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We checked in over at Smallvillethis week. Been a while since we stopped by, and boy, have things changed. Superboy -- d'ah, Clark -- still refuses to fly or wear the stretchy suit, but Lana's gone and Lois Lane, annoying reporter, is in, and Lex is 'dead' -- uh -- and there are so many characters from the DC Universe running around even veterans of the Comics Division of The Rush International need a scorecard to keep up ... especially when the versions we're seeing here are all funhouse-mirror versions of the characters we know and love.
It's the costumes, y'see. The costumes freak people out, including the producers. And the costumes in the recent episode called "Absolute Justice," starring Smallville versions of the Justice Society of America, including Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Stargirl, and others showed just how bad it could get. The costume design for the episode pretty much ruined and otherwise promising premise by DC writer-superstar Geoff Johns. Get the details of what went wrong and just how wrong it went (which is filed under "Very"), with the full article in Contrariwise.
Every show on the nets seems to be going on hiatus -- some for a few weeks, some for a few months. Among the Rusherrific shows, a number are skidding to a (temporary) halt for quite a long spell ... and the last go-rounds of '09 run the gamut, from the classic cliffhanger to the satisfying pause that refreshes. Let's be completely arbitrary and take an admittedly spoiler-iffic look at the last pre-hiatus episodes of some of our faves and not-so-faves ...
Stargate Universe: B+ This latest in the apparently immortal line of the Stargate franchise has been decidedly upsy-downsy since its inception, with some of the best sf on TV in recent years and some of the whiniest do-nothing installments on record. The tension between the militarists, civillians, and scientists all stuck on this Ancients' Ship to Nowhere has been growing since the beginning, and the chief scientist has been a manipulative and callous asshole from the git-go. We knew something had to happen .. but did any of us really think the military leader of this accidental expedition would actualy abandon the slimeball on a planet and walk away? Yeah, sure, there's a ship there; we know the bastard's going to get it working and come curising back home as the second half's super-villain, but still: harsh, dude. And rather cool. Way to advance the premise.
White Collar: C- Admittedly, this USA Network conman-and-FBI agent 'buddy' show baely qualifies as a mystery or a thirller, but the charm and chemistry between the two principles is undeniable. That's why the final scene in the last epi was so unforgiveable. The Con Man has been bonding with the Agent all season long, as he helps solve lots of silly high-profile swindle-cases and murders while he not-so-secretly searches for his long=-lost girlfirend (who doesn't want to be found.) And now, after al this bonding and banter, now we get a scene tha shows the agent as the bad-guy with the kidnapped babe in hiding, Now, come on. We are not idiots. Quite. Yet. You're not going to throw away one of the two stars on a cheap left-field play like this; you know the first line of the post-hiatus episode is something like, "How did you find me?" or it'll turn out she's the one doing the blackmailing or something else equally cheap and manipulative. I would have thought better of this moderately clever show. Now all that's keepingus watching is the denoument, not the characters we'd actually started to like. *Sigh*
V: D+ And frankly it's be a straight "D" if it weren't for Morena Baccarin, who's so beautiful you have to bump the grade just for her alone (not to mention Alan Tudyk. Hey, Firefly fans. When do you think Nick Castle will be makin a cameo?) The only notable thing about the end of the four-part (four parts? That's it?) Fall "season" (more like an Indian summer) is that it was exaclty like the other three parts: nothing happened. The big reveal is a yawner: "Ooooh, look! More ships!" And the "secret" of the aliens' real reason for being here makes no sense. What, they want to use us for food? This is n advanced civilization that can fly faster tha light; they can aleady grow human flesh so easily they use it as a cheap disguise for infiltrators. You mean to tell us they haven't invented the concept of domestic farm animals? Or even grow-in-a-vat Human Snacks? What are we, a delicacy? Have we become human caviar And besides, it's hard to take an alient race seriously when it has FTL ships but still uses hypdoermic needles, and apparenlty dislikes its own culture so much that the invaders speak English even when they're alone and away from humans. *Yawn* Possibly the most do-nothing non-delivery of the year here. What was all the fuss about in the first place? And if they don't think this dud of a conclusion is oging to hurt them, check and see who remembers (or cares) about this hsow when it reapears on teh schedule in four months. By then, Chuck will be back and V will be a distant memory.
Glee: A. Yes, it's not really a Rush kind'a show, but it does show you how a hiatus-break epi should work. All the complex story lines established in the previous six episodes nicely and surprisingly tied up, a strong sense of completion, and yet enough open questions about pregnancies, revenge plots, and new romance to make you ache for its return, and yet be patient for the long, long break for the holidays and American Idol. If only SGU, White Collar, and especially V had finished up the first half of their respective seasons with half as much lass and content. We would all be the richer for it.
As it is .. hey, anybody got a spare copy of Christmas Story? We haven't seen it twenty times this season. Yet. We can't wait.
There won’t be a weekly Doctor Who in 2009, but there will be a series of two-hour movies, starring the inimitable David Tennant as The Doctor, but without a consistent Companion. He picks up (and drops) new ones in each movie, including this one, which originally aired in the UK on Chistmas Day. And at that time it was also known that David Tennant would soon be leaving the role, as nine had before him, and someone would be taking his place as the Eleventh Doctor.
Why did it take six full months for the Christmas Special to appear on this side of the on? Anybody’s guess. But one of the clever centerpieces of the piece is blown to pieces by this, ah, time slip, so to speak.
At the time of its original airing, much ink was spread and speculation swirled around David Morrisey, a well-respect British actor who appears to be a (slightly befuddled ) future regeneration of The Doctor who has lost his way. Would he be the new Doctor? Was this the much-anticipated, even –dreaded, Regeneration Episode?
We won’t give it away entirely, but it’s really not much of a secret anymore. Any Who fan worthy of the name knows what nobody knows on December 25, 2008: this guy here is going to be the next Doctor, not David Morrisey.
And as of June 25, another Tennant-based Who-movie, The Land of the Dead, has already aired (it’s okay, but not as good as The Next Doctor). And the next, The Waters of Mars, is filming now and will air in the UK in November. When it will air in the US is anyone's guess.
As for The Next Doctor, you’re in for a rollckin’ good Victorian time, as The Doctor lands in London, 1851 and unravels a mystery that involves watches, memory, murder and the return of the biggest Cyberman you ever saw, not to mention the King – ah, Queen – ah, King? – of the Cybermen. Great fun … just a little late out of the starting gate.
Asteroids, comets, moons, planets smashing into Earth and ending everything -- everything. You'd think the all those celestial bodies ramming into each other, ending in total extinction events, would have enough inherent drama and visual potential to make a bunch of great movies.
Apparently not. Global annihilation just isn’t enough anymore. You gotta go big, son, really big.
At least that's what the makers of Impact, an 'original' (and never has the term been used so loosely) new miniseries on ABC seem to think . It's everything but the kitchen sink, and bits and pieces from every bad world-whacker since 1951, all rolled into one big sticky ball, starring the guy from JAG and the babe from Species. Check out the trailer…
An asteroid hitting the moon and sending it towards Earth? Not enough. So ... having a fragment of a brown dwarf star "hiding behind" that meteor shower, embedding itself in the falling moon, so now it weighs more than Jupiter? Better, but still ... Okay, have some of the moon-parts moving a zillion times after than the bulk of it, so they arrive, like. minutes after the collision -- and more than a month before the rest of it? You're getting there. Okay, okay: have the moon-dwarf-star-thing so hyped up on "electromagnetic energy" (yeah, we don't know what that means either) that it actually overwhelms gravity, so people and trains and stuff can go floating into the air at random points and time -- whenever it's dramatic. Okay, now we got a movie.
Unfortunately, it's a really awful movie, with bits stolen from every previous bad world-whacker of the last sixty years, from When Worlds Collide (1951 – Barbara Rush! John Hoyt! Really cool spaceships!) to Meteor (1979, the first truly awful star-studded extravaganza, with the likes of Sean Connery and Natalie Wood, among too many others) to Asteroid (1997, TV. A pre-Katrina fantasy with Michael [Terminator, Aliens] Biehn as an actually heroic FEMA Director) to the nearly simultaneous entries of Deep Impact (1998, a true weeper with Tea Leoni being all serious and Morgan Freeman as a – get this-- inspirational black president! Ha!) and the still-embarrassing Armageddon (1998, Bruce Willis as a drilling expert who saves the world but loses his life and Ben Affleck at his most ineffectual [okay, except for Daredevil] has a long and distinguished and/or embarrassing history in literature and film. Thinking back , there really hasn't been a good movie about the subject yet. And judging by Impact ... there still isn't.
Not that the battle is over: far from it. The very first world-whacker, When Worlds Collide, is slated for the remake express, directed by Stephen (GI Joe, The Mummy) Sommers with a scheduled release date of 2010. Look ouuuuuuut!
