I'm sure people will put down last night's Doctor Who finale by calling it fanfic, but it was actually much worse — and somewhat better — than that term implies. Russell T. Davies left no fannish button un-pressed, and made so many ridiculous logic-flops in his epic storyline, that he practically elevated fanwank to a new artform. I couldn't help comparing it to last year's finale, which was also ridiculous but didn't require a PhD in Who-ology to follow.

There were things that happened in last night's episode that I read about weeks, or months, ago. But I didn't stick them in morning spoilers, or downgraded them to "crazy rumors," because they just seemed too ridiculous. In particular, the Doctor's regeneration resulting in two David Tennants, one of whom is "human." And then the "human" David Tennant is sentenced to go off with Rose and be her boytoy. I honestly thought even Russell T. wouldn't give Rose such a ridiculously contrived happy ending.

Doctor Who is taking a break next year, with just a few one-off specials instead of a full season. Ostensibly, this is because David Tennant wants a year off, so he can star in Hamlet with Captain Picard. But it's pretty obvious, after this latest season, that the show needs a rest anyway. Even with Davies leaving and new showrunner Steven Moffat coming on, a year off would give the show a much-needed chance to rethink and recharge.

When Who came back in 2005, it was fresh and different than anything that had come before, and it was also accessible to new viewers. But recently, the show has been stuck in a tired formula, and it's giving in to the temptation to reference its own past more and more often.

Take last night's episode: I was startled by how continuity-heavy it was. It was like a clips episode. And I had vaguely wondered, in advance, if the show would mention that Sarah Jane Smith had met Davros, back in 1974. But the show didn't just mention that fact — it went on and on and on about it, in one of Davros' 100 boring speeches about destiny and souls and stuff. (Was it just me, or did Davros talk for about 20 minutes?) Likewise, the episode didn't have to bring in the fact that Torchwood's Gwen Cooper is played by the same actor as the psychic maid in season one's "The Unquiet Dead," but why not? It's not as if there's a story that's being stopped dead in its tracks while we obsess over minor fannish details or anything.

By the way, I don't think it's an insult to call an episode like this "fanfic." I love fanfic, I've written fanfic before, and it fulfills an important purpose. Fanfic is how we get to explore some of the corners of a universe that the "official" canon will never get to. It's exactly where you should have a scene where Davros meets Sarah Jane again and they talk about their first meeting 34 years ago. Fanfic also lets us have the kinds of happy endings we wish our favorite characters could have, but which we know deep down would have us hooting with derision if they actually happened: like getting a magic duplicate of the Doctor for Rose to spend the rest of her life with. (Until she gets sick of him following her around and talking like Catherine Tate. I give it a week.)

So why do I say this almost elevated fanfic to an artform? It's sort of the way Torchwood season one created the most brilliant crystalization of slashfic in television form, actually. It was every fanfic cliche, from the multiple Mary Sues, to the shipper happy ending, to the Doctor suffering emotionally and getting hurt and needing comfort, to the endless processing of minor plot details from old stories. It's like Roy Liechtenstein turning cheesy comics panels into huge paintings — by blowing fanfic up to a huge size and making it larger and more colorful than life, we see what's beautiful about it.

There was a lot to love about this episode, including Catherine Tate having the time of her life as a hybrid Time Lady/human, Daleks shouting in German, the lunacy of the Haagen Dasz device and the dwarf-star-necklace both turning out to be useless, K-9 showing up to save the day for a second, the Annihilation Wave reality bomb being such a ludicrous plot device, the naked Doctor-clone, Captain Jack having some no-doubt-delightful fantasy involving the half-Time-Lord Donna and the two Doctors. There was a pretty great splashy finale buried in all that excess and fannish drool.

Really, this should have been Donna's episode, all about her own Bad Wolf-ization. It's too bad she got a bit lost in the crowd of old companions and random supporting characters. In particular, it's clear now that bringing Rose back was a mistake. She added almost nothing to the past few episodes, except for one or two cool big-gun moments and some random shipper fodder. She was incapable of actually saying a complete sentence without sounding as if she was about to swallow her own tongue, and she drained all the energy out of every scene she was in. The gritty, determined Rose I liked in "The Satan Pit" and a few other episodes was nowhere to be seen, and it was pretty clear that she was only there so she could get her pet faux-Doctor at the end.

I've mentioned that Donna has been growing on me this season, so I was bummed that she got screwed over so badly. I mean, she gets a half hour of being a semi-Time Lord, which seems to involve imitating David Tennant's mannerisms. And then she's dropped back right where she started, being the person who doesn't even notice that the Earth got moved across the universe and dropped into a hole in space/time. Not only that, but she's in a completely untenable situation: nobody can ever ask her what actually happened on her wedding day, or her head will explode. That's going to work out great.And it's all the Doctor's fault, because he was too vain to regenerate normally. He wanted to keep his current cute hairstyle for a while, so he used the severed hand, and condemned Donna to being a ticking time bomb for life. Oh, and did it feel like a Bad Wolf rehash to anyone else? Plus the fact that we were told she would "die" and then it turned out to be a metaphorical death, just like in "Doomsday"?

That's what the Doctor should feel guilty about, not the fact that Sergey Brin sacrificed himself back in the Sontaran episode. Who cares about Sergey Brin? He was a schmuck, and he didn't actually sacrifice his life for the Doctor, he died to save the whole human race. The Doctor would have to be a collossal egotist to think Sergey Brin died for him alone. (Okay, I can believe that.) After a couple of years without pretty much any character development for the Doctor, it's a tad weird to reach for the guilty-Doctor schtick from Paul Cornell's Timewyrm: Revelation. Especially since we just saw, two weeks ago, that everybody including Sergey Brin would have been toast without the Doctor. It's a no-win situation for Sergey.

And what was all that about the Doctor-dupe being emotionally scarred by destroying the Daleks? I literally didn't understand what the Alpha-Doc was going on about there. And the idea that the clone-Doc was in the same state that Christopher Eccleston's Doctor was in at the start of season one was also baffling — wasn't the ninth Doctor supposed to be scarred by years of the Time War, and the destruction of his own people? Not just ten minutes of pushing buttons to make some random Daleks explode? And why was Beta-Doc scarred and not Alpha-Doc? I know, I know, it's just an excuse to let Rose go off with the I-can't-believe-it's-not-the-Doctor. But it felt like the most random thing in a totally random episode.

Finally... I only have one question about Dalek Caan: Why has nobody uploaded a funny rap video to Youtube yet, featuring Grandmaster Melle Mel's rap from Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You," only about Dalek Caan? You know: "Dalek Caan, let me rock you, let me rock you Dalek Caan, let me rock you, that's all I wanna do..." Oh, I have one other question: prophecies? Prophecies?? Is this Battlestar Galactica all of a sudden? Seriously, it was just annoying when Davros kept talking about Dalek Caan the prophet, but then the Doctor started doing it too. I get it that Dalek Caan saw the time vortex (the same way Rose did, and the Master did?) so now he has special insights. But doesn't the Doctor Who universe feature free will? Isn't the future still mutable? Also, the idea that Donna's transformation was so important that echoes stretched backwards in time seemed a bit piffle. Time-travel and timey-whimey are not magic. (Well, maybe they are. But in the Doctor Who universe, they're not supposed to be.)

Okay, to sum up: You pretty much expect one of RTD's season finales to be ridiculous, include a huge deus ex machina, and make no sense. And this one lived up (or down) to your expectations. But it wasn't nearly as much fun as the dancing-Master/Doctor-Gollum episode last year. There was too much standing around and talking, for three or four hours. And too much fan-service. And as for crying... I cried like a drunk toddler during Wall-E, but I mostly laughed during this ep. It really could have been 20 minutes shorter, and woul dhave been much better for it. What did you think?

Actually the thing that was new about last night's "The Stolen Earth" was the feeling of being a cross-over between three different shows in the Whoniverse. It really was like reading an issue of a comic book like Final Crisis or something. Like, meanwhile at Titans HQ, the Teen Titans react to the crisis, while at the JLA Watchtower, they're fighting Gorilla Grodd. Etc. etc. And hey, it was nice to see Luke, Gwen and Ianto finally in the Who universe proper, and vaguely interacting with the Doctor. (And maybe Gwen will get exterminated next week? We can only hope.)

Apart from that, it felt like the same deal as the previous big finales, only bigger. Crazy shit happens, and you just have to go with it and switch off your brain a little bit. So basically the Daleks stole the Earth because it's a component in the Crucible, their mega-weapon thingy, and they've hidden it in a fold of space-time. And the Daleks are swooping down and harvesting the human race. And Laurie Anderson and her army of rhinos are pissed.

I loved all the silly plot devices and loopy plot twists. Code Red! ULTIMATE Code Red! MEGA ULTIMATE Code Red! Maximum Extermination! Don't activate Project Indigo! Oh, okay, fine, you can activate Project Indigo after all. But really, don't use the Häagen-Dazs Device! Just don't! But meanwhile, we can make our telephone signal go really really far by making every telephone in England dial the Doctor's number at once. (Wha? Huh?) As long as you don't stop to worry about the fact that Cardiff's space/time rift was in a physical location that Cardiff no longer occupies, you'll just run with it. (Oh and by the way, the Doctor's phone number is out of service. Bah. If this was an American show, that number would have led to a viral-marketing rabbit hole, with three websites. And a cake, with a time machine inside. I'm just saying.)

Oh, and I loved the fact that Dalek creator Davros, one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived, was unable to figure out how to cultivate genetic material from himself without slicing his own torso up a whole bunch of times. Rock on, Davros, you crazy science guy. Rock on. Actually, even though Julian Bleach starred in the worst Torchwood episode ever, he was pretty great as Davros. He captured the character's mixture of curiosity, manipulativeness and mania better than anyone since original actor Michael Wisher. (Although I still think Davros should have stayed dead. And why does he have such a lame homepage?)

So here are some stock questions that it's handy to ask after watching part one of the giant whipped-cream-factory explosion that is a Doctor Who finale:

Is there a reset button in sight? Yes. Actually, there are at least two reset buttons — Dalek Caan traveled back into the Time War to rescue Davros. And the Time War was supposed to be "time-locked" (huh?). So maybe everything Davros has done since than can be undone using a double reverse time lock. Also, Earth is in a fold of time, away from the rest of the universe, so maybe time can be unfolded or something. But I honestly think Harriet Jones has to stay dead, because we need closure on her character or something.

Does the Doctor get fucked up? Yep. He "regenerates" at the end of the episode — similar to the way last year's finale had a cliffhanger of the Doctor being super-aged. I'm assuming there will be something similar this year, with the Doctor being messed up for part of next week's finale (in a botched regeneration?) and then restored somehow. Or maybe those old rumors about a regeneration which produces a second David Tennant (thanks to his severed hand) are true.

Is there (finger snap) drama? Yeah. There was the huge sniffly, forehead-kissy moment when the Daleks first start chanting over everybody's speakers. And there was the hilarious sequence where Rose gets all pissy because she doesn't get to have her own square on the companion-scope. All because Wilf wasn't allowed to have a webcam! So Rose is reduced to sitting there and mumbling (still sounding weird btw) about how she was there first! And who are all these other riff raff ruining her big comeback! Poor Rose.

Is there super-heroics? Yeah, lots and lots of it. Rose with a giant gun! The UNIT soldiers going down fighting! Good old Wilf (this season's most valuable player) taking on a Dalek with his paintgun! Gwen and Ianto needlessly sacrificing their lives so Jack can go off and have fun! But most of all, there was the glowing nobility of Harriet "one joke" Jones, giving her life so Dumbledore the Doctor's army could assemble. I totally would have voted for her. (And even though I was glad we'll never hear anyone say "I know who you are" to her again, I was glad she was able to turn her usual schtick into a moving speech of defiance. (It sorta reminded me of the Controller in "Day Of The Daleks": "Who knows? I may have helped to exterminate you.")

Do all those little easter eggs add up to anything? Well, sort of. Yeah, we see the Medusa Cascade, and there's an explanation for the bees disappearing, and we meet the Shadow Proclamation, etc. etc. And the missing planets from previous episodes randomly — in the whole huge universe — turn out to be among the 27 stolen planets here. It's not as if you could have guessed anything about this episode's plot by paying extra-close attention to the earlier stories, though. And I still have no clue why everything went "BAD WOLF" at the end of the previous episode, except that Russell T. thought it would be cool. And we still have no clue what's going on with Donna — except did she have two heartbeats in that scene where we hear her heartbeat and zoom in on her face? (Right before she says the thing about extra missing planets.)

Are we excited for next week? Yeah, I think so. I mean, come on. It's Russell T. Davies, who's sort of the gay Michael Bay*, going further than he's ever gone before. Who wouldn't want to see that? It won't make any sense at all, but it'll be underpants-hat crazy. And we've already had the obligatory "everybody saying the Doctor's name" moment (via telephone!) so that probably won't turn up next week. And the final cliffhanger did leave me with that awesome WTF?! feeling, like I have no clue how it could be resolved, even using crazy RTD logic.

* - Yes, I know Michael Bay is a director and RTD is a writer. But RTD is in an industry where writers have actual power, unlike Hollywood movies. And RTD really does seem to channel Michael Bay a little bit in his Who season finales.

Probably about 42 minutes plus commercials — which means a full 20-plus minutes may be cut out of the episode. The Sci Fi Channel famously cut some of the best parts out of last season's Who finale, "The Last Of The Time Lords" — including an amazing dance sequence. But that episode was only slightly longer than average, not 20 minutes longer.

Currently, it's not even clear when Sci Fi will air the episode. The channel's Schedulebot has the episode "Forest Of The Dead" airing this Friday, and then no Doctor Who on July 4. And then the channel is airing "Midnight" on July 11, and has "TBD" down for July 18 and 25... which presumably means the episodes "Turn Left" and "The Stolen Earth". That would put "Journey's End" on August 2nd, and the Sci Fi Channel hasn't announced its August schedule yet. So is it possible that Sci Fi will allow an extra half hour for "Stolen"? Or just make it a two-hour event, with even more commercials than usual? Yes, it's possible. The main constraint is that Sci Fi is showing new episodes of Stargate: Atlantis right after Who on Friday nights this summer. So for the episode to run long, it would have to start earlier in the evening, at 8 instead of 9. Right now, Sci Fi is re-running magical realism show Joan Of Arcadia on Fridays at 8 in July. So pretty much our only hope is that Sci Fi might ditch Joan for a week, and give us a heavily commercial-padded 90- or 120-minute running of the finale. (And then edit it down for reruns.) But I don't hold out much hope, honestly.

Oh, and here's a video about the making of the episode. We ran the actual clip from the episode in morning spoilers the other day, but you may not have seen the whole thing, from kids' show Blue Peter:

[TV Squad]

Darth Vader

Godzilla

The Daleks

Skeletor

Megatron

The Borg

Thanks to Lauren Davis for life-saving research help.

All images are copyright BBC and the designers, of course. [Doctor Who concept art gallery]

Nation's contribution to television reads like some kind of weird cautionary tale for would-be creators. Following on from early success as a comedy writer, Nation accidentally hit the big time by creating the Daleks for the second ever Doctor Who storyline - something that led to years of spin-off material for the writer, including an aborted attempt to launch a Dalek-only TV show in the US. Not content to be seen as a one-trick-pony, however, he also wrote for other shows like The Avengers, The Champions and The Saint, before creating a whole new series for the BBC in 1975 called Survivors.

Survivors was a show way ahead of its time - Influenced by more sober, serious SF than Who, the series dealt with what little was left of society following a viral outbreak that had spread across the planet and decimated humanity. Although the show ran three years, Nation left after the first season, moving on to create the much more upbeat space opera, Blake's 7.

From the creation of two successful British TV shows in a row, there was only one place to go next - but America proved too great a challenge for Nation and his success was limited to acting as producer of MacGuyver... which, as we all know, is no success at all.

Now, more than a decade after his death, Nation's creations all seem to be back in full force; the Daleks show up with depressing regularity in the new Doctor Who series, and both the BBC and Sky One have decided that audiences are ready for his particularly gritty take on SF post-Battlestar Galactica and Y: The Last Man. Maybe it's that audiences and program-makers have caught up with his artistic vision, or maybe it's just that program-makers want to capitalize on twin hungers for nostalgia and SF, but one thing's for sure - Next year, expect to experience Nation-building like you've never seen before.

Terry Nation.net

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed "The Sontaran Strategem," and it was much better than last year's Daleks-and-pig-people two-parter from the same writer, Helen Raynor. I mean, yay, the Doctor's paramillitary playmates from UNIT are back, Martha is still awesome, the Sontarans are still being nasty, brutish and short, and it's all good fun. And we get Sergey Brin doing a little world-beat dance with the evil Sontarans, in the above clip. Somebody needs to make a "Sontar! Sontar!" music video, including other bits from the original series where Sontarans appear to be dancing. (If you make such a video, I will most definitely post it here.)

It just all felt a bit... routine. The story zipped along, hitting the usual notes: there's a new diet pill, or ghosts are popping up, or there's a new car thingy, and everybody loves it. But it's secretly a naughty conspiracy. The Doctor and companion investigate, and the new companion gets a moment of proving she's really smart. Everybody oohs and ahhs. We reconnect with the companion's family and there are some emotional moments (supplied here by the world's most random montage. What was that about?) The villain does a silly dance. And then the pace slows wayyyyy down for the final cliffhanger, because we have to be sufficiently impressed with how fatal the danger really is.

It doesn't help that this is one of the most continuity-heavy episodes of the new Who so far, referencing not just tons of events in the previous three seasons, but also things like UNIT and the Sontarans from the original show.

I don't mind if the Davies Doctor Who era is going to be characterized by extreme campiness much of the time. It would be foolish, at this point, to expect a Who that takes its villains or storylines seriously, outside of a few notable exceptions. And I'm happy to take the show on its own terms, instead of hoping for it to be something else.

But there's nothing worse than recycled camp. Camp should be fresh, imported directly from the source on the wings of gilded nightingales.

Last year's Master three-parter was intensely campy and completely ridiculous, but it was also fun and engaging, and I got totally sucked into the storyline and wondering how exactly the Doctor was going to win this one. This didn't feel nearly as fun, nor was I nearly as engaged in whatever the plot was supposed to be.

I was underwhelmed by the Sontarans, who seemed a bit wimpy. The Doctor even points out that they're being uncharacteristically weak-kneed. Just like last year's New York Daleks story, where the Daleks skulked in a basement creating pig-people instead of just getting out and exterminating everybody, the super-warrior Sontarans are acting like Slitheen. (But to be fair, this is a two-parter, and there will no doubt be some clever explanation next week.)

Also, minor nitpick. The chief Sontaran makes a wisecrack about how talking is for women — one of the defining characeristics of the Sontarans is that they're cloned, and they have no concept of gender. In their first appearance, the Sontaran warrior Lynx examines Sarah Jane with puzzlement, because he can't understand why her "thorax" is built differently than the men. (And I know Helen Raynor remembers that scene, because she riffed on it in this episode.)

I did really like the interplay between Martha and Donna. It was cute that the Doctor was expecting them to fight, because that's what happened last time with Rose and Sarah Jane — and instead they made friends instantly. The bit where Martha told Donna about what happened to the Joneses was underplayed and super-moving. I would happily have had more of the former-companion-bonding and less of almost everything else in this episode.

I also liked the thing of the Doctor teaching Donna to steer the TARDIS, and Martha calling him back home using the cellphone he left her. And any chance to see Bernard Cribbins as Grandpa Wilf is always a major treat. It was pretty funny that everyone in Donna's family had met the Doctor.

There was also some extreme dodginess, like the Doctor talking the computer into self-destructing. Would Sergey Brin, let alone his alien masters, be dumb enough to program a computer that does the opposite of whatever you tell it? The computer's trying to kill the Doctor, not contradict him. It made no sense at all. And I actually cringed when Donna demanded that the Colonel guy salute her. Also, I hope somebody points out the Doctor's hypocrisy, the next time he depends on those naughty men with guns to save his life.

So to sum up, I'd say there was nothing wrong with "The Sontaran Strategem," except that it felt a bit too deja vu. And the second episode will have to do an absolutely brilliant job of explaining this whole cars-smog-GPS-evil-computers-genius-school-clones-invasion plot, or this episode will retroactively look a lot worse. Based on past experience, the show is probably hoarding all of its really fun, heavy-hitting stuff for the final few episodes. Plus, of course, the probably awesome Steven Moffat two-parter.

I'm trying real hard to be balanced and not excessively harsh here. For another POV, here's former Doctor Who novelist Lawrence Miles:

Well, for now, let's not dwell on the seemingly-endless tedium of "The Sontaran Stratagem". Because as I write this, it's 6:45 on Saturday night: I've been out for a wee twice, I've put the dinner on, I've tried walking up and down and stroking the cat in an attempt to make time go faster, but the damned thing isn't even half-finished yet. The worst part is knowing that it's a two-parter, and that we're going to have to go through all of this again in seven days' time.

The case was brought by small publishers JHP, who had published books based upon the Who characters in the 1960s because of then-chairman Jack Fishman's friendship with Dalek creator Terry Nation. Current boss Paul Fishman, Jack's son, felt that, because the BBC's 2007 book The Dalek Survival Guide had covered similar ground to their earlier books, then their copyright had been violated. Even though they didn't own the copyright to the material in those books.

Appropriately for such a vague case, the Judge's ruling was equally non-conclusive:

Mr Justice Norris decided there had not been substantial copying and it was "inherently improbable" that Mr. Nation would have assigned his copyright to the publishing company.

You have to love the way that British law works.

BBC wins battle over Dalek book [BBC.co.uk]

The press release reads:

Fans of all eras of Doctor Who can look forward to an incredible range of classic Doctor Who figures and monsters being launched in the UK by Character Options later this year.
 
Recreate scenes from the classic series of Doctor Who with the poseable action figures. Each figure pack comes with a different collectable part of the giant K-1 robot from the fourth Doctor's first story in 1974.  When all eight packs are collected, the giant robot will be complete.  
 
Classic figures include Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker.  Other figures and monsters include a Sea Devil (1972), Zygon (1975), Magnus Greel & Mr Sin (1977), SV7 and D84 (1977).
 
Also being launched is a Doctor Who 5 inch Classic Dalek Set - this set of three poseable Classic Daleks includes Daleks from The Dead Planet, (1963), The Planet of the Daleks, (1973) and Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

(No, toymakers. That's not a good idea.)

Character Options - Classic Series Action Figures [Doctor Who Online] (Thanks, Martin!)

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Fans keep insisting that Davros, the disabled scientist who created the evil cyborg Daleks, will make his first appearance since 1988 this year. And it may tie in with the return of Rose Tyler, the Doctor's companion who got stuck in an alternate, zeppelin-y universe. In a suggestion that sounds as much like fanservice as genuine possibility, here's just what might be happening at the end of the current season:

Davros uses weaponry from the Time War to destroy the ENTIRE alternate universe where [Rose] is trapped; a fortunate side-effect means that anyone not from that parallel universe is shunted back to this one, so Rose, Jackie and Mickey survive, but Rose loses her alternate father, galvanising her back into battle...

This rumor is busted, unfortunately. We know from filming that Rose "appears" to Donna a few times — somehow speaking to her through the breach [between universes]. That wouldn't be possible if that alternate reality were destroyed completely. She could just have a conversation with Donna anytime now that she's back in "our world."

Hypothesis?

The Daleks were dumped in the Void between realities. Chances are, the surviving Dalek from "Daleks In Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks" has made contact with Davros, informed him of the Daleks' defeat, and Davros is experimenting with "hole punches" through reality to reach/rescue the Daleks. That would explain why Rose and Donna are able to contact each other across realities — and suggests Davros and the Daleks will both appear in the season finale.

So it's pretty certain that the Ood, those creepy telepathic slaves from "The Satan Pit," will be back in "Planet of the Ood." And we know for sure the clone warrior Sontarans will be back, because we've seen a promo pic. And it sure looks like the Axons (a sort of space parasite from the 1970s) will be back in the Christmas episode, judging from the latest promo image. And we know Billie Piper is coming back for a few episodes.

But everything else sounds totally bogus. Will Ben Kingsley really play Davros, creator of the Daleks? Will Joanna Lumley really play the Master (actually, that sounds hot.) Will the Ice Warriors and the Brigadier really drag their asses out of mothballs? Not to mention the season concluding with a four-part "Time War," involving every monster ever. Most of the alleged spoiler summary sounds like ridicuous fansturbation. Which, knowing Russell T. Davies and co., means it's probably all true.

Meanwhile, there's a ten-second teaser trailer for the Christmas episode, which reveals nothing. In other news:

The animated Batman DVD that's coming out to promote The Dark Knight could be better than the movie itself. The six animated shorts will include new work by Satoshi Kon (Paprika), Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series), plus animation studios Madhouse (Death Note), Studio 4°C (Tekkonkinkreet) and Production I.G. (Ghost In The Shell)

Movies we might see in 2008 or 2009: The top movie scripts written in 2007 include a few science fiction stories, according to the "Black List" compiled by 150 movie execs and top assistants. The fave scripts include Passengers, about a passenger on an intergalactic spaceship who awakes from cryogenic sleep a hundred years before the rest of the crew. Keanu Reeves' company is producing that script but no studio has optioned it yet. A movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, written by Joe Penhall, has already been optioned by 2929 Productions. Also on the list: Get Back about two die-hard Beatles fans who (it gets worse) find a time machine and travel back to keep John Lennon from ever meeting Yoko Ono. Can we please send that one to development hell now now now?

Gerald "300" Butler still might star in the Escape From New York remake, despite reports he's dropped out. Terminator 3 director Jonathan Mostow is directing, so it should be just cheesy enough for Butler's trademark scowl.