The Happening:

Another bad early review of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening has gone up online. It's "The Birds without any birds." A neuro-toxin is released without any warning around the Northeastern U.S., and it causes people to murder themselves in terrible ways. Early on, we see a cellphone video of a guy walking into a lion cage without any awareness of what he's doing. And a row of people shoot themselves, and when each person drops the gun, the next person picks it up and uses it.

Mark Wahlberg is a passive-aggressive high-school teacher who's on the outs with his wife, Zooey Deschanel. They flee together, along with a few other people (plus the daughter of a fellow teacher) and they try to figure out what's happened. There are some War Of The Worlds-style fleeing sequences, including a barn with a trigger-happy farmer. And then it turns out the plants are releasing the neuro-toxin to get rid of the pesky humanity. Shyamalan attempts to "cut to a menacing-looking tree." And then they find a nice old lady whose house was built for hiding slaves — which turns out to come in handy. And instead of the trademark Shyamalan twist ending, the film has no ending at all. It just stops. Oh, and here are some images I don't think we've shown before. [Collider]

Fringe:

Here's the first promotional still from Fringe, J.J. Abrams' show that's really not an X-Files rip off. This must be from the scene where Anna Torv puts on a bikini to go inside the mind of her comatose boyfriend John. [New York Times]

Smallville:

On tonight's Smallville, Lex tells Clark he loved him (like a brother). And then they have their big showdown, and a buttload of stuff falls on top of Lex. The show ends with a big cliffhanger: is Lex alive or dead? [Serrico]

Stargate: Atlantis:

In season five of Stargate: Atlantis, Teyla keeps the baby. [Friendshipper]

Doctor Who:

Here's a snippet from the script for Saturday's Doctor Who episode featuring Agatha Christie:
ROGER: Miss Christie, I've a question. Why a Belgian detective?
AGATHA: The Belgians make such lovely buns
REVEREND GOLIGHTLY: Where do you get your ideas from?
AGATHA: Murder is easy, vicar, when you've killed as many people as I have.
And a clip. It's not really a spoiler to reveal that the Doctor and Donna will have to explain they're not married at this point, is it? [Planet Gallifrey]

Chuck:

Chuck's producers are looking for a major star to play a retired secret agent who gets called out of retirement to tutor Chuck. [Chuck TV]

Heroes:

Here's a first look at Daphne, the speedster who confounds Hiro in the new season of Heroes. [Heroes TV Show Spoilers]

Lost:

Here are some more sneak peeks at tonight's episode, including Michelle Forbes:

Kyle XY:

In the Kyle XY third season premiere, Kyle will meet face to face with the scientists of Latnok at last. He'll mostly interact with one of them, Daniel Cassidy. Kyle insists he'll never work for Latnok, but Cassidy is sure Kyle will eventually come back to the people who created him. [TV Squad]

Superman.
He's the last survivor (or one of the half-dozen last survivors) of the exploding planet Krypton. And he's invulnerable to just about everything in the universe, including nuclear bombs and the vacuum of interstellar space — but he can't come anywhere near a radioactive fragment of his own planet without dying. Or, if it's a red fragment, it'll turn him into a dwarf or a dragon. Of course. Also, Superman's pal, the Martian Manhunter, has a terrible vulnerability to fire — but it turns out to be mostly psychological.
Why it's poetic: Come on, he's lost his home planet... and now whenever he encounters part of it, it nearly kills him. The loneliness, the desolation.

Sontarans.
On Doctor Who, the Sontarans are cloned super-soldiers from the distant planet Sontar. They're almost unstoppable (although in their latest appearance they turned out to be pretty darn stoppable once you used non-copper bullets.) And their only weak spot is a small vent in the backs of their necks, which they use to recharge.
Why it's poetic: They're super-warriors, so they must always face their enemies. I mean, they could put a cap or a shield onto their neck-holes, but they choose not to. Because they need their fatal flaw to remind them who they are.

The Klowns.
In Killer Klowns From Outer Space. It turns out you can kill a killer klown by popping their red nose — it makes perfect sense!
Why it's poetic: They wear their most vulnerable part right in front of them, so they can see any attacks coming. Plus, it's like slapstick and murder rolled into one. Dude!

The Martians.
In War Of The Worlds, the invaders can clobber everything that humans can throw at them, and they scoff at our huge weapons systems. But then they're felled by the smallest enemy of all, the common cold.
Why it's poetic: Mostly because H.G. Wells gets so fancy and flowery talking about the "smallest and humblest of all God's creatures" and how it stomped the monsters' asses. (How does he know germs are humble?)

The Fithp
The Fithp are sort of weird super-intelligent elephants who use superior, if borrowed, technology to invade Earth in the 1986 novel Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The humans are hopelessly outclassed, but they have one advantage. In the Fithp culture, when two herds fight, one eventually surrenders and gets absorbed into the other herd — so they're not prepared for humans to surrender and then mount a resistance or plan sabotage.
Why it's poetic: Because these super-elephant guys fail to understand the most human of behaviors... sneakiness.

The Colonists
In The X-Files, the aliens seeking to invade the Earth create super-soldiers who have only one weakness: their bodies are torn apart by the magnetic fields of large deposites of magnetite.
Why it's poetic: The alien soldiers are super-human because of their metallic bodies — but those same bodies make them vulnerable to magnetite. Woah.

The Crawling Eye.
Aliens who are basically just huge eyeballs with tentacles invade the Earth and nothing can stop them — until one human figures out the aliens have no defense against the awesome power of fire!
Why it's poetic: Because the eyes are burning! It's a tremendous metaphor for the blindness of power. Or maybe it's just a metaphor for how much you'll be rubbing your eyes with sleepiness as you try to pay attention to this movie.

The Signs invaders.
We've already talked about this a fair bit, but the aliens who decide to attack/invade/kidnap kids in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs have a terrible vulnerability to plain old water.
Why it's poetic: The humblest of beverages! Or maybe, the fact that the aliens can't protect themselves against water without giving up their shape-shifting abilities. So they rely on the chameleon thing, to the exclusion of protecting themselves.

The Alien Teachers
Aliens replace the teachers at Henderson High School in Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty. And it turns out the aliens' only weakness is Zeke the drug dealer's "homebake."
Why it's poetic: It's the humblest of drugs! Oh, wait. I mean, come on. They're impersonating teachers, and they're vulnerable to the students' drugs. That's awesome. Plus, it's proof that drugs really are good for you. And the school drug dealer is your friend. Etc.

Leto Atreides II
In Frank Herbert's God Emperor Of Dune, Leto lives for 3,000 years and becomes nearly unkillable because he's part sandworm. But then it turns out that he's gained the sandworms' vulnerability to water.
Why it's poetic: He inherits the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the worms. Dude, come on!

Stitch:
Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, is a super-awesome alien koala creature. Except that he can't swim.
Why it's poetic: Stitch's super-dense body makes him indestructible, but also means he sinks like a rock. Oh noes!

The Tenctonese.
The aliens from Alien Nation could be burned, and even killed, if they came into contact with salt water. What is it with aliens and water of various types? (Thanks Roraz!) Science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer has an incredibly complicated explanation of how the Tenctonese's weakness actually makes sense.
Why it's poetic: You can't cry on their shoulders... or if you do, they'll definitely feel your pain.
Note: In the course of putting this blog post together, I found this post at Everything2, which was pretty helpful in coming up with some examples.

Thundercats:

Here's a model of what the heads will supposedly look like in the new CGI Thundercats movie, which appears to be using some kind of motion-capture and supposedly stars Hugh Jackman, Jessica Simpson and Michael Clarke Duncan. [TGISFW]

City Of Ember:

A new one-sheet for the City Of Ember movie came out, featuring a detailed plot synopsis of the Bill Murray adaptation of a young adult novel set in a post-apocalyptic underground city. Here's the synopsis:

For generations, the people of the City of Ember have flourished in an amazing world of glittering lights - underground. Built as a refuge for humanity and powered by a massive generator - this city will only sustain for 200 years. Now Ember is falling into darkness as the generator fails, and the dazzling lights begin to flicker and fade.

Despite growing concern for the future of their beloved city, Ember's students find themselves confronting the next step in their lives. A rite of passage for all graduates, it is Assignment Day, the day on which the Mayor himself will stand before the graduating students as they choose, by lottery, how they will spend their lives working for their society. Lina, praying with all her might to be a messenger, is appalled to be assigned to the Pipeworks, the vast network of pipes underneath the city. Her classmate, Doon Harrow, who wants more than nothing else to work in the Generator, panics when he pulls the messenger assignment. The Pipeworks isn't the Generator, but it is close enough and Doon offers to swap assignments with Lina. She is thrilled and grateful and eagerly changes jobs. Thus, an unlikely friendship is born, one that, as it blossoms, will change the course of all the lives in Ember.

Lina takes easily to the job of messenger and finds herself zipping all over Ember, delivering important missives to even more important people, including the mayor himself. At home she cares for her aging and forgetful grandmother, and her baby sister Poppy. When an old metal box is discovered in their closet, Lina's grandmother is overjoyed. Completely sure that the contents of the box are of the utmost importance, she is completely bereft of any memory as to why.

Lina manages to jimmy the lock open, and discovers some cryptic and decrepit papers inside. Unable to piece the papers together, Lina resolves to decipher their meaning and enlists Doon's help.

As blackouts in the city become more frequent, Lina and Doon realize that the information inside that box could lead to the salvation of their city and their fellow citizens. Now racing against the clock, the two follow the clues, cleverly maneuvering around corrupt politicians and unsavory characters hoping to keep them from their goal: restoring the light in the CITY OF EMBER.

Doctor Who:

Another set of probably bogus spoilers for the last two episodes of Doctor Who season four. Former British Prime Minister Harriet Jones becomes a super-Dalek (as in other recent spoilers). And Rose's alternate universe collapses, dumping Rose, Jackie and Mickey back in our universe. And the Sontarans fight the Daleks. And the Doctor's daughter Jenny is in it. And the Master is manipulating everything from behind the scenes. But Donna is secretly controlled by the Racnoss, those spidery creatures. And Dalek creator Davros is helping the last Dalek (from the Great Depression episodes) create a new race of Daleks. And the Doctor gets split into two Doctors, one of whom goes with Rose. (That part we actually did have pictures of the filming of, at least.)

I apologize to anybody who's not a raving Doctor Who fanatic, who might be struggling to make sense of the above paragraph. The fact that you need a PhD in Who to understand them, by itself, makes the above spoilers highly unlikely. Although you do never know. [Sunny Tyler]

Lost:

Lost was back filming scenes in the funeral home where Jack visited the mystery coffin at the end of season three. And the only Lost star to be seen there... was Desmond! Is he in the coffin? Or was he paying his respects? [Spoilers Lost]

And here's a sneak peek from Thursday's new Lost episode:

But before I get into the eponymous "daughter" at the heart of "The Doctor's Daughter," I should address the overarching message of the episode. Here to explain it to you is Puppet Boy George (from TV's Spitting Image satire show.) Take it away, PBG:

Now that we've got that out of the way, I felt like this episode was a bit of a tease. Not because we were promised the Doctor's daughter, and instead we got the Doctor's cobbled-together supersoldier semi-clone. Who's all cute and chirpy despite being bred only for war. I expected something like that. (Even though it made no sense to me that Donna and Martha didn't get "daughters" of their own. The explanation of why only the Doctor was copied seemed very hand-wavy. And it would have made the episode much more interesting if all three travelers had had to deal with sudden immaculate conception.)

No, instead, the episode was a tease because for the billionth time, we see the Doctor working through the exact same issues, and not getting anywhere.

This episode wasn't really that much about fatherhood — the daughter in question was a convenient receptacle for the Doctor's angst, and didn't really have that much personality of her own. Instead, the episode was all about the Doctor's grief for the dead Time Lords, and his PTSD about the Time War. Back in season one — in the scene where Christopher Eccleston brandishes an enormous gun at the disabled Dalek, and then breaks down — I had high hopes for delving into the Doctor's grief and PTSD. And when the Doctor finally found another Time Lord and it turned out to be the crappest Time Lord possible — the Master — I felt for him again. But this time around, it just felt sort of cheap.

Although, to be fair, I'm holding out a glimmer of hope here that this recent surge in "violence is bad, guns are stupid" moralizing from the Doctor means that his PTSD is finally reaching some kind of peak and we're going to see a crisis of some sort. I'm not sure what form that crisis would take — whether it would be the Doctor getting even more reckless and prepared to sacrifice his own life more and more needlessly, or the Doctor getting more heavy-handed in his meddling. I am prepared for there to be an arc here.

But I'm not holding my breath: the show seems to prefer doing episodes like this one, which engineer a situation designed to elicit an emotional crisis, which is "resolved" by the end of the episode. Despite vociferously admiring Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the makers of the new Who don't have the same flair for building character points week on week.

But even though I've just excoriated the episode for being a bit of a cheat, I mostly liked it. Georgia Moffett was fun to watch as the pseudo-clone of the Doctor. If you take it as just, "the Doctor's got a magic daughter! And she's cute! And she does backflips through lasers!" It worked pretty well. She was cute, and we didn't really need her to have hidden depths. On that level, the show worked quite well. I wouldn't even mind if we get the inevitable Jenny comeback, although I'm really not sure there's any more to her character than we've already seen.

The main reason I sort of liked this episode despite its manipulative and contrived main plot was that the whole business with the endless war, which turned out to have lasted only a week, was pretty great. It was also sort of contrived and clever-clever, but it was just plausible enough not to bother me. I found myself wishing, while the Doctor kept struggling with the non-dilemma of whether to accept his cute gymnast kid, that we could spend more time on the war, and the process of indoctrination that had managed to convince these people they'd been fighting for aeons, and the society that produced this conflict in the first place. Plus, the Hath were cute!

Other random observations: the thing about the TARDIS bringing them there so they could meet Jenny, but first the Doctor had to create Jenny, made no sense, even by Doctor Who's dodgy time-paradox standards. So I just ignored it. Once again, Martha was criminally underused. I really do think Donna is showing a surprising range, and she's definitely growing on me.

I don't really have much more to say about this episode. It was another fun piece of fluff, and as long as you ignore all of the sledgehammery hints that we're actually supposed to care about Jenny, it's a fun romp. Judging from the previous two seasons, we're almost at the end of the "fluff" portion of the year. At this point last year, we were on the verge of the underrated "42," followed by "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood," "Blink" and then the final three-parter. The year before, the second half had the awful "Fear Her" but was otherwise pretty great.

So I am keeping my fingers crossed that soon I will be able to write Doctor Who recaps that aren't just a variation on "Well, it's not that bad, if you ignore the plot and most of the characters." Coming up next: the Agatha Christie episode written by Gareth Roberts (whose The Highest Science may be my favorite Who novel), and then Steven Moffat's two-parter about a sinister library. I live in hope.

Tonight

Tonight sees the two-hour season premier of American Gladiators on NBC. This show is set in a bleak future dystopia where a drugged populace watches people compete in brutal events like "Rocketball" and "Vertigo," where survival is the greatest prize. Oh, wait.... never mind. If you like your contests of life and death a little more fictional, AMC is showing Terminator 2 at 8 PM.

Shia LaBoeuf is on Letterman tonight at 11:30ish, talking about Indiana Jones and explaining why he thought it was a great idea to play a "swashbuckling biker" named Mutt.

Tuesday

Shia LaBoeuf continues his TV rampage by appearing on Good Morning America, along with William Shatner.

The History Channel has two episodes of Mega Disasters at 8 and 9 PM, including a new episode, "Mega Tsunamis." Did waves taller than the Statue of Liberty smash the coasts of the Mediterranean sea 8,000 years ago — and could a tsunami like that happen again? Also, at 11 PM, the History Channel has a rerun of Earth's Black Hole, a special about black holes and whether they affect our life here on Earth. The answer, apparently, involves going to the Bermuda Triangle. (Of course it does.)

Also, FX is showing League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen at 5, and Hellboy at 8 and 10:30.

And Wednesday morning at 1:10, TMC has The Man Who Fell To Earth starring David Bowie at his absolute freakiest.

Wednesday

The History Channel comes to our rescue once again, with an episode of Modern Marvels called "Mad Electricity" — it's all about Nikola Tesla, and how we're all using his discoveries constantly today. That's at 8 PM, followed by reruns of MonsterQuest and UFO Hunters.

And at 10 PM, TMC is showing Hollow Man 2, in which Christian Slater plays a cop pursuing an invisible killer. Yeah. I didn't know they made a sequel either.

Thursday

It's the Smallville season finale, "Arctic." This could be the last time you ever see Lex and Clark face off, with the smouldering and the Lex wanting to probe Clark's secrets. After tonight's episode, Lex actor Michael Rosenbaum is leaving the show — possibly never to return — and Lana will only be back for a few episodes. Also possibly gone? Chloe. Oh, and the show's co-creators Miles Millar and Al Gough are also taking off. So even though Smallville is coming back next season, this may as well be the show's final episode because it'll be almost unrecognizable next year. So maybe we'll actually get some resolution of the show's main plot arc? It might be worth tuning in just to find out. In any case, Lex finds Clark's Fortress of Solitude and learns Clark's secrets. Anyway, it's on The CW at 8. Here's a clip:

And then Lost has the first hour of its three-hour season finale, "There's No Place Like Home Pt. 1." The survivors and the freighter people begin their final confrontation. And here's a trailer:

Also, TVLand has the 1999 movie of My Favorite Martian, starring Christopher Lloyd, at 8 PM. And TBS has the original Austin Powers at 9.

Friday

The Sarah Jane Adventures is already zooming towards the end of its first season on Sci Fi, with the second half of "Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?" airing at 8 and the first half of "The Lost Boy" airing at 8:30. Sarah Jane gets restored to our timeline, but then her cozy little family gets broken up a different way: a family turns up claiming that her adoptive son Luke is their child. Oh, and Maria's dad finds out all about Sarah Jane's world-saving activities, and decides Maria should have no part of it. Here's a clip:

And at 9 PM, Sci Fi has the first half of a Doctor Who two parter, "The Sontaran Strategem." Some people liked this episode a lot better than I did, with the campy dancing and weird Sergey Brin knock-off. In any case, it brings the Doctor and Donna back to present-day Earth for a reunion with Martha Jones and the military organization U.N.I.T. You can read our recap of the episode here.

Battlestar Galactica has a new episode at 10 PM on Sci Fi: "Guess What's Coming To Dinner." The human survivors of the Cylon genocide reluctantly join forces with a group of rebel Cylons to destroy the crucial Resurrection Hub. And it looks like Hera has a favorite auntie. Oh, and if you're in Seattle, you can watch it with a group of fans. Here's the trailer:

Saturday

As usual, the CW has two Spectacular Spider-Man episodes starting at 9:30, including a new episode at 10. But this week's new episode is pretty special, because it features the debut of the sexiest female character from Spider-Man's comics (sorry, Mary Jane): the Black Cat. And just to up the sexiness quotient considerably, she's voiced by none other than Tricia Helfer, aka the Cylon Six on Battlestar Galactica. How much sexiness do you think you can stand at 10 AM on a Saturday morning?

And meanwhile, the Cartoon Network has another new Ben 10: Alien Force at 10: "Max Out." "The team searches for Gwen's missing brother Ken and uncovers a secret of the DNAliens invasion." And then at 10:30, there's a new Transformers: Animated, which sounds like the sort of wheel-spinning episode (sorry!) that TV shows do while they're waiting for the end of the season to shake things up: "Investigating a mysterious race car, Bumblebee gets involved with an illegal underground street racing circuit, which also captures the attention of the Decepticons." Street racing? Why would the Autobots care about street racing? Whatevs.

The Sci Fi Channel is showing all three 1980s Indiana Jones movies, starting at 4 PM. (They're also showing during the day on Sunday.) Also, at midnight, Sci Fi has Timeline, followed by Tremors 4: The Legend Begins and Prophecy: The Foresaken. (Why did it take until Tremors 4 for the legend to begin??)

Sunday

At 9 PM, Sci Fi is showing its big promo special about the new Indiana Jones movie: Mystery Of The Crystal Skulls. Apparently there really are 13 crystal skulls, of which a few have actually been found in Mexico and Central and South America. And they're a huge mystery to archeologists because they're so perfect and awesome. Not only that, but it turns out that if you assemble all 13 skulls, you can stop the world from coming to an end in 2012. (Why is Sci Fi the only channel reporting on this? You'd think CNN and C-Span would be interested in whether the world was ending in four years as well.) Anyway, it's investigative journalism at it's finest, and in no way is it just a cheesy promo stunt.

And Spike is showing Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back at 8 PM.

The first companion on the show, Susan was the teenaged granddaughter of William Hartnell's first Doctor, serving as the spunky viewers-way-in to a world of time traveling aliens and meeting historical figures on a regular basis. Not that that kind of thing was easy, of course:

Over the course of several adventures through time and space, the thoughtful Susan encountered cavemen, Marco Polo, giant insects, the Ood-like Sensorites and the evil Voord. It's no surprise that the telepathic lass longed for the normality of Earth, as she was increasingly coming down with all kinds of ailments, being kidnapped or sentenced to be sacrificed. As you can tell, this was in the pre-Thatcher and Spice Girls days. Ultimately, it was to be a soppy romance that led to her forced departure from the Tardis.

Meet the Doctor's granddaughter [Digital Spy]

The Happening:

The secret of The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan's newest movie, is that it's a virus produced by plants and trees to fight back against humanity. It spreads through the air and makes people kill themselves. And the main characters, a family fleeing from the disaster, finally kill themselves at the movie's end. [Edward J.R.]

Smallville:

Someone claims to have casting sides for two new characters who will appear in Smallville season eight. There's a twentysomething bartender at Ace Of Clubs named Davis Bloome, who meets Lois when he serves her whiskey, and seems to read her mind as she's musing about a friend. It's a "weirdly sexy" moment. They snark back and forth, but then the conversation gets too weird for Lois. In a second audition scene, Lois seems to know Davis much better, and she finds him with blood on his hands. He says a waitress broke a tray of glasses and cut herself, but Lois doesn't believe him. And then it turns out Davis has blackouts where he can't remember anything he did. Lois offers to help, but Davis just begs her not to tell anyone. And she suddenly feels afraid.

The second character is Tess, who meets Clark in his barn, where she's wearing a pencil skirt and high heels. She tells Clark she's moving into Luthor Manor in Lex's absence. And she baits Clark about the fact that he was the last one to see Lex alive, and asks why Lionel Luthor would take a farmboy under his wing. Clark says Lionel was just a family friend, but Tess thinks Lionel lusted after Martha Kent. And her second scene involves Jimmy sneaking into the Daily Planet archives. Tess has been looking for Jimmy, but he's a hard guy to find. Jimmy tells Tess he didn't work for Lex, but she knows better. She tells him to spill what he knows about Lex's last trip... or else.

So... Lex is being replaced by a woman. And Lois is getting a new creepy love interest. [Notes... Written On Water]

Battlestar Galactica:

Battlestar Galactica just recently filmed a scene that started to explain how Starbuck came back from the dead. And "it's not an uplifting understanding," says star Edward James Olmos. "It's as dark as everything else. You sit there and you go, 'You guys are sick!'" [Boston Globe]

Doctor Who:

Once again, Digital Spy has a bunch of spoilers for Saturday's Doctor Who episode, three of which are fake. Off the top of my head, I can believe Donna tries to fit in with the 1920s by saying "spiffing" and "chin chin," Agatha Christie hits on Donna to no avail, Chief Inspector Smith shows up, and Donna thinks that Enid Blyton's "Noddy" is real and that "Murder On The Orient Express" is a song. [Doctor Who Insania]

Lost:

Time travel is definitely happening on Lost, say producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. And you shouldn't be asking if Claire is dead, but rather "What happened to Claire?" And we should be asking, "What is dead?" (Whoah.) Richard Alpert will be more prominent in the future of the show. Some of the show's mysteries, like the numbers, will never be explained, for fear of cheapening them the way the Force was cheapened on Star Wars after we learned about midichlorians. By the season's end, you'll have a sense of where the Penny-Desmond storyline is going. [E! Online]

Someone who's on set says the last week of filming includes scenes in the jungle, in a church, in a rescue plane and on the studio lot. And the "extra babies" (doubles for Aaron?) are girls. Significant? Or just random? [Lyly Ford]

Stargate: Atlantis:

Stargate: Atlantis will have a big two-parter halfway through its fifth season: "First Contact" and "The Lost Tribe." Dr. Daniel Jackson (from Stargate: SG-1) will visit Atlantis to do research on Janus, the scientist who invented a time-traveling puddle jumper, and who also saved Dr. Weir when she traveled back in time 10,000 years. Daniel and Rodney McKay discover a research laboratory on another planet, which belonged to Janus. But the other Atlanteans did not look favorably upon Janus' work. And Jackson and McKay aren't alone there.

Meanwhile, "Todd" the Wraith seizes control over the Earth battlecruiser Apollo, and only Ronon and Keller remain at large. Todd threatens to start killing people unless Ronon and Keller turn themselves in. Todd is heading to Janus' laboratory, to shut down the "Attero device," which threatens his new alliance. But Col. John Sheppard and Dr. Zelenka have joined up with a Traveler ship led by a captain named Katana, and they're are rushing to get to Janus' lab first. Sheppard and Zelenka work with a 15-year-old engineer, Mila to upgrade the Traveler ship's engines, because if they don't make it to Janus' lab before Todd, Jackson and McKay may be dead. [Gateworld, via Leliana McKay]

Firefly:

An upcoming Firefly comic book series, The Shepherd's Tale, will detail more about the mysterious pastor, Shepherd Book. According to actor Ron Glass, we'll learn that Book found God in a soup bowl, something about Book is artificial, Book's greatest victory was his worst defeat, and Book took the name of someone he killed. [Firefly Fans]

Star Wars: Legacy Of The Force:

More spoilers for Star Wars: Invincible, the Legacy Of The Force book that comes out on Tuesday: Jaina kills Jacen, after injuring him severely. Jacen has gone totally batshit, but really is trying to save Tenel Ka and Allana from some sort of danger. But Jaina doesn't believe him. Daala becomes chief of state. And Luke Skywalker is "around" but doesn't do much. His son, Ben, fights Tahiri and captures her. [Jacen's Heart]

Wolverine:

The Wolverine solo movie, which already has a pretty massive cast of mutants tromping through it, now also guest-stars the young Scott Summers aka Cyclops. How does Cyclops fit into the storyline of Logan's early years in the Weapon X military taskforce? [Superhero Hype]

Heroes:

Bruce Boxleitner will play a new character in Heroes season three, one who was originally modeled on Sen. John McCain, but who may have been reconceived now that Bruce is playing him. In any case, this new character shares many scenes with one of our female regulars. (Angela, maybe?) This makes me think the new season will be way more political than we'd been led to expect, with that "supervillains" theme. Also, even though we're hearing about lots of new characters in season three, the focus will be on our core characters from the show's original pilot. [Ask Ausiello]

Battlestar Galactica:

Here's a pretty carefully constructed chronology of all the spoilers about upcoming Battlestar Galactica episodes that have come out so far. The only ones that may be news to me are that Tigh gets onboard a baseship, and there's a "powerful scene" between Tigh and Admiral Adama, possibly about President Roslin's capture by the rebel cylons. [Leliana McKay]

Doctor Who:

Here's a snippet from the script and a clip from Saturday's episode, "The Doctor's Daughter":
Jenny picks herself up, unharmed, excited, grinning. The Doctor is furious with her.
The Doctor: Why did you do that?
Jenny: They were trying to kill us!
The Doctor: But they've got my friend
Jenny: Collateral damage. At least you've still got her. He lost both of his men. I'd say you came out ahead. [Planet Gallifrey]

Some kind soul has scanned in some pages from some British magazines that include a few spoilers for the rest of the season. The Doctor's "daughter" is related to him but is necessarily his daughter daughter — it's complicated. So how does he end up with a daughter? According to one article, he sticks his hand into a machine that spits out grown-up offspring a moment later. In the season finale, there's a segment on a fake talk show where the "lights in the sky" are discussed. And one of the companions appearing in the finale may not survive. (My money's on Rose, actually.) [Loftio]

Remember those incredibly suspect spoilers we posted yesterday for the end of the season? The ones where Donna dies, and then the Doctor undoes her death, and then he wipes her memory? The guy who posted them has been banned from Digital Spy, where he posted them, and has become the laughingstock of the Doctor Who forum. Poor guy — he was just trying to keep us entertained. [Boards.ie]

Lost:

Some more preview photos have come out from the season finale, showing the Oceanic Six in mid-escape.

And here are two more short clips from tonight's Lost episode. It looks like Locke meets a ghost from the Dharma Initiative, and Sayid has a plan to save everyone on the island. [Spoilers Lost]

Final Crisis:

Entertainment Weekly has a five-page preview of Final Crisis, with script pages from writer Grant Morrison. It looks very much like 52 part two, or maybe "53." In a nutshell, Dick Turpin (from Metropolis Special Crimes Unit) finds Orion in a dumpster, half dead. And then he has a conversation with ex-cop Rene Montoya, who's become a superhero called The Question. Meanwhile, the sky turns red and freaks out, and John Stewart, who's a Green Lantern (a space cop with a magic ring) gets called to a "1011" emergency. Oh, and old Justice League villain Libra is behind everything, but uber-villain Darkseid also plays a major role. [Entertainment Weekly]

Moon:

Remember Moon, the movie directed by David Bowie's son Duncan Jones, and starring Sam Rockwell (Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind)? Now that it's in post-production, a few more details have leaked out. The reason Rockwell is stranded alone on the Moon for three years: he's mining a gas that Earth needs to solve its energy crisis. And while he's stuck up there, he has an encounter that will change the course of human history. Even though Rockwell is alone on the Moon, he has costars in the movie: Matt Berry (The IT Crowd) and Kaya Scodelario (Skins). Are they playing aliens he meets, or other people who turn up? Or the people waiting for him back on Earth? [Slice Of Scifi]

The Dark Knight:

In the new Batman movie, part of what drives Harvey Dent over the edge into becoming Two-Face is that his fiancee is killed. This is presumably Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). This will also give Batman something else to angst over, since she's his old flame and his "hope for a normal life." [Comic By Comic]

Battlestar Galactica:

Someone posted a ton of spoilers for episode 9 of Battlestar Galactica season four, "The Hub," which airs June 6. Roslin and Baltar are in the hands of the rebel Cylons (the Leobens, the Sharons, the Sixes) who are planning an attack on the "Resurrection Hub," without which no Cylon can resurrect anywhere, even with a resurrection ship. The humans have an uneasy alliance with these rebel Cylons. And some human pilots help with the attack, including Helo, Seelix and "Gonzo" Pike. The humans also decide to help the rebels to retrieve D'Anna (Lucy Lawless) so they can learn the identity of the Final Five within the fleet. D'Anna is un-boxed and immediately starts being manipulative and playing mind games again. The battle to destroy the Hub is "insane."

Helo feels very threatened when he realizes that when "his" Sharon died and was resurrected over the algae planet, her memories became available to all the other Sharons.

Baltar does the one thing that could surprise me at this point: he confesses his role in the destruction of humanity to Roslin — leaving her with a tough moral quandary. We see Roslin's death in a flash-forward, and the "L-word" is finally spoken between her and Adama. Elosha puts in an appearance as Roslin's spiritual adviser. [Battlestar Blog]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

Here's our first look at Asajj Ventress, one of the main villains of the Star Wars: Clone Wars movie (coming this August) and TV show (coming this fall). As with previous versions, she's bald and venomous-looking. [USA Today]

And more story details about the movie have come out. Jabba the Hutt's son has been kidnapped, and the Jedi agree to rescue him in exchange for access to shipping routes, but this may be a plot to divert the Jedi to the remote planet of Teth. Anakin, his student Ahsoka, and a Clone squadron, travel to the B'omarr monastery on Teth to find Hutt Jr., but they find themselves surrounded by General Grievous' battle droids and hunted by Asajj Ventress. R2D2 helps them find a way out, and Obi-Wan brings much-needed reinforcements. [Jedi News]

Lost:

Lost's Sonya Walger (Penny) was spotted in Hawaii. Does that mean Penny's coming to the island? Or just that she's going to appear in an upcoming episode? Also, there are hints another one of our "favorite castaways" will die in an upcoming episode. [Spoilers Lost]

Smallville:

Here are some pics from the Smallville season finale, where Lex finally gets into the Fortress of Solitude. [The TV Addict]

And this week's episode, "Quest," follows Lex to Zurich, where he keeps trying to learn about the "Veritas" mythology. Lex gets attacked by a monastic-robed stranger with Kryptonian symbols carved into his chest, which seem to be a message for Clark. Meanwhile, Jimmy takes an interest in the symbols carved in the Kawatche caves, and Clark thinks about their symbolism. Clark and Chloe team up to investigate and learn that a member of the Veritas clan has survived and is hiding out in a church. Clark and Lex race to be the first to find this Veritas member, who holds the key to Clark's survival. [Buddy TV]

Doctor Who:

Here's a possibly spurious summary of the last two episodes of the current Doctor Who season. Former Prime Minister Harriet Jones is consumed with hatred for the Doctor, especially after she finds out her successor as prime minster was a member of the Doctor's own species. She managed to get aboard the Valiant and witnessed the entire year of Harold Saxon's reign of terror which "never happened." It was Harriet who stole the Master's ring from his funeral pyre, and uses it to help an army of Daleks, led by Davros, to escape from beyond reality.

This causes Rose's alternate universe to unravel. As head of her universe's Torchwood London, Rose knows what's going on, but doesn't know how to stop it. She desperately tries to reach the Doctor. Meanwhile, Donna has read her own life story in that future library (the one from the Steven Moffat two-parter) and knows she'll be killed by the Racnoss, the spider-creature that ruined her wedding day.

Donna is left alone inside the TARDIS, hurtling out of control, and doesn't know what to do. Then Rose appears on the screen, having managed to get a signal through a fracture in reality — after the Doctor has already completely vanished from our universe. Donna and Rose try to use the TARDIS to bring the Doctor back. They keep colliding with alternate realities, including their own lives if they'd never met the Doctor. Finally, they manage to bring the Doctor back. He's confronted Davros and Harriet, who's now the Red Dalek.

Realities collide, bringing Jackie and Mickey back to our universe. And then the Daleks kill Donna's mother and grandfather. And then Donna is controlled by the insect on her back, by means of a Racnoss Empress from an alternate reality, which came to our universe through the hole the Daleks have made. The alternate Empress joins forces with Davros and Harriet. The only way to stop Donna's evil back-spider is to kill Donna, which the Doctor refuses to do. Meanwhile, all the universes are threatening to collide, destroying everything. The Doctor reaches the Medusa Cascade, but the only way to close the rift again is to sacrifice a human life. The Doctor falters, unable to sacrifice anyone. But then Donna chooses to sacrifice her own life to save everything.

But after Donna is gone, the Doctor decides to break his most sacred rule for her, and goes back in time 24 hours to change his own past, so the Daleks and Harriet can be stopped without sacrificing Donna's life. Then Captain Jack erases Donna's memory so she has no clue what's happened and won't try to find the Doctor again. She won't remember him at all. This restores everything to the point it was before, with Rose, Mickey and Jackie once again sealed in their alternate universe. [Planet Gallifrey]

Transformers: Animated:

Here are some screencaps from an upcoming episode of Transformers: Animated called "SUV: Society For Ultimate Villainy," which already aired in the Middle East but won't air in the U.S. until June or later. It features a Decepticon called Swindle, and a villain who fires a time-freezing blast, using a pocket watch. The "clockwoman" teams up with Nano and the Angry Archer to build a time-control machine for Swindle. [TFW2005]

Spectacular Spider-Man:

And meanwhile, Spectacular Spider-Man is unaccountably airing its Halloween episode this Saturday. Here's the blurb:

"The Uncertainty Principle"... presents a number of perplexing situations for Peter Parker and Spider-Man as they both try to find clarity amid the masks, mysteries and menace of Halloween. While Colonel John Jameson struggles to land his damaged space shuttle, Spider-Man continues his ongoing battle with Green Goblin, who also threatens Hammerhead and Tombstone. Still, Peter's greatest challenge will be facing the awful truth when he finally learns the Goblin's "true" identity.

I wasn't sure at first why I liked "The Poison Sky" better than "The Sontaran Strategem." I think it's just because last week's installment was just lots of nonsensical investigation. And this week's was lots of nonsensical battles, which are just inherently more fun to watch. There were just more fun moments this week, which is all you can really ask for a lot of the time. (Sorry this is late, by the way — partly I wanted to ponder it a bit more, but mostly I just got swamped thinking of ways to obliterate campiness. This episode provided a few hints in that department, of course.)

I liked almost everything about Donna in this episode, which surprised me — except for some of the interactions with her family. Donna's mother is still not working for me as a character, and even though I love Bernard Cribbins, I'm getting tired of the way the schmaltzy music comes on whenever she has a heart-to-heart with her grandfather Wilf. The thing of the companion staying in touch with her Earthbound family worked pretty well when it was Jackie and Mickey (as annoying as they sometimes got) but it just doesn't seem to have that much life left in it now.

Besides Donna getting to be a hero and take on a Sontaran single-handed, the much-maligned paramilitary organization UNIT finally got to kick some ass as well. The first half of the story had me wondering why UNIT had even been included, and I was ready for part two to be just a litany of scenes where the Doctor tells the toy soldiers not to engage the aliens — along with the occasional moment of UNIT disregarding the Doctor and learning the folly of violence. So I was stoked when UNIT actually turned out to be competent — and I liked Colonel Mace's rousing little speech about showing the aliens how advanced humans can be in the killing department.

So, yes. Fun shooty action and nice use of the SHIELD helicarrier UNIT airship in the giant battle. Although, the final bit where the soldiers all cheer and the hawt female science-nerd/soldier smooches Col. Mace — maybe a little too much. But it's Doctor Who, so "too much" is always on the menu.

And yet. All the things that didn't make sense in part one still didn't make sense in part two. The Sontaran scheme still seemed way too fancy for the galaxy's most unstoppable warriors. Why not just swoop down, have a fun afternoon killing all the humans, and then transform the planet into a clone farm? It's better strategy, plus it's the warrior way. The Sontarans must have done this to planets a thousand times before, so why would they need to use cars to convert the atmosphere to clone feed? They should have a "Sontara-forming" device on their ship to do that for them.

I was also sad about Martha — when she turned up on Torchwood, that show suddenly became twice as watchable, and the Torchwood team started being good at their jobs. But Doctor Who reaped no Martha boost, mostly because she was sidelined in the random clone plot. I sort of got that the Sontarans needed the Martha-clone to infiltrate UNIT and stop the nuclear launch. But did they really need her to keep pressing a button on her iPhone every few minutes after that? Couldn't they have just rigged a little button-pressing machine? Mostly, it just seemed like a waste of the amazing powers of Freema Agyeman.

And then the scene where Martha talks to her dying clone literally made no sense to me. Why were we supposed to be sad that her (apparently) smelly clone was dying? Was Martha confronting her own mortality through her clone's death? No clue, sadly.

Actually, now that I think of it, I know why I liked part two of the Sontaran storyline better than part one: there was a lot less of Sergey Brin, or whatever his real name was. His character continued not making much sense to me. He was like like stock character #27: the misunderstood genius who teams up with the bad guys because he believes their empty promises. And then they suddenly but inevitably betray him. (He had maybe just a dash of Adam from season one.) Even the wacky "breeding program" scene felt like a random stereotype. ("I'm cleverer than you! I'm cleverer than EVERYONE!!!") Plus did I miss a scene that explained about this new planet the Sontarans were going to give him and his ten other breeding partners? It was mentioned, like, twice.

The only way Sergey Brin could have surprised me is if he hadn't sacrificed himself at the end. The misguided geniuses in league with monsters always sacrifice themselves, either to redeem themselves or to punish their former allies, or just because there's five minutes left.

Another thing that bugged me, of course, was the deus ex machina device, the fancy atmosphere-fixing machine that we'd seen for a split second in the first episode, which miraculously turned out to be the key to solving the killer-smog problem in the second episode. Of course, the new Who is known for its deus ex machinas, so it's par for the course. And the alternative, to have the Doctor MacGyver a new atmosphere neutralization whatsit out of spare parts, wouldn't really have been much less cheap. Just slightly less cheap.

Oh, and the Doctor being willing to sacrifice himself, just so he can offer the Sontarans one last chance to quit? Sort of great, I guess — except he knows what the Sontarans will choose. Is it really worth giving up his life — all his remaining lives? — just to offer them a last chance that he knows they won't take? And then it turns out the Doctor is bluffing anyway. So he's throwing away his life on a bluff that he knows won't work. (Or, more cynically, he's manipulating Sergey Brin into committing suicide on his behalf.) It felt like it happened not because it made sense, but because the story needed one last tense climax.

So in short, I liked part two better than part one, mostly because I'd already swallowed the ridiculous set-up and the ridiculous resolution was more fun. Looking at the two parts as a whole... it was a forgettable but sort of entertaining romp. Better than the Daleks/pigs/Depression/New York storyline by the same author last year, but still a bit scattershot. If I had to explain to someone how the ruthless warriors, the killer car fumes, the global military organization, the geek wunderkind, the mind controlled soldiers, the cloned companion and the aborted nuclear launch all fit together, I think I'd have a brain embolism. Better to think of it as a collection of cool moments (Donna alone on the Sontaran ship) and blah ones (Martha watching her clone die, Sergey Brin describing his breeding program) than try to view it as a story.

Iron Man 2:

Iron Man 2 will be about Nick Fury recruiting Tony Stark to help battle the super-terrorist known as the Mandarin. And the Mandarin will have super-dragon Fin Fang Foom on his side, according to sources familiar with the movie's storyline — but there's no script yet. [Cinemablend]

Batman 3:

And the third Batman movie will feature a lot more of Two-Face, the villain who debuts at the end of The Dark Knight. But the Joker won't be in it, largely due to Heath Ledger's death. And the story will be based on the graphic novels "The Long Halloween" and "Dark Victory" — especially the second one, which charts the rise of Two-Face and introduces Batman's sidekick Robin.

Indiana Jones:

Here's a new TV spot for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, with a bit of new footage. In particular, Shia tells Indy: "Get on, gramps!" [ComingSoon.net]

Doctor Who:

The first (lukewarm) review of Saturday's Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Daughter" is online. Jenny, the Doctor's you-know-what, has amazing abilities and challenges the Doctor at every turn. Martha gets captured by the fishlike Hath, while the Doctor and Donna fall in with the humans, who want their help in continuing their war against the Hath. The Doctor tries to stop the fighting and explores "what makes a person a person." Martha and the Doctor hardly have any time together, making their farewell at the episode's end a bit hollow.

And there's the usual mixture of spoilers and red herrings from Digital Spy, including Martha helping to set a fish's dislocated shoulder, the Doctor putting a gun to someone's head, Donna calling the Doctor's daughter "G.I. Jane," and the Doctor being surprised what he finds when he puts a stethoscope to Jenny's chest. [Doctor Who Insania]

The Doctor-less episode, "Turn Left," happens in a bombed-out looking Leeds with corrugated tin covering people's windows. And Donna has some kind of animatronic insect on her back, and people keep commenting on it. Soldiers (including UNIT soldiers) are running around, and one soldier tries to arrest Donna because of her back-insect. The Racnoss spaceship (from Donna's first appearance in the 2006 Christmas special) is attacking Earth. Towards the end of the episode, Donna runs out in the street carrying something that looks like a "vortex manipulator" and gets hit by a car. Rose appears and kneels next to Donna's body.

Rose is in a relationship with someone in the alternate universe, and it's not Mickey. And there are more rumors the Daleks recruit former Prime Minister Harriet Jones to become a new Supreme Dalek. The Supreme Dalek is red and has three head-lamps instead of the standard two.

Also, more details on the final scene of the fourth season, which we reported on a while ago. Donna falls down, and the Doctor and Grandpa Wilf help her to her feet. Then Wilf and the Doctor have this parting moment as the Doctor is leaving:
Doctor: Get a lot of this. Atmospheric disruption. (The rain stops.) Bye, Wilfred.
Wilf: What about you? All those friends of yours....who have you got?... Next time, at night, when the stars come out... I'll look up and I'll think of you... out there on your own... on her behalf...
The Doctor turns, walks sadly across the road, gets out his key, opens TARDIS and goes inside... Also, the Doctor shouts "You can never tell her!" at Wilf right before this exchange. The person watching filming surmised that maybe Donna has lost her memory of him.

And it's rumored the Chrismas special is based on the "One Doctor" audio play, in which a con artist pretends to be the Doctor. And those bronze Cyber-Shades are fakes cooked up by the fake Doctor (David Morrisey.) But then the real Doctor and the real Cybermen show up. (I think this is a bit dodgy, actually.) [Doctor Who Forum]

Lost:

It turns out Sawyer isn't in that scene of the Oceanic Six getting on the raft after all — that was Desmond's stand-in. And Desmond is definitely in the scene. [Lost.sc]

Both Sawyer and Locke are still alive and on the island in the future "Oceanic Six" timeline. And it sounds as though the finale's "spectacular kiss" may be between Sawyer and Kate. Also, the next two seasons will include more stories about the Oceanic Six's adventures off the island. And here's another new preview clip from Thursday's episode. [E! Online]

Smallville:

In the tail end of Smallville season seven, Lana gets better and then decides to leave town, which is why she's not in next year's episodes. [E! Online again]

Tonight

Another slow Monday in scifi-land. FX is showing Elektra at 9 PM, just in case you want a yardstick to compare Iron Man to. And Sci Fi is showing a ton of Star Trek: Enterprise episodes, which means there's an even chance you'll see Jolene Blalock decontaminating herself if you watch all of them.

Robert Downey Jr. is on Jay Leno tonight at 11:30 on NBC, probably gloating about how many truckloads of cash Iron Man made over the weekend, and making completely random predictions about the storyline of Iron Man 2.

And at 1 AM Tuesday, AMC has The Cell, in case you want to fantasize that it's your disturbed unconscious that J.Lo is wandering into.

Tuesday

The History Channel has a new Mega Disasters at 9 PM, with an episode called "Hypercane." Somebody offered me some Hypercane at a party recently, but I heard that stuff eats away at your sinuses. Actually, here's the blurb:

65 million years ago a massive asteroid crashed into Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. 75% of all life on earth vanished; but could a single asteroid have been the lone killer? Theories about what happened after the impact have been speculated on by the entire scientific community. Ranging from global warming to lethal worldwide firestorms, ideas have been put forth—but none have been proven. Then in 1995 a new theory claimed that a powerful mega storm known as a Hypercane caused the extinction. The Hypercane allegedly reaches 20 miles into the stratosphere and has wind speeds of up to 700 miles per hour. 3-D computer animations will reveal how this storm could have brought down nearly all life on the planet.

FX is showing Batman Begins at 8 PM, in case you want to refresh your memory before The Dark Knight comes out.

And at midnight, Encore has the original Alien.

Wednesday

The History Channel has another new UFO Hunters at 10 PM, featuring analysis of NASA's actual UFO footage. If it comes from NASA, it must be real, right?

Encore has Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me at 8, and Waterworld at 9:40.

Emile Hirsch is on Letterman, talking up Speed Racer, which comes out Friday.

Thursday

There's a new Smallville on Sci Fi at 8 PM. Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor from Star Trek: Voyager, takes some time out from his role on Stargate: Atlantis to play a funny monk guy who has a whole serve-the-Traveler thing for Clark. Here's the trailer:

And then there's a new Lost at 10:02 PM, "Cabin Fever." Things heat up on the freighter, and meanwhile we learn a whole lot of new stuff about Locke. Here are a couple of preview clips:

Sci Fi has the first two Resident Evil movies at 7 and 9 PM.

And at 4 AM Friday morning, AMC has 1958's Earth Vs. The Spider, about hot-rodding teens who have a run-in with a giant arachnid. But is one of that motorcycle-riding kids named Mutt?

Friday

Sci Fi has another unstoppable Friday night lineup. At 8 PM, Sarah Jane Adventures has two more episodes, the end of "Warriors Of The Kudlak" and the first half of "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?" "Kudlak" has a somewhat disappointing revelation that you can see coming a mile off, but still features some great ass-kicking Sarah Jane moments. And "Whatever Happened" is basically pure win, making you realize quite what a dire place the world would be without our hero.

And at 9 PM, there's a new (to Americans) Doctor Who episode, "Planet Of The Ood." It's the return of those subservient wormy-faced slave creatures from season two's "Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit," now with more nonsensical exobiology. The episode in general doesn't make much sense, but it does feature some good moments between the Doctor and Donna. You can read my recap here. And here are the first 10 minutes of the episode:

And at 10, there's the sixth episode of Battlestar Galactica season four, which means we're halfway through the 2008 episodes already. This is the episode featuring Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Nana Visitor as another cancer patient, and that means you can expect to see lots of President Roslin battling her own cancer. I wonder which book the Admiral will read to her from this week. Here's the trailer. Poor Gaeta:

Also, at 8:30 PM, TCM has 1959's On The Beach, one of the earliest post-apocalyptic movies ever, where survivors of a nuclear war wait in a submarine off the New Zealand coast for the radiation to reach them.

Saturday

There are two Spectacular Spider-Man episodes starting at 9:30 on The CW, including a new episode featuring the Green Goblin and John Jameson, the astronaut son of newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson. And another classic Spider-villain may make an appearance.

The Cartoon Network has a new Ben 10: Alien Force at 10, followed by a new Transformers: Animated at 10:30. Transformers features "the debut of Wreck-Gar as well as the return of the Angry Archer."

IFC is showing the scifi-ish Human Nature at 9 PM — it's one of the lesser known Charlie Kaufman scripts, but still very worth checking out for its weird neuroscience and mice learning to eat salad with a knife and fork.

And the Sci Fi Channel has B-movies all day from 9 AM to 5 AM, including quite a few Sci Fi Original Movies. I want to list all the titles, just because they make me giggle: RAPTOR ISLAND, CARNOSAUR, CARNOSAUR 2, CARNOSAUR 3: PRIMAL SPECIES, PTERODACTYL, ROCK MONSTER, AZTEC REX, SABRETOOTH, and RAPTOR. I think Aztec Rex is appearing for the first time ever, at 9 PM and 1 AM. Somebody is excited, to the point of making a celebratory LOL-dinosaur.

Sunday

At 7 PM, Sci Fi has the movie Hybrid. It's either the 1997 movie about people who go into a dark, scary lab and get chased by a half-something, half-something else monster. Or the 2000 movie about the guy in the 1930s who was obsessed with creating a new breed of corn. Or maybe... it's a hybrid of the two! Anyway, whichever hybrid it's about probably won't lurch out of the bath and blather about Kara Thrace causing the apocalypse, sadly.

And FX is showing I, Robot at 8 PM.

In his regular column in the UK Doctor Who Magazine, Davies wrote about the surprise appearance of Rose at the end of season four's first episode:

When I wrote the very first draft of 'Partners In Crime' in September, I just got the devil in me. What if, I thought, what if we could transmit something, just once, that no one sees coming...? ...This is Donna's series, and if anyone had caught a rumour of Rose's return, there was a genuine danger that Catherine's launch could have been overshadowed. We owed it to her to carry this off successfully.

'Dr Who' boss explains shock Rose cameo [Digital Spy]

Speed Racer:

Here's a featurette that IGN Movies posted, showcasing Matthew Fox's Racer X character from Speed Racer, including a few snippets of footage we haven't seen before. It looks as demented as everything else I've seen from the film. [IGN Movies]

X-Files 2:

There's a rumor whooshing around the web that Mulder and Scully are still a couple in X-Files 2... but Scully "has someone on the side." After searching all over, I tracked the rumor to the movie's IMDB FAQs, which cited co-writer Frank Spotnitz as a source. (The item has since been removed, but here's the Google cache.) [IMDB]

Iron Man:

Iron Man comes out today, which means this may be the absolute final chance to obsess about whether Samuel L. Jackson has a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo. Now MovieHole is claiming there definitely is a moment of Jackson as pirate-eyed spymaster Nick Fury after the credits of the theatrical release (but not the version screened for critics). Says MovieHole:

At the end of the credits, Stark comes home and finds Nick Fury in his living room -staring towards the window. He then turns to tell Stark he's the not the only superhero in the world. Stark asks who he is, and Fury turns and says he's "Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D, and I'm here to talk to you about The Avengers Initiative".

Incredible Hulk:

Here are some new Incredible Hulk stills that came out on the heels of that new trailer. I have to admit, the more I see of the CGI in this movie, the more it feels like it belongs in a 1990s haunted house movie. [MovieHole again]

Doctor Who:

One viewer has an absolutely airtight theory about what's going to happen on this Saturday's Doctor Who:

I think that the gas isn't actually gas, but really it is a teleporter device where 1 particle of gas teleports 50 sontarans. Then they will shoot the humans and afterwards, get out a shotgun. Then they will shoot the humans heads off, take their heads and put them on their feet. Then they will go ice-skating and fall in love with the doctor. They get married and have a child; hence 'the doctors daughter'

Also, some guy who knows someone says that David Tennant's Doctor will make a cameo appearance in the second season of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. [TenMartha4Ever]

And Alex Kingston (ER)'s character in the upcoming Steven Moffat super-library two-parter "Silence In The Library"/"Forest Of The Dead" is named Professor River Song and may have her own sonic screwdriver. And "Turn Left," this season's Doctor-lite episode, may take place in an alternate universe where military rule is in force and everyone has a strange insect-like creature on his/her back. (Is this the alternate universe where Rose lives, or another one?) In the final two-parter, Dalek creator Davros may do a "Borg Queen" style entrance. And there will be tons of different Daleks, including some fitted with claws. [Death Ray, via Keith]

In this Saturday's episode (really) the Doctor shepherds Donna into the TARDIS for safety, but then the Sontarans teleport the TARDIS aboard their ship. With the world's sky turning poisonous, the nations of the world unite to launch a nuclear strike against the Sontarans, in spite of the Doctor's warnings that it'll do no good. After the adventure is over, Martha's ready to go home to her fiance, but she's physically restrained from doing so. And here's some dialogue from the episode, plus a new clip:
Donna: God, the air's disgusting.
Doctor: Its not so bad for me - go on, get inside the TARDIS —
(holds out key)
Oh. Never given you a key. Keep that, go on. That's yours. Quite a big moment really.
Donna: Yeah, maybe we can get sentimental after the world's finished choking to death. [Planet Gallifrey]

DC Universe 0:

The 50-cent DC Universe 0 comic which goes on sale today (possibly by the time you read this) ends with Barry Allen, the fast-running superhero known as The Flash, coming back from the dead. Which means almost everyone who's ever died in DC Comics is now alive again. Good for Marvel Comics leaving Spider-Man's Uncle Ben dead — except for that alternate universe version a couple years ago, but that hardly counts. I think. [Superhero Times]

7. When one person displays a new and bizarre ability, that's the work of evolution, because survival of the fittest is making only the strongest genes survive. Actually, if there's only one person in the entire world who can shoot cherry-colored death rays out of his eyes, that's not evolution — that's a mutation. It's evolution if the cherry-eyebeam guy has a easier time mating with Famke Janssen than anyone else, and thus makes tons of babies, all of whom can do the red-eyeblast thing. Mutations are only the building blocks of evolution, not the result of evolution. Go back to school, Mohinder.

6. Evolution is puberty. In the X-Men, for some reason, bizarre powers always manifest themselves whenever they first start getting hair in new and unusual places. And it's always treated as though the person's development as an individual is a form of, or a manifestation of, evolution. It's like puberty goes hand in hand with the sudden emergence of weird new genes, and your changes as an individual is confused with the transformation of your whole species. I also love the idea that there's one X-gene, which somehow activates a whole range of powers, from heat-vision to being a chicken-man.

5. Creatures with totally different ancestors will end up looking sorta the same, just because. Biologist and science fiction author Joan Slonczewski says a big problem with most science fiction is that it depicts convergent evolution as happening all the time — that's why aliens look sort of human, and aliens and humans can inter-breed. In fact, divergent evolution is way, way more common than convergent evolution. Divergent evolution is when creatures who share a single ancestor — like, say, mammals — evolve to be very different from each other over time. You're not likely to get just one unique creature in an ecosystem, like the great worm in Dune. Instead, you're likely to get a diversity of creatures from one ancestor. Convergent evolution, when creatures with different ancestors evolve to be similar because they're filling a similar evolutionary niche, is much rarer. (An example of convergent evolution, says Slonczewski: birds, bats and flying fish.)

4. Your children will inherit your body-mods. Maybe the earliest evolutionary theorist was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) who believed in the idea of "soft inheritance," where you pass on your acquired characteristics to your kids. If your body adapts to circumstances during your life — for example, if a particular organ gets smaller because you use it less — then your children will inherit it. (That organ will be smaller in your kids.) In fact, only genetic changes are passed on. But that doesn't stop science fiction from presenting changes to a creature's body, or non-genetic adaptations that you make in the course of your life, as being heritable. (Lamarck's ideas are sometimes mischaracterized as, "if you lose a leg, you'll have one-legged children," but he wasn't that silly.) In David Cronenberg's 1979 classic The Brood, a cutting-edge psychotherapy causes patients to manifest their darkest emotions in their own bodies — and one transformed woman gives birth to monster children that she can control telepathically.

3. Humans could evolve overnight into a new species in just one generation. In Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, humans' junk DNA suddenly starts expressing, and certain people are strongly sexually attracted to each other. These chosen people's children, the ones who survive, are a radically different species from homo sapiens. And Bear shows how this is just like when homo sapiens suddenly sprung up overnight, nearly 200,000 years ago. The new breed of humans are super-intelligent and mega-awesome. But it's pretty unlikely that super-rapid evolution would happen within only one generation.

2. It's possible to de-evolve people with rayguns or whatnot. Because evolution is a straight line and always happens in totally predictable ways, it's also a reversible process. You just need the right "de-evolution" device, like in the totally radical movie Mario Bros., where Dennis Hopper's King Koopa, who turns anyone who opposes him into a primordial sludge. Or, in the Next Generation episode "Genesis," a mutated T-virus from whiner-in-chief Reg Barclay causes everybody on the ship to start devolving — including Captain Picard, who starts turning into a lemur/pygmy/marmoset hybrid. Because Picard's too multi-faceted a guy to devolve into just one type of creature. Something similar also happens in the Doctor Who episode "Ghost Light," where an evolution-doubting clergyman is somehow de-evolved into an ape.

(Which reminds me: How exactly did "Ghost Light"'s interplanetary explorer/surveyor character travel all the way across the galaxy to survey Earth, but manage to be unaware of evolution? Is Earth the only planet where creatures don't just stay the same forever?)

1. We can predict evolution and accelerate it with technobabble. Random weird things, like going really really fast, or getting exposed to weird radiation, or just eating some weird fish, will cause you to evolve 1,000,000 years into the future, like in that Voyager clip above. And then there's the totally AWESOME Voyager episode where the crew meets the long-distant descendants of Earth's dinosaurs, who are spacefaring and intelligent. Janeway deduces they're the great-great-great-great-grandkids of the dinos by asking the computer to predict dinosaur evolution millions of years ahead. Because, of course, evolution is completely predictable in a vacuum, and you don't need to know anything about enviornmental factors.

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

Iron Man:

As you've probably heard, Iron Man doesn't feature the rumored cameo by Samuel L. Jackson as eyepatch-wearing superspy Nick Fury. At least, not the version shown to preview audiences. But some people are claiming the final version released to theaters will have an extra added scene that was left out of the preview version, in which Jackson shows up as Fury, recruiting for a group called the Avengers. Whether this is towards the end of the film, or after the end credits, I'm not sure. [JoBlo]

Also, director Jon Favreau has a slight cameo in the film as Happy Hogan, a supporting character from the comics who will be much more important in the second film, if any. And the DVD of the first movie will include a deleted scene at a party in Dubai where Tony meets Ghostface Killah and they know each other. [Superhero Hype]

Robert Downey Jr. says he thinks the Iron Man sequel will deal with Tony facing his newly godlike power, and Tony will turn to drink as he contemplates the enormity of what he's done. And Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts gets a boyfriend, and Tony says he's happy for her while taking a drink to console himself. Then Tony gets drunk and shows up at Pepper's place during her date, dressed in his Iron Man suit, demanding to know what the boyfriend has that he doesn't. [Sci Fi Wire]

Superman: The Man Of Steel:

And speaking of actors who aren't named Edward Norton but still have script ideas, Brandon Routh has some hints about the sequel to Superman Returns, which seems to be officially called Superman: Man Of Steel. Routh says this time around, Superman will have a "good villain that we can actually have physical altercations with." Because Superman didn't get to punch anyone/anything in the first movie, so it'll be good to have more punching this time. And there'll be more humor from Clark, plus more funny Clark/Jimmy interactions. And maybe things between Superman and Lois will be more smoothed over, and Lois "can afford to be nicer to Clark." Routh still believes Superman and Lois will end up together. [Superhero Hype]

Wolverine:

The new Wolverine-focused X-Men prequel movie, due out in 2009, is much darker than the X-Men trilogy, and is more along the lines of Batman Begins, promises star Hugh Jackman, who could star in another 10 or 11 Wolverine movies. [MTV Movies]

Star Trek:

The new Star Trek prequel movie starts with the crew going off on the start of their five-year mission, says Uhura actor Nichelle NIchols. [TrekToday]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is scouting for two new recurring characters: Becky, a "hot teenaged hipster" who may be John's new girlfriend. And Catherine, an "unusually earthy" business leader in her early 40s, who's sort of a female Bill Gates. [Ask Ausiello]

Battlestar Galactica:

On Battlestar Galactica, the search for Earth may not t