over episode, than it did in plotting this year.
  Smallville and the 90’s Flash series were both brought into the Arrowverse. John Wesley Shipp was Barry Allen on Earth 90, most likely a reference to him playing the role in 1990-91. Shipp’s character warned of a Crisis to come, and expressed surprise that Diggle wasn’t wearing his ring. Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz says that an episode with a version of Diggle as the Green Lanturn is, “To be continued.” We will not see this in the immediate future as it was confirmed that this has not actually been written yet.
  The Arrowverse is finally able to make references to Gotham City with Gotham near the end of its run, but still cannot show Batman. Instead we were introduced to his cousin, Batwoman, who might be getting her own series.
  The episode ended with an announcement that next year’s crossover event will be Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Flash has been teasing a Crisis since the beginning, but showing this as occurring in 2024, making it unclear if this is the same event. I also wonder if they might collapse the television multiverse, placing Supergirl on the same earth as Arrow and The Flash.
  In other genre news, The Good Place, which once again rebooted itself in the most recent episode, has been renewed for a fourth season. Before going on hiatus for the holidays, for the first time the cast has made it to what appears to actually be the real Good Place.
  Mack will be taking over as head of SHIELD when Agents of SHIELD returns. The series has already been renewed for a seventh season, with season six to air this summer. Clark Gregg is not listed as part of the cast. This might mean he really has died after last season, but it is also possible that they are purposely not announcing his return to the series to hide future plans for him.
  NBC will air the two-hour finale of Timeless this Friday, with fans hoping the show will once again return following cancellation. The episode is left open-ended to leave the possibility open of a return.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Agents of SHIELD, Alex Kurtzman, Arrow, Batman, Batwoman, Chris Chibnall, Daleks, Doctor Who, Gotham, Jodie Whittaker, Michelle Yeoh, Patrick Stewart, Russell T Davies, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Steven Moffat, Supergirl, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos, The Flash, The Good Place, Timeless. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who Continues To Improve, Looking At The Most Recent Three Episodes; Elseworlds; Daredevil Cancelled; Responses To Bill Maher’s Attack On Stan Lee; Handmaid’s Tale Sequel; Big Bang Theory/Young Sheldon Crossover
  December 2, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  This season of Doctor Who will not be remembered for its any big episodes, but the show is getting on track. Chris Chibnall has stayed away from the big, outlandish ideas of past seasons, timey wimey twists, or multi-episode stories. Instead we have a series of stand alone episodes which do work well to keep the show accessible for new viewers and show the variety of types of stories possible with Doctor Who.
  There have been three more solid episodes since my last review of Doctor Who. Kerblam! was a science fiction story which could have worked well with some of the previous Doctors. We got to see the Doctor wearing a Fez once again. As with some other episodes this season, the air date fit in well with current events, but wasn’t limiting for future viewers. We went into the week leading up to Black Friday with a look at some of the problems with Amazon (which did not prevent me from putting in lots of orders later that week).
  Beyond the social commentary about the problems of replacing humans with machines, and the treatment of human workers, there was a strong story. One measure of its success was that I was totally fooled by who turned out to be the villain, while the more obvious villain was, as has been common this season, more misdirection. In previous seasons we have been led to fear common place actions such as blinking. This week the danger was in breaking bubble wrap.
  The major faults of the story were primarily understandable due to budgetary constraints. This hardly seemed like a company which employed ten thousand people when we only saw a few. It was also a little disappointing to see how easily they killed off characters. Dan’s death seemed sort of unnecessary. Kira’s death was the saddest, and in other episodes equivalent characters would have been saved by the Doctor. I would even have expected the Doctor to resolve the problem without Charlie getting killed. The message of the episode was also diluted by having Charlie turn out to be the villain of the episode. However, having a rebel who goes too far for a desirable goal is hardly unprecedented, and does not contradict the underlying message.
  After Kerblam! we got another historical episode with The Witchfinders. The episode checked off many boxes: time travel, social commentary, a historical figure, an alien threat, and even zombies. If the episode had any flaws, it was throwing too much into one episode. While taking place in England, the witch trials had the same warped logic of the American version: “If she dies she’s innocent, and if she lives, she’s a witch and we’ll hang her.” The Pendle Hill witch trials seen in this episode were based upon real historical events (but, to avoid any confusion, there were no mud zombies).
  Once again there was misdirection as to the villain, with Alan Cumming, initially seen looking menacing in a mask, turning out to be more comic relief than the villain of the episode. The Doctor was also shown to have a new power–bobbing for apples without getting her hair wet.
  This episode finally addressed the difference in having the Doctor regenerate as a woman. She had trouble being taken seriously due to her gender, as King James denied that a woman could possibly be the Witchfinder General. Jodie Whittaker made a rare reference to her gender this episode in protesting: “If only I was still a bloke, I could just get on with the job without having to constantly defend myself.” There was this commentary on the times: “These are hard times for women. If we’re not being drowned, we’re being patronized to death.”
  It was inevitable the a woman who appeared and acted differently, and even used a magic wand, would be accused of being a witch during the episode. As the Doctor was told, “Do you know why the Ducking Stool was invented, Doctor? To silence foolish women who talk too much.” Fortunately the Doctor had also learned some tricks from Harry Houdini.
  Kerblam! included a reference to the Doctor meeting Agatha Christie. The Witchfinders quoted Arthur C. Clark’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
  This week’s episode, It Takes You Away, was another success, taking place in the present on earth instead of in space or the past. I won’t say much about it to avoid spoilers as it has not aired in the US yet, but the episode also works well to continue the back stories of a couple of the companions, and move their relationship forward. The episode also includes monsters, with one again being based upon misdirection (but without WiFi). While it avoids getting seriously timey wimey, there is also a strong science fiction element going back to an old Gallifreyan fairytale. Following the recent homage to Matt Smith and Fez hats, in an homage to Jon Pertwee, Yaz offered the advice to “reverse the polarity.”
  The above trailer is out for Elseworlds, the three night crossover on CW, which premieres next week. The official synopses are out:
  EPIC ELSEWORLDS CROSSOVER KICKS OFF TONIGHT — When Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Oliver Queen (guest star Stephen Amell) wake up one morning and realize they have swapped bodies with each other, the two set off to find out what disturbed the timeline to cause such a shift. However, things quickly go from bad to worse when they present their case to Team Flash and the gang doesn’t believe them. Barry and Oliver realize they need Supergirl’s (guest star Melissa Benoist) help and travel to Smallville on Earth-38 where they end up meeting Kara’s cousin, Clark Kent (guest star Tyler Hoechlin), and intrepid reporter, Lois Lane (guest star Elizabeth Tulloch). LaMonica Garrett guest stars as The Monitor.
  THE ELSEWORLDS CROSSOVER CONTINUES IN GOTHAM CITY WITH BATWOMAN (RUBY ROSE) — With Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Barry (guest star Grant Gustin) still stuck in the other’s bodies, the two get a lead on John Deegan (guest star Jeremy Davies) and head to Gotham City with Supergirl (guest star Melissa Benoist) to figure out why their reality has changed. While there, they meet the mysterious Kate Kane (guest star Ruby Rose) who provides them with information that leads the group to Arkham Asylum.
  THE BATTLE CONCLUDES — Supergirl (Melissa Benoist), The Flash (guest star Grant Gustin), Green Arrow (guest star Stephen Amell) and Superman (guest star Tyler Hoechlin) engage in the battle of their lives.
  Stephen Amell tweeted the above picture, posed in front of the bat signal.
  Entertainment Weekly has more on the episodes from the stars, including this from Grant Gusten and Stephen Amell:
  “You’re not going to see me playing Oliver Queen’s mannerisms, or Stephen playing Barry’s mannerisms. It’s more being aware that for some reason we’ve switched lives and destinies. It’s more the fun of the situational comedy that we keep finding ourselves in, and less us having a complete role reversal,” Gustin tells EW. “We get to see Stephen do some of the more goofy speed stuff I have to do on a regular basis, and I get some actual combat as Green Arrow. So, we just see different colors for each of us.”
  “Having superpowers is crazy! Wearing the Flash suit is crazy!” says Amell, who, like everyone else involved, sounds genuinely thrilled about the crossover’s story. “The idea is that in order to be the best version of Barry Allen, which I have to be because we face a threat, there are elements of his personality I have to embrace, and there are elements of my personality that he has to embrace.”
  Besides including characters such as Batwoman, Superman in black, and Lois Lane, Comicbook.com reports that the episodes will include “alternate versions of Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo) serving as a Central City police officer — alongside alternate versions of Joe Wilson (Liam Hall) and Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman).”
  Daredevil joins the growing list of Marvel series being cancelled by Netflix but Disney apparently has more planned for the character with their own streaming service starting soon. Third season showrunner Erik Oleson also discussed the news on Twitter.
  Stan Lee’s company has responded to Bill Maher’s attack on Lee’s legacy with this letter:
  An Open Letter to Bill Maher from Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment
  Mr. Maher: Comic books, like all literature, are storytelling devices. When written well by great creators such as Stan Lee, they make us feel, make us think and teach us lessons that hopefully make us better human beings. One lesson Stan taught so many of us was tolerance and respect, and thanks to that message, we are grateful that we can say you have a right to your opinion that comics are childish and unsophisticated. Many said the same about Dickens, Steinbeck, Melville and even Shakespeare.
  But to say that Stan merely inspired people to “watch a movie” is in our opinion frankly disgusting. Countless people can attest to how Stan inspired them to read, taught them that the world is not made up of absolutes, that heroes can have flaws and even villains can show humanity within their souls. He gave us the X-Men, Black Panther, Spider-Man and many other heroes and stories that offered hope to those who felt different and bullied while inspiring countless to be creative and dream of great things to come.
  These are but a few of the things we the fans of Stan Lee also consider “adulting,” because life both as a child and grown-up can indeed be a struggle. Stan is the author of millions of happy childhood memories and the provider of so many of the positive tools of adulthood.
  Our shock at your comments makes us want to say “‘Nuff said, Bill,” but instead we will rely on another of Stan’s lessons to remind you that you have a powerful platform, so please remember: “With great power there must also come — great responsibility!”
  -Team Stan
  Comicbook.com has compiled arguments, beginning with a quote from Barack Obama from 2013:
  I grew up loving comic books. Back in the day, I was pretty into Conan the Barbarian and Spiderman. Anyone who reads comics can tell you, every main character has an origin story — the fateful and usually unexpected sequence of events that made them who they are.
  They concluded by quoting these words from Stan Lee:
  Let’s lay it Let’s lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them — to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are. The bigot is an unreasoning hater — one who hates blindly, fanatically, indiscriminately. If his hang-up is black men, he hates ALL black men. If a redhead once offended him, he hates ALL redheads. If some foreigner beat him to a job, he’s down on ALL foreigners. He hates people he’s never seen — people he’s never known — with equal intensity — with equal venom.
  The television version of The Handmaid’s Tale has gone beyond the events of the original novel. Margaret Atwood has tweeted that she is writing a sequel:
  Yes indeed to those who asked: I’m writing a sequel to The #HandmaidsTale. #TheTestaments is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene and is narrated by three female characters. It will be published in Sept 2019. More details: https://t.co/e1umh5FwpX pic.twitter.com/pePp0zpuif
  — Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 28, 2018
  The Arrowverse doesn’t have the only shows with a huge crossover planned. CBS has revealed how they will handle the Big Bang Theory/Young Sheldon crossover episode: “Sheldon and Amy are still down about their theory being disproven, but a VHS tape from Sheldon’s past inspires him not to give up.” When I first heard of the crossover, I was hoping for time travel.
  Posted in Barack Obama, Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Arrow, Barack Obama, Bill Maher, Black Panther, Blink, Chris Chibnall, Daredevil, Disney, Doctor Who, Grant Gustin, It Takes You Away, Jodie Whittaker, John Barrowman, Jon Pertwee, Kerblam!, Margaret Atwood, Matt Smith, Melissa Benoist, Racism, Science Fiction, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, Stephen Amell, Supergirl, Superman, The Big Bang Theory, The Flash, The Handmaid's Tale, Witchfinders, X-Men, Young Sheldon. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, Arachnids In The UK; Penny Dreadful Returning; Marvel Television Crossover Hinted; Arrowverse Crossover and News on The Flash
  November 4, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  Arachnids in the UK provided both a horror story before Halloween and political satire just over a week before the midterm elections in the United States. These two components were not entirely successful, but there was a third aspect of this episode of Doctor Who which was a success, redeeming the episode.
  The main story line was fairly weak (as many episodes of Doctor Who tend to be), and its fairly minimal importance was seen in the way it was wrapped up quickly. Rather than being a true monster, the spiders were simply normal spiders who grew to be too big and lacked an ecosystem to exist in. The solution played into the anti-gun sentiments seen earlier this season, but is it really more humane to let them suffocate as opposed to shooting them quickly? I could see earlier seasons solving the problem more humanely by transporting the spiders to a new planet where they could live in peace. While the episode did provide a quick solution for the spiders in the hotel, it also seemed to forget that there were additional spiders around the apartments seen earlier in the episode.
  Chris Noth added the political aspect for the episode and, like the spiders, fell short of being the outright villain of the episode. He played an American businessman who aspires to be president, builds luxury hotels around the world, loves to fire people (including Yaz’s mother), sees guns as the solution, uses words such as “fire and fury,” and hates that a woman (the Doctor) is the one in charge. He also hates Donald Trump, whom he is clearly modeled upon, and plans to run against him. I had expected to see Jack Robertson die a horrible death, being eaten by the spiders. Instead this only happened to his poor bodyguard. The episode ended with Jack Robertson seeing himself as the hero, and ready to go on to attempt to become the next president. This would have been the true horror of the story if not for the fact that we already have Donald Trump as president. This does leave open the possibility of Robertson becoming a recurring character, possibly with Chris Noth returning to play the next president sometime in the future.
  As political satire, this was fairly weak considering it adds nothing to the vast work satirizing Trump, other than copying some of his obvious characteristics. I suspect that Chris Chibnall did not want to get overly specific so that the episode will still hold up over time. While many future viewers might forget many of the specifics of the Trump years, I doubt anyone will forget the basic outline of Trump as shown in the episode.
  The episode works best if seen as the conclusion of a trilogy to establish the Doctor and her new companions, beginning with The Woman Who Fell To Earth and The Ghost Monument. These show the Doctor meeting her future companions, getting to the TARDIS, and ultimately getting home after a series of adventures–with Rosa showing only one of these as a side story to this trilogy. After this series of adventures, the TARDIS made it back to Sheffield.
  The revival of Doctor Who has been stronger by showing the families of many of the companions, allowing the companions to be more complete people as opposed to simply people traveling with the Doctor. The episode concentrated on showing Yaz’s family, but also went back to Graham’s loss of Grace and building a relationship with Ryan.
  Until they returned to Sheffield, the three were with the Doctor by accident, and the goal was to return them home safely. Now they had a choice, and the Doctor even warned them of the dangers of traveling with her. This especially makes sense considering the fates of many of her recent companions. I imagine that it is easier to write a companion out by having a tragic outcome than showing that someone would just decide that they no longer wish to travel on the TARDIS.
  The episode also suggests further expansion of the Doctor’s backstory. Steven Moffat had set up the possibility of a Timelord changing gender, but now we are hearing suggestions that the Doctor has also been a woman, had a family, and had a life we do not know about. Peter Capaldi, speaking of the Master, has said, “I think she was a man back then. I’m fairly sure that I was, too. It was a long time ago, though.” This episode was more explicit. The Doctor said she used to have sisters, and that she herself was once a sister in an aqua hospital, which was a training camp for space assassins. As we know very little of the Doctor’s life before becoming a Timelord, there is no contradiction with the Doctor having had sisters. However, for the Doctor to have once been a woman, this would mean that William Hartnell was not the first Doctor. Older episodes did sometimes hint at previous regenerations before Hartnell, but for this to have been possible it would have been necessary for the Doctor to have been granted additional regenerations in the past. We did see this was possible with Matt Smith.
  In other Doctor Who news, it appears that instead of a Christmas special there will be a special on New Year’s Day this year. This does help as they appear to have run out of ideas for a Christmas tie-in for the series. I imagine that for some viewers in the UK, this might not matter much, unless people really care about the tradition. Watching in the United States, I would prefer a special on Christmas Day, and lacking a connection with the holiday would be fine. There is very little new American television around the holidays, and I’ve gotten in the habit of downloading Christmas specials from the UK that day. However, New Year’s Day is taken up by football here. At least the streaming channels will fill in for the lack of Doctor Who on Christmas Day if my wife and I wind up staying home and watching television.
  The Hollywood Reporter has a story on a new version of Penny Dreadful, with new cast and new location:
  Penny Dreadful: City of Angels opens in 1938 Los Angeles for a story that Showtime describes as “a time and place deeply infused with Mexican-American folklore and social tension.” Rooted in the conflict between characters connected to the deity Santa Muerte and others allied with the devil, City of Angels will explore a mix of the supernatural and the combustible reality of that period, creating new occult myths and moral dilemmas within a historical backdrop. The series will feature all new characters and storylines.
  “Penny Dreadful: City of Angels will have a social consciousness and historical awareness that we chose not to explore in the Penny Dreadful London storylines,” Logan said Thursday in a statement. “We will now be grappling with specific historical and real-world political, religious, social and racial issues. In 1938, Los Angeles was facing some hard questions about its future and its soul. Our characters must do the same. There are no easy answers. There are only powerful questions and arresting moral challenges. As always in the world of Penny Dreadful, there are no heroes or villains in this world, only protagonists and antagonists; complicated and conflicted characters living on the fulcrum of moral choice.”
  There have been hints about a cross-over between Marvel’s Runaways and Cloak & Dagger. Comicbook.com reports:
  “It can reference the rest of the world, but it’s true to teenagers — they’re not interested in what Tony Stark is doing this week or what Matt Murdock is doing this week but they might be interested in a couple of kids who live down in New Orleans and what’s going on there.”
  That’s fitting because both Tyrone Johnson and Tandy Bowen have been members of the Runaways team at some point along in the Marvel comics mythos. Now that the characters are played by Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt, respectively, that’s a scenario that’s entirely plausible in live-action.
  In fact, Cloak & Dagger showrunner and executive producer Joe Pokaski has previously said the powers that be have had conversations on how to make crossovers happen.
  Chicago, as opposed to Vancouver, will provide the background for Gotham City on the Arrowverse Elseworlds crossover episodes this season. We will be seeing Ruby Rose as Batwoman, and seeing a Black Suit Superman, but it has been confirmed that Batman will not appear.
  CBR.com reports that Flash’s most iconic villains might be returning for the 100th episode:
  DC World writer Paul Edwards attended an autograph signing at MCM Comic Con London. While there, he talked with actor Tony Todd, who previously provided the voice for Flash villain Zoom. During a conversation about Todd’s acting, the former Candyman star explained that he had just finished filming episode 100 of Flash. When asked if he would be reprising his role as Zoom, Todd replied, “They are all returning, all the speedster villains, and they all want a piece of Barry.”
  …Executive producer Todd Helbing teased a big twist for the series at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, so this might be what he was referring to. The eighth episode of Flash Season 5, which will premiere on Dec. 4, will be the series’ 100th episode. Tom Cavanagh, who plays various versions of Harrison Wells on the show, will direct.
  You might have noticed that Joe West has not been doing much on The Flash this season, generally sitting in scenes. TVLine has the reason for this:
  I’m hearing that Martin suffered a back injury over the hiatus. In fact, a studio rep confirms for TVLine that the actor will be taking a medical leave from the CW hit, adding: “We wish him a full and speedy recovery and look forward to his return as Detective Joe West.” (It’s unclear at this time exactly when and for how long Joe’s absence will be felt on screen, but sources tell me it will be addressed at some point.)
  Fortunately it should be easy to have a reduced role for Joe, and write him out for a while, without causing serious problems for the stories.
  Posted in Donald Trump, Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Arachnids In The UK, Arrow, Batman, Batwoman, Chris Chibnall, Cloak and Dagger, Donald Trump, Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Penny Dreadful, Penny Dreadful City of Angels, Peter Capaldi, Rosa, Runaways, Science Fiction, Steven Moffat, Superman, The Flash, The Ghost Monument, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Tom Cavanagh, William Hartnell. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who, More on the Season Premiere; Star Trek Short Treks, Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, and Michael Dorn; The Arrowverse Crossover Episode; Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh
  September 30, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  A new clip from the season premiere of Doctor Who has been released in which the Doctor (now played by Jodie Whittaker) finds that she is a woman and no longer the white haired Scotsman she was not long ago. The season premiere episode, The Woman Who Fell to Earth, airs on October 7.
  Radio Times has more information from a Q&A with Chris Chibnall and the stars. Regarding her costume:
  Jodie Whittaker had a tough job in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, trying to play a character who hadn’t quite worked out who she was yet. Apparently, wearing the costume of her Doctor Who predecessor Peter Capaldi helped her find her feet.
  “I think the thing that’s really helpful about episode one is being in Peter’s costume and feeling that I was literally in someone else’s shoes,” she said.
  “So it felt as if I was continually trying to discover things and, I suppose, settle in. I really love the euphoria of the scene where the Doctor finds what she wants to wear because it does feel for me from that moment that the electricity is on.
  “I feel that it was a really helpful episode for an actor playing a brand new role.”
  We will see Peter Capaldi’s costume a while longer, and it might not be the last we see of Capaldi’s Doctor, as he hinted at Wizard World Comic Con:
  The Doctor Who veteran recently was a guest at Wizard World Comic Con in Austin. During a panel, Peter Capaldi was asked about his final moments on set playing the Doctor. He explained that, once he finished shooting his last scene, sad as it may have been, he had a sense that this wasn’t really going to be the end of his relationship with the long-running sci-fi series. Here’s what Capaldi had to say.
  “When I finished, well, you never really finish with Doctor Who. It was sad, but not as sad as you think it is because you never leave.”
  Last week I noted the claims that the old monsters will not appear first season. This does not necessarily apply to the future:
  Much has been written about the absence of classic foes like the Daleks or the Cybermen this year – but Chris Chibnall says he never intended to shelve them permanently.
  “It’s not a rule forever on Doctor Who,” he said.
  “It’s just that this year in the series we’ve got new monsters and new faces. As is relatively well known, I’m as big a fan of the show as anyone.
  “There’s lots of things you’d like to bring back and we might do that in the future, but just not this year.”
  Radio Times also has a spoiler-free review of the episode here.
  The first of the Short Treks premieres on CBS All Access on October 4 with the above trailer released last week. I posted a list of all four episodes with release dates and synopsis last week.
  Jonathan Frakes has completed work directing the second and ninth episodes of season two of Star Trek: Discovery and tweeted the above picture on the set.
  We still don’t have any specifics regarding the upcoming series based upon Jean-Luc Picard, but Patrick Stewart has tweeted a picture from a meeting with Kirsten Beyer, Michael Chabon, Akiva Goldsman, Diandra Pendleton-Thompson, and James Duff to begin working on the series.
  Michael Dorn has discussed the changing make-up for Klingons on each version of Star Trek, and that he is happy not to have to go through it as on Discovery:
  In a general sense, in every iteration of Star Trek – outside of Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and all those Klingons – the producers were trying to make it their own and put their own stamp on the Klingons. So, they decided “We are going to do something different than everybody else.”…and I think that is what they came up with for Discovery. There is no rhyme or reason to it, or to any of the stuff, so I think it is just a matter that they want to put a stamp…
  I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
  The title of this year’s Arrowverse crossover event has been named Elseworlds, and will finally introduce Gotham City. While we will not see Batman, who has occasionally been hinted at, the story will introduce Batwoman. The crossover will start with The Flash on Sunday, December 9. Arrow on Monday, December 10, and conclude with Supergirl on Tuesday, December 11.
  We don’t know if we will see the Gotham City of Earth-1, Supergirl’s Earth-38, or an entirely different universe. CBR.com speculates that the story will be part of a Crisis which leads to a merging of these different universes so that Supergirl is on the same earth as the other CW superheros (now that they are all on the same network):
  After all, with the Monitor involved and an emphasis on alternate worlds, it seems quite likely that we might be looking at some sort of Crisis. What’s more, such a crisis was already hinted at in the pilot episode of The Flash. Viewers might recall a newspaper article from the future (the year 2024, to be exact) where the Scarlet Speedster had mysteriously disappeared following a crisis that involved red skies. If Crisis on Infinite Earths is known for anything else, other than merging DC continuity, it’s because it featured the heroic death of Barry Allen. Now, it’s already been established that the timeline on The Flash had been put on the fast track and altered, which could mean that the year 2024 might not be set in stone. Instead, it could very well end up being in 2018.
  This doesn’t mean that Barry Allen will die, but it he could get lost in the Speed Force (again). Either that or, with history altered, another Flash (or DC character) could end up making the ultimate sacrifice (looking at you, Superman.) It seems like all of the elements are in place for the next Arrowverse crossover to actually be a full on Crisis-level event. If that is the case, then it’s likely that, after four years, we will finally see a merging of Earth-38 and Earth-1. If that happens, then Supergirl will finally be a part of the same universe as Green Arrow and the Flash.
  They also looked at the question of a Flash dying during this Crisis in another post. (Any relation between the Red Skies and the Red Forest of 12 Monkeys?)
  Marc Guggenheim has discussed how he works at Lifehacker.
  This week we had the return of some shows, but the must-see scene of the week was Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh on the Saturday Night Live cold open:
  Plus Weekend Update on the Senate testimony:
  Posted in Humor and Satire, Science Fiction, Television. Tags: 12 Monkeys, Arrow, Batman, Batwoman, Brett Kavanaugh, Chris Chibnall, Daleks, Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker, Jonathan Frakes, Marc Guggenheim, Patrick Stewart, Peter Capaldi, Saturday Night Live, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Supergirl, The Flash, The Woman Who Fell to Earth. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Homecoming; Star Trek Wins Governors’ Award & Other News; The Arrowverse; Professor Proton; Tatiana Masslany, Bryan Cranston, and Aaron Paul
  September 16, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  Homecoming looks like it should be one of the more interesting genre television shows of the fall season, premiering on Amazon Prime on November 2, with the first four episodes shown recently at the Toronto Film Festival. The series is based on the podcast of the same name, and to give the feel of a podcast will be shown in twenty minute episodes. The TV Addict summarized the plot:
  HOMECOMING, the new Amazon Prime Video psychological drama, is based on the podcast of the same name. Julia Roberts stars as Heidi Bergman, a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center — a facility that is helping soldiers transition back to civilian life. Enter Walter Cruz (played by Stephan James), a soldier who is eager to move on to the next phase of his life. There’s also Colin Belfast (played by Bobby Cannavale), Heidi’s supervisor who seems to have questional motives.
  Fast forward four years, when Heidi has left the center and is working as a small-town waitress while living with her mother (played by Sissy Spacek). A Department of Defense auditor visits her one day to ask questions about the work she did at the Homecoming facility and why she left. As she relays her story, Heidi realizes there’s more to the story than she told even herself.
  Besides the strong cast as listed above, the series will be directed by Sam Esmail of Mr. Robot. Deadline spoke with Esmail about both Homecoming and season four of Mr. Robot.
  While the network broadcast of the Emmy Awards won’t be on until tomorrow, Star Trek received the Governor’s Award at this year’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Above is the video of the tribute to Star Trek. Bill Nye praised Star Trek saying, “It may have started off as an entertainment series but it changed the world — and I feel that it changed the world for the better.”
  Deadline discussed the show with several cast members:
  Backstage, Koening, Burton, Ryan, Shatner, Martin-Green and Kurtzman talked about how the Star Trek franchise still resonates after all these decades.
  “It resonates because we were talking about topical issues and socio-political content,” said Koening, who played the memorable Chekov. He said that it still resonates today.
  Burton chimes in, “It’s all about good storytelling.”
  “We still worry about living together and having a fruitful and joyful experience,” continues Koening. We are beset with problems that we had in the ’60s.”
  As the newest member of the fleet, Martin-Green points out that she hopes Discovery gives justice to the franchise and furthers it. “It was very important to us anew, but be our own at the same time,” she adds.
  Kurtzman adds that Star Trek “has been a beacon of hope for so many people for so long.”
  The USS Callister episode of Black Mirror, which was a warped homage to Star Trek, also won three awards.
  In other Star Trek news, Michael Chabon, who is working on the new Picard series, revealed that the show will take place in 2399. This brings us into uncharted territory, finally showing what happens beyond the 24th century when TNG, DS9, and Voyager took place.
  William Shatner has discussed why Captain Kirk was killed.
  Episodes on the CBS All Access app will be available for download for offline viewing, including Star Trek: Discovery. There are a few catches. Downloading will only be available for subscribers to the commercial free tier, downloads expire after 30 days, and after watching a show it will only remain available for another forty-eight hours.
  Rainn Wilson teased returning to Star Trek: Discovery to reprise his role as Harry Mudd.
  Sonequa Martin-Green was recently asked about season two of Star Trek: Discovery:
  It’s way too soon to talk in any detail about season two of Discovery, but give us some sort of sense of what fans can expect in terms of the show’s direction, Michael’s path…
  Well, I think people expect the fallout from everything that happened last year. There’s so many things that happened. So many decisions were made. So many changes happened. There was evolution in season one, but we weren’t able to dig into it because we were at war. So, you will see all of that. You will see people dealing with what’s left. Dealing with the residual, dealing with, “OK, what do I have now? What have I done? What does that mean? Who am I? Who are we?” You’ll see people asking those questions and seeking to answer them in season two. And there is a lot more…. there’s a little more joy just because we aren’t at war. We’re able to smile a little bit more. There’s a sense of levity that’s there simply because we’re not fighting for our lives.
  And Michael will be part of that? Be a bit lighter?
  Oh yeah, for sure. There’s certainly a heaviness that is present with me as Burnham, just because of everything that is driving me and because there are deep-seated problems there. So, those are still at play, for sure. But yes, you see the smile, and you see the chuckles that we allow ourselves to have, including Burnham, because we’re not fighting.
  How will the presence of Captain Pike affect Michael?
  In that big way that a captain affects a ship and a crew. A crew is almost defined by the essence of the captain. We went through the ringer with Lorca, and so there’s a little bit of PTSD there. There’s a little bit of distrust there because of what we’ve gone through and because we had someone who manipulated us and sought to kill us for his own gain. And so, Pike being the deeply rooted good guy he is, he is going to have an effect on us. He’s soothing in that way. He’s comforting in that way. And hopefully you will see us sort of galvanize because of that.
  Elizabeth Tulloch of Grimm has been cast to play Lois Lane in the upcoming season’s Arrowverse crossover episode. This adds her to along list of actresses who have played the role, including Margot Kidder, Teri Hatcher, Amy Adams, Kate Bosworth, Noel Neill, Phyllis Coates, Erica Durance, Megan Fox, Uma Thurman, Dana Delany, Mandy Moore, Stana Katic and Pauley Perrette. As previously announced, Tyler Hoechlin will reprise his role as Superman. Cassandra Jean Amell, wife of Stephen Amell, will play Nora Fries, the wife of Mr. Freeze.
  Grant Gustin has teased the upcoming season of The Flash in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:
  “I don’t want people’s expectations to be through the roof, but I really think this could be very similar to season 1 in [terms of] the heart and humor it had and the scope,” Grant Gustin tells EW.
  One thing contributing to the season’s lighthearted tone is the arrival of Barry and Iris’ (Candice) daughter from the future Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy), which essentially thrusts parenthood onto the couple. “They’re learning all of the lessons new parents learn when their kids grow up, but since she’s an adult it sort of adds this heightened scenario to all those decisions,” says EP Todd Helbing.
  The CW Network has released the above teaser for Supergirl.
  Netflix has released the above trailer for season three of Daredevil.
  Bob Newhart will be making a final appearance as the ghost of Professor Proton on The Big Bang Theory.
  Tatiana Maslany of Orphan Black will be appearing with Bryan Cranston on a Broadway version of Network.
  Aaron Paul, who starred with Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad, will be appearing as a regular on season three of Westworld.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Aaron Paul, Alex Kurtzman, Arrow, Black Mirror, Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston, Daredevil, Grant Gustin, Grimm, Homecoming, Mr Robot, Orphan Black, Patrick Stewart, Sam Esmail, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Stephen Amell, Supergirl, Tatiana Maslany, The Big Bang Theory, The Flash, Westworld, William Shatner. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Star Trek News; Doctor Who; Sharp Objects Finale; The Arrowverse; Iron Fist; Mr Robot; X-Files Barbie Dolls
  September 3, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  Deadline reports that Star Trek will be awarded a Governor’s Award on September 8 during the Creative Arts Emmy Awards in recognition of, “the visionary science-fiction television franchise and its legacy of boldly propelling science, society and culture where no one has gone before.” Also from the Academy:
  What began as a television show grew into an entertainment franchise that has consistently depicted humanity’s greatest hopes for a better tomorrow. Throughout the Gene Roddenberry-created Star Trek’s multiple series, viewers were exposed to a world where technology and science helped improve the human condition. Futuristic technological advancements featured in the show bear striking resemblances to the cell phones and virtual reality systems in use today.
  David Stapf, President of CBS Television Studios, added: “The impact of Star Trek is far-reaching, and has inspired not only countless individuals, but great advancements in technology, science, health care, space exploration and more. We are so grateful to the brilliant minds and talented individuals, both in front of and behind the camera, who boldly tell stories that stand the test of time.”
  TrekMovie.com has some quotes from the cast of Star Trek: Discovery on the upcoming season speaking at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto.
  William Shatner told the Toronto Star that he is not interested in doing a new Star Trek series like Patrick Stewart.
  Karl Urban (McCoy) spoke about the Quentin Tarantino Star Trek movie at Trekonderoga, including how it would be R-rated, but not because of the use of obscenities:
  You shouldn’t worry that it is going to be full of obscenity and stuff. He wants an R-rating to really make those beats of consequence land. If it’s not PG, if someone gets sucked out into space, which we have all seen before, we might see them get disemboweled first…It allows some some breadth…gives him some leeway to do that. To me, that was always one of the things I loved about what DeForest Kelley did. He would actually capture the horror of space. That look in his eyes of sheer terror always struck me when I was a kid.
  TrekMovie.com has an excerpt from, So Say We All , an oral history of the Battlestar Galactica series, discussing how Deep Space 9 paved the way for BSG, and the long road towards a more serialized format on Star Trek series.
  Variety reports that Matt Smith will be joining the cast of Star Wars: Episode IX.
  Sources tell Variety that “The Crown” star Matt Smith is joining “Star Wars: Episode IX,” which is currently in production in the U.K. It’s unknown at this time whether the “Doctor Who” alum will be on the side of the rebels or the evil empire.
  As for the new Doctor, Matt Smith has this to say about Jodie Whittaker: “She’ll be brilliant. I think she’s got great humor but a real depth and sort of pathos and humanity that I think will lend itself to the character. I’m really excited as a fan, actually. Game on!”
  While we still don’t have much information on the upcoming episodes of Doctor Who, Radio Times reports on hints of “dark,” “epic” and “squelchy” episodes coming. Metro has a story on the CGI effects.
  Others recently revealed to be included in Star Wars: Episode IX include Keri Russel of The Americans.
  There continues to be few new genre shows currently on, but there was one major finale to look at. Sharp Objects ended essentially the same way as the novel, but (major spoilers) did end with the revelation that, while Adora killed Marian, Amma killed the girls with help from her roller-skating friends. The show used this as the surprise ending, leaving out the aftermath described in the novel. The television series ended with Camille seeing the teeth in the doll house and Amma (an anagram for Mama), telling her, “Don’t tell Mama.” Then there are a couple of scenes in the credits which quickly fill in the details of the killings, and revealing that Amma was the woman in white.
  Joanna Robinson looked at many of the questions from the series at Vanity Fair. She included information from the book, such as why Amma did the killings:
  Why did Amma do it? In the book, there’s a lot more explanation: Amma tells Camille that she had fun at first with the violent little Ann and Natalie. They killed a cat together! But at a certain point, the two girls started hanging around her house too much, asking too many questions about Amma’s mysterious illness—and worst of all, getting too much attention from Adora. Amma murdered the girls partially because she’s been warped by being poisoned by her mother her whole life. Often, children who have been subjected to Munchausen by Proxy have a hard time distinguishing what constitutes real violence and separating the idea of pain and affection. “A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort,” Flynn writes.
  Robinson summarized what happened to Amma in the novel:
  In the book, Amma gets arrested and goes to prison. She’s only 13 in the novel, and is definitely tried as a minor. She’ll be in there until she’s 18, at least; Camille suspects even longer. Amma has shorn off all her hair—an act of defiance that mirrors young Camille’s cropped cut. (All the good girls of Wind Gap have long flowing hair, but Amma isn’t in Wind Gap anymore.) Camille visits Amma, who is having a hard time adjusting to life behind bars. Amma hasn’t recruited any new disciples . . . yet.
  And Camille:
  In the book, after Amma is arrested, everything unravels for Camille. She takes a knife to the one uncut part of her body—her back—and is only prevented from going after her own face because her editor, Curry, breaks in and stops her. She goes to live in the Curry house, and is slowly rebuilding. She’s also given up drinking.
  Alan Sepinwal discussed the ending with Gillian Flynn in an interview in Rolling Stone:
  We have to start with that ending and how abruptly we cut from the revelation that Amma killed the girls, to the Led Zeppelin song, to the credits. How did you and Marti and everyone decide that was how you wanted to wrap up the season?
  That was mostly a Jean-Marc choice. It was his idea to have, right at the moment people are looking at each other to start theorizing about what happened, those quick shots of what exactly happened, and then that last final shot of Amma as the Woman in White. If you stay long enough; I don’t know if you saw that part.
  I did, but that’s still a relatively new thing for television. The Marvel movies have trained audiences to watch through the credits, but outside of Westworld, TV doesn’t do much of this. Was there any concern that the audience might turn it off before getting to that?
  Now that everyone watches TV differently, the idea is that you can go back. If it becomes a viral thing, like the different words [on Camille’s body] that people were looking for, you have an opportunity to go back and look for it a second time. You can hold the episodes on your DVR or on your devices and go back easily.
  The book spends more time letting Camille and the reader absorb and contemplate Amma’s role in things. As the author, how did you feel about Jean-Marc’s choice to end things so abruptly after that’s revealed?
  That was all of our choice. The only Jean-Marc part was the trippy Led Zeppelin cut. Books are just very different from film, and I had to respect how that was going to feel. There was a lot of discussion in the writers’ room about how much time we were going to have after Amma comes home with her, that there was going to be that extra twist. We wanted to preserve that moment but give enough time so that it does feel like the rug is being pulled out from under you. You want to give enough time where Amma and Camille are being like sisters so that it is that moment of incredible shock. We went around a lot about what was the correct amount of time to have the proper amount of gut-punching! Which I say with an evil laugh…
  For the benefit of people who didn’t read the book and have only that ending montage to go on: Adora was responsible for killing Marian with Munchausen by proxy, and was doing the same to the Natalie and Ann, but it’s Amma who went and killed them on her own?
  She wasn’t necessarily doing Munchausen by proxy — she was tending to [Natalie and Ann], and that made Amma very angry. Amma is the one who feels like she’s made that sacrifice. She has allowed herself to be sickened by Adora, and therefore she feels like her treating any other girls is a deep violation of that contract. And I don’t blame her in her child mind logic. That made her angry, so she sociopathically chooses to kill the girls.
  The CW Network has released the above trailer for their super hero series. According to Syfy Wire, “Supergirl‘s fourth season premieres on Sunday, Oct. 14, at 8 p.m. EST; Arrow‘s seventh season follows on Monday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m. EST; Legends‘ fourth season airs right after at 9 p.m. EST, although it won’t premiere until the 22nd; The Flash‘s fifth season arrives Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 8 p.m. EST; Black Lightning‘s second season follows at 9 p.m. EST.”
  Syfy.com has excerpts from a recent interview with Stephen Amell on playing the Arrow. They also have some information on the upcoming season of The Flash.
  Iron Fist returns for season two next week. Hopefully they have fixed some of the problems from the first season. Bleeding Cool has some behind the scenes videos and pictures.
  I recently noted that Christian Slater was saying that Mr. Robot will end with season 4. Variety confirms that the show will end after the fourth season.
  A federal judge has ruled that only San Diego Comic Con can use the term comic con, and that other comic conventions using the term are infringing on their trademark.
  The original X-Files Barbie dolls, seen in the picture above, did not look all that much like Mulder and Scully. New versions are being released for the shows’s twenty-fifth anniversary, which can be seen here. They look much better, and can be pre-ordered for $40 each.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Amy Adams, Arrow, Battlestar Galactica, Black Lightning, Doctor Who, Gene Roddenberry, Iron Fist, Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Mr Robot, San Diego Comic Con, Science Fiction, Sharp Objects, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Star Wars, Supergirl, The Americans, The Crown, The Flash, Westworld, X Files. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Star Trek News; The Arrowverse; Jessica Jones Showrunner Leaving for Warner; Man In The High Castle Trailer; Veronica Mars; The Affair; Big Bang Theory; Timeless; Foundation Trilogy; Hugo Award Winners
  August 26, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  It is another slow week with only one new science fiction show airing which I’m watching (Killjoys). While fun to watch, I don’t find that a show worth reviewing episode by episode as I do with some genre shows. There was one season finale with The Affair, but I don’t see much point in writing about that here except for one brief comment. I was surprised that such a major character was killed off, but many have speculated that it came down to Ruth Wilson complaining about not receiving equal pay with its male lead. Tonight is the season finale of Sharp Objects, but I will wait until after I see the finale to comment on the show. While no shows to review this week, there have been some items of interest.
  With limited new news, I’ll start by going back to something interesting we learned about Deep Space Nine. I never did like the ending of the series, and I believe that this is the consensus of Star Trek fans, even if this story claims that the ending was well-received. Regardless, we learned at the Las Vegas Star Trek convention that the ending could have been far worse. From ComicBook.com:
  Speaking during a panel at Star Trek Las Vegas, Behr revealed that he really wanted the series finale to call back to the popular season six episode “Far Beyond the Stars,” revealing that the entire story of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was actually the dream of science fiction writer Benny Russell.
  “I did pitch to [executive producer] Rick Berman that the final episode would end up with Benny Russell on Stage 17 at Paramount, wandering around the soundstages, realizing that this whole construct, this whole series, that we had done for seven years, was just in Benny’s head,” Behr said (via Trek Movie).
  But Deep Space Nine is just one television series in the Star Trek franchise, and Behr’s dream ending could have had major implications for the rest of the franchise as well.
  “That is how I wanted to end the series. And Rick said ‘Does this mean The Original Series was in Benny’s head? Does this mean Voyager was in Benny’s head?’ I said ‘Hey man, I don’t care who is dreaming those shows, I only care about Deep Space Nine and yes, Benny Russell is dreaming Deep Space Nine.’ He didn’t go for it,” Behr said.
  In “Far Beyond the Stars,” series lead Sisko finds himself experiencing the life of Benny Russell, a black science fiction writer in 1950s America. Russell imagines Deep Space Nine as a story he’s trying to sell, but struggles with the racism of the era. In the end, this is revealed as a vision sent to Sisko from the prophets in the wormhole near Deep Space Nine. In reality, it’s a powerful episode about what science fiction is for, what it is capable of, and why who writes it matters.
  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. There’s a documentary planned for release later this year titled What We Left Behind that will feature the cast and creative team that worked on the show looking back on the time they spent, the stories they created, and the legacy of the series.
  I totally agree with Rick Berman on this one. It was fine to have an isolated episode in which things were possibly a dream, or for some series like St. Elsewhere to be a dream, but do not end the series in this manner when Star Trek extends far beyond this series.
  TrekMovie.com has some quotes from Gates McFadden, including answering questions regarding the news of a new Star Trek series staring Patrick Stewart:
  No, we haven’t [heard anything], and I am sure Patrick will fill us in sometime. I have no idea if we are in it, or if it is just Patrick or what. We will all find out, but it is just so cool, though. It is very exciting. Again, I am always blown away by the fans, who have loved the show and Roddenberry’s vision for so long and through so many different series, and they have all been so wonderful. I am as excited as everybody else.
  Tyler Hoechlin will be reprising his role as Superman in the upcoming seasons Arrowverse crossover, and Lois Lane will be introduced (along with Catwoman, as previously announced). From Deadline:
  The three-night crossover event kicks off with The Flash on at 8 PM Sunday, December 9, followed by Arrow at 8 PM December 10 and capping off with Supergirl on December 11. For this year’s crossover, The Flash and Supergirl will swap time slots. The Flash normally airs on Tuesdays and Supergirl on Sunday. Arrow airs in its regular Monday night slot.
  Hoechlin’s Superman will appear in all three episodes. This year’s crossover will also include the first appearance of Batwoman (Ruby Rose).
  The Flash will return with new episodes on Tuesday, October 9 at 8 PM ET/PT on The CW, followed by Black Lightning (which is not technically part of the Arrowverse) at 9 PM. Supergirl premieres the next week on Sunday, October 14 at 8 PM, followed by Arrow on Monday, October 15 at 8 PM. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will return on Monday, October 22 at 9 PM. The as-yet-untitled crossover event will from Sunday, December 9 through Tuesday, December 11.>
  I09 has a story on the rise of the Dark Night on the upcoming season of Gotham.
  We might see a big improvement in the DC based television shows while there has been a huge loss for the Marvel shows. Melissa Rosenberg, creator and showrunner for Jessica Jones, is leaving Netflix and moving to Warner Bro Television. From The Hollywood Reporter:
  In a competitive situation, the Jessica Jones creator and showrunner will depart the Netflix Marvel drama after season three and move to Warner Bros. Television with an overall deal. Sources say the indie studio outbid Netflix for Rosenberg’s services in a deal that ultimately is worth in the eight-figure range. Ultimately, Rosenberg was ready to do something different and was ready to move on to new projects though Netflix is said to have courted her to stay.
  Under the multiple-year pact, Rosenberg will create and develop new projects for Warner Bros. TV. She is currently focused finishing up the previously announced third season of Netflix’s Marvel drama Jessica Jones. A return date for the Krysten Ritter-led Marvel Television drama from ABC Studios has not yet been determined. A new showrunner would take over for Rosenberg should Netflix renew Jessica Jones for a fourth season. Rosenberg will remain credited as the show’s creator and executive producer.
  Amazon Prime has released the season three trailer for The Man In The High Castle (video above). The synopsis:
  Season three of the Emmy award-winning The Man in the High Castle finds Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) grappling with her destiny after seeking safety in the Neutral Zone. Realizing that their fates are intertwined, she works with Trade Minister Tagomi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) to interpret the mystery of the last remaining films. Meanwhile, as tensions between the Reich and the Empire continue to rise, Joe Blake (Luke Kleintank) returns from Berlin and is sent on a diplomatic mission to San Francisco, where he and Juliana reunite and come to a turning point in their relationship. Also in the new season, Obergruppenfuhrer John Smith (Rufus Sewell) finds himself celebrated by Nazi high society, but political forces are closing in as North American Reischsmarschall Lincoln Rockwell and J. Edgar Hoover plot against him. Helen (Chelah Horsdal) takes drastic action to protect her family while they struggle with the aftermath of Thomas’ death, and Smith learns of a shocking and ambitious new Nazi program that has personal and global ramifications
  Hulu is planning a reboot of Veronica Mars, with Kristen Bell reprising the title role.
  Apple has picked up a ten-episode series based upon Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.
  We have more news on the Timeless movie planned to wrap up the series. The two-part episode will air in December, with production starting in October. The full cast will be returning. TVLine has more on the planned writers and director.
  The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin has won the Hugo Award for best novel. Wonder Woman has won for Best Dramatic Presentation–Long Form and The Good Place: “The Trolley Problem” has won for Best Dramatic Presentation–Short Form. The Verge has a full list of nominees and winners.
  ABC is planning a biracial reboot of Bewitched.
  I’m sure everyone who cares knows by now, but I feel I should include the news that The Big Bang Theory will be ending after this season. Fifty million dollars was not enough to entice Jim Parsons to stick around for another two years.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Arrow, Batman, Batwoman, Bewitched, Black Lightning, Foundation Series, Gotham, Hugo Awards, Jessica Jones, Jim Parsons, Killjoys, Kristen Bell, Krysten Ritter, Legends of Tomorrow, Patrick Stewart, Science Fiction, Sharp Objects, Star Trek, Supergirl, Superman, The Affair, The Big Bang Theory, The Flash, The Good Place, The Man In The High Castle, Timeless, Veronica Mars, Wonder Woman. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: More News From Comic Con Including The Orville, Star Trek Discovery, Doctor Who, The Expanse and CW Shows; Game of Thrones; Altered Carbon Renewed
  July 29, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  Last week I began coverage of this year’s San Diego Comic Con, concentrating on Star Trek: Discovery, The Orville, and Doctor Who. This week I will add some additional information which came out at Comic Con on these shows, some information on other shows, and some news which came out later in the week.
  Marina Sirtis will be guest staring in an episode of The Orville, which will be directed by Jonathan Frakes. John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox) is yet another former Star Trek actor who will be appearing in an upcoming episode of The Orville. More on plans for season two of The Orville in last week’s post and at TrekMovie.com.
  Rod Roddenberry premiered a short film at San Diego Comic Con, which can be viewed here. More information at SyFy Wire.
  Alex Kurtzman says that a new Spock has already been cast.
  Last week I wondered whether Anson Mount would be taking command of the Discovery for the entire season, or just as an arc part of the season. This does not entirely answer the question of whether he will be in command of Discovery the entire time, but Mount did say how long he will be appearing on Star Trek: Discovery in this interview with TrekMovie.com:
  They’re still shooting, so was it an arc or are you a season 2 character?
  Oh yeah. I’m contracted.
  For the whole season, I meant. Main cast, whole season?
  Yep.
  13 episodes.
  Yep.
  There’s something a little jaded about Pike when we meet him early on in “The Cage.” Would you say that maybe some of what he experiences in this is part of his arc that takes him to that point?
  Editor’s note: The question was intended to touch on how “The Cage” informed Mount’s performance, and how it affects where Pike is now. The fast pace of the red carpet means sometimes questions aren’t phrased perfectly. To clarify, the events of “The Cage” took place in 2254, three years prior to DSC season two (2257).
  You’re going to see some easter eggs that you’ll recognize about Pike, I can tell you that.
  Michael Dorn says that there hasn’t been any talk yet about a Worf spinoff among the new Star Trek projects, but he is working on it:
  “I think this Worf thing would be perfect — I mean, really perfect,” he says. “It’s just a matter of getting the phone number of the right guy or getting the email of the right person that can actually get you in there. It’s a little early in the game right now, but I still think there’s hope for it.”
  Even though there’s a powerful mystique to being a Starfleet captain, Dorn’s idea isn’t to put Worf in charge of the Enterprise. Dorn is fascinated with Klingons and feels the race of warrior aliens could be explored even further. His idea is to put Worf in charge of a Klingon ship during a period of cultural change for their fictional empire. There would be different aliens — including humans — on the ship, and the shift toward diversity and inclusion would be a painful one for the Klingons.
  “I’ve always liked the Klingons. I’ve always thought that they were the most interesting aliens outside of the Vulcans and all that,” Dorn says. “There’s a certain Shakespearian bent with the Klingons. They’re very nationalistic — there’s coups, there’s assassinations, there’s takeovers, there’s all these kind of things. Interestingly enough, they talk kind of Shakespearian.”
  Chris Chibnall told Digital Spy why the upcoming season of Doctor Who will have three companions and be more of an ensemble:
  “I love Doctor Who as a big, popular, mainstream, accessible show,” Chibnall said. “So I wanted to make sure that every member of the audience felt they had a relatable character, an access point. Hopefully it means that the show can resonate with the broadest possible audience.
  “And of course, three companions with the Doctor… we’re really going back to 1963 – that’s the format of the show! You’re not changing the format, that’s how it started, really – which I only realised afterwards.”
  The Doctor’s new friends – Chibnall says not calling them “companions” just feels “a bit more natural” but “is in no way a rule or edict from now on” – include Yaz (Mandip Gill), who is “in absolute awe of the Doctor” and Ryan (Tosin Cole), who “challenges the Doctor from time to time, gets it right sometimes, but wrong a lot of the time”.
  “Ryan’s 19, Yaz is 19, and then you’ve got Graham who’s the oldest of the bunch, so we’ve got different generations, different genders,” Cole told us.
  “People have an ‘in’, in three different ways,” Gill added. “We all bring something different to the group, with gender, race, everything. And just the personalities of the three characters are very different.
  “They each have a very individual voice, where I think certain people will be able to instantly relate to Bradley Walsh’s character, instantly relate to Tosin’s… and hopefully just love us all!”
  Walsh completes the trio as Graham, with Chibnall confirming that he thought of casting the star having worked together on ITV’s Law & Order: UK in 2009.
  “He’s an amazing actor and that’s what I learned working with him on Law & Order,” he added. “He has an incredible emotional range. He’s able to be really funny, and break your heart. And these guys [Gill and Cole] are exactly the same, as is Jodie. It means you have a range of emotional flavours in the show.”
  Io9 interviewed Naren Shankar, showrunner of The Expanse at Comic Con, and asked about the move to Amazon:
  io9: Will fans be able to tell the difference with the shift to Amazon?
  Shankar: I think we’re in real strong continuity at this point. Anybody who’s read the books know that the books change pretty radically, sort of season by season. We’re in book four now, and if you’ve read book four, that is set entirely on one of the alien worlds beyond the rings. We’re not going quite that far, to, just completely do that as the entire season. But I think one of the strengths of the show is that it keeps changing. But—hopefully we’re doing our jobs right.
  It’s not like Ty [Franck] and Daniel [Abraham, who co-author the Expanse books as James S. A. Corey] stopped being involved in the show. [laughs]. So, it’s not that. [Show writers] Georgia Lee and Robin Veith have both moved on to other projects, but they’re still friends of the show and they’ll be part of it again, I have no doubt.
  io9: Will working with Amazon give you more creative freedom, or at least release you from having to do things like bleep out swear words?
  Shankar: Absolutely. None of those restrictions have to come into play, because those are all basic cable issues. What’s weird about it is that on Syfy all of that stuff was bleeped out, but if you happened to be watching it on Space in Canada, none of that’s bleeped out. It’s going to be, I think, terrific for the show, because we don’t have language restrictions, we don’t have nudity restrictions, we don’t have all of these things that conspire a lot of times to make, especially genre shows, not feel as adult as they should be. Not to feel real. In my mind, it sort of infantilizes genre [TV series] even more so. But that goes away on Amazon.
  We also don’t have to jam the individual episodes into 43-minute chunks. There were a lot of times over the last few seasons that I’ve gotten a show through post, and it’s been like, “Man, it would much better if I could just open this thing up by two minutes.” But you can’t. That isn’t a problem on Amazon either. So I think there’s huge creative advantages. And honestly, this show was made for streaming. It was made for bingeing. That’s just what it is. And everybody [who works on The Expanse], I think to a person, would say the same thing. We kind of have found our home. This is the right place for the show…
  io9: The third season had events from both book two and book three guiding its plot. Will there be any of book five in season four?
  Shankar: Without giving too many spoilers [laughs]—there’s so much that is juicy from this point on. One of the great frustrations when we thought we’d been canceled at the end of season three was that the end of the third book is really the end of the first big movement of the series. Which is, after spending a lot of time inside the solar system, this gigantically important thing happens that opens up an entirely new frontier for humanity. And that starts happening in book four.
  Yeah, the book itself is completely restricted to the storyline on this new planet, Ilus, and a huge portion of the new season [is based on] book four. But we’re also creating material [that takes place] back in the solar system, that reflects on the events on Ilus. It’s stuff that isn’t in the book, but it actually bridges books four and five going forward. There’s a whole bunch of things happening that are sort of referred to, obliquely, in the text, but we’re bringing them to life and actually playing storylines back in the solar system simultaneously.
  io9: Can you name a couple of examples from past seasons when the show has added or changed material from the books?
  Shankar: There’s a few examples, even going back as far as the pilot. Chrisjen Avasarela, she’s not in book one of the series. She actually comes into book two. Very early on, that decision was made to pull her into the original narrative to give Earth’s perspective of the events, so it’s not just Holden and Miller, which is the entire book one. Similarly, the character played by Elizabeth Mitchell, Anna Volovodov, she’s in book three but she’s not in book two at all. So because we knew that we would be bridging the end of book two and book three in the third season, we launched Anna at the beginning of season three—the backstory of Errinwright and her on Earth, that’s not in the books or the novellas. So we’re teeing up the narrative for future seasons of the show, but we’re creating new stuff that’s not in any of the published stuff. Ty and Daniel are right there with us, so we’ve talked a lot about how to bridge it. But I think people are going to be pretty psyched by what we do.
  io9: Is the ultimate goal to finish the books?
  Shankar: I would love to take the show to the end of book nine. Ty and Daniel have written a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That is the perfect version of this for me—if we can keep the show going, and people like it, I think it would be remarkable to tell, because they are telling a story about the evolution of a species and sort of the fate of humanity in very, very big terms with a very particular point of view. I’d love to be able to take it to the end. That would be amazing.
  Nora Allen said she made a “big mistake” at the end of last season, but it turns out that she made multiple mistakes per this report from ComicBook.com:
  In an interview with Entertainment Weekly at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, Helbing said that Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) has more than one mistake to deal with and that those additional mistakes are well on their way.
  “There’s a bunch of big mistakes and they’re coming,” Helbing said. “It’s not just one.”
  While Helbing didn’t elaborate on exactly what those mistakes were, during the show’s SDCC panel Helbing also revealed that the show, whose overall theme for season five is the concept of legacy, would be doing a younger version of The Rogues. If Nora, whose heroic codename is XS, is operating as a super heroic speedster in the future it would make sense that she would also have her own version of the Rogues, the iconic group of Flash villains in comics.
  On top of the possibility of a Young Rogues, the season’s big bad, Cicada, has also been teased as art of Nora’s big mistake. A tease about the villain was supposed to factor into The Flash’s season four finale, but was ultimately cut for time, though it was confirmed that Cicada won’t be a speedster, something Helbing told ComicBook.com gave the show a way to change up the obstacles for Barry and the team.
  TV Line looked at Legends of Tomorrow, including why they are not being included in next season’s Arrowverse crossover.
  Supergirl will have feature television’s first transgender superhero next season.
  Marvel’s Cloak and Dagger has been renewed for a second season.
  It was revealed at Comic Con that the third season of The Man In The High Castle will premiere on October 5, with the entire season being released that date. Amazon has also renewed the show for a fifth season.
  The final six episodes of Game of Thrones will air in the first half of 2019. A pilot for one of the prequel series will also start filming early in 2019. At present there are only plans to proceed with one series, with previous stories discussing several possible spinoffs.
  TV Line has information on The 100.
  Altered Carbon has been renewed by Netflix for a second season. Like Doctor Who, the show lends itself to the “regeneration” of the main character, or at least having a different appearance and star every season. Anthony Mackie, who has played The Falcon in Captain America and Avengers movies will play Takeshi Kovacs next season. It is not known if other characters from the first season will return.
  Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits is being made into a television series by Apple.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Alex Kurtzman, Altered Carbon, Arrow, Bradley Walsh, Captain America, Chris Chibnall, Cloak and Dagger, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Jodie Whittaker, Jonathan Frakes, Legends of Tomorrow, Marina Sirtis, San Diego Comic Con, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, The 100, The Avengers, The Expanse, The Flash, The Man In The High Castle, The Orville, Time Bandits. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: The Handmaid’s Tale Controversial Second Season Finale; Discovery Shows The Enterprise Bridge; Emmy Nominations For Genre Shows; Doctor Who Teaser; HBO Picks Up New Show From Joss Whedon; Sweetbitter Renewed; Downton Abbey Movie Announced
  July 15, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  The second season finale of The Handmaid’s Tale was quite controversial. I had mixed feelings when I saw June/Offred decide not to flee to Canada. It was frustrating, and unexpected, that she did not take advantage of this opportunity, but I was also concerned while watching the minutes leading up to this that we might be seeing a replay of the first season finale–June on the verge of escaping and then being dragged back again. At very least I am glad that they wound up doing something different.
  The question is whether the surprise ending is believable with what we know about June. We would expect anyone to want to escape that country if possible. Last season, when given the opportunity to try to escape, June attempted to do so. However, some things are different. She saw her first child, and had to face the question of why she did not try harder to remain with her. She even has information about her daughter, giving her a chance at finding her again. While fighting the system in Gilead appears to be too dangerous to risk, seeing that the Marthas have united to rebel does give more hope.
  It might be argued that she was attempting to escape when she tried to get the car earlier in the season, however we don’t really know that her plan was to try to escape to Canada. She might have planned to try to free her first daughter first. Plus at that time she was pregnant, and escaping Gilead with her soon to be born daughter would be motivation to try to escape. At the end of the second season she had the opportunity to both send her second daughter to safety and remain behind to fight.
  Ultimately whether I accept the conclusion of the second season as a realistic choice will depend upon what we learn was in June’s head in the time and what she winds up doing. After two bleak seasons, I hope that the third season does show further rebellion. Of course with this show there is no guarantee of success. There is the danger that June winds up being captured and in an even worse situation, or even that the entire series ultimately ends with the execution of the characters in Gilead who we care about. Hopefully we will get a more optimistic ending than that.
  There are also questions about several other characters. Will Emily actually make it to Canada and, if so, what does she do there. How far will Serena go in opposing the system? Will Aunt Lydia survive her wounds? I bet she will be back. What happens to the relationship between Nick and Commander Waterford now that it is clearer that Nick is involved with the resistance? There must be a limit to how useful Nick’s knowledge of Waterford’s secrets are against a guy cruel enough to have his own wife’s finger cut off for reading the Bible. What will Commander Lawrence do now that we know where his sympathies actually lie? Will the authorities realize that the Marthas were rebelling, and what action will they take? It will be far easier to have a mass execution of Marthas than of handmaidens (as they threatened at the start of the season).
  We have some hints as to the answers in this interview executive producer Bruce Miller had with TV Guide:
  Did you know from the beginning that Offred was not going to escape at the end of the season? And did you get push back from anyone else about whether or not she should escape or stay?Bruce Miller: There was incredible amount of push back from me and from everybody else. All we want is for her to get out. So even though storywise you want to do one thing, emotionally all you want is the other answer. So I guess we all wanted her to get out personally. But yeah, I mean, I knew from the middle of Season 1 that this would happen. So because of that, we were working toward this. I mean, once we started to feel the kind of deep vein of regret that Offred was feeling, or June was feeling at the prospect of leaving Hannah behind and how it was tearing her apart, we felt like [that] after she saw her. And after she kinda was faced with the idea of, “I am going to be able to get one child to safety, and now I just have to decide what to do myself.” I don’t think it’s a choice about whether you’re gonna stay behind to try to rescue your child, I think it’s a needto. I wouldn’t be able to leave one of my children behind… When we got to it, it felt very natural to the character. It is an impossible choice but we are faced with those all the time, so it is interesting to see what she does.
  Have we seen the last of Emily and baby Nicole or is there more story to tell for those two characters?
  Miller: We have not seen the last of Emily and Nicole. I don’t know that we’re gonna see Nicole going to her first prom very soon, or Emily for that matter, but we have not seen the last of them. We’ll follow them on their journey after they leave Offred in the tunnel, in the finale, we will be following them… I think that Nicole is quite a popular young girl. There’s lots of people who want her including a whole country of Gilead if she happens to get out… It’s a huge, huge puzzle piece of our world. It’s June’s child, and just as much as Hannah has been a huge part of our show Nicole’s going to be a huge part of our show whether it’s in influence or whether it’s in corporeal reality with someone holding her in their arms. She is the force to be reckoned with. She is the next generation that they’re all doing all of this for.
  Will Bradley Whitford’s character be coming back in Season 3, and what are we gonna learn about him and why he helped Emily escape?
  Miller: Yes, Bradley’s coming back for Season 3. He was exactly the kind of character we wanted to start building in Season 2. We were hoping his schedule would work out that he could come back for Season 3. I think we’re gonna learn a ton about him. I mean, I think the fact is he’s our Oppenheimer character. The man who designed an atomic bomb and then saw what it could do. I mean, he’s a designer of Gilead, and now he’s seen what it can do. So he is a mass of contradictions and dangers, so you never know what he’s willing to do, what he’s not willing to do. He’s been protecting himself for a very long time. And his adventure to keep himself alive certainly is not always an adventure that’s going to keep the people around him alive. But now that June has crossed paths with him, she’s going to cross paths with him a lot more in Season 3.
  What you can tell us about Aunt Lydia and her future? We don’t see her actually die but it looks really bad at the end of the season.
  Miller: Aunt Lydia doesn’t die. I don’t think Aunt Lydia can die. I don’t think there are forces in the world strong enough to kill Aunt Lydia. And by extension the incredibly strong, fabulous Ann Dowd, I think is with us for a long, long time as well. Aunt Lydia doesn’t die, she’s transformed by this event. The fact that one of her girls who — [she thinks] that there’s a love between her and her girls — has literally stabbed her in the back. I think that that alters your workplace feelings on a day-to-day basis. You don’t wanna turn your back. So I think that in some ways there’s a lot of possible effects. But I think in her case, it makes her double down that she feels like she just wasn’t strong enough in her discipline. So she, I think, has decided it’s time to get tough.
  It was exciting to see Rita take a decisive action in the finale. What can we expect from her character moving forward?
  Miller: Amanda Brugel, has really done a remarkable job with Rita. The fact that she’s both incredibly strong and invisible in the house is just, it’s a miracle of acting that she really has made her both a powerful force and you just completely forget that she exists. And I mean, and that’s supposed to be mirroring the way the Waterfords and the people in Gilead just let her fade into the woodwork, on purpose, because that’s the role that she’s supposed to play. But it’s great that she uses it strategically, and so everybody forgets about her, and then all of a sudden she has this freedom to build this network with all the other Marthas. They trade things back and forth, information and cinnamon and cheese and all sorts of stuff. And so they have a life going on there and a resistance network. You know it’s used for other things, black-market things, gossip, but now she’s turning it and using it as a resistance network.
  I think she’s gonna have to do some very deft dancing to get around her comeuppance for her complicity in this, and I don’t know whether she will, but she is our representative of this group of women who have been pushed into invisible domestic roles like so many women in real society, in our society. She is, but she is not invisible, and she’s not domestic. She is a woman in full, and you get to see kind of the power that brings to bear. And I think, in [Season 3], we’re going to see some of the results of her coming out of her shell and becoming a little more visible. But I think the key for me is that she is a very smart survivor, and that’s what she’s going to continue to be.
  We saw Nick, too, take a stand against Fred (Joseph Fiennes) in the finale to help Offred escape. What are the consequences for that choice are going to look like for him next year?
  Miller: Nick did take a stand and impulsively, which is not his best — not a Crayola crayon he does do very often. He’s not an impulsive guy in general. And I thought is was such a kind of a measure of the closeness of his relationship with Fred and how much he was willing to risk… But yes, there will be repercussions for Nick. The interesting thing about Nick and Fred is that power dynamic between the two men and the two positions that they hold. One is kind of outwardly a leader of Gilead, and the other, Nick, is quite a powerful person behind the scenes because he’s a spy, and because he has dirt on people, and because he knows all the good and bad things people are doing, going to Jezebel’s and all those things. So I don’t think it’s a hammer that the commander can bring down so easily on Nick, or would want to…
  Is there a happy ending to this story? Is that in any way the end goal or is everything always going to be terrible?
  Miller: I think there is a happy ending, and I don’t think everything’s always going to be terrible… I believe in June, and I believe that if The Handmaid’s Tale is the story we’ve decided to tell from this imaginary place of Gilead, if June’s story is the story we tell, we’ve told it because it’s a story of hope. I do feel like every episode where it ends and Offred is alive, June is alive, it’s a huge victory and a story worth telling. To see how someone in this world doesn’t just survive, but in their own way, find ways to live, find ways to actually have a life, have intimacy. She sees her daughter, which she never thought would happen. So all of these things are huge victories for me.
  But in terms of an ending, I think this is a story of a woman getting out of bondage. So I think in the end that’s the story, whether she is able to get out herself or whether she’s able to get one or more of her children out, or reunite with her husband. Those are all details, but I think the story is bending, I hope, because it exists, it’s bending towards a happy ending because this account of what happened exists means that somehow some way, June got that account out. That to me sets a story of kind of the triumph of the human spirit and hope.
  Miller had more to say about why June stayed in this interview with Deadline:
  DEADLINE: I often like to start these at the end, so why does June stay in Gilead at the end of the finale?
  MILLER: Because she’s a mother. She has one child who’s going off to safety and one child that’s still here so she stays for her daughter Hannah. Whether she’s going to help her daughter or whether she’s going to try her hardest to injure Gilead, it really comes from two things. One is her mom saying you’re stronger than you think, which is something she realized about herself throughout the season. The other is her daughter saying why didn’t you try harder?
  When she finally sees Hannah, Hannah says why didn’t you try harder to find me?
  And she’s going to try harder and I think that after having a season where all these things that were seemingly impossible have come to pass I think she’s willing to take a chance. She’s not so willing to leave her eldest daughter behind.
  Elisabeth Moss also supported her character’s decision in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter:
  “Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Moss explained her take on the season finale and the game-changing decision for June to stick around in Gilead, saying there are two primary reasons for the development.
  “There’s really a couple answers to this, and they are equally important,” she says when asked why June’s decision feels like the right way to end season two. “Hannah is the first one. It’s as simple as that. She cannot leave her daughter there. She doesn’t know if she can get back in if she leaves. What can she do from the outside? She doesn’t know. But here’s what she does know. She just discovered that there’s a legitimate and strong underground network of Marthas working for the resistance. The wives led by Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) just rebelled against the men and government of Gilead. They are starting to resist. And she just saw a commander (Lawrence, played by Bradley Whitford) help his handmaid and her dear friend Emily escape. A commander. How deep does this underground network of resistance go? She knows now she isn’t alone. She doesn’t want to leave Hannah, but when she sees Emily and the commander, she realizes she can get her baby Holly out and stay to try to do the same for Hannah. And she doesn’t have a lot of time to make that decision. She does the riskier thing, which is stay, but she literally cannot leave Hannah in that place.”
  (For what it’s worth, Moss weighs in on why June told Emily to refer to Holly as Nicole, the name Serena gave the baby: “It’s a show of love for Serena and a thank you for what Serena did in letting June get her out. It’s June’s baby, but it’s June’s way of acknowledging Serena’s true love for that child.”)
  In terms of why June’s decision to stay was the right way for season two to end, Moss says, “She is staying to fight to save all the children of Gilead. It’s bigger than her now. It’s bigger than her and Holly and Hannah. It’s all about the sons and especially daughters of Gilead, and fighting for their lives. Seeing the Martha network and the commander have opened her eyes. She is no longer alone. She has an army, and she’s going to fight back.”
  “I don’t want to fight from the outside,” she adds. “I think it would kill June. To feel helpless like that. There are people doing the work that needs to be done in other countries, particularly Canada of course, that we show legislatively and trying to find their families and fighting Gilead in that way. There are very few people who can fight from the inside, and you have to have both. There are very few people who are as smart and experienced with Gilead as June is, who are as connected to a high ranking commander such as Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) or Lawrence, who know the ins and out, who have someone connected like Nick (Max Minghella), who knows that there’s a network of Marthas. She has very particular qualities that make her the one who should lead the resistance. Being in Canada, trying to change things from the outside, would just be extremely frustrating for her. And there’s probably no one who gives less fucks about what she has to do to get her daughter Hannah out than June does.”
  The final moment of the season sees June pulling her handmaid hood over her head, more iconically cloaked in Gilead than ever before. And yet, Moss agrees that it signals an end for June’s life as “Offred,” even if it also means the birth of someone new.
  “It’s not the June that was captured and brought to Gilead,” she says. “It’s not the June in the flashbacks. It’s a new June. She has become stronger, smarter, braver. She has learned a lot. She has experienced indescribable physical and emotional pain. She has changed forever, and not necessarily for the better, but in a way that she needs to have changed to be able to lead the resistance. She has hardened. She’s gotten very tough. She’s maybe colder. But that’s what she needs to be. She will never lose her humanity, and she will never lose the capacity to love as a mother, but that mother’s love can be the fiercest thing you’ve ever seen.”
  Promotional pictures for season two of Star Trek: Discovery are showing the inside of the Enterprise. The above picture is of Burnham walking onto the bridge of the Enterprise. Sonequa Martin-Green is quoted as saying, “…we’re really going to be digging into family. A lot of questions are going to be raised; some are going to be answered.” Will that include showing Spock? There has also been a picture released of a Saurian, an alien species first seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
  Star Trek: Discovery, with two nominations, is just one of several genre shows to receive Emmy nominations. Discovery’s nominations are in the categories of Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup (Series, limited series, movie or special) and Outstanding Sound Editing For A Comedy or Drama (One Hour).
  Other Emmy nominations of note include Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), for Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Jesse Plemons (Black Mirror: USS Callister) for Lead Actor in a Limited Series or TV Movie, and multiple nominations for Westworld, Game of Thrones, The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Americans. The full list is available here.
  The official teaser for Doctor Who series 11 was released during the BBC’s coverage of the World Cup Final. We got a look at Jodie Whitaker as the Doctor, the Doctor’s new companions, and perhaps a timey wimy way to replenish a pizza box. From Entertainment Today’s cover story on Doctor Who:
  The choice of Whittaker to play the lead role on Doctor Who represents a massive gamble on the part of new showrunner Chris Chibnall — who’d previously cast Whittaker as a grieving mother on his cop drama Broadchurch — and the BBC, which successfully revived the sci-fi series in 2005 following a lengthy hiatus. More than 18 million Doctor Who DVDs have shipped, 12 million action figures have been sold in the 13 years since its relaunch, and in 2013 a 50th-anniversary episode was screened in 94 countries. In the U.S., the show has become the flagship series for BBC America, which will premiere the new season this fall, simulcasting the first episode so it screens at the same time as in the U.K. There is a lot riding on Whittaker’s ability to make audiences around the world fall in love with a female Doctor, as the actress is well aware.
  “There’s no rules, and it’s liberating,” she says. “But it’s equally terrifying.”
  EW spent two days on the set of Doctor Who for this week’s cover story, hanging out with Whittaker and the trio of actors who are playing the Doctor’s new companions: Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill, and Tosin Cole. Your writer also spoke with Chibnall who explained why he had made the decision to make the Thirteenth Doctor female once Whittaker’s predecessor, Peter Capaldi, decided to leave the series.
  “I just felt the time was right,” said Chibnall. “I think if the show hadn’t done it, we would have been behind the world, and Doctor Who has got to be out front leading the world, and being a great example of all the amazing things that are in the world. So, it wasn’t even a question in my mind.”
  Above is a cross over episode I’d love to see (via Doctor Who Today).
  HBO has picked up a new series from Joss Whedon. TV Line reports:
  The Whedonverse is expanding to HBO.
  The premium cabler on Friday gave a series order to Joss Whedon‘s The Nevers, which is described as an “epic science-fiction drama about a gang of Victorian women who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies, and a mission that might change the world.”
  Whedon — who previously toyed with creating a “Victorian female Batman” for the stalled comic book series Twist— will write, direct and executive-produce the HBO drama, as well as serve as showrunner. His previous live-action TV forays include, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, as well as Dollhouse and the co-creation of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (where his brother Jed serves as co-showrunner).
  Totally non-genre (unless you consider the abundance of shows about someone moving to the big city or restaurant shows a genre), but I was pleasantly surprised to find that STARZ has renewed Sweetbitter for a new season. I won’t say it is must see, but at times shows with short seasons come in handy, sort of as a long movie. The first season is six thirty minute episodes, making it easy to watch in one or two sittings. It was the inclusion of Caitlin Fitzgerald in the cast which caught my attention.
  In the historical television genre, a Downton Abbey movie is now official.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: Agents of SHIELD, Alexis Bledel, Black Mirror, Bradley Walsh, Broadchurch, Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who, Dollhouse, Downton Abbey, Elisabeth Moss, Firefly, Game of Thrones, Jesse Plemons, Jodie Whittaker, Joss Whedon, Orphan Black, Peter Capaldi, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Sweetbitter, Tatiana Maslany, The Americans, The Flash, The Handmaid's Tale, The Nevers, Westworld, Yvonne Strahovski. No Comments »
  SciFi Weekend: Westworld Season Two Finale; The Expanse Season Finale; 12 Monkeys; Oprah’s Cameo On The Handmaid’s Tale; The Orville & Discovery Among Saturn Award Winners; Further Rumors On Patrick Stewart Returning To Star Trek; Jonathan Frakes On Star Trek and The Orville
  June 30, 2018 — Ron Chusid
  Westworld concluded the second season by answering many of the questions raised during the season, and opening up a whole new set of questions for season three. One meta question about the series going into the season was whether the producers could surprise fans with twists after the major twists of the first season were predicted on line. I give them credit for pulling it off this year. While it was apparent that something was up with Delores not being seen in the most recent timeline, I don’t think many realized that she was in a host version of Charlotte Hale’s body. It would be interesting to watch Charlotte’s scenes again knowing that she could have been Delores in some.
  We know Delores left the park in Charlotte’s body, but we later saw both Charlotte and Delores, raising the question of whose mind is in Charlotte’s body at that point. We know that Delores took the minds of some other hosts with her, but not which ones. It is like the mystery of the Final Five Cylons on Battlestar Galactica. Which of the apparently dead characters will return this way? Will she reconstruct Maeve? When Delores left the park, it was obvious that Stubb realized she was a host, and most likely that he was a host constructed to protect the other hosts. This leaves open the question of how many other hosts there are impersonating humans. While some apparently dead characters will return, I suspect we will never see those who went to the virtual reality heaven again, but nothing can be ruled out entirely.
  One of the most interesting questions was raised in the final post-credit scene. I assume that William and Emily were both humans when William first killed Emily. Apparently at some time in the future, perhaps third season or perhaps long beyond then, there will be a host version of Emily doing a fidelity test on a host who has William’s mind inside, reliving the events of William in the park. As on Battlestar Galactica, all of this happened before and will happen again.
  The producers did clear up many of the questions raised in the finale in various interviews, while making clear that other topics are being saved for next season. Following are some excerpts from various interviews:
  Deadline
  Wait a second, isn’t Dolores in Charlotte? Why are they standing together in the end?
  JOY: What Dolores has done is that she’s smuggled herself out of the park while impersonating Hale. She has put herself back into her body, and yet Hale is still there. The question is where is Hale now? And that’s a question we’ll be visiting next season.
  As Charlotte buzzes away from the island, in a bag she carries several pearls from The Forge.
  JOY: In those pearls are a handful of hosts that she is smuggling out of the park. Which hosts they are, we’ll be exploring.
  We see the Man in Black digging in his arm, and he’s not in a lot of pain. Does that make him a host? We see that there’s actually a back-up of him that exists.
  JOY: This season we’ve been seeing him in a lot of pain and as he digs into his arm, he suffers from madness. He himself doesn’t know if he’s a host or not. We’ve basically had two time lines this season in the classic film noir structure. We’ve seen him playing the game and figuring his footsteps to the Valley Beyond, but he’s become confused on his side of reality, questioning his nature. If you immerse yourself in the game for too long, do you lose the sense of what is real and not real? He struggles with this and it leads to the moment where he kills his daughter Emily thinking she might be a host. He was in fact mistaken, and he’s digging into his own skin for answers and doesn’t find any wires by the time Dolores arrives. By the end of this time line, he’s being shipped out into the real world. He did kill his own daughter, he’s in the prison of his own skin, locked in his own confusion and guilt.
  The chapter that occurs after the credits [editor’s note: Where the Man in Black arrives in an apartment that looks a lot like the one that housed android James Delos being interrogated by daughter Emily as though she is the human, and he the robot] is a little piece of what to come in the future. It gives full closure of the timelines by validating what happened in the park as the Man in Black leaves.
  And Bernard?
  JOY: He’s leaving his home in the end to be in the real world. Dolores is being totally upfront with him. That they escaped the park, and even if they’re working as foes, it will take both of them to survive. The real world is what we’re investigating next season.
  Entertainment Weekly
  ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Do you know who each of those balls represent in Dolores’ purse? Or is your cast on edge about which characters Dolores found worthy of survival?
  JONATHAN NOLAN: We’ve had some interesting conversations. It’s a large ensemble cast and sadly we’re saying goodbye to some people at the end of this season. But as always with this show, who remains and who doesn’t is something we’re having a lot of fun with. There’s going to be a bit of a wait for a third season but we want to surprise and hopefully delight people with the way things progress…
  When we see Dolores walking with Charlotte out of the room at the end on the mainland, does that mean there are now two Doloreses played by different actors?
  Ehhh, not really. The question of who’s who and what we’re looking at is something we’re excited to play with. We’re excited to withhold a little from the audience but … it’s complicated…
  Is it safe to assume — and perhaps it’s not — that Zahn McClarnon’s character, the Ghost Nation leader Akecheta, and others who went through the portal to the virtual Eden are not going to continue on?
  I think that’s on the safer end of things to presume. But there’s a big story we’re telling here so … yeah.
  I know you’ve drafted the broad strokes of your multi-year plan, can you say if next season largely take place outside the park?
  Yes. We’re very excited about where the third season goes. It’s been a long build-up to get outside the park. And we’re incredibly excited about what that looks like and sounds like and what exactly our hosts discover out there…
  Your Marvel-like post credits sequence with William and his daughter that brought us back to the horrifying James Delos fidelity apartment. My read was that Dolores printed out a version of the Man in Black and his daughter using the park’s secret guest data to leave them entombed in The Forge to do the fidelity test for all eternity and that scene takes place many years later. But that it doesn’t mean the Man in Black was a host previously or that he’s not still alive in the real world like we saw with him in the tent. Is that more or less how we should be interpreting this?
  I’d agree with a lot of that. They do explicitly say they’re not in the system. And we do see the ruins of it. So that does suggest in that scene we are further in the future. We’d always said with this story we wanted to consider the beginning, middle and the end the of the emergence of a new form of life on Earth and we managed to cover a lot of those bases in this season.
  Based on that final scene, should we assume there will be a time jump for season 3?
  Not necessarily. We just love the ability to play in perceptual terms with the hosts being immortal. There is a subtle shift in this season, when you started seeing more and more backstory of the Man in Black, it should raise suspicions, and it has for a lot of people but, um … returning to the last question, your take it on it, which, as usual, is astute, is we’re watching a series of events play out: We see Emily’s dead body, we see the Man in Black in extremis — but not quite dead yet — but we also understand we’ve explored Delos’ greatest mistake, the one unalterable moment, the cornerstone decision he makes in his life, and we’re seeing that play out with the Man in Black. We’ve seen how it is that, using The Forge, that you’d be drawn back to these key moments and you’d run them again and again…
  The Wrap:
  TheWrap: Where exactly did Dolores send the Hosts who went into the Sublime when she changed the coordinates?
  Joy: I think what she’s done is she fulfilled their wish. They wanted to escape to a digital space where they could be truly free and create their own world, untarnished by human interference. And in changing the coordinates and kind of locking in and stowing them away, Dolores has finally found a way to accept their choice and give them what they so desired.
  TheWrap: After the guest data in the Forge is erased, Hale/Dolores leaves with five control units in a purse. Who is in them? Maeve? Armistice? And can “Halores” remake them then?
  Joy: There is Host data in the actual hosts who did not “sublime” — so their CPUs are still intact. So, if they didn’t sublime, those pearls still contain their information. In each of those little balls in the purse is a Host, so there is a handful of them — but not an infinite amount of them. There are five. One Host per pearl.
  TheWrap: When Halores left the beach, it seemed like Stubbs knew it was Dolores — or at least that it wasn’t Hale. Is that safe to assume?
  Joy: Yes! It is safe to assume. And there is a step further that you can assume too. And we don’t say it explicitly, but if you are left wondering with all [Stubbs’] talk, his knowing talk about, “I’ve been at the park a very long time,” and Ford designed him with certain core drives, and he’s gonna stick to the role he’s been programmed with; it’s a little acknowledgement of just why he might have his suspicions about what’s going on with Hale, and then lets her pass.
  And doesn’t it make sense if you are Ford and designing a park and you have a whole master plan about helping robots that you would keep one Host hiding in plain sight as a fail-safe? Maybe the Host who’s in charge of quality assurance? And by the way, that was totally meant to be subtle [laughs]…
  TheWrap: So, because we do know that Emily died in the current timeline we’re in, is it fair to assume whoever is down there with this iteration of the Man in Black is similar to Dolores training Bernard? That has to be a Host or some other something if this is in the future and Emily died. Yes?
  Joy: Oh yes, the Katja Herbers in the future talking to the Man in Black is now a Host version of Katja Herbers.
  More on the finale in the Behind the Scenes video above.
  The Expanse season three was by far the best season yet, making me very happy that Amazon is keeping the series alive. I am also glad that they did move at a quicker pace and conclude Abaddon’s Gate. If they had ended a season mid-book again, it would have been really frustrating if the series was not renewed.
  Showrunner Naren Shankar discussed the season finale and plans for season four with Entertainment Weekly:
  ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start right at the very end: What is the meaning of that last shot where the Roci goes through the Ring, and as Holden passes through it, there is a burst of energy. What’s going on there, and what are you setting up for season 4?
  NAREN SHANKAR: When Holden was in that vision with Miller, he learns the beings that built the Rings, they’re gone. So what killed them? Because he had a vision of these things, he had a vision of something destroying the Rings and shutting them down. And Miller says, “I kinda wanna know too.” And so when the Roci goes to the Ring at the end, it comes to kind of an ominous little harbinger of things to come. That there is something inside that Ring space, in places between the Ring gates, that’s gonna come into play at some point as the series goes on.
  We’ll talk more about what you have in store for season 4 in a bit, but let’s get into what happened this season. First off, you really sped through book 3, Abaddon’s Gate, doing the whole thing in seven episodes — much faster than the first two books. Why the accelerated pace for what is, in my opinion, one of the best books in the series?
  Book 3 was a challenging thing to adapt. What was tricky about Abaddon’s Gate was that it starts with an entirely new cast of characters. It kind of builds up to getting them through the Ring. It’s more philosophical than intellectual. The space where they go into, it’s sort of the most… I don’t want to use this term disparagingly at all, but sort of science-fiction-y thing we have done in the run of the show. Which tends to be sort of more like science-realistic, or at least tries to achieve that. So for a lot of reasons, we felt like we had 13 episode seasons, we were gonna finish off Caliban’s War mid-season. We took the approach that we compressed it and we launched Anna, who was the character, really kind of the focus character in Abaddon’s Gate, early in the season, which we did because she is not actually in the second book at all…
  One of the most interesting things you did on the show was your treatment of Ashford. He’s a pretty detestable character in the book, but you made him much more layered here and turned him into a guy who, while on the wrong side of things, does think what he’s doing is right and is admirable in the way he is willing to sacrifice himself for that. How did that character evolve for you?
  Part of it was when we got this point in the narrative, it was about Fred and Dawes and their dueling agendas. But when we got to the Behemoth, it would be kind of weird to have Fred and Dawes on this ship. And so, it led us to this idea of their lieutenants. So Drummer was a logical one to take it for Fred Johnson, and then we were like, “Who’s the guy who worked for Dawes?” Then that was the starting point for Ashford, because he doesn’t have really that backstory in the book. And we asked ourselves, what would a guy who worked for Dawes have done before?
  And so we crafted that character and built a backstory around him. And then, as we understood what he was going to do, we had the opportunity to reach out to David Strathairn. He was older than we thought initially the character was going to be, but that actually allowed us to give more layers and more depth to it. And so what you saw in the final product was kind of the aggregation of all of those different things. I think that it’s one of my favorite things in season 3, honestly. He just gives a terrific performance, all over.
  Let’s talk about season 4. What can you say about where the story goes next?
  One of the things that seems pretty clear, and we set it up at the end of the episode 13 with Holden’s thing, it’s going to be another blood-soaked gold rush. That’s about to happen, because you’ve got an entire species and several societies that have defined themselves on the fact that the solar system is all they’ve got, that those resources are what they have. But suddenly that all changes. It’s like the discovery of the New World — suddenly there’s land, there’s resources, there’s the potential of making incredible fortunes right there. What’s going to happen? Well, readers of the book know that these are things that that destabilize societies, and that’s what you are going to see the beginnings of in season 4.
  The fourth book, Cibola Burn, takes place pretty much all on the planet Ilus, or in orbit of that planet. Will that be the same deal here? Is that going to be the battleground and the space version of expanding west?
  [Book authors] Ty and Daniel often refer to the story of Ilus and Cibola Burn as kind of a classic Western in many ways. The book Cibola takes place entirely on Ilus. We are there for one complete novel. We are going to tell that story in season 4, sure, but we’re not leaving Earth and Mars and the Belt behind. They’re part of the story, and both of fans of the books and fans of the show are going to see something really interesting and new in season 4…
  Finally, how does the show change now being on Amazon as opposed to Syfy?
  There are some things that are amazing that we don’t have to worry about: restrictions on nudity, restrictions on language, and restrictions on length to some extent. It’s like we don’t have to jam the episodes into 43-minute boxes if they’re going to spill over into a 50-minute box. There were times in season 3 where I wished that I had been able to put another four or five minutes into certain shows, it would have been great. And we certainly would have done it, and that’s the beauty of being on another platform like this, is that if the material demands it, you can make the story a little bit longer to accommodate it.
  We never wrote it going, “Oh, God, it’s going to be on basic cable so we’ve got to tone this down.” I think we did some pretty drastic things when we needed to. None of that’s going to change, and I hope that as we get into it more, we’re going to find more and more opportunities to really make the platform work for us, because it’s a great way to watch the show. When you can stream this thing in 4K and it’s seamless and there are no commercial breaks — we don’t even go to blacks — it’s a different experience when you watch. It’s incredibly engaging, and every time I show it to people that way, they go, “That’s a completely different experience than watching it on basic cable.” So we’re really excited to be on Amazon.
  This week set of three episodes of 12 Monkeys was darker than the previous three as expected. While characters might not actually be gone in a time travel series such as this, it appears to have been the conclusions of the stories for Deacon, Hannah and Emma. The twist with Hannah was unexpected until late in the episode, but in retrospect makes perfect sense. Showrunner Terry Matalas told TVLine that this was planned from the start: “From the moment we mentioned Marion Woods, I knew. In fact, on Brooke’s first day, I told her, right after she was cast. It was something that was always planned. And if you go back and watch the series, you can see many hints of that throughout.”
  Like last week, the episode also ended with a family drink thanks to time travel.
  There were other twists. We found that Cole is the living anomaly in the timeline, and the weapon mentioned in the previous episodes was designed to wipe him out of time. Yet another major twist had Cassandra be the one to release the virus, with the alternative being even worse should they not have time travel available to fight the threat against time itself. The danger is accelerating as Titan is completed and the sky is turning red over New York. The episoded ended with the message, To Be Concluded.
  During last week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, June was briefly free, and turned on a car radio to hear this message from Radio Free America:
  And now, this news. The American Government in Anchorage today received promises of economic aid from India and China. In the United Kingdom, additional sanctions on Gilead were announced, as well as plans to raise the cap on American refugees relocating from Canada. Now, a tune to remind everyone who’s listening, American patriot or Gilead traitor; we are still here. Stars and stripes forever, baby.
  The message was read by Oprah Winfrey. Showrunner Bruce Miller explained how this cameo came about:
  “We’d heard Oprah was a fan of the show, and had a story idea, and thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if… So we asked and she said yes, and it was a lovely, easy process,” showrunner Bruce Miller says. “The radio segment she recorded was inspired by the free radio of the Allies from World War II. It was an absolute honor to have Oprah featured on the show, and especially thrilling as she was the one who presented us with the Emmy last year.”
  The Orville has won the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction TV Series. The full list of awards is here. Awards for best television series in various categories went to:
  Best Science Fiction TV Series: The Orville
  Best Horror TV Series: The Walking Dead
  Best Action/Thriller TV Series: Better Call Saul
  Best Fantasy TV Series: Outlander
  Best Presentation on Television: Twin Peaks
  Best Animated TV Series: Star Wars Rebels
  Best Superhero Adaptation Television Series: The Flash
  Best New Media TV Series: Star Trek: Discovery
  Best New Media Superhero Series: Marvel’s The Punisher
  Star Trek: Discovery won another Saturn Award with Sonequa Martin-Green winning as Best Actress on Television. Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks) won for Best Actor on Television.
  Blade Runner 2049 received the award for Best Science Fiction Film. Black Panther won the award for Best Comic-to-Film Motion Picture
  The rumors continue that Patrick Stewart might be reprising his role as Jean-Luc Picard . While it is not clear how reliable this is, The Mirror makes it sound like they are close to a deal:
  Sir Patrick, 77, is “close to securing a deal” to return as Captain Jean-Luc Picard for a reboot of the Generation series.
  The star is keen to reprise his most ­famous part – and deals are close to ­being struck, says a TV source…
  The show’s co-creator Alex Kurtzman has a five-year contract to forge new adventures for the small screen. And his team has spoken to Sir Patrick about returning as Picard to helm the Enterprise for run or even longer.
  An LA source said: “Patrick is ­looking pretty good to get back on board the Enterprise. There are some aspects of the deal to be finalised, but there is a verbal commitment from all parties.”
  He said: “There are animated series also in the works, and Patrick could easily lend his voice to them.
  “An announcement will be made in the next few weeks and the show should be out next year.”
  If it comes down to one or the other, I hope it is a live action reboot of The Next Generation as opposed to having Stewart work on an animated series. It would also be great to see Star Trek finally move forward again, with the last two series and recent movies all taking place at earlier times. As other former Star Trek stars have not been mentioned, I wonder if the plan is to secure Stewart first, or if this would be done with a new crew under Picard.
  TrekMovie.com has posted an interview with Jonathan Frakes in which he discussed both Star Trek and directing The Orville. He had this to say about type-casting:
  And I don’t know if I knew subconsciously or consciously that there’d be this typecasting. As Leonard Nimoy famously said, “It’s better to be typecast than not to be cast at all.” But there was a certain thing that happened after the show that you can see evidence of from The Original Series, from our series, Voyager, DS9, Enterprise. The exceptions were Bakula, and Patrick, and Bill and Colm, and Rene and Kate, maybe, to a certain point. Jeri Ryan. More of a handful people were not painted with the Star Trek brush, right? I don’t know what you’d call that in your world, but there certainly is … It was a double-edged sword.
  Posted in Science Fiction, Television. Tags: 12 Monkeys, Alex Kurtzman, Battlestar Galactica, Better Call Saul, Black Panther, Jonathan Frakes, Kyle MacLachlan, Leonard Nimoy, Outlander, Patrick Stewart, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Trek Discovery, Star Wars, Terry Matalas, The Expanse, The Flash, The Handmaid's Tale, The Orville, The Punisher, Twin Peaks, Walking Dead, Westworld. No Comments »
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