Category: TV Sci-Fi (Page 46 of 81)

“Reaper” rumor

February 23, 2009 /

I know I’m not the only one amongst the Bullz-Eye staff who regularly frequents TVShowsOnDVD.com, but if you’re a “Reaper” fan and aren’t familiar with the site, then let me tip you to a news brief that popped up there this morning.

David Lambert, one of the regular TVShowsOnDVD.com contributors, offered up this bit of info:

Our contacts in the industry tell us that the plan is for The CW to air all 13 episodes (of “Reaper”) on thirteen consecutive Tuesdays, and after the 2nd season finale airs on Tuesday, May 26th, then Lionsgate will release Reaper – Season 2 on DVD exactly a week later, on June 2nd.

Sweet! We can only hope that the powers that be have utilized the amount of time that’s passed since the cast filmed the episodes – they were working on them in 2008 – to produce better bonus material for this set than they did for Season 1. I’ve talked to three of the primary cast members of the show over the course of its run (Bret Harrison, Tyler Labine, and Ray Wise), and they all love working on and talking about the show, so it’s clear that they’d be willing to contribute if only they were asked to do so.

Actors, External Entertainment, External TV, News, Reaper, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas, TV DVDs, TV Sci-Fi

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

February 21, 2009 /

After last week’s jam-packed episode, the series downshifted a bit, delving into the minutiae (i.e. the food shortage) that played such a prominent role in the first two seasons. While Baltar and Paula were arguing about food, I was wondering if this was really how we were going to spend the last five episodes. This detail-oriented stuff was interesting when the show was finding its feet, but with all that has happened, it just feels trivial. The major plot points to come out of Baltar’s storyline is that Caprica Six is back in his head (yay!) and that he managed to convince Bill to give him a trunk load of guns to defend their food stock. (I’ll admit that it was funny to see how Baltar picked the prettiest mom to help, resulting in a major eye-roll from Paula. Some things never change.)

It was nice of Boomer to bring Ellen back to the fleet, but their arrival has all sorts of consequences. First and foremost, Ellen is still an annoying bitch. When she finds out that Tigh and Caprica Six are expecting, it throws her into a jealous rage and she tries to manipulate the situation to get back into Saul’s arms. The plan may have worked too, as it could have been the stress of Ellen’s return that sent Caprica’s pregnancy off the rails. Now that the baby is out of the picture, I’d expect Tigh and Ellen to pick up where they left off. (Baltar and Caprica Six may too, for that matter.)

Tory, Tyrol and some of the numbered Cylons suddenly want to leave the fleet, and given what Sam said before his surgery — “Don’t leave the fleet!” — Tigh is more than a little reluctant. Since Caprica lost the baby, the whole Cylons-can-procreate argument doesn’t really hold much water, so they may decide to stick around for a while. Bill’s worried about Galactica’s dependence on Cylon technology, but the lesson (probably) is that humans and Cylons need each other to survive.

Boomer’s return creates another issue — what does Bill do with her? She tried to assassinate him and then defected from the other 8’s to join Cavil in the Cylon civil war. As one of our readers suggested last week, she may have come back to rejoin Tyrol. He’s single and obviously still has feelings for her. This could drive a wedge between Bill and Tyrol, and that’s not good.

Finally, I have to mention a subtle yet hilarious exchange in Bill’s quarters when Baltar was pleading for help…

Bill: The two of you can listen to this.
Lee: Where are you going?
Bill: To the head, to do something constructive. A little project I’ve been working on.

The term “head” of course means the toilet, so Bill is saying that taking a dump is more constructive than listening to Baltar speak. That’s some dry humor there. Great stuff.

Battlestar Galactica, External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Friday night — where good shows go to die

February 17, 2009 /

In theory, Fox had a solid idea. Pair Joss Whedon’s new hour-long drama, “Dollhouse,” with “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” to create a male-skewing sci-fi block on Friday night. They’ve had success on Friday’s in the past with sci-fi; “The X-Files” flourished there (or at least paid for itself) for several years. But The Live Feed reports that ratings for both shows were a disappointment.

The series premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” was seen by 4.7 million viewers Friday night and garnered a 2.0 preliminary adults 18-49 rating and 6 share. It was beaten in the 9 p.m. hour by ABC’s “Supernanny” (6.1 million viewers, 2.2/7) and is the lowest-rated scripted series premiere on a major broadcast network this season aside from NBC’s now-defunct “Crusoe.”

“Dollhouse” was paired with the midseason return of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (3.7 million, 1.3/5), which was shifted from its previous Monday post. “Terminator” came in third place in the hour and hit a series low (by like 27%). “Terminator” beat NBC’s “Howie Do It” (3.9 million, 1.2/4), but not by much. Both “Ghost Whisperer” (10.3 million, 2.4/8) and “Wife Swap” (4.3 million, 1.5/5) did better.

I thought “Dollhouse” had a pretty solid premiere, but I was by no means blown away. The premise is interesting — that there’s a business that can reprogram “dolls” to become whatever its clients need. In the premiere, Echo (Eliza Dushku), started out as a party girl meant to entertain a rich playboy, but was reprogrammed to become an expert in kidnapping scenarios. Dushku looks great in a dress, but was a little stiff when she was trying to convince the father of a kidnapped girl that she was the right person for the job. I’m not sure that she’s the right one to carry the series, though future episodes will decide this. Stepping back a bit, I’m not sure how some viewers may react to seeing this pretty girl having her brain wiped at least once per episode. If the heroine doesn’t have some consistent character traits week-to-week, she may be tough to relate to.

I’ve liked “Terminator” all along, and I’m surprised that it is struggling in the ratings. I suppose this has to do with the collective attention span of fans of the movie series. Maybe stringing out a serialized plot over 20+ episodes is just too slow of a pace for those that fell in love with the action-packed “Terminator” films. This is a perfect example of a series that should have a 13-episode season, like many of the series on HBO, Showtime, FX and TNT. Shorter seasons means a compact season-long story arc and no filler, which is the main reason that a series loses viewership. When people get bored they naturally move on.

Another Friday show that is dying a slow death is “Friday Night Lights.” It consistently scored in the 4.0-5.0 range in its first season, and that fell to the 3.0-4.0 range in its second foray. Now, after premiering on DirecTV this fall, the show is garnering ratings in the 2.2-2.8 range as NBC runs the episodes for the non-DirecTV folks. Is this enough to keep this stellar show on the air for another season? Only the big-wigs at DirecTV and NBC know for sure, but given the state of the economy, it would be surprising if it were granted a fourth season.

Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Friday Night Lights, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Heroes 3.16 – I Hate People When They’re Not Polite

February 16, 2009 /

Really? They had to start the episode by reminding me about the plotline that loathe the most…?

Fair enough, let’s drive right into the Claire storyline. She’s continuing to get text messages from the mysterious rebel while lying to her mother and being shitty to her father, while HRG continues to offer up threats which are clearly pointless, since we all know that she’s going to ignore orders and do whatever she wants to do, anyway. Well, at least Zeljko is clearly pissed off about it. (We can only hope and pray that he actually acts on it.) By using another comic book store as a set piece, I couldn’t help but feel like the producers were saying, “Okay, let’s keep playing to the diehard geeks, ’cause if we lose them, we’re really screwed.” The sequences of Claire trying to save the life of Comic Book Guy were well-executed, but, again, it all came back to the issue of Claire being totally uncontrollable. If this had been a real government operation, she would’ve been imprisoned (at the very least) long ago, no matter who her father and stepfather were. And now she’s unnecessarily telling her mother what’s going on, knowing full well what effect that could have on her and, worse, leading to a touchy-feely scene at the end with Claire and HRG…? (The only redeeming moment of that sequence was having Comic Book Guy step out of the shadows.)

Dear “Heroes” producers: KILL THE CHEERLEADER, SAVE THE SHOW.

It felt a little too on-the-nose to have “Born to be Wild” playing on the stereo as Sylar set forth on his road trip with his new little buddy, Luke, but that was about my only complaint about their storyline this episode. The relationship between the two of them remains the most interesting thing about this new series, with Sylar doling out examples of his power and being flummoxed by Luke proving more fascinated than scared. The scene at the diner was also really well done, with Luke being irresponsible with his abilities and Sylar actually opening up to Luke about what he wants out of his encounter with his father. I thought sure we were going to see the end of Luke after he made the mistake of trying to be a nice guy by giving Sylar his dad’s address, but then Zeljko’s men invaded, and the end of the scene was…well, how did you feel about it? I’m sure Luke thought that Sylar had betrayed him by leaving him to be captured, but I felt like Sylar imagined that he’d given Luke a bit of a thank-you gift by not just killing him outright. In the end, of course, Sylar clearly felt like he really did owe it to Luke to save his ass, and the sequence in the paddywagon was awesome…almost as awesome as having the two of them drive off into the night to the strains of “Psycho Killer.”

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Heroes, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Battlestar Galactica: No Exit

February 14, 2009 /

Wowsers. With Sam doing his little I’ve-got-a-lot-to-tell-you bit, this had to be one of the most informative episodes of the entire series. Let me run down what I think we know at this point…

– Those that are still holding out hope that Ellen wasn’t the fifth Cylon can stop – she is. She was resurrected 18 months ago and is considered to be the “mother” of all the skinjobs. The Ones (or one one in particular) seem to have a major problem with the fact that she made them (somewhat) human. By the end of the episode, the Ones were ready to open up her brain to find the secret of resurrection, but Boomer snuck her off to parts unknown. I’m not clear on when this escape coincides with current events, so if anyone has a clue, be sure to comment.

– Ellen still likes to drink, even after resurrection.

– The final five were living on Earth and they reinvented resurrection. Tyrol was credited for having done a ton of work towards this end, but Ellen was the one that made the final leap to make resurrection possible again. For whatever reason, they had a ship in orbit, waiting for Earth to be destroyed. (And, as far as I know, we still don’t know why Earth was destroyed.) The Cylons living on Earth were able to procreate, which is why they did away with resurrection in the first place. I believe that the implication is that all Earthlings are actually Cylons. That’s good to know.

– Once Earth was destroyed, the final five started off to the 12 colonies to warn them about creating Cylons (and/or treating them badly). They were not able to make jumps, so the travel was very slow, which is what accounts for the 2,000-year difference between Earth’s destruction and when the fleet fled the colonies.

– The final five found that the centurions had a belief in one true God, and that they were experimenting with making hybrids, but nothing would live yet. The cylons were at war with the colonies, so the final five made a deal with them that if they ended the war, they would show them how to make skinjobs. This is why the Cylons went away for a while.

– They made eight models, but the Sevens (Daniel) were apparently killed by the Ones, due to jealousy over Ellen’s favoritism towards the Sevens. Cavil was also the one that took Tigh’s eye.

– Cavil also banished the final five, stripping them of their memories and sending them off to live with the humans not knowing that they were in fact Cylons until a certain point in time. (We do not know why he did this. It would seem to work against his goals to place the five within the human fleet where they could eventually help the humans find a new home.)

A few other notes about this episode…

– The ship is falling apart and Bill had to make the tough decision to use Cylon technology to fix the hidden fractures throughout the ship. Between this and the Cylon FTL upgrades, if the fleet does in fact find a new home, they’ll have the Cylons to thank.

– Tigh had a great line – “Yeah, you point a finger back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two. No!”

– Cavil said to Ellen, “They destroyed the hub but they don’t know about the colony.” He’s referring to Earth, right? For that to be the case, this conversation had to take place after the hub was destroyed but before the fleet found Earth.

– Roslin passed the torch to Lee. Now he could become the “dying leader” that takes the fleet to find a new home.

– He did a great job as the “brain guy,” but it was a little distracting to see The Daily Show’s John Hodgman (a.k.a. “PC” from the Mac commercials). That guy is soooooooo funny.

– Even though the operation was a success, Sam is apparently brain dead. Hey, if he stays that way, at least he went out with a bang.

Awesome episode.

Battlestar Galactica, External Entertainment, External TV, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

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