Included in the gallery is the first picture of Luciana Carro as Pryah, who works for Daniel Graystone. But you may remember her by her BSG nickname, Kat.

[Syfy via Battlestar Blog]

Mad Max: Fury Road:

Just how big is the set for this film? Says star Tom Hardy:

It's massive. It's enormous," he continued. "It's like turning a mountain upside down and pouring it through a sieve.

Any clue what that means? It sounds epic, anyway. [MTV]

Avatar:

Not sure if we've already run this clip or not, but if not, then enjoy:

And here's a clip we definitely haven't shown you before. I love Neytiri wearing her sunglasses to ride her dragon. [Cineplex via Slashfilm]

The Lovely Bones:

Weird nitpicks: After Stanley Tucci's creepy pedophile murderer tosses his victim Susie Salmon's charm bracelet in the water, but keeps the "house" charm. But then we see all the charms expand into ice sculptures or clouds or topiaries — but the house charm is still among them. Also, before Susie dies we see her reading Seventeen magazine, but after she dies, she fantasizes she's the cover girl in Groovy Teen magazine. Towards the end of the movie, Susie sort of inhabits the body of a goth girl who looks like Emly the Strange, and makes out with Emily's boyfriend, whom Susie loved before she died. Then Susie goes to heaven permanently, and we see Emily and her boyfriend spooning, with no mention of the weird ghost possession make-out that just happened. [Black Book Mag]

Kick Ass:

A new character poster gives us a better look at the Red Mist. Bigger version at the first link. [AICN via Cinemablend]

Endangered Species:

A few new details about Eli Roth's Transformers-meets-Cloverfield movie. It's set against an urban backdrop. He's tweaking the script at Quentin Tarantino's suggestion. He's going to do some visual-effects tests, the results of which will determine how he shoots the thing. It's very character-driven, and he has some actors he's dying to work with. [MTV]

Eclipse:

A new picture of your favorite couple, Edward and Bella. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Doctor Who:

As you may have heard, the show was filming in Croatia this past week, with the Doctor, Amy and new companion Rory in tow. (And some are claiming that Rory is Amy's boyfriend — is he the new Mickey Smith?) The Croatia filming appears to be for an episode taking place in the past, judging from some of the costumes. But don't believe the British media chatter that it's an episode about vampires — it's almost certainly the Van Gogh episode that Richard Curtis wrote. More pics at the links. [Sky and Hello!]

Here are a bunch of promo pics from "The End Of Time," David Tennant's swansong, one or two of which we may have shown you before. They include your first look at the alien, shapeshifting Vinovicci. [BlogtorWho and BSCReview]

Meanwhile, Britain's Radio Times has another cast list for "End Of Time" part 2, which conflicts with the IMDB version. Notably, no Harriet Jones. Hmmm...

David Tennant - The Doctor
John Simm - The Master
Bernard Gribbins - Wilfred Mott
Timothy Dalton - The Narrator
Catherine Tate - Donna Noble
Jacqueline King - Sylvia Noble
June Whitfield - Minnie Hooper
Claire Bloom - The Woman
David Harewood - Joshua Naismith
TRacy Ifeachor - Abigail Naismith
Lawry Lewin - Rossiter
Sinead Keenan - Addams
Alexandra Moen - Lucy Saxon
Karlo Collins - Shaun Temple
Teresa Banham - Governor
Barry Howard - Oliver Barnes
Allister Bain - Winston Katusi
Sylvia Seymour - Miss Trefusis
Pete Lee-Wilson - Tommo
Dwayne Scantlebury - Ginger
Joe Dixon - The Second
Julie Legrand - The Partisan
Brid Brennan - The Visionary
Krystal Archer - Neys
Lachele Carl - Trinity Wells
Paul Kasey - Ood Sigma
Ruari Mears - Elder Ood
Silas Carson - voice of Ood Sigma
Brian Cox - voice of Elder Ood
Nicholas Briggs - voice of Judoon

[BlogtorWho]

Caprica:

This Battlestar Galactica prequel just cast another actor to play William Adama — no, not the future Admiral, but his grandfather. Aleks Paunovic will play the father of Joseph Adama and grandfather to little Willie in some flashback scenes, and he'll be a recurring character. Paunovic already appeared on BSG, playing Sgt. Fischer. [Aleks Paunovic via Battlestar Blog]

Lost:

A deserted area of Hawaiian rainforest hides a new camp which has been set up for this show's sixth season. It doesn't look like much, though. More pics at the link. [SpoilersLost]

Another new set — a ship of some sort, or rather part of one. It's apparently designed so they can rock the deck back and forth and make it look like the ship is caught up in a huge storm. And considering that some prisoner types were hanging around in baggy brown clothes, it may be the Black Rock. More pics at the link. [SpoilersLost]

Jose Yenque tweeted that he's joining the cast of this show. [Twitter via SpoilersLost]

Also, Fionnula Flanagan told an Irish talk show she'll be back for two episodes as Eloise Hawking, not surprisingly. [SpoilersLost]

Fringe:

The cast reveals the names of the Observers, and discusses their significance. [Fringe Television]

Meanwhile, I'm hard-pressed to tell exactly what's going on in this new set video. I think Anna Torv is being blown across a parking lot by some mysterious force, but hard to say. There are seven more videos from the same person under this YouTube account. I do like one commenter who says the intrepid fan making these recordings should shave his/her head and wear a fedora. [Anon120409 on Youtube]

And here's a sneak peek and "scenemaker" for Thursday's new Walter-and-William episode. [FringeRus]

Supernatural:

The show is casting one of the Four Horsemen for the episode "My Bloody Valentine:

[FAMINE] 50 to 80 years old... He is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He is withered, weak, raspy. This character is a creepy and destructive old man filled with a voracious hunger...GUEST STAR

[CUPID] 30s to 40s, doughy, out of shape, naked, his humorously loving character greets everyone with enormous bear hugs that almost break their ribs. He is overflowing with love and positivity to an almost humorous and narcotic degree (think Will Farrell in "ELF" sptv050769)...GUEST STAR

[SpoilerTV]

Also, Julie McNiven says that when Anna goes back in time and tries to kill baby Sam in episode 13, it's for the best reasons:

Everything Anna does is motivated by wanting to do the right thing, wanting to do what she feels is going to keep this apocalypse from happening. I see Anna as always doing what she thinks is right and she's very strong about that and doesn't want to hear anything otherwise.

And she says there's some great hand-to-hand combat and throwdowns in the episode, and hints that Anna does actually survive to try and kill more babies in the future. [AOL]

The Survivors:

There will be a "high octane" second series of this British remake at some point, but no date yet. And here's what happens:

The series picks up moments after the thrilling cliff-hanger to the first series and the survivors are now struggling not just with the difficulties of day-to-day life amidst the ruins of the post-virus apocalypse but also with the threat of other emerging communities and the machinations of the sinister Lab.

As the series begins, Abby is being held by Whittaker and Fiona at the Lab. There, she learns that the scientists have avoided infection and are looking desperately for a vaccine which they believe her unique immune system alone will generate.

Meanwhile, the family races to save Greg's life as he lies dying from a gunshot wound. Drawn into a burning hospital by their search for the necessary medical equipment, Al and Anya are caught in an avalanche of rubble as the building collapses around them. Tom is faced with the stark challenge of rescuing his friends from a seemingly insurmountable disaster, with only Sarah and Naj to help him.

Characters returning for this high-octane second series are Abby, a devoted mother with a missing son; Greg, a loner, hiding the pain of his past; Anya, a doctor who has seen too much; Al, a playboy who becomes a surrogate father to the young and headstrong Najid; Sarah, a hedonist used to getting her own way; Tom Price, handsome, dangerous and a high-security prisoner before the virus hit; and Samantha Willis, the last surviving member of the British Government.

[Survivors BBC TV]

V:

So just who are the Visitors? Laura Vandervoort explains that they're basically Canadians. Also, she says her character is definitely somewhat evil, but she's not sure how much yet. [Multipleverses]

FlashForward:

Apparently the reason why the show took a week off was simple: Major, huge developments happen in the episodes that were going to be episodes 15 and 16, and the network looked at those scripts and decided they should be episodes 13 and 14 instead (so, less treading water.) And it's not clear whether the original episodes 13 and 14 were scrapped, or just retooled to appear later in the season. Also, the biggest reveals of the season happen in the next two episodes, 11 and 12, says David S. Goyer. [EW]

Chuck:

Episode 3x11 will be "Chuck Vs. The Final Exam." [ChuckTV]

And one more new promo reveals that we'll be seeing a "Whole New Chuck." He's a reluctant spy no longer.

Sanctuary:

In next week's episode, "Penance," Michael Shanks guest stars as an abnormal named Jimmy who has a special David Cronenberg-esque pouch in his stomach, which he can use to smuggle things for the Sanctuary — including, in this case, a dangerous abnormal. Some bad guys get involved, and he's forced to go on the run with Kate, leading to a big secret for the two of them being revealed. And then in the following week's "Sleepers," Will and Magnus are in Mexico looking into some missing teenagers, and they run into vampire Nikoka Tesla, who's up to no good. [Sci Fi Wire]

Additiional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

Okay, that's obviously not completely fair; after all, this last ten years have also seen things like Lost and Twilight winning over new fans, not to mention the end of the Harry Potter book series. But there's no denying that this has been a decade of recycling ideas: James Bond, Batman and Star Trek all got movie reboots (Trek also got a television one, if you count Enterprise), Star Wars gained new life as a TV show, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica was reborn to much acclaim, unlike fellow television reboots Bionic Woman, Knight Rider and V. We even have Tron waiting in the wings for next year, along with a new Charlie's Angels TV show. The most successful "new" media franchises were Transformers and Spider-Man - based on ideas that are over two decades old (You could even argue that things like Lost and Twilight are simply mashing up old ideas into relatively new forms; they're definitely standing on the shoulders of giants, at least). So what happened?

It's easy to just say "Well, the geeks are in charge of media now," even if it's not necessarily untrue. But that doesn't explain how they got there, and why they're not making us fall in love with all manner of new things, instead of retreads of old flames (Does Fringe count as new, or just an updated X-Files?). Personally, I think the blame is shared pretty much equally between creators and the audience. For all that we may cry YARM whenever someone talks about their dream to make the ultimate Logan's Run project, it's as much a desire to succeed as creative backwards-looking that's behind it; audiences, for the most part, tend not to support the new in numbers necessary to make it a big success. Look at the most successful movies of the last ten years: Each one is based on a concept that people grew up on.

So, is it simply nostalgia? Perhaps; it's tempting to play armchair psychologist and stroke the chin, commenting on a return to childhood things following the trauma of 9/11, but it doesn't quite fit, because how does that explain the domination of 2000's The Grinch or 1999's Phantom Menace? You can see definite post-9/11 tropes throughout the pop culture that followed (A simpler morality, where good guys always won and could save us from death from above, in many cases; stories of people dealing with increasingly familiar apocalypses in others), but I don't think that the prevalence of reboots was necessarily one of them. It's not laziness, either; some reboots (Battlestar Galactica, for example) put in as much work as any original concept in terms of worldbuilding and creation.

In the end, it may simply be the result of conservatism on everyone's parts: Audiences don't want to spend time or money on something they don't know will entertain them, and studios/creators don't want to spend time or money on something that they don't know will have an audience waiting for it. Movies like District 9 or Moon, web content like Dr. Horrible and the increasing use of comic books as source material for other media back this up, to an extent; the new ideas, and new voices, now have to find new - and cheaper - outlets through which to make themselves known, and become popular and proven enough for the big time. Maybe that'll have happened by the time they've been around long enough to be nostalgic about.

So here are the most insane SF soaps we could think of — but I bet we missed some good ones. What are your favorites? Pipe up in comments with the lurid details!

Top image by Dennys Ilic. Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Heroes

You can pick any character from this show and get a headache trying to figure out all the story twists he or she has gone through. Take Matt Parkman: He's trying to keep his marriage together — No, wait! Now he's living with Mohinder and co-parenting Molly the mutant-detecting girl! — No, wait! Molly is out of the picture! And now Matt is becoming an African-esque shaman! — No, wait! Now Matt is in love with Daphne the speedster, who's the Love Of His Life! — No, wait! Now Matt is back with his wife, and will never think about Daphne again! — No, wait! Etc. etc. etc. My favorite, though, is probably Peter's girlfriend trapped in an alternate dystopian future — whom we will never mention again! Ha ha ha ha urk. (Matt Loves Daphne wallpaper from Fanpop.)

Alias

This show started off pretty coherent — but around the third brainwashing or the tenth revelation that Sidney's mother's cousin was really the spy behind brainwashing Sidney to think her half-sister was a chicken. I defy anybody to explain to me the tangled backstory of the Bristow family.

The Cat Who Walked Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein:

I made a dreadful mistake: This was the first Heinlein book I ever read — and it may have ruined me for Heinlein forever. In the late Heinlein novels, every character ever shows up, and they mostly have sex together, interspersed with a lot of drama and philosophizing. It's a sequel to The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress as well as Number Of The Beast, and features characters from several other books — including Jubal Harshaw, Lazarus Long and Hazel Stone, and it turns out that all of Heinlein's characters have previously unsuspected connections to each other. As reviewer James W. Harris puts it:

Having all of his "good" guys sound like a convention of smarmy talking wife-swappers is just gross. I hate to sound like a teenage girl, but damn, Heinlein's kissy-kissy talk and innuendo just made me want to puke. And making his classic characters act out in this limp-dick porn flick is just tragic. Having them go on and on about how they were going to kill people for bad manners is just a little psycho to me. Evidently a lot of people and situations annoyed the hell out of Heinlein and he used this book to vent. Some people want to call this satire but I think that's whitewash.

Maybe Heinlein lost his mojo and these multiverse stories were the best he could do. Personally, I thought The Rolling Stones was a perfect novel, and bringing back Hazel Stone was a fictionally fuck-up of an idea, ditto for the cast of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Maybe I am a prude because I just don't want the Hazel Stone, grandmother of Castor and Pollux, joking about being stretched out of shape by giant 25 centimeter cock.

All of Heinlein's personally favorite characters get put into a fictional juicer and blended into weird rabble of sex obsessed mob that chirp a weird innuendo patter and are almost impossible to tell apart. When I read these multiverse stories I can't help but believe that horniness was driving Heinlein crazy. These later stories are preoccupied with sex, killing people, responding to annoying people, the reliability of witnesses, rude people deserving capital punishment, and so on.

Venture Bros.:

At least this show is ridiculous on purpose — the ultra-demented story of the Venture clan has gotten more and more involved, with Sergeant Hatred's struggle against his pedophilic past taking center stage, and deformed clones and weird villain love affairs aplenty. Most of all, there are the labyrinthine family elements crossing over into everything, like the revelation that Dean was also the head of the Guild. The same characters and their families end up being connected in ever more improbable and weird ways, making our heads spin.

Battlestar Galactica:

I have four (or possibly five) words for you: "Hotdog is the father." Whaaa? There's also the great way Baltar went from being a slimy scientist to being a slimy politician to being a slimy cult leader — and what happened to the baby that Baltar and Six were going to have together? Oh and while we're on the subject, what about Saul Tigh being crazy-chicken in love with Caprica Six — until she has a miscarriage, and then he never thinks about her again? It all makes you want to grip your television and scream (in a Krazy Starbuck voice) "You're going the wrong way!"

Sonic The Hedgehog (comics):

According to the always great TVTropes website, this comic-book tie-in to the popular video game went whirling off on crazier tangents than a flying hedgehog on crack. To quote TVTropes:

The Archie Comics Sonic The Hedgehog series twisted Sonic's love life into a Gordian Knot: Originally hooked up with Sally Acorn, she got stuck ruling the country and shoved the relationship to the side to focus on her new duties, prompting Sonic to fall in with Mina Mongoose, starting a rivalry between the two women for Sonic's affection. He then started seeing Fiona Fox on the side, which not only pissed off Mina and Sally, but Tails, as well, who had a crush on her due to falling in love with a robotic duplicate created by Robotnik several years earlier (don't ask). Eventually, Mina got her own boyfriend, Sally got Sonic once again, and Tails got tossed into a brick wall by Fiona, who gave them all the finger to have a relationship with Sonic's evil clone from another universe. And that's not even counting the mini-tangle between Antoine, Sally, Bunnie Rabbot, and Antoine's evil clone from the same universe Fiona's new beau comes from.

Got it? Great.

Gundam Wing:

Okay, let's get this straight... Relena Darlian discovers she's really adopted, and her real name is Relena Peacecraft, one of the last survivors of the pacifistic (duh) Peacecraft tribe. And then it turns out that Zechs Marquise is her long lost older brother. Meanwhile, she gets obsessed with Heero, a young whackjob who keeps announcing he's going to kill her, not unlike the "I'm going to rape you" guy in Welcome To The Dollhouse. And that's just scratching the surface of the most confusing, tangly saga of all time, involving endless backstory and weird family crap.

Angel:

I was going to do Charmed, Angel's fellow WB series which had the whole "my ex-husband is a half-demon" thing, but Angel is so much more ridiculous — mostly because of Cordy, who is in love with Groosalugg, until she's in love with Angel instead, but meanwhile she's turned into a half-demon and then she becomes a Higher Power, until she comes back and has sex with Angel's son — who, as someone points out, is practically her stepson since she helped care for him as a baby — and then becomes pregnant and evil — until she gives birth to an evil god. Nothing on parent show Buffy was as incestuous and ridiculous as Cordy's arc on Angel. Oh, actually, wait — Cordelia was pregnant twice on Angel.

Robotech:

Sure, it was supposedly about the giant mechas, but it was really all about the tragic loves and the tormented Rick-Minmei-Lisa love triangle. To quote Wikipedia,

In early 2013, while sitting at an outdoor cafe, [Lisa] contemplates the love triangle between the three of them when she overhears two men talking about how women were "dealt all the aces" when it comes to relationships, to which Lisa says to herself "that's all you know...here's one woman who would trade every ace in the deck for one Rick Hunter.

Sigh. Twoo Love. Here's a great fanvid featuring the music of White Town. Yay!

X-Men (comics):

This, of course, is the most insane soap opera imaginable. At this point, the X-men have had illegitmate babies from the future, secret love affairs, doomed passions and multiple bad transcriptions of all sorts of accents, from Cajun to Scottish. My favorite ridiculous soap-opera twist might be Madrox's night of passion with two female members of X-Factor: Siryn and Monet, resulting in a pregnancy that isn't quite a normal pregnancy. But then there's also the whole insane Rogue/Gambit thing, the Scott/Jean/Wolverine/Emma love doodaddle, and of course Professor X turning out to be secretly in love with Jean Grey. That's just scratching the surface, really. If you want more info, check out the X-Men relationship map — which is probably already out of date!

We're lucky enough to feature Quantum Mechanix's authentic replica of the Cylon targets used on Battlestar Galactica before any other site — even Quantum Mechanix's own site. They're model-makers who brought you the amazing animated-style BSG figures, the Cylon raider filming minature, the U.S.S. Enterprise model, the detailed map of Firefly's 'Verse, and most of all the perfect replica of the Serenity.

Here's the full description for the Cylon poster, so you can prepare to take aim with your credit card:

Take Out Your Aggression on a Target That Deserves It!

Battlestar Galactica is one of the most ground-breaking television shows of all time. Not just in terms of storytelling and visual effects, but in every detail – set design, soundtrack – even the background props.

In our continuing quest to bring you affordable, screen-accurate replicas of the iconic props from TV's greatest saga, we are proud to present our screen-accurate replica of the Cylon Centurion practice target as seen on Galactica's shooting range.

Reproduced from the same digital files used to print the screen-used props, QMx has painstakingly reproduced this practice target on an 18"x24" poster printed on 60-pound flat-finish paper stock. We've even die cut the poster into the same distinctive trapizoid shape (why do Colonials hate right angles so much?) and we've included the scoring form in lower right corner of the poster.

All for just $9.95 per poster. Perfect way to prepare for the fight against our Cylon oppressors, when that day inevitably comes.

It'll be available soon over at Quantum Mechanix.

Want to see Dirk Benedict transform slowly into a King Cobra? Here's the crucial sequence. It all just proves that if it's 1973, you should not go to work for a professor named Dr. Stoner.

And here's the film's original trailer:

Don't say it... Hiss it!! And yes, the film really does end with snake guy versus mongoose. There can be only one!

Spock
Died: Sacrificing himself by bringing the warp engines back online at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, leading to his dying from exposure to radiation.
Undied: His body was resurrected in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock thanks to the Deus Ex Machina powers of the Genesis Planet, and it turned out that his soul had lived on all along thanks to mind melding with Bones.
Cause of Undeath: Mind-meld and blatant plot ridiculousness in order to keep the fans happy. Admittedly, it was all set up in Star Trek II, but still.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, his soul was alive the entire time in Bones, but his body had enough time to go through a funeral and being shot off into space, so... 50/50? But not really, let's face it.

Ellen Tigh
Died: Poisoned by her husband after (in his eyes) betraying humanity in "Exodus, Part II" at the start of Battlestar Galactica's third season.
Undied: Instantly downloaded into a new body as part of the Fifth Cylon retcon, as revealed in the fourth season's "Sometimes A Great Notion."
Cause of Undeath: Traditional cylon download/rebirth.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, she was instantly reborn, which suggests that she was never actually dead as such, but the whole Fifth Cylon thing muddies the waters... especially when she was reborn as someone who wasn't exactly the Ellen she was when she died. We're going with "Kinda, but not really."

Boba Fett
Died: Falling into the Sarlacc's mouth in Return Of The Jedi.
Undied: Climbing back out of the Sarlacc's mouth in comic sequel Star Wars: Dark Empire.
Cause of Undeath: He was swallowed by apparently never chewed or digested and climbed his way out, apparently.
Does It Count As Death?: If you believe Dark Empire, not in the slightest. George Lucas apparently disagrees, however; it's said that he edited Fett's last appearance in the special edition of Return Of The Jedi to make it clearer that it's meant to be the end of the character.

John Sheridan
Died: Avoiding certain death by nuclear explosion at the end of Babylon 5's third season finale, "Z'ha'dum," by jumping into a pit so deep that it was impossible to survive. Oh, and then there was that nuclear explosion, which presumably would've destroyed the pit and everything within it anyway.
Undied: At the start of the show's fourth season, Sheridan was revealed to be in a limbo between life and death because of his love for Delenn. With the help of - and 20 years worth of lifeforce from - helpful fellow limbo-ite Lorien, he comes back to the land of the living.
Cause of Undeath: As Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting would say, choosing life. Who knew it was that simple?
Does It Count As Death?: Nope. Think of it as getting as far as death's foyer, before deciding to turn back because you'd changed your mind.

Tasha Yar
Died: Wanting out of her Starfleet contract early, Denise Crosby got her character killed at the hands of a gloopy, ooky oil monster in the first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation "Skin of Evil."
Undied: Thanks to time travel shenanigans, turns out never to have died in the alternate timeline of third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," and then manages to return to the past of the original timeline at the end of the episode in a way that still doesn't make a lot of sense.
Cause of Undeath: Alternate timelines having prevented her from dying in the first place.
Does It Count As Death?: Well, a Tasha Yar definitely died. In fact, as we learn upon the appearance of the second Yar's daughter Sela, the other Tasha was killed unsuccessfully trying to escape from the Romulans, so it looks as if any and all Tashas would end up dead one way or another.

Superman
Died: At the hands of the apparently unstoppable Doomsday in 1993's The Death of Superman storyline.
Undied: Midway through the follow-on The Return of Superman storyline, when it's been revealed that none of the four characters who've taken up the mantle are the real thing.
Cause of Undeath: He woke up. No, really; the audience is pretty much told that he'd never died in the first place, he'd just gone into superhibernation in order to heal from the fight.
Does It Count As Death?: Not at all, but it definitely counted as a moneyspinner for DC Comics, who went on to kill Green Arrow and Green Lantern within the next couple of years, as well as teasing deaths for the Flash and breaking Batman's back.

Bucky
Died: Trapped on a bomb that mentor and Nazi-fighting partner Captain America had managed to jump off of before it exploded, as explained way back in 1963's Avengers series.
Undied: In 2005's "Winter Soldier" storyline of Captain America, where he got reintroduced and prepped to become the new Captain America in 2007.
Cause of Undeath: Turns out that Bucky was, in fact, blown to bits by the exploding bomb... It's just that they were pretty large bits. Large enough to rebuild him into a brainwashed no-good commie assassin who gets put on ice between missions, until he meets Cap, goes rogue, remembers who he is, and then uses his mighty Russian technology for the good of American mankind.
Does It Count As Death?: What's brainwashed Russian assassin for no?

The Flash
Died: Which one? Barry Allen died in 1985's Crisis On Infinite Earths. Wally West disappeared and was, at various times, presumed dead/missing/no-one could make up their mind in 2004's Infinite Crisis, and Bart Allen kicked the bucket in 2007's The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13.
Undied: Wally came back in 2007's Justice League of America #10, Barry in 2008's Final Crisis #1 and Bart in 2009's Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #4.
Cause of Undeath: Both Barry and Wally had, it turns out, never died. Barry had been swallowed into the Speed Force, which is the cosmic... thing... that gives all super-speed characters their powers in the DC Universe, while Wally's fate was ultimately (after a couple of failed attempts that were quickly contradicted) decided upon a variation of "He took his family on vacation to an alien planet and didn't tell anyone." Don't ask. Bart, meanwhile, did die, kind of... but his teenage self was trapped in a futuristic lightning rod and then magically released in the 31st century to fight Superboy Prime. Again, it's probably better if you didn't ask.
Does It Count As Death?: No question for either Barry or Wally (No), but Bart... I have no idea. I've read Legion of Three Worlds multiple times, and still don't understand the explanation that's given there; let's just never mention it again and pretend it didn't happen.

Jason Todd
Died: As the result of a real-life phone vote to see if Todd, the second Robin (as in Batman and), should be killed at the hands of the Joker. Seriously, 1988's comic industry, what the hell were you thinking?
Undied: 2004's Batman revealed that Todd was not only not dead, but had magically aged more than most other characters in the DC Universe in his off-panel absence.
Cause of Undeath: Superboy was punching the walls of reality, and things went a bit weird. You know how it is with these superheroes and their punching the walls of reality; history gets rewritten all over the place. Just be glad that Batman didn't end up as Batdinosaur. Although, now that we think about it, that'd be awesome.
Does It Count As Death?: Magically contradicting Schrodinger and his cat, Jason Todd both did and didn't die. His official history has it that he died, and then just came back to life thanks to the punching of reality, meaning that he was still alive. So, while it ultimately doesn't count as permanent death, there was a death in there somewhere.

Jean Grey
Died: In 1980's famous Uncanny X-Men #137, where she sacrifices herself for the good of the universe to stop herself from becoming overwhelmed by the godlike power she possessed that might lead her to eat a couple of planets if she got peckish.
Undied: It's revealed in 1986's Fantastic Four #286 that the Jean Grey who killed herself was never actually Jean Grey at all, but the Phoenix force, who's been cosmically imprinted with Jean's personality. Don't worry; the Phoenix force was already back by that point anyway.
Cause of Undeath: Jean hadn't died (at that point), and the resurrection of the Phoenix force was somewhat implied by the name - The official explanation was that the Phoenix force hadn't actually died either, just lain dormant until someone else (Jean's daughter from an alternate timeline. If you don't already know, don't ask) claimed it.
Does It Count As Death?: Before the retcon and ruined Chris Claremont's X-Men once and for all you bastards, it did. Now? No-one died until years later, when Jean really got the Phoenix power and then ended up dying anyway. Guess there's something unlucky about the name or something.

White's Deviant Art gallery includes tons of these amazing paintings, some of which are still for sale. They're all acrylic on stretched black velvet, generally around 14 by 18 inches, although some are as big as 18 by 24. And they're like your most vivid dreams about robots, spaceships and aliens, only brought to life in pure velvet.

Says White:

I am a huge scifi geek. I saw this velvet painting on the Star Wars Collector's Archive, and I thought it was so cool in an awesome, yet cheesy way. I figured I could reproduce it pretty quickly. I was wrong. Painting on velvet is a lot harder than I thought. I did a few more, which were a little better, but they were still more like the "oh god that's so bad that it's funny" velvet paintings that seem so prevalent. I stopped trying for a while, and then had the idea, instead of trying to make them "cheesy", that I would try to paint them as realistically as I possibly could. Slowly, the paintings got better, and I started to get the hang of working on velvet. So, the more realistic paintings in my "deviantart" gallery are the more recent ones.

Check out more of his artwork here: [Bruce White on Deviant Art]

While Johnson isn't involved in the new television series, he still holds the movie rights to V, and he's convinced that whether the new show is a success or a flop, it can only mean good things for him:

If the show succeeds, it gives us an opportunity to go out with a one sheet that says, 'You like the show, now see the original classic reborn,' [and] if the show doesn't do well, we can always say, 'Here is the "V" you've been waiting for.'

If you've been waiting for a relatively-low budget independent movie, that is:

When I discovered that I controlled the motion picture rights to 'V,' I suddenly had a lot of new best friends. All the major studios, Fox, Paramount, MGM, Warners, wanted to buy the rights with a whole lot of money. They see it as a $200 million tentpole picture, and want to bring someone else to direct. I took a deep breath and said no... I got into the business to direct and do what I do. So what we've been endeavoring to do is to set up an independent production and produce this movie for $50 million. So I can hang on to the director reins and make sure it gets done.

Why are we worried that a Johnson-directed movie may end up like Richard Hatch's Battlestar Galactica sequel? Because Johnson says things like this:

There's a sense that not only do I know the themes, but it's also because I've had that one on one connection with the audience over the years... I really listened to them and have got a pretty good sense of how to make 'V' work.

Fanservice, here we come...?

The television reboot of V premieres on ABC on November 3rd.

'V' voice revisits familiar turf [Variety]

I'm keeping my lips sealed on exactly what the clip is all about, but suffice it to say that every fan of the original series is going to go apeshit over it.

There's no mention of this little treat on the disc itself (it's a secret), but here's what you need to do to access it:

- Go to the extras menu

- Highlight the Admiral to Director featurette

- Now navigate to the right with your remote

- You should see the BSG Seal appear – hit enter and enjoy!

The Plan came out on Tuesday.

via Darth Mojo

Thanks to Titan Books for sending us these exclusive extracts from the BSG season 4 companion book, out now to coincide with the release of the direct-to-DVD "The Plan." No, they won't explain that whole "Opera House" thing, but they are pretty fascinating.

So here are five things you never knew about Battlestar's final season:

1/ As the production began the casting process for an actor to play Starbuck¹s father, they realized that they needed a performer who could not only act, but was also an accomplished musician. That¹s not a small thing to ask, and at one point, the production thought they might have a solution get musician Bear McCreary to play the part himself! McCreary agreed to audition. "I thought, he¹s about the right age, he's a good looking guy, he'll look good on camera, and he can play." laughs director Michael Nankin. "Why not?". During the audition, however, it was mutually decided that music
was where McCreary¹s considerable talents lay! "For the good of the show, and of humanity in general," McCreary jokes on his blog, "I didn't get the role"

2/ Aaron Douglas does an extremely good impression of Edward James Olmos, to the extent that if Olmos was away from set when a read-through has been scheduled, Douglas would stand in and read Olmos' lines

3/ The interest with going the whole hog in blowing Gaeta's leg off was influenced by the question of who may have been directing the episode. "There was a rumor that Quentin Tarantino was interested in doing an episode and his schedule only allowed him to direct during the dates that 'Faith' would go into production," explains [episode writer] Seamus Kevin Fahey. "So, there was a small element of making it this bloody, awful, insane, Tim Roth squirming in the back of Mr. White's car-type teaser. It didn't work out, but I remember that being a germ of inspiration while working on those scenes. Director Michael Nankin did an amazing job with that sequence. It's so brutal. I loved it." Presumably if Tarantino had directed, someone would have also had to lose an ear.

4/ The ship, the Battlestar Galactica, was absolutely integral to the series. Besides lending her name to the show, she was where most of the action of the series had taken place - and so choosing the right way for her to make her exit was important. "Once we had decided that Galactica was going to get to Earth in the distant past, the question was, 'Well, what are we going to do with the ship?" says Ron Moore. "We played around with that quite a bit in the fourth season.". The writers discussed various options before making the decision to send Galactica and the rest of the fleet into the sun. "At one point we talked about maybe burying the ship, and maybe in a flash forward to contemporary times, there were these mounds of unknown origin in Central American," recalls Moore. "That was something Bradley Thompson was talking about. We were going to have someone digging into one of these mounds and discovering metal - and there would be the side of the ship. We also had a version where Adama decided to burn the Galactica, like Cortez burning his ships when he got to the New World"

5/ Ron Moore, a self-confessed Navy buff, says the scenes portraying the build-up to the attempted mutiny aboard the Demetrius were specifically influenced by the Caine Mutiny, a 1954 film set aboard a US destroyer and starring Humphrey Bogart. In the film, the crew are successful in their attempt to remove the single-minded Captain Queeg (Bogart) and are court-martialled on their return to port. Moore was also interested in the look of the Caine, which was a run-down, clausrophobic ship, and the Demetrius also took on those properties, Moore was so pleased with the resulting set that he called the art department together to praise them personally. This initially caused panic amongst the crew until they realised the summons was for good news, not bad.

Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion Season Four on Borders.

Oh, and this one-on-one interview with Olmos contains some spoilers for "The Plan," because we talked specifics with him. So go buy the DVD, watch it and come back to read this, if you're concerned about spoilers.

What's left?

So Olmos has been very vocal about saying that he'd like to make more BSG movies like "The Plan." But what would they be about? He explains:

Simple questions, like what happened to the [final] five during this period of time? Where were they coming from 2,000 years ago? How could they be around for 2,000 years, and yet the understanding of Caprica is that the robotic trend on Caprica was started 57 years ago? How did that work? That question comes into play, and I would love to see how they answered it. That, to me, would be explosively unbelievable. I would love to have that question answered. I would also love to know what is going to happen to the people on the Earth. What is going to happen to Adama and all the different people? What happened to the Raptor that got them to the point of finding their dream space? That, to me, is just two simple ones I can think of off the top of my head.... To me, there's still a lot of beautiful story that's waiting to be unleashed in this world.

Don't download "The Plan!"

Actually, when we asked Olmos about forthcoming DVD movies, he first paused to express his displeasure with everyone who downloaded "The Plan" from the Internet before its release date. Seriously, if you're planning on grabbing this DVD from a file-sharing service, imagine Admiral Adama getting pissed at you — because he is. In a nice way. "People don't understand that if they want to see this universe again, they have to participate by voting, by casting their dollars. If they don't cast their dollars, they won't see any more of these."

So what's the deal with Starbuck?

So speaking of unanswered questions, we had to ask Olmos what was going on with Starbuck at the end of the final episode. He says "I would love to know that," and he would imagine that question being answered along with "the full story of what happened to Lee" after the show ends. Adds Olmos:

I talked with Starbuck about this. She felt that she went with Anders, that she transported herself like an angel, and she went into the sun with Anders on the Galactica. So she went back with Anders. That's her idea.

Love is the key to "The Plan"

Olmos says "The Plan" not only explains what the Cylons' goals were, but also why they weren't very successful in achieving those goals. The reason for the Cylons' failure? It has to do with encountering a human emotion they weren't prepared for: Love. That's why you see the version of Cavil who's living on the surface Caprica finding himself unable to kill Starbuck, when he has a clean shot, towards the end.

Rick Worthy is the catalyst

As we've mentioned, the TV show's most underused Cylon becomes the most memorable character in "The Plan": Cylon Number Four, aka Simon (Rick Worthy), gets a great arc involving one of his model marrying a human and adopting her daughter in the fleet, while another of his model is on Caprica with the resistance. Olmos says Simon's story is "the catalyst" that helps us understand what happened to the Cylons. It illustrates the theme of love, since Simon's love for his wife and child changes him, but it also shows how the Cylons are unexpectedly having huge divergences between different copies of the same model.

Humor is part of "The Plan":

Olmos says he enjoyed bringing out the humor in Jane Espenson's script (which has some incredibly funny moments, especially the ones involving Aron Doral and his teal jacket.) Like much of BSG, the DVD is incredibly dark, but with some moments of strange levity. Olmos says it's important that the humor comes out of the irony and the situation, and that way the comedy doesn't seem forced. Olmos says he was probably chosen to direct this because he had already made humor happen when he directed the episode "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down":

Like when Baltar is making love with Six, and then Starbuck comes walking in and sees him with his pants down and all his privates being exposed, and he's humping away on Six, but you can't see Six. All you can do is just see the doctor there humping. It's hysterical. Because we the viewer understand it, but the situation is one where by now Starbuck thinks the doctor is just out there where the buses don't run.

What you won't see in "The Plan":

Olmos is a huge fan of Dean Stockwell, who plays Cavill, and he says people don't appreciate what a great performer Stockwell is — Olmos has been a fan of Stockwell's since he saw the 1948 anti-war movie The Boy With Green Hair, starring a young Stockwell as a boy with the power to stop war. In "The Plan," Cavill befriends a young quasi-orphan boy, and the boy's costume is an exact replica of Stockwell's costume from Green Hair. Olmos had the costume hand-stitched to match.

But Olmos wanted to go further with the reference: He wanted the boy in "The Plan" to have green hair, and both the studio and writer Jane Espenson refused to let him.

People would have just been in shock, like 'What the hell is that about? And in essence, it would have been a statement that would have reverberated throughout the entire planet for centuries to come. And would have augmented something that needs to be understood, but in turn, the studio and the writer were afraid of it, they just thought "That's crazy." They didn't want it, they thought it was a stupid thing to do. It would be all about, "What? Why did the boy have green hair?" And it would be about the boy with the green hair. It should be about that. It should be that deep and in the context. So may be they'll let me paint CGI green hair and put it on him. From the time he raises his head to the time he dies, he has green hair, and nobody says anything about it. And the audience just has to deal with it. Let them deal with it.

Want to meet Olmos yourself so he can explain more of the ideas behind BSG? Enter the "Dinner With The Admiral" contest over at UGO.

Top image from Gateworld.

There are moments of coolness in this movie for fans, especially those of us who wanted to know more about little-used cylons like the Simon model. We get genuine character development for Simon, as well as a few versions of Cavil and sleeper agent Sharon. Writer Jane Espenson isn't always in her element with Battlestar, but she knows how to write snappy dialogue that Dean Stockwell delivers with pitch-perfect evil prissiness. (There is a great moment where Cavil snarks at a Five model for being too blendy with his fellow models by wearing the same suits, and the Five snaps, "But his jacket was burgundy. This is teal.") We also meet a hooker version of Six who is hilariously awesome.

However, I have to emphasize what I said above: This movie is only going to be cool for fans. Nobody else could possibly understand it - the story jumps around in time throughout the first and second seasons, referencing plot developments that will make no sense to anybody but a die-hard follower of the show. But fans will also quickly become impatient with the story, too. Larded with lots of old footage, "The Plan" often feels like a gussied-up clip show.

A lot of the details that are added in actually make the show even more confusing. For example, a Cavil hanging out with the rebels back on Caprica has a conversation with a Simon model that makes it seem as if both of them know that Anders is one of the final five. Which makes no sense because one of the major issues in the show was that only Cavil knew who the final five were.

We also discover that the Cylons never really had a "plan" at all - basically, Cavil just bamboozled the other models into attacking the colonies for "justice." But what he really wanted was for the final five to be killed in the attacks, and then wake up in their goo buckets having "learned a lesson" that humanity is horrible. Somehow, he thinks that just having lived among humans will have convinced the final five that humans are awful. Then they'll all apologize to him and he'll get a lot of damp hugs from his naked, gooey parents.

Unfortunately, however, the Plan goes awry because none of the final five are killed in the attacks. Plus, they haven't learned anything! They still think humans are cool. Although Ellen is on the verge of death, Cavil decides to keep her alive so that she'll eventually learn her lesson that humans suck.

Could this really have been the whole Plan? Nuke the entire human race so that the final five will resurrect and give out apologetic hugs? I feel like I need another movie just to explain what happened in this one.

However, I don't want you to think that it was all bad, because there were parts of The Plan that reminded me of what made BSG such a great show. One of the Simon models in the Fleet is given a great backstory. He's gone native, married a human, and adopted her child from a previous marriage. His wife, who works with the Chief in engineering, is a strong, interesting character - a woman who once had a job doing aerospace engineering at a top company, who now has to figure out how to make the Galactica's jalopy fighter ships run without any spare parts at all. As Cavil pushes Simon to destroy the ship where he lives, we see the Cylon torn between the family he loves and the Cylons who are his people. It's a great subplot, and could easily have been an episode during the first or second season.

Developments with Cavil's character are also pretty interesting. We see that there are two versions of Cavil who emerge after the colonies are destroyed: one who is the evil Brother we all love, and one who starts to sympathize with the humans.

In fact, the theme of "The Plan," if anything, is that the Cylon's sympathies were always divided. From the beginning, they were torn between love for humanity and rage that they had been enslaved by the creatures who created them. Even Cavil, who is revealed in this movie as pretty much the only reason the Cylons attacked the colonies, is divided in his loyalties. One of the strengths of BSG as a series was that its heroes were dark, and its villains were granted an unexpected goodness. While it doesn't exactly deepen this theme, "The Plan" certainly sticks with it.

I think "The Plan" is destined to be the kind of thing that nobody but BSG completists will want to own. It won't bring new people into the series, and even those who love the series may be disappointed. Though there are standout moments, "The Plan" essentially takes the sensibilities of the final, extremely uneven season of the show and overlays them on the events of seasons 1 and 2. That's something that most of us, especially diehard fans, didn't really want to see.

"The Plan" will be available in stores on Oct. 27.

The Plan debuts on Blu-ray and DVD on October 27th.

Darth Mojo says:

To help celebrate composer Stu Philips' upcoming 80th birthday, Southern California's most lavish movie palace, the Warner Grand, is throwing a party! Great music is a must if you really want to make a party swing, so the theater's house band will be busting out extended suites from some of Stu's most popular work, including the scores of Knight Rider, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Battlestar Galactica.

In this case, the "house band" is the Golden State Pops Orchestra, and the band leader will be none other than Mr. Philips himself!

Want an amazing evening of musical geekery?

Find out more via Darth Mojo (thanks Mojo!)

Inception

Cillian Murphy has apparently read the Inception script. His thoughts? Excited but vague:

"It's conceptual. It doesn't fit into any genre," he explained. "There are elements of different types of things in it but it is all from Chris' imagination. I've never read anything close to it before."

[MTV Movies Blog]

Thor

An eagle-eyed reporter noticed Dominic Cooper was reading casting slides for Thor. Although Cooper cautioned that nothing has been finalized, the part he was reading for is Fandral the Dashing, a member of the Warriors Three, a team of Asgardians who fight alongside Thor. So we might be seeing the trio (and Cooper) in the movie. [Movieline]

Stan Lee is disappointed that Kenneth Branagh didn't consider him for the role of Odin, though he will have a cameo in Thor. [Collider]

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

The TV Obsessed has another spoilerific review of The Plan, including the fact that the Simon who has a wife and kid on one of the ships in the fleet airlocks himself rather than destroy the ship or be revealed as a Cylon — but he gets found out anyway. And Cavil sets off Five's explosive suicide vest himself. Also, we see the beginnings of Leoben's Kara obsession as he sits alone and listens to the fleet traffic. Cavil randomly stabs a little boy for no reason, just so we'll know how evil he is.

And there are some cool apocalyptic images of the Cylon attack on the Colonies. [The TV Obsessed]

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Interviews with Terry Gilliam and the cast offer a few more glimpses of the trippy fantasy movie:

2012

If the latest stills from Roland Emmerich's disaster porn teach us anything, it's that the apocalypse will be wet. [IGN]

X-Files 3

David Duchovny would like to do a third film, but if it happens, he'd like to focus on the aliens and conspiracy that were central to the show's mythology. [IGN]

Eclipse

Kirsten Prout has been cast as Lucy, a vampire who appears only in flashbacks. A vampire named turns Jasper Hale into a vampire during the Civil War and recruits him for her vampire army. Jasper eventually betrays Maria and two of her soldiers, including Lucy. [MTV Movies Blog]

Dollhouse

It looks like Paul Ballard and Echo are going to lock lips in an upcoming episode, but that doesn't mean Paul has completely given himself over to the Dollhouse. Tamoh Penikett says that although Paul's been drinking the Kool-Aid a bit, he's going to have more issues with his new corporate role. [E! Online]

And we get a better look at Summer Glau and her poor, poor (left) arm in November 6th's episode "The Left Hand." [Spoiler TV]

Supernatural

In the November 19th episode, "Abandon All Hope," Lucifer will capture Castiel while the latter is on a recon mission in Missouri. Lucifer interrogates Castiel by trapping him in a burning ring fueled by holy oil. [TV Guide Magazine]

Heroes

Executive producer Adam Armus drops a few more hints as to which male original cast member will die:

"We always pull surprises on Heroes. That's all I have to say. It is an epic battle. It's an epic struggle between two very well-loved characters, and it's going to be really compelling."

So, who will be involved in this epic struggle? Hiro and Ando? Parkman and Sylar? Nathan and Sylar? [SCI FI Wire]

FlashForward

In the November 5th episode, "The Gift," the apparent connection between a Blue Hand club and some recent suicides leads Mark, Demetri, Gough, and MI6 agent Fiona Bands to investigate. Aaron will receive a surprise visit from an army buddy of his late daughter's. While Demetri reveals his lack of flashforward to Zoey, Nicole will help Bryce solve the mystery of his while volunteering at the hospital. [Spoiler TV]

Smallville

Lois throws some punches in this preview from Friday's episode "Roulette." [via Spoiler TV]

The Justice Society is assembling on Smallville and three of the members have been identified. Stargate SG-1's Michael Shanks will be playing Hawkman, Andromeda's Brent Stait will play Doctor Fate, and Aliens in America's Britt Irvin will play Stargirl. [IGN]

The Sarah Jane Adventures

This Thursday marks the beginning of the two-part serial "The Mad Woman in the Attic." We get an early glimpse of Donald Sumpter as Erasmus Darkening, Suranne Jones as Mona Lisa, and Eleanor Tomlinson as Eve. [Blogtor Who]

And in the second part of the serial, we'll see a pair of very familiar faces: the Third and Fourth Doctors. Granted, we'll be seeing Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker in flashbacks using archival footage, but we'll also see Sarah Jane's future — one featuring another familiar Doctor. The vision of the future will involve the phrase, "He is returning, he is coming back," and we'll see the TARDIS appear in the Bannerman Road attic. In another flashforward toward the end of the episode, where we'll encounter none other than the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. Sarah Jane's robotic sidekick K9 will also be back, supposedly for good. [Den of Geek]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.