Thor:

Here's a new casting call, which gives another hint about where the bulk of this film takes place:

[ISABEL ALVAREZ] 50's/60's A sweet small town gal who has lived her whole life in the same little town where she grew up. She's faced plenty of ups and downs in her many years but has everything she's ever wanted or needed in the small slice of Americana, family, friends and the best little restaurant in town

Avatar:

A new pic shows Sully looking at a cool display. [IGN]

Lost:

The show is going to offer us an answer to one of the show's "oldest and most confounding" mysteries, and it's going to be an answer none of us expected to get. [EW]

The show's focus will remain on the characters rather than the mythology, says Damon Lindelof, and season six will explore their relationships (including romantic ones) — just not in the way you expect. And yes, we'll get an answer to the mystery of the numbers, but it may not satisfy us. Also, we may be reading too much into the hieroglyphics on the new poster which seem to say "Who is the leader?" [E! Online]

But talking to USA Today, Lindelof hints that nothing in the show's posters is accidental. Also, the mystery of why Walt was so special, and why the Others wanted to study him, will be addressed in the final season, and will attain a new significance — even if Walt himself doesn't come back. There's still a chance that Cynthia Watros may come back as Libby, but it's up to Watros. Also, Frank Lapidus has been promoted to "series regular" this season. (Yay!) We won't have to wait until the very final episode to start getting the big answers. [USA Today]

Someone sneaked around the show's filming locations, and they found a bunch of new stuff. Out in the jungle near where Claire gave birth, there's a crude lean-to with animal skins on it. At the beach camp, there are those lean-tos made of airplane wreckage and sticks that we showed you a while back. And there's that crude grave we showed you as well. Otherville is looking run-down and destroyed. The Flame has been fixed up and has an updated Dharma logo on it. And there's a new pic of the back of the Temple. [SpoilersLost]

A supposed inside source says Locke is a "man about town" on the island, reconnecting with a bunch of the original Losties, including a gun-toting Claire... and he finds time to get stabbed by a genuine Iraqi. [SpoilersLost]

The Box:

Did you realize this Richard Kelly Twilight Zone-esque movie is coming out a week from Friday? I feel like we've barely heard about it. But fear not, there are TV spots airing on network TV, and here they are:

And a new poster. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Dollhouse:

Eliza Dushku Twittered about the ongoing filming:

We're shooting way outside LA in an underground bunker w/ methane meters, exit plans (one way in & out w/ a 100+ crew!), firearms. G.I.Jane.

Could this be a return to the post-apocalyptic universe of "Epitaph One"? Fingers crossed! [Twitter]

Fringe:

Seems like the show will keep playing with the tension of everybody getting clues that Peter is from an alternate universe, but Peter being unaware, for the rest of the season. [EW]

Leonard Nimoy has one more appearance on the show that he's already filmed — but he hints that he may not come back at all after that. The producers want him to come back, to deepen the "alternate universe" mythology, but he's waiting for them to come up with a story arc, and he'll see if it's compelling. [MTV]

Sarah Jane Adventures:

Here are some more pics from the wedding episode, in which the Doctor shows the kids the TARDIS. [BlogtorWho]

Doctor Who:

Another interview about the animated story "Dreamland," this time with the animator. [BlogtorWho]

Supernatural:

Sam and Dean swap bodies in episode 5x12. (I want to mail Kripke a copy of that Quantum And Woody TPB, but it's probably too late for a shout-out.) [EW]

And here are some pics from the upcoming episode "The Real Ghostbusters". [SpoilerTV]

And a casting call for episode 5x12, "Swap Meat":

[GARY] 17 years old (would prefer 18 and overs), puny, gawky, bespectacled, smart and geek (think "McLovin" from "Superbad"), he's a naive, amateur Satanist who works at a fast food joint and longs to break free from his wealthy, stifling parents. He's granted one of his wishes, and starts to live the life he's always wanted. Please denote age next to your suggestions. GUEST STAR

[NORA] 16 years old (would prefer 18 and over), she is a cute, smart, alternative girl (in the vein of Thora Birch in "American Beauty") who is a naive, conflicted high school student, she's an amateur Satanist, she's not really interested in hurting anyone; she's mostly going along with Gary and Trevor's plot because she has a crush on Gary. Nora's follower-type nature is squelched when she becomes possessed by a dark force. Please denote age next to your suggestions sptv050769. Please submit all ethnicities. GUEST STAR

[SpoilerTV]

V:

Here are a couple of new promos, teaching how you can join the "Peace Ambassador" program:

Also, episodes three and four will be called "A Bright New Day" and "It's Only The Beginning." [VisitorSite]

FlashForward:

Here's a new awesome promo for tonight's episode, featuring Dominic Monaghan:

Paula Newsome (Women's Murder Club) will be joining this show as a doctor, for an arc starting in early 2010 — speculation is, she plays an Ob-GYN. [EW]

Smallville:

Kelly Souders talks about the Lois/Clark relationship:

They both have a few issues, so things never go as smoothly as you think. But what's great about the relationship, because it's sort of more adult, mature relationship, is it actually brings their issues up to the forefront, and makes them start dealing with them instead of being the younger versions of themselves, where they might not have been that conscious of it.

And in episode 9, "Pandora," we go to the future and deal with the fallout from Lois' sex dream, and there is some Lois skin. That episode plays like a finale, and we'll see an alternate ending for everyone in the cast. Also, in the next few episodes, Clark may contemplate wearing glasses. Chloe will have an unexpected love interest, and on a related note, she'll meet a superhero who's not all he's cracked up to be. (Booster Gold? That's my guess.) [EW]

Also, not only will the Martian Manhunter be back, but so will Zatanna. And — this feels like a spoiler at this point — the producers are still talking about Clark eventually turning into Superman. [MTV]

And here are a ton of promotional photos of the upcoming episode "Kandor," on top of the handful we showed you yesterday. [SpoilerTV]

Heroes:

Greg Grunberg Twittered a picture of himself wearing "scary" makeup for an upcoming scene — and it looked sort of zombie-ish. (The pic is down now, alas.) [Twitter]

Also, there are five clips from next Monday's episode, "Once Upon A Time In Texas," but I can't find them in an embeddable format. If you really care, they're here: [TV.Com]

And here is the synopsis for the following episode, "Shadowboxing":

Claire investigates the sorority attacks, which may have a link to Noah. Elsewhere, Peter finds his job performance improved after gaining a new ability, which also provides a means to help Emma, and Sylar escalates his assault on Matt.

[TV Guide]

Chuck:

Here's a casting call for episode 3x10, "Chuck Vs. The Tic Tac":

[COLONEL JAMES KELLER] (55) but needs to be able to play younger in flashbacks. Military man for life, yet relatable and casual despite his rank. GUEST STAR. All ethnicities

[SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder and Mary Ratliff

As near as I can find out, there's only one horror movie that actually involves Alzheimer's directly: in Renny Harlin's Deep Blue Sea (1999), scientists are trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's. So (as one naturally would) they genetically engineer SUPER SHARKS with amazing brains. What can possibly go wrong? Oh, yes. The shark thing, is what can go wrong.

Here's a good chunk of that movie, which conveniently starts out with the foolhardy scientists explaining their scheme to Samuel L. Jackson, and ends with indications that things are going wrong. (I do not think Jackson, at any point, utters the words, "Get these motherfucking super-sharks out of this motherfucking seabase." More's the pity.)

But that movie just uses Alzheimer's as a plot device. If you're looking for stories that actually play on our fears of Alzheimer's and what it means to our tenuous grasp of personhood, you have to look a bit further afield. And as Sir Michael Caine says, Alzheimer's is scarier than any shark, no matter how big.

But here are the ways in which i think we're starting to see the rise of horror that takes about Alzheimer's, obliquely rather than dead on.

Forgetting:

There's been a rise in stories about people's memories getting siphoned off. I have a vague but vivid memory of reading a comic book (or maybe seeing a TV show) with baddie who exults in erasing people's memories, and says things like, "I just took your memories of your mother," with a smirk. But I can't for the life of me remember where I saw this — almost as if my memory had been erased, fiendishly. And googling has turned up nothing. (Any suggestions?)

(Update: Thanks to everyone who commented. I think Ian Cyr is right, and it's a recent issue of Green Lantern Corps. by Dave Gibbons et al., featuring a baddie with mental powers. Although, someone reminded me The Surgeon General does something quite similar in Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and, yes, Gibbons again. But it's fascinating how many other examples people came up with.)

In any case, there are lots of other examples of recent stories about mind-erasure. Dollhouse is an obvious example, which asks explicitly what's left of us after our memories have been stolen away. (And comes up with a moderately hopeful answer, over time: There's still something that remains even after our minds are gone, although it's hard to define.)

Heroes has the walking plot device, the Haitian, who mostly just shows up and zaps some of your memories whenever HRG or someone else needs a little memory lapse — then wanders off to do his own thing, until he's needed to henchman up again. But there is that one super-creepy bit where HRG is interrogating his former mentor in Russia, and he gets the Haitian to zap bits of the mentor's memory, piece by piece, gloating the whole time. You get the full scariness of being unable to remember your mother, or your wife, or other bits of your past.

Torchwood season two had Adam, the guy who insinuates himself into your memories. Smallville had Lex getting some super-advanced electro-shock therapy, which erased seven months of his memory, and being shattered as a result. DC Comics grappled with the ethics of the magician Zatanna erasing people's memories in "Identity Crisis." Acheron Hades in the Thursday Next series has shown a propensity for zapping people's memories as well. Various X-Men have gone around zapping memories of late, including Rogue, Professor X and Jean Gray. (And in
one recent X-Men comic, Emma Frost sadistically erases an assassin's only happy memory, vowing to do worse if the assassin comes back. In Mark Millar's Authority issues, the Evil Doctor also gets off on nuking people's memories.

The 2001 movie Time Lapse features someone who's been dosed with a memory-erasing drug, rushing to stop an evil nuclear scheme before his memory goes away completely. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind featured people paying to have memories selectively erased, only to discover how terrifying that is in practice. And Dark City was all about people's memories being rearranged every night.

I feel like this is just scratching the surface — there's a lot of fiction right now talking about how fragile your memories are — and how, if they go, what's left may or may not be recognizeably "you."

The shambling hordes:

And then there's the fact that we're seeing a proliferation of zombie movies, which are all about people who are falling apart physically and have lost all of their personality and sense of identity. As someone who's lost a few close relatives to Alzheimer's, slowly and horribly, it's easy for me to recognize how zombies are a metaphor for this dissolution of the self. People with Alzheimer's are still conscious and aware, they still move around and seem to respond to stimuli, but as disease progresses they get less and less capable of reasoning or having any kind of meaningful interaction with anyone around them. It's heart breaking and horrible — the person you knew is still there, but no longer really him- or herself.

As I pointed out a while ago, the zombie movie which comes closest to depicting the awfulness of losing a parent to Alzheimer's is Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, which is also sometimes called Braindead:

Quasi-zombie movie I Am Legend even makes the link clearer by showing that the "zombies" still have vestiges of humanity and are capable of caring about each other. In the movie's original ending, Robert Neville is able to get through to the zombies and help them remember they used to be people — he comes up with a cure for their condition, and is able to get through to them. Because their real problem isn't that they're feral or mindless — it's that they've forgotten themselves.

The movie Fido also plays with this fairly explictly, by having the main character's dad become a docile, enslaved zombie by the end. He's still recognizeably the same old dad, but the biggest change is that he's lost most of his mind.

Obviously, a huge part of the zombie fad simply comes from the fact that they're a cool way to have an apocalyptic scenario — they're unstoppable and nasty, and if they bite you, you're screwed. They have many of the hallmarks of a good monster: loud, relentless, biting, overwhelming. But at the same time, as the zombie genre continues to expand and diversify, people are using zombies as metaphors for a bunch of different things — and one of those things, clearly, is having a loved one disappear, inexorably into the mists of forgetting.

So if it's true that we're only just seeing the beginning of the onslaught of dementia in our rapidly aging societies, you can expect to see more fantastical and science-fictional stories that attempt to capture the madness of it all. As Caine says, no monster can ever be as scary as Alzheimer's... but some monsters can help us come to terms with it.

Thanks to Kevin Schmidt, Morgan Johnson, Capt. Snowdon, Lynae Straw, Michael Wilson, Martina de la Cruz, Nivair H. Gabriel and anyone else I missed.

The difference between Sierra and the other Dolls turns out to be that Sierra never consented to be a Doll. But none of the other Dolls could really give informed consent or know the kinds of engagements they signed up for. We're pretty clear that Sierra was being raped, but what about Echo and Victor?

All who consent to becoming a Doll are informed about what that entails... perhaps not in the greatest detail, but they are aware that they're giving up their minds and bodies for a number of years. But in Sierra's case, she was clearly violated. Echo's case is unique as well. As we established in Season One, she had no choice but to "volunteer".

Now that we've seen Sierra drawing the black smudges everywhere, it looks less and less like Topher's mindwiping can really remove the trauma of an engagement from the Active's mind. So are all the Actives being damaged by their experiences, or is Sierra a special case because Nolan was a repeat client and her original abuser?

All the Actives may experience trauma in one way or another, but Sierra's case is different. Repeat engagements with her original kidnapper/abuser? That's damage that runs deep.

Where was Ballard in this episode? (My theory is, you wrote this for season one and it got held over. Am I right?)

I like your juicy theory but Paul was absent for a much less interesting reason. We did have an exchange between Boyd and Topher that explained Paul's absence (Echo was on idle therefore Paul was given some downtime) but we had to cut that out for running time. We also had to cut a shirtless Topher bit from the end montage. DVD extras perhaps?

So Boyd is turning a blind eye to Echo's self-awareness, and Victor and Sierra are walking around holding hands and sharing a bed-coffin. Has the Dollhouse just gone completely soft all of a sudden?

Soft? Aren't we all softies? Don't we all want Sierra and Victor to hold hands and snuggle in a pod? Especially after Sierra's been through hell? We're giving you what you want America! Or the very small portion of America who watches us. And Boyd isn't necessarily turning a blind eye. He leaves an all access key card for Echo in her book. Which we may or may not deal with later. Tune in many weeks from now to find out what happens!

And finally, this episode felt, in general, like it had stronger ties to "Epitaph One" than any season two episode so far. And Sierra's violation feels like the leading edge of the apocalypse — what happened to her will happen, sort of, to everyone else. Is it just her bad luck to be the first casualty? Or are you making a statement about rape leading to dehumanization and depersonalization for everyone, not just the actual victim?

Wow. You must think we're smart or something. Yes? To what you said. In the question part. I'll go with yes.

Yes, the show saw a massive drop in ratings when it was moved to Fridays in the first place, but since then, it's managed to grow its audience and, unlike Dollhouse, keep the growth... and in doing so, move its network up as a whole, as well:

The show matched last week's season high (which also held up in the nationals, btw). That means The CW tied ABC for third place at 8 p.m. (18-49 is not their sales demo, but they still keep an eye on it). Regardless of the network's mixed feelings about "Smallville," any show that gets the network out of fifth place among the industry's standard measurement is tough to ignore.

Does this success mean that the show has broken the Friday curse - and might get a tenth season? It's beginning to look much more likely. What is keeping this show alive, and can someone get some to Dollhouse quickly?

'Betty,' 'Dollhouse' slip; 'Smallville' retains gain [THR Live Feed]

Oh, and this is your spoiler warning: I'm going to assume you saw last night's episode already. If you haven't, go and watch it. Twice.

Dollhouse must have been testing our faith on purpose. I went into season two convinced this was one of the all-time great TV shows, exploring thorny issues of gender, power and identity in a way that few other shows ever manage to hint at. And then the season's first two episodes left me wondering if I'd just been hallucinating. Last week's serial killer/Chaucer mash-up was a huge leap in the right direction — but last night's episode, "Belonging," was the real thing. I totally apologize for saying Glee is better than Dollhouse.

So yes, this was definitely a prequel to the unaired "mindwiped Mad Max" episode, "Epitaph One," which is on the Dollhouse DVD set, and which must be watched multiple times to appreciate its awesomeness. Watch "Belonging" and "Epitaph One" back to back, and you'll see many of the same strands uniting them both, including Topher's remorse, Adelle's despair, and Rossum Corp.'s determination to treat all the Dolls like property. This is a major step forward on the road that leads to everyone on Earth being stripped of his or her identity at the whims of a few wealthy psychos.

But last night's episode didn't just give us a bit more insight into how our merry band of mind-erasers turned into basket cases in a world of shit. "Belonging" also answered one of the big questions lingering on from season one: Just how complicit were Adelle, Topher and the rest in the unspeakable violation of Sierra? Last year, we saw that the psycho-freak Nolan Kinnard had propositioned Sierra, and she'd repeatedly turned him down. So Kinnard had the Dollhouse erase her brain and program her to be in love with him — and now he (and anyone else with money) can have her whenever he wants. It was one of the creepiest episodes of this supremely creepy show, and it made us wonder just what monsters these Dollhouse people are. And now we know.

It turns out that Adelle and her crew didn't know about Kinnard's scheme to get the ultimate revenge on the woman who rejected him. Instead, Kinnard fooled them into thinking that she was a crazy lady who'd be better off as a Doll — he'd pumped her full of drugs to make her appear psychotic. (Because, I guess, mind-wiping actually changes your brain chemistry and can erase chemical problems in the brain?) And they just thought Kinnard was an especially avid client.

But last night, everyone learned the truth — and it's because Sierra's mind-wiping couldn't erase how she really feels about Kinnard. After every one of her lovey-dovey engagements with the man who enslaved and destroyed her, she paints black horrible shapes. Echo, who's rapidly gaining awareness, notices this and brings it to Topher, who starts poking around. And then we get the scene above, where the Rossum Corp. scumbag played by Keith Carradine basically tells Adelle that they're already slave-merchants, and she should get over herself. You can see how this leads directly to the notion that Carradine's character, or someone similar, should live in Victor's body full-time, which gets raised in "Epitaph One." (When I demanded a Sue Sylvester-like villain on Dollhouse the other day, I had in the back of my mind that Carradine was joining the show as a Rossum scumbag, but couldn't remember the details. He's pretty much just what I was hoping for though.)

So, there you have it: Dollhouse is pretty much admitting it's a show about rape. Sierra never consented to any of this, and whatever bleach Topher is pouring into her synapses isn't strong enough to erase her true feelings on the matter. And the repeated, systematic violation of Sierra is one of the early-arriving horse-people of the apocalypse. This kind of shit is what's going to bring the whole world down.

And just like Joss Whedon promised, we're starting to see the people in charge make defining choices. This time around, Adelle makes the wrong choice, and Topher kinda, sorta makes the right one — although, what exactly did he think would happen if he sent Sierra with her original personality, Priya Tsetsang, to confront Nolan Kinnard? How exactly was that going to turn out well? The slow emergence of Topher's conscience is one of the great marvels of the show, especially since we know how it's going to turn out. Last week, it was "Topher has ethical problems! Topher!" and this week, Topher finds out his great mitzvah, helping the crazy woman, was all wrong. Whiskey started the ball rolling, of course, and I'm actually perversely glad we get to see Topher stew over this without Whiskey/Claire there to torment him actively. It would be so much more clear-cut if Whiskey could stand over him and tell him how bad he is.

And of course, Dichen Lachman absolutely rocked out as Sierra/Priya — after Enver Gjokaj's standout episode last week, this was Lachman's turn to prove her mettle and she totally rocked. Both Fran Kranz and Lachman were amazing. Check out this scene from the end of the episode, the little pauses and gestures. You can see that Sierra really wants Topher to mind-wipe her, and Topher really doesn't want to do it. The way she sits back, like she's ready for her treatment. The way he closes his eyes. Great stuff.

And yes, Jonathan "Riker" Frakes did a great job directing this — it half makes me forgive him for the abomination that was Clockstoppers. The weird bit where we're seeing Topher's eye through a funny lens was flashy and neat, but a lot of the rest of the episode was understated and awesome.

And Eliza Dushku was great as Echo this time around, with the story of Echo's awakening taking some huge leaps forward. And her speech to Boyd about the coming storm was some nifty foreshadowing of the apocalyptic chaos we've already glimpsed. And Dushku had one of the most important speeches in the episode, about the nature of power, towards the beginning. It's easy to miss, but her beautifully delivered speech sets up a lot of the episode's themes:

No, sweetie. It's about the power. There's a ton of money in this room, but that's not power. Nolan's a medical genius, shortlisted for the Nobel — That's power. Art is power, because they (meaning the wealthy idiots) can't make it. So what if you make Nolan all cute and nervous? Why not ride that a little? Make them think they have the power. Our time will come.

There are so many ideas in there, it's hard to know where to start — Echo has been programmed by the Dollhouse to convince Priya that sleeping with Nolan is a good idea, and she does this by trying to convince Priya that she's the powerful one in this situation. She's powerful because she's the only one who can create her art, which is a limited commodity. And she's powerful because she's beautiful and can use her wiles to get Nolan to help her career. (It's a very "Wife Of Bath" notion.) Money isn't power, says the mindless plaything who's been programmed — at great expense — to say that.

Because, of course, money is power, or at least one of the manifestations of power. And the moment Priya tries to assert her actual power — simply by leaving the room — she gets cockblocked, and shortly afterwards, she no longer even exists as a person. And the whole rest of the episode proves, more or less, that people like Nolan really do have all the power. Unless you stab them repeatedly in the chest, and are lucky enough to know someone with amazing "cleaner" skills, like Boyd.

I think all along, I've championed Dollhouse not just because of its many moments of greatness, but also because of its potential — which is much greater than almost any other television show possesses. Dollhouse's concept, and its dark, complex characters, open up so many possibilities for storytelling about the stuff that we're all dealing with in our lives — the people who want to turn us into what they want us to be, the compromises we all make to get along — that if this show lives up to even a fraction of its potential, it will be legendary. So when an episode actually delivers on the show's wealth of possibility, I get frightfully excited.

My one quibble about this episode is, once again, the Dollhouse being awfully slack. Boyd spends a lot of time piecing together the signs that Echo is becoming way too sentient... and then does nothing about it. Meanwhile, Victor and Sierra are practically humping each other in the main spa concourse, and people just think it's cute. Weren't the dolls supposed to be... I dunno... kind of empty-headed when they're in their mindwiped state? A mere erection on Victor's part was cause for a red alert a year ago, and now it's "everything goes."

Random thought: I am willing to bet this episode was written for season one and held over — because Paul Ballard wasn't in it, and I have a feeling writers Maurisa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon wrote it for a Ballard-less Dollhouse, then couldn't revise it to make Ballard fit in.

"Every hero becomes a bore at last." – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Yes. I'm opening with a quote. But it's a quote by a guy named Waldo, so you can picture him in a striped shirt if you find that pretentious.

There. Does that make it go down smoother? Good.

Besides, it's true. After a certain amount of time, heroes lose their luster. Ethical missteps accumulate, continuity drags, and personality quirks that were once fun are either watered down to blandness or begin to grate on a fan's nerves. Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy, and that's the truth. (I am piling on the literary allusions today.) The movies, tv shows, books and comics that strip down and re-examine the traditional superhero trope are beginning to outsell the trope itself.

As a reactionary, I say that you will pry my traditional superhero comics out of my cold, dead hands. As a capitulationist, I say please let me offer a few suggestions.

Murders Are Always, Always, Always, Entertaining:
What can you get if you like a good, old-fashioned murder mystery but aren't willing to listen to the legal jargon and watch extended crime scene technician montages? Not a damn thing, which is why the first two characters I'm suggesting would be a success. Slam Bradley is a hard-drinking, rough-living, tough-talking old-timer. Jason Bard is a guy who is basically stuck together with masking tape, both because he's the kind of honorable man who faces danger and the kind of idiot who was shown in at least one comic scratching his own head with the barrel of his loaded gun. Naked. No, I'm not kidding.

They're both private detectives, and neither has much regard for either technology or legality. Together they would star in a comic that's all breaking down doors and inappropriate relations with clients and absolutely no talk about residual heat signatures or torts.

Isn't it time that we, as consumers, stopped anticipating legal complications in our crime investigation and started anticipating good, old-fashioned sleaze? Isn't it time we just heard about the people at the lab doing tests on evidence instead of seeing it done set to a song by The Who? Isn't it time we brought back the old guy in a trench coat saying ‘Oh, one more thing,' before nailing the suspect to the wall? And then hitting him with another suspect?

I think so, my friends. I think so.

My Name Is Andy:
The old saying ‘tragedy is when I cut my finger and comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die,' really comes into play here. When last we saw Marvel Comics' Awesome Andy, the Android, he was feeling like this:

Hilarious, right?

Andy had a bad week, and decided to go off into the world to find himself. He's an android who can absorb the abilities of anyone around him, so finding himself could be a complicated issue. I think of it as more of a marketing opportunity. Emo Andy, Punk Andy, Country-Western Andy, Ironic Jerkbag Andy; this is something that anyone can relate to. This comic would be a mash-up of Dollhouse, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and My Name Is Earl.

I'm sure some of you are saying, ‘What in the name of god could save such a terrible concept?' This: The main character can do anything, anything at all, except talk. Except talk.

This doesn't just save the comic. This turns it into a potential TV show. Think of all the shows I just mentioned. Now imagine the leads can't talk. I can see the smiles on your faces from here. They're beautiful.

Sex and the Desperate Cougar Housewives Done Right:
If there is one flaw in the current crop of shows marketed to women, and there aren't, there are many, but if there were one, it would be that despite all evidence to the contrary, the characters are still treated as if they are decent human beings.

This new potential comic doesn't have that problem. What it has instead is fantastic crossover potential. Over the years, most of the heroes have picked up their share of floozies. From the banal to the murderous, said floozies have tried to lure the heroes away from their significant others too many times to count. Such stories tend to be uninteresting when told from the point of view of the protagonists. What we need is them told from the POV of the temptresses.

Put Cat Grant, Lana Lang (Would-be Mrs. Kent-Els, both of them.) on a team with Marianne (the ex-homeless, romance-novel-writing, flower-shop-attendant and Green Arrow lover), with Madame Masque (The Tony Terrorizer) and you'd have a pretty dull comic. You need something to spice it up, and I have just the person.

Namor. Admit it, an egomaniacal fish man really puts the spice in that team. The comic would still be irresistible. It would be like a sashimi cupcake. Everyone would know it was bad, but they wouldn't be able to resist. Go ahead. Try not to read. You will fail. This, I promise you.

The Best Office Ever:
Comics can't just be romance and murder. We need some substance to go with all of that flash. And where does America usually get substance? Why, we borrow it from Great Britain, of course. We've ripped off Jane Austen novels and Shakespeare plays, but when even those proved too much for us we moved down the culture ladder to television shows. The Office was a smash hit on two continents, but it lacked something comics could provide: sociopaths. Which brings us to the comic that absolutely, unquestionably, urgently, must be made: Wayne Enterprises Human Resources Department.

There are many rants on the internet saying that Bruce Wayne's money could prevent crime more effectively than Batman's reign of terror. Those ranters clearly choose to ignore what Bruce Wayne does with his money.

By night Batman passes out cards for Wayne Enterprises to prostitutes, junkies, and petty criminals caught in the middle of a suitably sympathetic crime. By day Bruce Wayne roams the halls of the Wayne sky-scraper, handing out college scholarships to anyone who looks like they might have the talent or ambition to contribute meaningfully to the company. But that's just day-to-day stuff for the long-suffering staff of the Wayne Enterprises HR Department.

In both comics and cartoons, Wayne Enterprises has been shown to have a Hire-A-Felon policy in place. These felons can be anything from reformed armed robbers to the guy who likes to carve a puppet out of the nearest available piece of wood, pretend it's his boss, and have it plan diabolical crimes. That's right. The characters in the HR division spend their time throwing going away parties for bright-eyed innocent employees going off to highly marketable places like art school, finding jobs for hookers whose marketable skills include being able to talk, and explaining the sexual harassment policy to a guy who is basically the villain from the Saw movies.

Add Steve Carell to this bunch:

And it's gold. Gold.

A Fox rep tells io9 that this is the airing schedule for Dollhouse between now and 2010:

Friday, Oct. 23 (tonight) - Episode 204 (9PM-10PM et/pt)
Friday, Dec. 4 - Episode 205 & 206 (Summer Glau episodes 8PM-10PM et/pt)
Friday, Dec. 11 - Episodes 207 & 208 (8PM-10PM et/pt)
Friday, Dec. 18 - Episodes 209 & 210 (8PM-10PM et/pt)

That will leave three episodes of the show's 13-episode order for season two, yet to run. As for rumors that Fox is burning through those episodes of Dollhouse as quickly as possible, in order to clear a space on its calendar for the past-life detective show Past Life on Fridays in January, they're not entirely true. At least, Fox says there will still be "at least" a few episodes of Dollhouse left to run in January. (Or more, if the show gets a miraculous extension, which does seem admittedly unlikely.)

Also, says a Fox rep, "Past Life's premiere has not been announced at this time. So no, it's not scheduled for Fridays in January."

Oh, and according to Jenna Busch at Sci Fi Wire, tonight's episode is breathtaking and worth cancelling your Friday plans for.

Thor and The Avengers

Jon Favreau might have wondered how the supernatural aspects of Thor would blend with the more scifi bits of the other Avengers movies, but Brian Bendis isn't worried:

"My advice is, has been, and will be, that much like the comics, you look at movies like the 'Oceans' movies that have all these different flavors, you put the flavors together and you cook 'em," Bendis told MTV News. "It absolutely can be done."

Like Joe Quesada, Bendis has read the Captain America script, in addition to the Thor and Iron Man 2 scripts. And he's pleased, saying they go somewhere better and different from where the comics have gone. [MTV]

Paul

To research their film about an alien and a pair of friends who tour America's famous UFO sites, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost did their own UFO tour, starting in LA and ending in Colorado. Although most of the dialogue for the alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) has been recorded, it's going to end up being tweaked and re-recorded. Why? The pair were pushed to make an R-rated film, and now Rogen's dialogue needs to be raunchier. Jason Bateman's character — an agent chasing the group — is named Lorenzo Zoil, a goof on the drama Lorenzo's Oil. [SCI FI Wire]

New Moon

Jacob and Edward face down in the new TV Spot:

Lost

The crew was filming near a school in Hawaii yesterday. Fast fingered tweeters nabbed photos of Matthew Fox and described the scene: Jack drives down the street in his old Jeep, and runs into a school called Saint Mary's Academy (is this the same as Central Intermediate School from the other day, or a different school?) in quite a hurry. [Dark UFO]

Despite rumors to the contrary, Harold Perrineau did not turn down an offer to appear in the final season. In fact, he was never asked. He has no idea if he'll be back, but says he'd jump at the chance to return and say his goodbyes. [E! Online]

Dollhouse

We've known for a while that this week's episode "Belonging" focuses on Sierra's backstory, and it will be a real nightmare; we'll learn that she's a missing and exploited woman. Plus, Adele gets to unleash her moral fury on Sierra's abuser, telling him, "You're a raping scumbag one tick shy of a murderer." But Adele and Topher will face some moral quandaries of their own.

We've seen lots of pictures of Alexis Denisof's Senator Daniel Perrin hanging out with Echo in next week's the next episode The Public Eye, and we'll actually see them in bed together. They don't actually have sex, but Echo will be in a lace bra and panties during the scene in question. Also, there's a moment that reminded the pre-reviewers at E! of the BSG episode where we find out Boomer's a Cylon. So is Daniel a doll? It would explain the Dollhouse-type pajamas we saw him wearing a while back. In fact, the episode will be full of sleeper agents, twists and turns, moral relativism, and role reversal.

Summer Glau's character Bennett will have a surprising connection to another character on the show, and Miracle Laurie will be back as Madeline, formerly November, to break Paul's heart. [E! Online]

In the ominously titled tenth episode "The Attic" (written by none other than Dr. Horrible's Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen), we'll encounter Clyde, a genius who "holds the secrets to the Dollhouse." The episode will also feature Matsu, a proper businessman. [Spoiler TV]

Fringe

Sebastian Roche is replacing Thomas Kretschmann as the head of the hybrid supersoldiers from the other dimension. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Caprica

Ryan Robbins, who played Charlie Connor in Battlestar Galactica is about to start shooting on an episode of Caprica. He'll play a character named Diego who is very important to Clarice's storyline. [Battlestar Blog]

And here's a closer look at Athena Academy, where Zoe and other members of the Caprican elite go to school. [SCI FI Wire]

V

The Wall Street Journal has a great interview with Morena Baccarin. She talks a bit about the politics of V, saying she watched a lot of political debates when modeling her alien diplomat. She also mentions that, in the pilot, we see an alien sleeper cell, and humans will get the sense that the people in their communities may not be whom they see.

Will Baccarin eat a guinea pig like Diana did in the original series? She says she hasn't eaten anything odd yet in any of the episodes she's filmed, but the producer did ask if she had any issue with rodents. [WSJ]

In the second episode, "There Is No Normal Anymore," Erica and Father Jack have decided they're anti-Visitor, and soon find they're being tracked by a V Seeker. Chad thinks he blew it with his exclusive first interview with Anna, and looks to be more investigative in his next newscast. Dale Maddox has gone missing, and both his wife and law enforcement start questioning Erica about his whereabouts. [Spoiler TV]

Also, Scott Wolf is way smiley in the episode's promo photos. [Spoiler TV]

Heroes

It looks like we're back in the Burnt Toast Diner in "Once Upon a Time in Texas." [The ODI]

The title of the twelfth episode is "Upon This Rock." [Spoiler TV]

Smallville

There have been a few small changes to the episode schedule. The two-part "Society" will be the season's eleventh and twelfth episodes, and "Persuasion" will be episode 13. [Spoiler TV]

The Sarah Jane Adventures

The Mona Lisa comes to violent life in Mona Lisa's Revenge, airing November 12th and 13th. The gang goes on a school field trip that quickly turns disastrous as art comes to life. The kids find themselves trapped without Sarah jane's help when Mona Lisa vows to release her terrifying brother from his prison. But Clyde has the key and everything will depend on him. [Blogtor Who]

And David Tennant returns! Here are images of the Tenth Doctor in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. [Blogtor Who]

Additional Reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.

(And no, I don't believe Dollhouse is for-certain doomed — the ratings are picking up slowly, and the show still has a shot. The fact that it's being left out of November sweeps, and won't be back until December, is a very bad sign, but we've already seen miracles. Joss doesn't seem to think it's necessarily the end. So, you know, be mighty and all that.)

Dollhouse is one of my favorite TV shows right now, but it's not my absolute favorite — sadly, that honor belongs to Glee, which isn't even science fiction. It's not just the show's brilliant musical numbers, its visual flair, or its amazingly rich character-driven comedy. It's not even the relentless pushing of the "it's okay to be different" message. It's the storytelling — even in a year that has seen Torchwood: Children Of Earth and the final half-dozen episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Glee has been making me see whole new possibilities for television as a unique medium, with its own storytelling toolkit.

So here are a few things we'd love to see Joss Whedon bring back to Dollhouse after his visit with Glee.

1) The pacing. That's actually the main thing that jumps out at me every time I watch an episode of Glee. They pack so much into one episode, and none of it feels forced. Last night's episode would have been ten episodes, or maybe even a whole season, of any other show. The Puck-dates-Rachel subplot alone would have spanned several episodes and featured a whole host of scenes of them discussing it and other characters reacting. The bit where Mr. Schu and Sue Sylvester are suddenly doing a dance number together — was it a dream sequence? Was it an imaginary story? No! — it came out of nowhere, and then made total sense.

No other television show burns through plot lines as fast as Glee, and it's exhilarating to watch. It makes other TV shows feel like they're doling out story in little doses, with a teaspoon or something. And it makes each episode of Glee feel more like a movie.

Dollhouse, in particular, has a problem with pacing. It was worse in season one, when Fox pushed the "remote-free viewing" idea, in which every episode had limited commercial interruptions and Whedon's crew had to fill 50 minutes instead of 42 minutes per episode. But the pacing continues to lag quite a bit in season two. Whedon has done faster-paced television before — many Buffy season two episodes rush forward as if they're on fire — but maybe it's time to return to that kind of downhill-racer story-telling. Like, for example, maybe instead of the assignment of the week, we could get the assignment of the next ten minutes?

2) Fun villains. Okay, so Joss probably can't put a gun to Jane Lynch's head and march her over to the Dollhouse sets. If he tried, she would probably disable him for life using her retractable ginsu blades. But maybe Dollhouse could use some more characters who actually enjoy being evil? Adelle has her moments of smugness, and Alpha seemed to have some fun with being nasty, in the tail end of season one — but they both mostly seem tormented. Dollhouse is full of morally gray people who feel really bad about all the awful things they're doing, and what's better to put that into relief than giving us at least one character who just revels in his/her badness? I'm holding out hope for Reaper's Ray Wise, as the head of another Dollhouse, in some upcoming episodes. Also, it's possible we'll be meeting some more high-up Rossum Corp. people who can show us more of the full-blooded nastiness we've only glimpsed so far.

3) More fantasy sequences and montages. Quinn's "You Keep Me Hanging On" sequence last week was just insane — and Dollhouse has shown lots of potential to go to the weird montage/dance sequence/bling-covered fantasy place. Just watch its unaired pilot, which is on the DVD box set. There's so much crazy jumping around between Echo as a gangster and Echo as a ballroom-dancing wedding date, and everything is colorful and zingy — I feel like maybe some of that spirit got lost in the show's revamp, after Fox nixed the original pilot. But it wouldn't hurt to get a bit of that back. I'm picturing mindwiped synchronized swimming, and brainwashed hot-air ballooning, set to showtunes. Come on, why not?

What do you think? Could Dollhouse use just a touch more Glee?

Inception

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

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

[MTV Movies Blog]

Thor

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

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

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

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

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

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

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

2012

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

X-Files 3

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

Eclipse

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

Dollhouse

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

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

Supernatural

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

Heroes

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

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

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

FlashForward

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

Smallville

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

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

The Sarah Jane Adventures

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

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

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.

Monday:

House -
A police officer with a fear of heart disease heads to Princeton General on FOX at 8 PM. Because that's what apparently killed the last three generations of men in his family at age 40, he's terrified of the same. But was that really what it was? Also, the Darth Vader dictator's case is still hanging over Chase's head (I love House, but I'm so over this storyline) and House faces ghosts from his past ("ghosts"? We can hope).

Heroes -
On NBC at 8 PM, the newly found Sylar is led by Samuel on a voyage of self-discovery, while the arrival of Hiro proves fortuitous for Emma and her abilities. Meanwhile, Peter is asking Noah for help finding someone to heal Hiro.

Big Bang Theory -
Wil Wheaton guest stars as a participant in a trading card competition. Turns out Sheldon has a deep seated resentment for him, so he enters the competition too. Also, Wolowitz asks Penny to set him up with one of her friends, on CBS at 8:30 PM.

Extreme Paranormal -
A team of paranormal investigators, on A&E at 10 PM, use extreme measures (such as replicating deaths to "invoke" the ghosts of those killed in a 1980 riot) to find what's haunting the New Mexico State Penitentiary.

Movies:

Experience the flaming-skull magic once again! Nic Cage is Johnny Blaze in Ghost Rider on FX at 8 PM.

Tuesday:

Nova -
Lizard expert Eric Pianka tracks down the elusive monitor lizard in Australia, and showcases them using "lizard-cam" technology on PBS at 8 PM.

Ghost Lab -
The brothers head to Chicago on Discovery Channel at 10 PM and also to the Mortuary in New Orleans.

Movies:

A San Francisco detective helps an alien cop track down an otherworldly murderer in Alien Nation, on the Fox Movie Channel at 8 PM

Wednesday:

Spectacular Spider-Man -
It's Valentine's Day and Peter jeopardizes his relationship with Liz Allen to stop a meeting between Tombstone, Hammerhead and Doc Oc. And on Disney XD at 9 PM, only Spider-Man can head off the impending gang war.

Ghost Hunters -
On Syfy at 9 PM the team probes Chicago's Congress Theater's claims of floating apparitions and disembodied voices.

MythBusters -
Which has better gas mileage: clean cars or dirty ones? On Discovery Channel at 9 PM, it's the "hangover episode," where Tori, Kari and Grant study myths stemming from beer and liquor.

Destination Truth -
Incan ruins are investigated on Syfy at 10 PM and the team looks for evidence of a humongous bird in Alaska.

Eastwick -
Some sorta of crazy moon beam eclipse thingy is affecting the women on ABC at 10 PM, and it's leading them all to free their inhibitions. Meaning, Kat gets freaky on top of a piano, Roxie and Mia have an awkward moment with the cute brothers they're each involved with and Joanna runs a troubling story.

Movies:

On Disney at 8 PM, Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire. One of Sabrina the Teenage Witch's aunt has a date with The Nanny's employer, who happens to be a vamp, too.

Thursday:

FlashForward -
On ABC at 8 PM, Mark has to answer to the Senate, in order to get the team funding and I hope we get to see more of his flash-forward in the process. Janis (the possibly pregnant-in-the-future FBI agent) questions her flash in regards to her current relationship status. Also, Olivia finds out some interesting tidbits about Mark's flash — possibly about the prevalence of alcohol in it?

Movies:

Bill Murray and crew are headed out to protect the city on AMC at 5:30 PM for Ghostbusters II.

Friday:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold -
On Cartoon Network at 7:30 PM we finally get to hear Neil Patrick Harris as the Music Meister as he uses his power to hijack a satellite, so he can control people with music... and take over the world. Yay for singing villains.

Ghost Whisperer -
On CBS at 8 PM, the whisperer must help Chad Lowe come to terms with his past and the ghost that's making him pay for it.

Smallville -
Oliver's kidnapped by Victoria (aka Roulette) and warned that his life is danger. Then, when he's arrested for Victoria's death, Oliver turns to Chloe for help. Also, Ms. Lane is upset with Clark for keeping Oliver's suicide attempt a secret, all on CW at 8 PM.

Dollhouse -
Finally, the way Sierra came to be a doll is revealed when she faces her Rossum Corp connection as an Active, on FOX at 9 PM. And of course, her link includes obsession and murder. This episode is directed by Jonathan "Will Riker" Frakes, who also directed several episodes of Roswell.

Stargate Universe -
Destiny seems primed for a collision with a star, and of course all her power goes out, too, leading the crew to consider abandoning her on Syfy at 9 PM. With a name like Destiny, though, are they serious? Apparently so, as they hold a lottery to fill the only working escape shuttle.

Sanctuary -
Magnus takes in those ousted by the Cabal in the attacks on the Tokyo and London sanctuaries, and Kate sets a one-of-a-kind creature free, on Syfy at 10 PM.

Movies:

An Alien breeds inside Sigourney Weaver, on AMC at 8 PM.

Saturday:

Movies:

Silly college kids take a wrong turn and end up mixed up with real (live?) deadly ghosts in Ghost Town on Syfy at 9 PM.

Sunday:

Movies:

On Encore at 10:15 PM Pierce Brosnan tries to warn of an impending volcanic eruption a little too late, in Dante's Peak.

The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibbard has a theory that Thursdays are just too full of programs aimed at the same audience to give Fringe a fair chance in its new timeslot:

[W]hen you look at what's on the night, you have two of the coolest soaps ("Grey's Anatomy" and "Vampire Diaries"). You have the two arguably hippest crime procedurals — "Fringe" and CBS' "The Mentalist." You have two of the most fashionable comedies, NBC's "The Office" and "30 Rock." And you have the most geek-friendly freshman drama, "FlashForward." Also crowding things is "Survivor," a highly rated show fans tend to watch the night it airs lest they're spoiled the next day. This doesn't read like a single-night's lineup, it's like a list of Entertainment Weekly cover stories. Very contemporary, wholly or semi-serialized, blog-friendly shows. And there's only so many titles a viewer will watch in a single night.

Hibbard argues that this has mix of programming is arguably the reason behind Fringe's fall in ratings this season:

The idea to put "Fringe" here was sound: "Grey's" and "CSI" and "The Office" are slipping. There's an opportunity to put a new sheriff in town. This move wasn't Fox devaluing "Fringe," this is Fox showing faith in "Fringe." But then ABC and The CW and CBS put their new cool shows on Thursday too.

Thursday isn't the only night this is happening; Friday sees Stargate Universe air at the same time as Dollhouse, with the younger-skewing, but still geek-friendly Star Wars: The Clone Wars showing on Cartoon Network. So what's the answer? Moving shows around, timeslot-wise? Investing in more DVRs or watching them online? Or dropping shows because nobody can watch everything...?

Did Fox blunder moving 'Fringe' to overstuffed Thursdays? [THR Live Feed]

A "leaked" memo from Adelle DeWitt appeared the other day, telling the Dollhouse sales staff that they need to redouble their efforts. A second appeared earlier today, explaining that the Dollhouse's communications department would be at a Rossum event, one that "offers the company and its research major national exposure."

Other than giving us another look at how the Dollhouse operates, what is the purpose of these memos? They might be part of an alternate reality game, but could we be seeing some of the consequences (and maybe the Dollhouse sales staff) on screen? Or is this all just about creating the sense that the Dollhouse could exist in our universe? After all, Senator Daniel Perrin details his investigations into the Dollhouse on his Twitter feed and his personal website.

Leaked Dollhouse Memos [Scribd via Metafiler]

Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman tells The Hollywood Reporter that even though Fox isn't happy with Dollhouse's ratings, the network plans to air all 13 episodes — although during November sweeps, Fox might have to air something else, to goose up its numbers. Fox won't make a decision about giving Dollhouse the other nine episodes of season two until after the first 13 episodes finishes airing — which means the show still has a chance. But it also means the show will have to shut down production after it finishes shooting episode 13, and then ramp back up if it gets another order.

Joss Whedon tells THR he's currently shooting episode eight, and he'll make sure the script for episode 13 gives fans a degree of closure, in case the show does not come back after that:

We'll definitely have closure, but will leave some doors open. When we got our first numbers, which were bad, the first thing [Fox president of entertainment] Kevin Reilly said was, 'You'll have all 13,' which was great. They're not going to pull the rug out from under us.

Beckman says he didn't want to face the wrath of Whedon's fans for yanking Dollhouse before the end of its current block of 13 episodes, given the fact that he's already pissed off the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fans:

If you cancel it, you're an asshole; if you renew it and then don't put it back on, you're an asshole. I'm still paying for 'Terminator.' 'Dollhouse' has a small rabid fan base that in the world of social media seems bigger than it is. We gave them another season knowing full well we were going to burn in hell if we pulled it.

It really may not be too late to save Dollhouse — last week's episode, "Belle Chose," did see a nice uptick in ratings, and luckily all of those people saw a much better episode than the first two of the season. If the show keeps improving in both ratings and storytelling, we might just see a second miracle. On the other hand, it's nice to know the show's not planning on leaving us totally unsatisfied. (And I'm betting that closure includes another glimpse of the "Epitaph One" future.)

Spider-Man 4:

MTV's readers voted in a poll that the Lizard is the villain they'd most like to see, with Carnage coming a close second. In response, director Sam Raimi says he loves the Lizard, but doesn't know much about Carnage. (And let's hope he picks just one villain this time around.) Gary Ross is still revising the screenplay, but Raimi explains the criteria that will determine the next movie's villain:

What we're trying to do right now is really understand the journey Peter is going to go on this time and have the villain maybe be a counter to that growth, something that he has to overcome. Or maybe he has to grow in a way to overcome the villain, because there always seem to be stories of coming of age, of a young man growing up and learning things about life, so once we are identifying the exact movement that Peter has to grow to, I think the villain-and we're trying this right now; we're trying to choose a villain based on who would be the proper counter to that growth, so we really have dramatic conflict.

How many times can one hero come of age though? [MTV]

Dollhouse:

Here are all the promo pics from "The Public Eye (Part 1)," the first episode featuring Summer Glau as Bennett Halverston, the "genius programmer" at the DC Dollhouse, who gets Echo strapped to a table. As interesting as the pics are their captions: Like, apparently Summer's character is "seeking revenge" on Echo?

Plus here's a new season two promo pic (click to enlarge). [SpoilerTV]

Lost:

Reader Michael visited the beach where they film all the beach scenes, back in August — a mysterious structure, maybe part of that new mysterious building, was there. But none of the castaways' camp, and none of that airplane wreckage we've shown you pics of recently. Which means the camp stuff and the airplane stuff was definitely added more recently. Here are a few of Michael's pics from August. [Thanks Michael!]

Also, Locke and Sawyer were just filming some scenes together, and Saïd Taghmamoui has come back to film some scenes as Caesar. [SpoilersLost]

Sarah Jane Adventures:

Here's the "cinema trailer" showcasing the third season of this awesome Doctor Who spin-off. [BlogtorWho]

Supernatural:

"Changing Channels," the penultimate episode of 2009, is the one in which Sam and Dean get trapped in various parodies of TV shows, including a Japanese show, a classic sitcom, Grey's Anatomy, and CSI. And since Richard Speight is coming back, it's very likely the Trickster is the culprit. [Supernatural.TV]

V:

Here's the official description of the pilot episode:

In the premiere episode, "Pilot," an image of Anna (Morena Baccarin), the leader of the V's, is projected worldwide as she speaks about everyone joining together and no longer being divided by country or separated by fear. She wants us all to unite, and is counting on a very important component of human nature — devotion. At first considered a threat, the V's quickly become a fascination and a link to things that lay just beyond our reach. For Tyler (Logan Huffman), a teenaged boy, the V's are his ticket to being a part of something big and something that offers hope. To Chad (Scott Wolf), an egotistical news anchor who wants to further his career, his exclusive interview with Anna begins his desire to dominate the airwaves. Father Jack (Joel Gretsch), a priest with questioning faith, is hesitant to believe in the Visitors' righteousness and goes outside of the church in search of the truth. There are other dissidents who believe the Visitors aren't who they say they are, including Ryan (Morris Chestnut), who is faced with a life-altering decision when the V's show up. And to FBI Counter Terrorist Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell), who discovers, while investigating a terrorist cell, what lurks beneath the alarmingly human exterior of the Visitors, resisting this new world has never been more important — and never has there been more at stake. This truly is the dawning of a new day.

[SpoilerTV]

And here are new TV spots, focusing on InaraAnna. [VisitorSite]

Heroes:

Elizabeth Rohm joins the show Nov. 2 as Lauren Gilmore, a CIA agent who gets a hot romance with HRG. She describes her character:

Lauren, as we meet her in the beginning, is partners with Jack. They work in the same company, so she sort of does what he does. She's just a bad-ass kind of guy like him, but a girl... [HRG] and I have a past, that I can't say is exactly romantic, but there's definitely love between us. There was a period in time when they were incredibly close – nothing happened but they were really close – and you could see that there was a real bond between them. [Something] was almost going to happen, but he was still married at the time. So she erases her memory of when it started to become a little hot and heavy between them.

[TV Guide Magazine]

Smallville:

Here's a sneak peek from Friday's new episode, "Echo":

And here are some extra pics from the episode. [SpoilerTV]

True Blood:

Alan Ball shares what happens in season three:

After last season you would think things would sort of return to normal – but no, that's not going to happen!" Ball told TV Guide Magazine. "No, there's just as much weird stuff out there, and we're going to meet some werewolves for the first time; we're going to find out some roles vampires played in history, which is interesting and shocking and funny. It's more of the same.

He's excited about the Vampire King of Mississippi, and Eric continues to break out — plus Jessica and Hoyt will be dealing with everything that's happened. And Arlene and Terry will have more of a life and presence on the show.[TV Guide Magazine]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

During Dark Horse Comics' Buffy The Vampire Slayer panel, editor Scott Allie said that Dollhouse creator Joss Whedon had reversed his previous "No Dollhouse comic" stance:

Dollhouse? There's a chance... When Joss first told me he was going to do the 'Dollhouse' show, I said 'Well, I know you don't want to do comic right away, but whenever you want to do then, we want to do them.' He said, 'Yeah, I just don't really see how it's a comic, but if we're gonna do it, I'll do it with you guys.' And then at San Diego this year, he said 'I know how we can do it as a comic.' And that's where we left it.

If Dark Horse does end up with a Dollhouse series, they'll have the experience to do it right; in addition to their Buffy Season Eight series (With a Season Nine series to follow, possibly starting in 2011, according to Allie), the Oregon-based publisher also publishes comics based on Serenity, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Whedon's comic-only creation, Sugarshock.

BCC: "Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8" Panel [Comic Book Resources]

[Rec] 2:

Javier Botet returns as Medeiros, who's possessed and the object of a manhunt by a priest and a S.W.A.T. team. The priest needs Medeiros' blood so he can synthesize an antidote for the virus that allows demons to possess people's bodies. As with the first movie, Botet only shows up at the end of the film. The sequel has more explanations than the first movie, and is more action-oriented and commercial, says Botet. [Shock Till You Drop]

Green Hornet:

Apparently the new "it" band The Anvil just filmed a cameo where they play in a rock club and then, literally, explode. [L.A. Times via Cinemablend]

Lost:

More details on episode four, "The Substitute," from an anonymous source. (Grain of salt definitely indicated.) Apparently this is the episode where we deal with Faux Locke and Jacob's murder. And in the episode — according to source — Sun insists they should give someone a proper burial, Frank makes a comment about the "weirdest funeral ever," and Ben makes a touching speech. Someone reveals that he/she know a lot more about the island than Ben does, and the identity of Jacob's child is revealed. Also, a drunk Sawyer reunites with a familiar face, and an old friend meets someone unexpected off the island — possibly the Ben/Locke scene at the school that people witnessed the filming of? [SpoilersLost]

Some new set pics include a bit of airplane, a hole in the ground, and a weird structure. More at the link. [SpoilersLost]

Dollhouse:

Enver Gjokaj, aka this show's new MVP, says he's very clear that Victor and Sierra really do get wiped in between assignments — it's only Echo who remembers stuff. But Victor and Sierra have a love/attraction that can't be wiped. And upcoming episodes will explore Victor's backstory and we'll discover that he's actually "a very broken character." We'll realize that both Victor and Sierra were very "damaged characters." [L.A. Times]

Caprica:

Some set pics from a Syfy set visit, mostly showing the nice interior furnishings... but that one Cylon pic is fucking cool. [SpoilerTV]

Doctor Who:

More details about the upcoming animated storyline, "Dreamland." The Wire's Clarke Peters will play a Native American named Night Eagle. (Oh.) Peters says his character gets caught up in an alien invasion in New Mexico: "He's an old man, but a hell of an archer." And as you might have known, Georgia Moffett (the Doctor's daughter from last year) plays a new character, companion Cassie Rice. And David Warner also guest stars. [Telegraph]

Fringe:

A couple of photographers captured some snaps of the recent filming, including a stint at UBC involving an altercation, a fedora, and a group of children in orange outfits. More pics at both links. [My Little Insanity and BlueTeeth on Flickr, via Fringe Watch]

Supernatural:

A goofy sneak peek and a new promo from this week's episode:

Romo Lampkin/Manservant Neville himself, Mark Sheppard, will guest star in the last episode of 2009, "Abandon All Hope..." He plays a pivotal crossroads demon named Crowley. This episode, written by Ben Edlund, will be epic and leave you on the edge of your seat until the show returns in early 2010. (The show takes Oct. 22 off, but otherwise has new episodes every week, through Thanksgiving.) [Chicago Tribune]

And here's the synopsis for next week's episode, "The Curious Case Of Dean Winchester," written by Sera Gamble:

OLD MAN DEAN! - Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) discover a witch (guest star Hal Ozsan) is running a high-stakes poker game where the currency is life years vs. money. Bobby (Jim Beaver) sees the game as a chance to get out of the wheelchair and bets 25 years, but loses. As Bobby begins to age rapidly, Dean steps in to save him but also ends up turning into an old man, leaving Sam holding the bag for their survival.

[SpoilerTV]

Chuck:

Episode 3x07 will be called "Chuck Vs. The Mask," written by Phil Klemmer with Michael Schultz directing. [ChuckTV.net]

FlashForward:

A couple of sneak peeks from this week's episode, "Black Swan":

And here's the official description for episode six, "Scary Monsters And Super Creeps":

Mark, Demetri and Wedeck try to connect Janis' attack with a separate attack made on them; Olivia confronts Mark about his flashforward; Demetri and Gough track down a clue from Mark's flash; Dylan goes missing from the hospital

[SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

Those rumors that Laura Vandevoort would turn up in episode 9x07, "Kandor," aren't true. And here's the description for the Speedy episode, 9x06, "Crossfire":

OLIVER TAKES DC COMICS' CHARACTER SPEEDY UNDER HIS WING - Oliver tries to help a young street girl, Mia AKA Speedy (guest star Elise Gatien), get out of her dangerous life by offering to train her, but Mia double crosses him. Lois asks Clark to help her land a job as an on-air television host, but the two are shocked when the station wants to hire them as a team.

[KryptonSite]

Stargate Universe:

The lost-in-space show had a press day in Vancouver last week, and Collider was kind enough to post the whole thing on Youtube. [Collider]

Even though this show is such a departure from the past 15 seasons of Stargate shows, in one respect it represents a return to tradition: co-creator Robert C. Cooper says that the Stargate had become marginalized somewhat in Stargate Atlantis, and in this show it's central once again. It's the "device that allows us to tell stories. It's very much a central icon to this show." [Den Of Geek]

True Blood:

Someone you hate isn't long for this world, according to Alan Ball:

"Somebody is going to bite the dust and it's going to be really good to see them get what they deserve," Ball says.The only clue the Blood boss would reveal is that "it's a person we'll be happy to see go."

[TV Guide via True-Blood.net]

Complicated is probably underselling it, though. In every one of Joss Whedon's projects, the central romantic relationship is really deeply messed up. His romantic leads use each other, delude themselves, and often end up in tragedy. But through all of the complexity, these twisted relationships end up feeling more real than any simple rom-com example ever would.

Of course, that extends to sexuality in the context of these relationships. Whedon likes to put his characters into weird sexual situations as well. Sex tends to have unexpected consequences in reality as well as fiction, but in Joss Whedon's world, those unintended consequences are often unimaginable or even disturbing.

Here are a few of the best examples of Joss Whedon's propensity for weird, convoluted romances. (Spoilers for Dollhouse, Buffy, Dr. Horrible, and Firefly!)

Buffy and Angel

In a lot of ways, the Buffy-Angel relationship is Joss Whedon's prototype for messed up relationships. For starters, their story is essentially a supernatural Romeo and Juliet. In a dangerous and deadly way, Buffy and Angel are very much star-crossed lovers. Buffy's sole task is to kill vampires, and Angel is... well, a vampire.

Of course, things are more complex than that; Angel is not just a vampire, but a vampire with a soul. This is what draws Buffy to him. He's got a troubled past and a dark edge, but deep inside, he's essentially as human as her.

And then we get our first very Whedonesque sexual experience with a twist. When Angel and Buffy finally go at it, it is precisely this act of love that causes Angel to lose his soul and revert to the demon he once was. Buffy's feelings for him go from complex to downright wrong (and very dangerous) in a matter of moments.

It's a sophisticated metaphor for the terrible versions of themselves people sometimes become after sex. But it's also a quintessentially Joss Whedon touch: when the couple is at their happiest, things take a turn for the darkest.

Buffy and Spike

And let's not forget Buffy's even more mixed up relationship with Spike. She is repulsed by him for a very long time, seeing him as a symbol of the destructive nature and blood lust inside of herself.

But in Joss Whedon's mind, this man as symbol of self-loathing may as well be a symbol of self-loving; Buffy embarks on a twisted, self-destructive romantic fascination with Spike. The sex scenes between these two always feel a little dirty and more than a little self-destructive on both ends.

And that's not even counting the feather in the demented cap that is Spike and Buffy's relationship: Spike tries to rape Buffy in an attempt to prove to her that she really does love him. It's a strange, dark, twisted scene, but what makes it even more twisted is that this attempted rape really is the first step on the road that eventually leads to Spike's transformation into someone Buffy does love.

This arc is also steeped in metaphor. The two of them, at their darkest moments, turn to each other, and they even help each other become the people they want to be, but not before they help tear each other down to the saddest, most broken people they can be.

Captain Malcolm and Inara

Interestingly, the relationship between Malcolm Reynolds and Inara Serra is probably the most normal of Whedon's leading romantic stories, despite the fact that the two never get beyond meaningful glances and playful flirtation.

From the get-go, Malcolm disapproves of Inara's profession. She's a "companion," which, in the world of Firefly, is a specially trained, deeply spiritual individual who creates meaningful sexual and emotional bonds with their clients. Captain Mal disdainfully refers to this as "whoring."

In fact, the Captain makes it clear over and over that he doesn't respect her profession. But he makes clear, after famously punching out another man who calls her a whore, that he does respect her. In fact, his disapproval of Inara probably stems mostly from jealousy.

I imagine that if "Firefly" had continued, Joss Whedon would have leveraged this hot-and-cold romance into a much more destructive story-line. Whedon and crew have indicated that Inara was on the path to dying if the show had continued, which shouldn't surprise anyone... anything remotely romantically stable isn't destined to last in the Whedonverse.

Dr. Horrible and Penny

While Dr. Horrible remains pretty light throughout its three parts, it does offer us a pretty twisted little romantic storyline.

Billy is a meek man, but his alter ego, Dr. Horrible, seems to count impressing the cute laundry buddy Penny as one of his main goals as a world-dominator. Billy seems to think that he, as Billy, will never impress her, but Dr. Horrible certainly will.

In the end, though, when Dr. Horrible makes his big debut, he accidentally contributes pretty directly to Penny's death. With her last breaths, Penny reaches out to Billy, not Dr. Horrible, and calls instead for the Doctor's nemesis.

It is at this moment that Dr. Horrible realizes that he never had a chance with Penny, that the only way he could connect with her was as Billy. But Billy is gone now, replaced by the villain he thought he needed to become.

In Joss Whedon's hands, a sci-fi musical blog with rom-com elements still ends up a pretty dark romantic tragedy.

Pretty Much Everyone On Dollhouse

Finally, in Whedon's most recent creation, pretty much every romantic relationship has it's twisted, destructive side. For starters, the first real romantic relationship we get is the one between FBI agent Paul Ballard and his neighbor Mellie.

Just when we see Ballard getting comfortable with this woman, Whedon hits us with the revelation that she was only there to spy on him, that the personality that loves him was concocted to do just that and nothing more. The woman he loved is just a shadow in an empty room.

Needless to say, this distorts Ballard's relationship with her. Soon after the revelation, Ballard, frustrated by the fabricated nature of Mellie's love, has some angry sex with her, then runs out on her. She's devastated, yet Ballard knows it's only because she's programmed to be devastated. His relationship with her is a symbol of the depravity he's fighting in trying to shut down the Dollhouse.

But Dollhouse doesn't stop its experimental romantic stories there. The show asks what would happen when the shadows start to linger in the empty room. Could the unimprinted dolls start to develop romantic interests, despite their supposed lack of personality or libido?

The poster-children for this concept are Victor and Sierra. These two gravitate towards each other in their unimprinted state, and they also seem to feel a residual pull towards each other in some of their imprinted states.

By far the most dark and twisted relationship on Dollhouse, though, is that between Sierra and her original handler. Her handler, on multiple occasions, took advantage of the preternatural trust programmed into the otherwise blank Sierra to take advantage of her innocence and rape her.

It's one of the most twisted sexual events Whedon has yet crafted, and it further proves his fascination with strange, unconventional, or even downright disturbingly messed up romantic relationships.

What Does It All Mean?

It's clear that Joss Whedon loves complicated romantic and sexual relationships. Both love and lust are unabashedly large motivating factors for his characters, and this provides a springboard for the most interesting story-lines on his shows.

But it also makes what can sometimes be fanciful and unbelievable circumstances seem much more real. When we see a "happily ever after" story, we sometimes think, ok, but for how long can someone be so uncomplicatedly happy? Joss Whedon's stories provide us with some answers to that question.

More to the point, Whedon uses supernatural and science fictional elements to take complex, realistic romantic and sexual tension and inflate them to near mythic proportion. At the risk of going too far with the Whedon love, it's the kind of thing that Shakespeare so excelled at. In his works, gods and ghosts often became the engines for deeply affecting tragedy, helping his stories bridge the gap between intimate realism and giant mythology.

Whedon's stories do the same thing for his fans. We know life isn't simple, that there's something disingenuous about a television show that portrays all romantic stories as cut from the same simple cloth. Whedon offers us all the intricacies of our own romantic and sexual development writ large. It's the kind of thing that appeals very strongly to a select audience and will hopefully someday get the wider appreciation it deserves.

Despite a couple of flaws — which I'll get to in a bit — "Belle Chose" was Exhibit A for how great Dollhouse can be when the concept is handled right. So it's not surprising that it was written by Tim Minear, the man who gave us Firefly's "Out Of Gas" and many of Angel's best episodes.

So what's the secret these two men share? They're both in positions of great power — the college professor is tenured and at the zenith of his career, the serial killer is wealthy and connected. But neither of them can have what they want, and their fantasies about women remain tantalizingly out of reach. That's frequently the larger thread of Dollhouse: The wealthy may already own your bodies and souls, but they want to own your hearts and minds as well. They always have some unfinished business, something that people (usually women) are unable to give them freely for whatever reason.

The professor wants a young, impressionable, none-too-smart student (named Kiki!) whom he can teach and condescend to, in a sort of Educating Rita pastiche that turns pornographic. It's not just that he wants a student to sleep with him to get an "A" — watch those scenes where he tells her about Chaucer. (Or "Chauncey," as she insists on calling him, in a lovely reference to Being There.) And even though the professor really does have all the power in this situation — even disregarding the meta-point that Kiki only exists because he had the Dollhouse create her — he wants to teach Kiki that she really has all the power. He trots out the standard second-wave feminist analysis of Chaucer's Wife Of Bath as empowered woman, who uses sexuality to get what she wants. Traditionally, people viewed the Wife Of Bath as a harlot, a cautionary tale for women, but it became fashionable to view her as a feminist heroine instead.

Here's the Wife Of Bath giving the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, a hand job — from Pasolini's Canterbury Tales movie:

As that montage up top makes clear, the professor and the serial killer, Terry, both have the same fantasy about women: that the women are in control, that they're constantly using their sexuality to gain advantage, and that the men are helpless. (The only difference is, the professor enjoys this fantasy, and insists the women aren't whores — Terry thinks they are.)

So Terry, the serial killer, collects "Dolls" of his own — but instead of the mindwiped, programmed puppets the Dollhouse supplies, he creates his own, injecting people with paralytic drugs and then turning them into human mannequins — they each represent one of the women in Terry's family, who ignore him and leave him out of their games. If you really had any doubt that Dollhouse is a metaphor for how powerful people objectify and mistreat everyone, especially women, then the opening scenes of this episode ought to have set you straight.

The underlying metaphors in "Belle Chose" are by no means subtle — and that's a big part of what I love them for. They come right out and say it: the professor, a model Dollhouse client whose fantasy is incredibly harmless and almost sweet, is directly compared, again and again, to the serial killer who kidnaps women, injects them with crap, and turns them into his fully poseable figures. Both men are in denial, both men are blinded by fantasies about female power that excuse their abuse of women. And when the two finally meet — it doesn't really go well for either of them.

Because, of course, the episode takes a weird left turn about two-thirds of the way through — the serial killer's been downloaded into Victor's body, and thanks to the foolishness of Saul Tigh (helping out his fellow artifiicial person) the VictorOfTheLambs character gets out and about. So Topher tries to shut down Victor/Terry — only to swap Victor's and Echo's imprints. So now Echo is imprinted with the misogynistic serial kiler, while Victor thinks he's a hot teenage girl. Cue weird woman-hating stuff from Echo, while Victor flirts with a bunch of boys and nearly gets gay-bashed. it's almost too over the top, but it works — partly because it's great to see one more weird use of the Dollhouse's brain-switching tech.

But yeah, there were a couple of major flaws in the episode that did lose it a bit of its sheen of awesomeness:

Flaw #1: The incompetence of the Dollhouse is staggering. I mean, really. This is starting to damage my suspension of disbelief. The moment where Adelle actually turns to Topher and says something along the lines of, "We've imprinted our active with the mind of a serial killer and turned him loose — and he has no GPS locator!" made me giggle. When the characters themselves comment on how incompetent they're being, it's a bad sign. I also think Professor Skankypants should get a refund.

Flaw #2: The last act was a little bit of a let down. I'm not sure where you could go with this episode, after Echo was imprinted with Terry's sick mind, but having Echo turn into the episode's monster (which sort of happened last week as well) was a bit disappointing. And then Echo gives a long speech in which she tries to convince the three captive women to kill her — why not just have them tie Echo up? The longer Echo's speech dragged on, the less concerned I was that Terry's persona was going to reassert control, and the more I felt like the episode was just spinning its wheels.

But meanwhile, the episode also packed a ton of other awesomeness:

Adelle is amazing. Her double act with Boyd was one of the major highlights of the show, especially "There is no need to continue to translate me." And then she switches, seamlessly, into an equally great double act with Ballard, where she handles the uncle and he handles the evil nephew. So great.

All of the stuff with Paul learning to be Echo's handler was terrific — this is the first time we've seen what happens to the Actives after they're programmed, and the scenes of Echo getting a makeover were a much-needed bright spot. Echo/Kiki being all bouncy and giggly while the campy costuming guy tells her she's won a free makeover were great.

And of course, Paul is totally in love with Echo — this episode pretty much broadcast it. The whole Fast Times At Ridgemont sequence where Paul watches Echo in the shower and then watches her act flirty later on, in extreme slow-mo. That's not your standard concerned handler look — that's a seriously schmoopy/lustful look. I kind of want them to have Anthony Stewart Head guest star, so he can raise one eyebrow and say, "A Handler in love with an Active? Fascinating."

Oh, and it's official: Dr. Claire Saunders is missing, both in the sense that nobody knows where she is, and in the sense that we miss her. A lot. And it's sounding like despite Boyd's amazing tallness, Adelle really will go over his head and have Claire dragged, kicking and acting her heart out, back to the Dollhouse.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune, blogger Maureen Ryan makes an impassioned case for why we should cherish Dollhouse, especially in an era where people are trying to give Roman Polanski a free pass for raping a young girl:

"Dollhouse" sets out to do what network programs are supposed to do — to entertain — but it also examines thorny ideas about power, exploitation and gender. Few other shows on television are willing to do this (and here I have to mention of FX's "Sons of Anarchy," which has made the fallout from a rape one of the most interesting stories of the fall). But complex questions about manipulation, deceit and the ability to make self-aware choices are built into the DNA of "Dollhouse," which is about attractive "Actives" who are frequently mind-wiped and sent on missions, some of which have a sexual component...

Delving into these topics does not necessarily produce feel-good TV. But when these themes are explored with brutal honesty, the results can be extremely compelling.

She featured four clips from tonight's stunning episode:

Ryan talked to Jed Whedon about the show's themes and upcoming episodes. Whedon explained that the writers decided to do more "client of the week" episodes at the start of season two, to ease into the show's themes for new viewers. And they figured that for viewers who had seen the unaired post-apocalyptic episode "Epitaph One," the knowledge of the evil dark future would lend more weight to the stand-alone episodes.

And Whedon said that even if the show dies after the first 13 episode order of season two, the writers won't feel like they held back any awesomeness. But that's as long as they get to 13 episodes:

Our feeling is that we will be able to make all 13. Obviously, everything is subject to change, but we really think we're at least going to be able to make these 13 and we're just going to go crazy. When we're coming up with stories, we're saying, "Why not do whatever we want?" That's really fun.

I really wish Whedon was more definite about the show getting to make all 13 episodes, at least.

And Ryan was able to glean some details about the show's upcoming episodes, which all sound way more exciting than "I married a arms dealer" episodes. We're going to see Alpha (Alan Tudyk) again towards the end of November. We'll be seeing another Dr. Horrible alum besides Felicia Day — Whedon's wife, writer Maurissa Tancharoen. Whedon and Tancharoen co-wrote the Oct. 23 episode "Belonging," in which we discover more of how Sierra was "recruited" to the Dollhouse. And here are summaries of the next batch of episodes (Oct. 16 is a week off):

"The Public Eye" (Oct. 30) "When Senator Perrin (guest star Alexis Denisof) makes his stand against the Rossum Corporation, Echo (Eliza Dushku) attempts to stop his expose. Adelle (Olivia Williams) and Topher (Fran Kranz) travel to the Washington, DC, Dollhouse where they meet its genius programmer, Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau)."

"The Left Hand" (Nov. 6) "Echo and Bennett have a shocking meeting as Adelle goes head-to-head with the ruthless head of the DC Dollhouse (guest star Ray Wise). Topher sees double when he must involve Victor (Enver Gjokaj) in his espionage. Perrin finds a surprising witness to testify against the Rossum Corporation, but find he may be living in a house of cards."

"Meet Jane Doe" (Nov. 13) "After her entanglements with Senator Perrin and the DC Dollhouse, Echo finds herself out in the world-at-large as she struggles to control her multiple memory downloads. Topher discovers the dangers of science that will have devastating effects on the future, while Adelle engages in a power struggle with Harding (guest star Keith Carradine)."

"A Love Supreme" (Nov. 20) "When Echo's past romantic engagements are found murdered, the Dollhouse fears that Alpha (Alan Tudyk) has returned to seek his revenge. Adelle grows suspicious of Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) who hopes to find allies in Boyd (Harry Lennix) and Topher. The Actives turn against their handlers, leaving one member of the house permanently mind-wiped."

Come on, doesn't that sound pretty demented? [Chicago Tribune]

2012

Here's a new TV spot for Roland Emmerich's disaster porn:



[via Trailer Addict]

And a behind-the-scenes featurette goes beneath 2012's tidal waves:

[via Spoiler TV]

Transformers 3

Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman won't be scripting the third Transformers film, leaving Ehren Kruger, who worked with them on Transformers 2, as the sole screenwriter. Michael Bay says he'll be collaborating with Kruger on new toy-based characters. [CinemaBlend]

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Anna Kendrick says that her character, Scott's sister Stacey Pilgrim, is pretty true to the book, and she that most of her role involves yelling at Michael Cera on the phone. She also says creator Bryan Lee O'Malley's actual sister — also named Stacey — is an extra in one of the scenes. [MTV News]

Lost

A Lost watcher ran into L. Scott Caldwell, who plays Rose, at LAX airport, where she was on her way to Hawaii to film. No word on what she's filming, but apparently she won't be working more than a day. [DocArzt]

And Locke's wheelchair and Hurley's Hummer are visible in a recent set photo:

[DocArtzt]

In an interview, Henry Ian Cusick, who plays Desmond, says that the new season picks up where it left off then "jumps all over the place," but that the cast is still as confused as ever when they pick up new scripts. He still doesn't know what happens to Penny or Desmond at the end, and he's not sure how much will be resolved, as Desmond has become a more peripheral character. [TV Guide]

Suzanne Krull tweeted that she's off to Hawaii to film for Lost. Krull played Lynn Karnoff, the woman Hurley's dad paid to pose as a fortune teller. [Lost Spoilers]

Supernatural

We're coming up on the infamous Paris Hilton episode "Fallen Idol," in which Sam and Dean go hunting and come across a town where the residents are being killed by American icons like Abraham Lincoln and James Dean's car. Hilton plays herself (or rather a demonic version of herself — insert your own joke), and she's got the Winchester boys all tied up:

[TEN Gossip]

And the Winchester boys suit up for "I Believe the Children Are Our Future:"

[SPNsite]

Heroes

Here's the official description for Monday's episode "Hysterical Blindness:"

"SELF-DISCOVERY ROCKS THEIR WORLD AS OUR HEROES ENCOUNTER NEW ABILITIES, TRY TO RECALL PAST LIVES AND STUMBLE UPON AN UNEXPECTED KISS — MADELINE ZIMA, DAWN OLIVIERI, DEANNE BRAY, TESSA THOMPSON, ERNIE HUDSON, RAY PARK AND ACADEMY AWARD-WINNER LOUISE FLETCHER GUEST STAR — Samuel (Robert Knepper) prepares for new additions to his family, while Lydia (guest star Dawn Olivieri) warns him of the consequences. Claire (Hayden Panettiere) discovers that her roommate Gretchen (guest star Madeline Zima) may have a hidden agenda. Meanwhile, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) finds an unexpected way to connect with Emma (guest star Deanne Bray), who would prefer to stay distant. Elsewhere, a different side of Sylar (Zachary Quinto) emerges as he desperately tries to remember the person he used to be.

[CinemaBlend]

Oh, and here's that much-touted girl-girl kiss:

[The ODI]

Kavi Ladnier will return as Mohinder's ex-girlfriend Mira, probably in the November 9th episode "Shadowboxing." [The ODI]

Greg Grunberg posted a POV video to his Twitter account. It appears Matt Parkman will be on a gurney at some point, and his face will be covered with gauze:

He also takes us on a tour of the show's wall of death:

[via Spoiler TV]

Dollhouse

We'll finally get some background on Sierra in this season's fourth episode:

Sierra is forced to face her past as her connection to the Rossum Corporation leads to obsession and murder in the episode "Belonging"

[via Spoiler TV]

And here's our first look at Summer Glau as Topher's counterpart. Nice glove:

[Dollverse]

More set pics reveal Echo and Alexis Denisof's Senator Daniel Perrin in matching outfits. They look comfy, but not quite like Activewear:

[Spoiler TV]

Better Off Ted

In the ninth episode "Beating a Dead Workforce," Ted plans to surprise Gordon Jenkins, an overworked Veridian employee, with a cake as appreciation for all his hard work. But Jenkins has passed away overnight at desk. Veronica gives an inspirational speech at Jenkins' memorial service. The employees are moved to work even harder and Jenkins becomes a folk hero at Veridian. We'll meet April, a pretty young scientist, and Perry, a "cool dude" from accounting, who both listen to Lem's fake stories about how close he was to Jenkins. We'll also meet Beaver, Perry's best friend who has trouble living under Jenkins' shadow, and Johnny, who has driven all night while on meth to pick up parts for a prototype of a new sleep machine. [Spoiler TV]

Smallville

We get a look at the ravenous zombies in Friday's episode "Rabid:"

FlashForward

Here are four previews (in one video) from Friday's episode "137 Sekunden:"

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.

Only two episodes in, the Dollverse fansite is already reporting that the new season is in trouble:

Dollhouse is at real, serious risk of being pulled off air within the next few weeks due to low ratings. I have my own thoughts about the low ratings – I don't think they're down to the show but due to other factors – but the problem is it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is the numbers are way down on the networks projections. As a result, I've heard from multiple people over the weekend the show may get pulled off air. And I don't mean ‘Internet ratings experts'.

How bad are the ratings? Bad enough that the Hollywood Reporter's James Hibbard is describing them as "punch[ing] through it's previous rock bottom Friday night to discover a Fox ratings netherworld":

The show dropped 20% from last week's premiere, which was already an all-time-low for the show. I'm betting the debut of Syfy's "Stargate: Universe" zapped some viewers (cable ratings aren't available yet), but even so — this is too low for a Fox show.

More worrying, TV By The Numbers compared the profitability of the series with a possible replacement - reruns of medical drama House - and found them wanting:

The simple conclusion based on the assumptions of this model is House reruns are more profitable, even when baking in the ancillary revenue streams that exist for Dollhouse that do not exist for a House rerun. House reruns are more profitable assuming at least a 1.2 rating, even if Dollhouse has ancillary revenue and even if it only costs $650,000 per episode. If Dollhouse costs a million per episode, rather than $650,000, the House rerun is a lot more profitable.

With this sort of information available, combined with the perception that the show is once again in ratings freefall, it's no wonder that rumors have an early retirement for the show being planned, especially when many critics are echoing the thoughts of TV Guide Magazine's Matt Roush:

I know the loyal Whedon-ites will blame Fox for whatever doomsday scenario may occur, but I find the show to be at least as much at fault as the regrettable scheduling. While I find the premise provocative, I can't say the first episodes of this season have blown me away. It's not jelling for me, and besides ginormous plot holes I find hard to shrug off — I liked the twist that Ballard was the client in the season opener, but how was the target manipulated to fall in love and marry Echo, that sort of thing — it's all coming off so far as dismayingly flat, with wildly uneven performances. I know I should care about the implications of Topher being able to manipulate the Actives on a "glandular" basis, but it's hard when you feel so little for the actual Actives. (When the best work so far has been turned in by Amy Acker, who sadly isn't even a series regular, it's not a great sign.) Anyone who's read me for any length of time knows it pains me to be this critical of anything coming from the Whedon camp, and I'm still hoping some of the upcoming episodes (if they are allowed to air) will come closer to hitting the mark as several did toward the end of the first season (though none so audaciously as "Epitaph One"). I'm certainly not encouraging Fox to "put a fork" in it, given the investment so far. But I am disappointed, discouraged and not terribly hopeful.

The question may be, if Fox ends Dollhouse now, how many people will have a Firefly-esque reaction, and how many will view it as a mercy killing?

Afterlife centers on Daniel Hoffstetter, a workaholic government scientist who neglects his wife in favor of his DNA research, a choice that's all the more tragic when he collapses and dies in the first eight pages of the script. Naturally, since the entire screenplay is about Daniel, he doesn't stay dead very long, and soon wakes up to find himself in a younger, fresher body. His boss, the ethically-challenged Leonard, explains that Daniel's mind has been imprinted on a mind-wiped body. But Daniel's new longevity comes at a price: he is now an employee for the Tank, an ultra-secret branch of the government.

Like the Dollhouse, the Tank is an underground facility where the "employees" are kept isolated from the rest of the world. But instead of mindless, beautiful zombies, the employees are scientists who have been resurrected by the Tank to continue their work. Daniel is not allowed to leave the Tank, or even contact his wife. Eventually, the frustrated Daniel is able to escape, only to discover an added layer of security in the Tank's plans: the body he's been given is that of a notorious executed serial killer, making him unable to blend in with normal society.

Daniel enjoys a happy reunion with his wife, but is soon finds himself pursued on all sides — by the Tank, by the detective who captured the serial killer, and by the serial killer himself, whose personality is beginning to reemerge inside Daniel's mind. Whedon wrote Afterlife 1994 as a spec script and sold it; at some point Andy Tennant was onboard to rewrite and direct it, but it's never been made. Still, it's interesting to see how far back some of Whedon's ideas for Dollhouse go.

Afterlife Script
Afterlife Review [Scriptshadow]

Monday:

House -
James Earl Jones plays an African dictator charged with crimes against humanity, who's checked into the hospital. Meanwhile, Wilson is still dealing with the crazy-addict-without-an-outlet House on FOX at 8 PM.

Heroes -
On NBC at 8 PM, Hiro tries to forget his own problems by helping strangers in trouble. Angela tiptoes with Nathan around his past and Tracey makes a splash in an effort to get her job back.

Big Bang Theory -
Furthering complicating your DVRing, on CBS at 9:30 PM Sheldon tries to Pavlov's Dog Penny, but using chocolate, instead of ... dog food or whatever. The other single boys try to pick up women at a Goth nightclub, and let's hope that Leonard and Penny actually have better sex soon.

Movies:

Please join me in reliving your childhood, and watch Halloweentown on Disney at 8 PM. Debbie Reynolds lives in a town where Halloween is a way of life. All Hallow's Eve is now threatened and she and her grandchildren must save the day in typical Disney fashion.

Tuesday:

The Universe -
Space based weapons and battles! Tonight on History Channel at 9 PM Universe covers the possibility of such awesome epicness — what it could look like, how it'd work, and and just how destructive it would truly be. Let's hope they cover lasers and death stars.

Ghost Lab -
Discovery Channel has their own paranormal/ghost hunting team now and this new show at 10 PM sends their team to Louisiana to investigate the haunting claims of Shreveport Municipal auditorium an Myrtles Plantation. Basically, this team uses tech and science to explain strange phenomena.

Movies:

Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs are the inhabitants and humans are the dessert, is on Cinemax at 5:45 PM.

Wednesday:

MythBusters -
The boys are back in town on Discovery at 9 PM, with bullets and socks. Tonight, they solve the question: which will hit the ground first, a falling bullet or a fired one? And they also try to determine if you can literally knock someone's socks off.

Ghost Hunters -
Tonight on Syfy at 9 PM the team investigates the USS Salem for bumps... and, oh yeah, ghosts.

Destination Truth -
The destination gang travels to Chile to probe about a possible UFO sighting on Syfy at 10 PM.

Eastwick -
Roxie's haunted by a ghost, and that creepy ant lady from the pilot, Bun, is awake from her coma. She knows more about Darryl than we're privy to yet, but now she's obsessed with a curious symbol (is it the same one as on Roxie's murdering neighbor?) and Kat is refusing a divorce lawyer ... and maybe even a divorce? And of course our trusty investigator Joanna is digging away on ABC at 10 PM.

Movies:

Milla Jovovich and female empowerment may be the only reasons Oxygen is showing the zombie/corporate greed-fueled epic Resident Evil: Apocalypse at 8 PM. But there are many, many reasons to check it out.

Thursday:

FlashForward -
That creepy German prisoner we've seen in previews is finally showing up, when Mark and Janis travel to Germany to ask him for some "important information" about the blackout. Demetri, with his newfound knowledge of his death day, is all abuzz over some more terrible news, and Aaron (Mark's AA buddy for those of you having trouble keeping up already) turns to Mark for help exhuming his daughter's body, or at least where it should be. The show's already large ensemble gets bigger, on ABC at 8 PM.

Vampire Diaries -
Stefan is carefully revealing bits and pieces about his past to Elena, who goes on to hear some strange and scary things about the Salvatore fam. Psychic Bonnie seeks out her grandmother for help discerning an learning more about her ... ability, on CW at 8 PM.

Supernatural -
The Paris Hilton episode is here! Rejoice in her self-satirizing willingness to be exploited on television. Or just revel in her terrible acting and incredible stung-casting as a celebrity-impersonating demon (or ghost?). Tonight on the CW at 9 PM, the citizens of a small town are dropping at the hands of dead icons, like ... Abraham Lincoln? And James Dean's car?

Fringe -
On FOX at 9 PM, Olivia and the Scooby gang are hunting down shape-shifters, and Walter is busy making a cocktail for Liv to help her remember what Spock told her in the other dimension.

Movies:

An army of vamps has a blood orgy in Alaska, in the graphic-novel adaptation 30 Days of Night on Encore at 8 PM.

Friday:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars -
Cad Bane's new mission, on Cartoon Network at 8 PM, is to kidnap kids who are force-sensitive and bring them to Mustafar for Sith training.

Ghost Whisperer -
Eli's father has a heart attack that leads him to a reunion with his dead mother. Turns out she had a secret before her death, and it must've been a whopper because she hasn't crossed over yet. The secret's out on CBS at 8 PM.

Smallville -
Lois is infected by a zombie plague that Zod has cursed upon the city. The cure is in the blood of a Kryptonian, but Clark can't get involved without revelaing his identity to Zod, on the CW at 8 PM.

Dollhouse -
On FOX at 9 PM, Echo is a free-wheeling coed and Victor is a psychotic nephew. So needless to say, they have a tiff while imprinted.

Stargate Universe -
On Syfy at 9 PM a search team combs a desert planet for a vital mineral necessary for restoring life support aboard the Destiny. But it turns out their window of opportunity is closing fast. Also, Chloe reachies out to her mother, using the communication stones.

Sanctuary -
Afterward, on Syfy at 10 PM, the season premiere gives us Magnus as she's searching for Ashley, putting her and her allies at odds with con-artist Kate Freelander: a woman with ties to the Cabal, who divulges secrets almost immediately.

Movies:

The sequel that should really only exist inside a sealed-off virtual world, The Matrix Reloaded, is on MTV at 7 PM. Have yourself a chocolate-cake orgasm, with the sequel that proved trilogies aren't such a great idea.

Saturday:

Movies:

The venerable Brittany Murphy stars in Megafault on Syfy at 9 PM. More importantly, Green Arrow himself, Justin Hartley co-stars. When an earthquake threatens to split the world, a seismologist and a miner get involved. What're they gonna do? Stitch it back together? Sure, why not.

Sunday:

Movies:

Did you know they made a Butterfly Effect 3? It's appropriately called The Butterfly Effect 3: Revelations and is on Syfy at 7 PM. Basically, time-traveling boy accidentally unleashes a serial killer while trying to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's death.

Iron Man 2:

Entertainment Weekly posted a new set pic from this superhero sequel, showing Tony Stark in the famous Randy's Donut's scene (with Nick Fury, not pictured.) More set pics from upcoming movies at the link. [EW]

Predators:

More casting news! ComingSoon.net reports that The Shield star Walton Goggins has joined the cast, playing one of those tough guys who get zapped to the Predators' homeworld. [ComingSoon]

Green Hornet:

Some more set pics give us a better look at the Hornet's weird-looking gun — is it a gas gun? A laser? Something else? More pics at the second link. [People And Daily Mail]

New Moon:

Our first look at Tinsel Korey As Emily, who's like a second mother to the wolf pack. A scratched-up second mother, by the look of things. [Dread Central]

Doctor Who:

Heroic set reporter Alun.Vega was Twittering from the filming, just as we were wrapping up this edition of morning spoilers. Apparently Matt Smith was on set, wearing David Tennant's suit — which was much the worse for wear, with lots of rips, as if Tennant had been caught in an explosion. And it appears that Amy, his new companion, is a police officer when he meets her. They filmed in the fake 1990s village of Leadworth, complete with a fake garden set up around a "White House." (But not THE White House.) And Amy says something to the Doctor about "twelve years of therapy." Amy and the Doctor run to an ice cream truck. (Possibly due to weird post-regeneration food cravings?)

Also, there's a fire truck parked near the White House, and lots of extras stand stock still, as if frozen, holding their mobile phones as if they were in the middle of taking a picture of something. More pics at the second link. [Alun_Vega on Twitter and Flickr]

Lost:

This island-castaway show filmed two different scenes involving Locke on Saturday. One seemed to involve the deserted back offices of Hawaii Telecom, and Locke's old box-company nemesis, Randy Nations (Billy Ray Gannon) was reported to be on set. (So in the alternate reality where Oceanic 815 didn't crash, Locke is presumably back at his old job.) But then a second scene took place at a high school, and involved Locke and Ben — plus a ton of extras playing high school students and a girls' basketball team. Since episode four is called "The Substitute," there's some speculation that either Locke or Ben is a substitute teacher — although maybe that name also refers to Locke's doppelganger? And finally, Katey Segal, who played Locke's lost love Helen, is also in Hawaii — so maybe the Locke who landed safely in L.A. had a reunion with Helen. [Hawaii Weblog]

Another set report involved a scene where Sun, Frank, Ilana and Ben are walking along with Locke's dead body — apparently a continuation of the season finale, coming right after the events at the Four-Toed Statue. They walked back by the remains of the castaways' camp, including Mr. Eko's church. And there are set pics, in which you can't really see anything much, at the link. [Lyly Ford]

Also, we've been wondering when we'd see Matthew Fox and company filming some scenes where they're still wearing their Dhama jumpsuits, following on from the events of the previous season finale. And now one eyewitness has spotted a jumpsuited Fox, plus Evangeline Lilly, filming a scene with John Hawkes, who's joined the cast as corporate spokesperson Lennon, plus the long lost flight attendant Cindy, played by Kimberly Joseph. There were also a ton of extras in ragged clothes. They were filming a set at the Temple. Also around later on were Daniel Dae Kim and Jorge Garcia. [Hawaii Weblog]

Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof say they've found a way, in the final season, to bring back the sense of learning more surprising stuff about these characters all the time that they had in the first season. This new device will lead to some emotionally intense moments of discovery. And don't hold your breath for tons of extra Dharma Initiative stuff this season. They also imply Richard Alpert will be getting a fairly involved flashback sequence. [Sci Fi Now via SpoilersLost]

Caprica:

A new promo includes a few seconds of precious footage of episodes after the pilot... including a slugfest between Graystone and Adama. [Battlestar Blog]

Sarah Jane Adventures:

Here are the official descriptions for parts 1 &2 of the second story, "The Mad Woman In The Attic":

Part 1: Rani investigates strange rumours about a demon living in a funfair at the seaside. What she finds there, however, is far more alarming than that and she makes a decision that affects not only her future, but also the futures of all those she cares about... Far in the future, in 2059, an old Rani remembers the day when her whole life went wrong. As her younger self investigates mysterious disappearances at an abandoned funfair, she sets into motion a chain of events which unleash the terrible powers of the alien Eve.

Part 2: Alien Eve's powers grow out of control, with everyone caught in her sinister and endless games. As the echoes of an ancient war threaten the modern world, the danger extends all the way to the year 2059. If Rani fails to change her own destiny, then everyone is doomed.

And here are some promo pics from the first story, "Prisoner Of The Judoon". [BlogtorWho]

Dollhouse:

Here's a new interview with Enver Gjokaj and Dichen Lachman. [BuddyTV]

In episode 4, "Belonging," we witness how Sierra wound up in the Dollhouse firsthand. And Sierra has some intimate moments with Victor. Also, Boyd is worried about Echo. [Fox]

Supernatural:

Our first pic of Paris Hilton in Thursday's episode looks... like Paris Hilton. With a weird knife. Full version at the link. [Chicago Tribune]

And here are a couple of clips from the episode:

And according to a casting call, we'll be meeting another new demon in episode 10:

[CROWLY] 40's or 50's male Demon - he is bit more urbane and sophisticated than what we've seen up to this point. He wears a suit, drinks fine wines, still pretty cruel and decadent, though. Please submit all ethnicities. RECURRING GUEST STAR

[SpoilerTV]

FlashForward:

Here's a sneak peek from Thursday's new episode.

Someone's flying to Japan in episode nine apparently — at least, we'll meet a bilingual Japanese flight attendant, according to a casting call. [SpoilerTV]

Also, in episode five, Mark finds himself on the defensive in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, while Olivia receives an anonymous message. And Janis wonders how her vision of the future will affect her relationship. [SpoilerTV]

Heroes:

Claire vamps it up and Sylar gets dissheveled and then joins the circus, in new promo pics from episode 5, "Hysterical Blindness." [SpoilerTV]

Fringe:

Can Olivia handle the truth? We'll find out on Thursday.

Smallville:

Here's the official description for episode 5, "Roulette":

DC COMICS CHARACTER ROULETTE SHOWS OLIVER HER CARDS - Oliver (Justin Hartley) is drugged and kidnapped by a woman named Victoria AKA Roulette (guest star Steph Song), who tells Oliver that he's involved in a dangerous game and must fight for his life. After Victoria shows up dead and Oliver is arrested by the police, he turns to Chloe (Allison Mack) for help. Meanwhile, Lois (Erica Durance) berates Clark (Tom Welling) for not telling her about Oliver's suicide attempt.

[Kryptonsite]

Fall is officially in full effect, which means the big bad summer sci-fi season is over! Now, personally, I set my bar so impossibly high that no film could ever come close to pleasing me unless our lord and saviour Michael Bay himself were to direct it. But perhaps some of you plebs are able to enjoy lesser entertainment - though I fail to see how you can watch anything beyond those low brows of yours. So, now that we've had a little while to absorb and reflect the entertainment we've witnessed, what really was a disaster? So, enjoy a mini "clip-show" to refresh your memory and then vote on what was truly a disaster!


WATCHMEN:



DOLLHOUSE:



TERMINATOR SALVATION:



BSG FINALE:



STAR TREK:



X-MEN ORIGINS - WOLVERINE:



TRANSFORMERS-REVENGE OF THE FALLEN:



GI JOE:



SUMMER GLAU:



DISTRICT 9:



OTHER:



Now go vote... and argue!!!

I also want to use this change in format to bring a little news. For a while now, I've been trying to bring you the best Disaster I can with the time that I have when not busy with other ventures. But, in less than two weeks, I will be welcoming a tiny disaster of my own into the world. So between that and other "official" work that I've been involved in, I will be having far less time to put together a weekly "This is a Disaster". So I am going to take a short hiatus.

I will return, I would just rather promise future greatness than deliver regular mediocrity.


I'll still be lurking around here doing the odd 'shop when time and inspiration meet. But if you want to see what work I'm up too check out my blog. I have big plans for ROACH, so continue to check there periodically. And if you are curious what the fuck I'm going to do with a baby, I just started a new blog that I will do my best to keep up with so follow along there.

Thanks for all your interest so far and I will return before you notice I'm gone.

-Garrison Dean

Syfy eagerly announced the news in a subtle press release with a header stating "SGU Outdelivers FOX's Dollhouse at 9PM":

Following record ratings for Warehouse 13, Eureka, Ghost Hunters and Destination Truth during its most-watched third quarter ever, Syfy's viewership surge since the July 7 brand evolution continued on Friday, October 2, when Stargate Universe premiered to the best franchise premiere performance in four years, drawing more than 2.3 million viewers – and besting FOX's Dollhouse at 9PM (ET/PT).

Stargate Universe, which stars Robert Carlyle, Lou Diamond Phillips and Ming-Na, grabbed 2.35 million total viewers along with a 1.7 HH rating, 1.32 million Adults 25-54, and 1.12 million Adults 18-49 during its two-hour debut episode from 9-11PM (ET/PT).

Dollhouse, meanwhile, dipped to a series low of 2.1 million viewers, the second-least watched network show in its timeslot (Only a rerun of America's Next Top Model got fewer, on the CW; to put things in somewhat dire perspective, a rerun of ABC's new show The Forgotten almost doubled Dollhouse's viewership with 3.97 million). Given that shows almost always drop in audience size from premieres - Syfy's Warehouse 13 aside - it'll be interesting to see whether the cable SGU can maintain its slim lead over the broadcast network Dollhouse in weeks to come.

Syfy continues ratings roll: Stargate Universe averages 2.35 million in premiere [TV By The Numbers]

Last night's Dollhouse is never going to be most people's favorite episode of the series, but it was pretty interesting and had some neat ideas — it's the sort of episode that will look great when you view the whole season on DVD, in one go. In fact, I couldn't help wondering, as I watched it, whether Joss Whedon and his new showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas were more consciously making the show for DVD viewers, since that's where all the eyeballs actually are. Oh, and this was the first script by Reaper creators Butters and Fazekas.

As a stand-alone piece of Friday night entertaining, "Impact" was a bit frustrating because you really didn't have anyone to root for until towards the end.

I think the episode actually stumbled a bit, by not making the client of the week sympathetic earlier. When we finally do start to see Nate Jordan's caring side, it's an unexpected revelation. (There was a moment, though, where I did wonder if Nate had just somehow bought a baby from somewhere, and then hired Echo to be its pretend-mom, and there was some crazy, deeper scheme at work here. And that was a nice bit of misdirection, actually.) For most of the episode, Nate appears to be an evil jerk, who's hired a surrogate mom in lieu of a plain old nanny.

It turns out Nate has hired the Dollhouse to create a caring mother for his newborn son, because he's incapable of forming an emotional attachment with the boy himself. We find out, towards the end of the episode, that this is because Nate's real wife died in childbirth and he foolishly blames the baby for it. But Nate's emotional distance from his son winds up causing more problems, because Echo (who believes she's Nate's wife and the baby's mother) thinks he's having an affair or doing something illegal. And then, through a wacky misunderstanding, Echo thinks Nate is planning on killing her and getting rid of the baby, so she runs.

And then, as the episode progresses, Echo starts to seem more and more demented and out of control, until we get the scene excerpted above, with the lightning and the knife and the weird horror movie cliches. Since Echo never seemed to be in jeopardy in the episode, and we scarcely cared about Nate, it seemed like we were mostly supposed to be worried that Echo's glitchiness would harm the baby somehow.

You have to admire Butters and Fazekas for coming up with a new spin on the show's central questions about mind vs. body. This time around, the central problem is that Topher has figured out a way to tweak Echo's mind so much, she actually lactates and can breastfeed "her" baby. This, Topher later concedes, may have been "a bridge too far." Echo becomes so attached to the baby, it makes her become paranoid and over-protective, and even after her mind has been wiped, she retains the emotional/physical connection with the baby in her Doll state. The episode subtly (to its credit) reinforces this idea that the mother/child bond is stronger than Topher's mental software, by talking about how the child "imprints" onto the mother early on.

But really, just like last week's episode, this week's was the tale of two Dolls. One current, one sorta former. Last week, we saw the contrast between Echo's desire to rediscover her "original" personality, Caroline, and Whiskey's desire to remain Dr. Claire Saunders, even though she knows that's not a "real" personality. This week, we saw Echo suffering because she still remembers her imprints after they're erased, and struggling with the pain of awareness — and meanwhile, we caught up with November, who has no memory of her time as a Doll, and is totally happy about it. It really is true — November should be on the Dollhouse's promotional DVD. She seems to have reintegrated into "civilian" life with no difficulty whatsoever.

And here's a random thought — what it Melanie/November is the "name" that Senator Perrin has, who can help him bring down the Dollhouse? I don't have much to say about the scenes of Alexis Denisof as a crusading senator, except that his accent seemed to wobble quite a bit. And there's definitely something weird about his wife. Is she a Doll? Is she going to be mind-wiped? The episode sort of faked us out when she went to answer the door, and we thought something had happened to her.

The only other thought I had is that I've figured out why so many of the show's leads are looking weird this season — it's the HD cameras. Eliza Dushku keeps saying they're filming in HD now, and it allows them to film much more quickly. But honestly, Dushku, Tahmoh Penikett and Fran Kranz are all looking a bit strange now: every line on their faces stands out in sharp relief, and Kranz appears to be wearing eye shadow. Maybe the show's lighting is weird with those cameras? Just a random thought.

Sadly, Dollhouse dipped to a new low, 2.1 million viewers. So enjoy your mind-wiped identity crises while you can, kids.

The "Virtual Echo" app, which runs on the somewhat insecure Adobe Air platform, is reminiscent of those "virtual girlfriend" programs that proliferated in the 1990s. You can customize how often Echo struts out onto your screen (wearing a different outfit each time) and does a trick. (When she's hostage negotiator Ellie Penn, she throws a card, which "hits" your screen and reads, "Your Boss Is Coming!" or "Why Be All Business?" or "Call Me." Which is sorta cute, I guess.) If you're missing her fashion catwalk strut, then you can always click "see me now," and she'll come when you call her.

There's also an augmented reality version, where you can show a special card to your webcam, and make Echo move around the webcam image of your home or office — so it looks like Echo is in your room, with you. Whoa.

Umm... virtual Echo? I think Sheena Easton has a message for you:

But seriously, for a show that's struggling on Friday nights, and grappling with the perception (mistaken, in my view) that its core message is "using women is fun," this is the last thing Dollhouse needs. Trying to market this show as sexy escapism, à la Alias, clearly has not worked out. Maybe it's time to borrow from what Joss Whedon has been saying about the show all along, and portray it more as the story of a woman's fight to regain her identity from a gang of brainwashers? Just a thought.

Dollhouse, of course, is on tonight at 9 on Fox. But Echo can be thrusting her breasts on your computer screen right now. [Virtual Echo via THRFeed ]

Oh, and there are some spoilers for upcoming TV shows here.

We can't help noticing the odd religious moments in a lot of the fall's biggest SF TV shows, and how shoehorned-in the references to God or the Bible often seem to be. Unlike Firefly, which featured a man of God as one of its major supporting characters and naturally sparked theological discussions, or BSG, which took place during an apocalypse, the newest crop of shows seems determined to mention God even when it doesn't make that much sense.

Take the scene above from the season opener of Fringe, where FBI agent Amy Jessup goes through all of the Fringe Division's cases and compares them with Bible verses — it's all in the Book Of Revelation! (Thanks to Meredith for suggesting this one.)

Or FlashForward, whose pilot includes one character who randomly questions whether God gave everyone on Earth a glimpse of the future as a punishment. Leaving aside the fact that clairvoyance seems like an odd shape for divine punishment to take. There's also the fact that the slutty/Christian babysitter just happens to be making out with her boyfriend (while the girl she's looking after is asleep) and thus feels guilty — so she decides that God gave the entire world a future vision just to punish her for making whoopie on the couch. Make sense? Absolutely not. Unless you think that some studio exec in a meeting said, "We need a religious angle here. There oughta be one character who decides that this was all God's doing. Because that'll play well in the God states."

And then there's V, which — spoiler alert — has aliens visiting us and claiming to be benefactors, who've come to help us. Plenty of people are suspicious of these allegedly enlightened visitors, but then we meet a Catholic priest who's decided to preach that these aliens are "God's creatures," with the implication being that they're sent by God. And the priest tells his underling, Father Jack, that he must preach the aliens are divinely sanctioned — or else. It's even sort of implied (if I remember correctly) that the Vatican has made support for the aliens official policy. WTF? Why would the Catholic church come out in support of random aliens that we know nothing about? It's one of the few moments in the V pilot that literally makes no sense whatsoever, and it inspired much head-scratching when we saw it at Comic Con.

And then there's Stargate Universe, which — spoiler alert again! — has a character experience weird religious visions for no discernable reason in its second episode. (Or third, if you count the two-hour pilot as two episodes.) It's never entirely clear why one character, stuck on a weird, inhospitable planet, is having visions of being in church and talking to a priest, and it seems partly designed to give us a chunk of this character's backstory. But it also feels like a quick-and-dirty way of conveying that this character is having a spiritual wandering-in-the-wilderness thing, without actually having to create any real religious/spiritual content to go with it. It feels a bit cheap: he's in the wilderness, and he sees some churchy stuff. Oh! So that means it's deeply symbolic or something.

And of course, Dollhouse gave us the ultra-stereotypical "Christian cult with guns" in one of its first-season episodes — the one where Echo gets turned into a blind religious zealot with cameras in her eyes, and everybody's sorta Amish and sorta Mormon.

Honestly at times, watching current SF TV it's hard not to feel like someone watched too many early John Woo movies and thought "church with birds in it — deep!" Or maybe too many early 1980s New Wave videos, where Duran Duran dance around pews and it randomly turns black and white. (And yes, I know that those videos are directed by Highlander auteur Russell Mulcahy.) But it also feels like a bit of pandering to a Christian nation that's perceived as being a bit suspicious of science-y stuff.

The Genesis of religion in SF TV

Once, it seemed like religious iconography and rhetoric was rare in science fiction — the original Star Trek confronted Captain Kirk and his crew with Greek gods, as well as godlike aliens who just wanted to toy with our heroes. You might have a hysterical crewman babble something about "If God had wanted us to go into space, etc," and the Roman episode did end with Uhura staring at the camera and saying the rebels were worshipping "the son of God." But these were just grace notes. (We won't get into Star Trek V, since that was a movie, and it came much later, and it makes the head hurt.)

After Trek, you certainly had the occasional SF program where the good guys were confronted with bog-standard space gods, who were notably free of any religious dogma that people on Earth could recognize. In fact, one reason why space gods are so often ridiculous and campy is the fact that they're trying so hard to be ecumenical. One common SF trope, over the decades, was the "meeting the real-life alien behind the ancient Earth myth — but this was usually the creature who inspired the Aztecs or the Egyptian religions, not the Judeo-Christian deal.

But in general, when television SF did grapple with religion prior to recent years, it was to reveal religious icons as aliens, using high technology to impress the superstitious. It wasn't until the final couple of seasons of Stargate SG-1 that this "superstitious humans worshipping aliens" storyline seemed to be an overt critique of organized religion. The show suddenly introduced a new antagonist for our heroes, a set of "ascended" (non-corporeal) aliens called the Ori, who encourage humans to worship them and preach from the Book of Origin. Writes blogger Chris Bateman in his 10-part essay on religion in science fiction:

It is almost impossible not to interpret the Ori as a paper-thin parody of Christianity... Much of the shallow critique of Christianity occurs between Claudia Black's ex-Goa'uld host Vala Mal Doran – who takes over Richard Dean Anderson's role as comic relief in the later seasons and fulfills this role magnificently – and her Ori-worshipping husband Tomin. Vala and Tomin square off in debate after Tomin reads incessantly to her from the Book of Origin, with Vala accusing him of taking a bunch of stories about how to live well and using it as a justification for war and murder. The scene serves a narrative purpose – Tomin later witnesses a Prior blatantly distorting the meaning of one of the verses in the Book of Origin, causing him to question his faith – but it also reads as a clumsy attack on contemporary Christianity.

Bateman theorizes that the producers of SG-1 were aghast at the Bush Administration's war in Iraq and wanted to satirize what they perceived as a right-wing Christian crusade against Islam. To some extent, The 4400 also seemed to be taking jabs at organized religion on occasion.

But before SG-1 introduced the Ori, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took a huge leap forward in introducing religious themes to SF, with the Prophets, aka the "wormhole aliens." For most of DS9's run, you could choose to believe the secular theory that the Prophets were merely interdimensonal aliens, who lived outside space/time and saw future and past as the same thing. But towards the end of the show's run, the messianic overtones around Benjamin Sisko made it harder and harder to sit on the fence. And meanwhile, Babylon 5 won praise for including characters of faith (including a Catholic commander, and a group of Catholic monks who come to live on the station) as well as including religion in many of its storylines.

Most recently, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles included Agent Ellison, who's frequently shown to be a Baptist, and religious references became more and more predominant in the show (which is about the actual apocalypse, so it does make sense to bring it up.) Most fans of BSG would agree that the show's monotheist/polytheist divide made it a much richer experience than a simple robots-vs-humans show would have been otherwise — regardless of how you may feel about the Baltar Cult, and the hand-wavy "Starbuck turns into ZZ Top" ending. And it's pure blasphemy to suggest that Firefly would be better without Shepherd Book.

The rise of Space Jesus?

Lately, though, it's seemed almost required to have some kind of religious discussion among a TV show's themes — and it's more likely to be Christian rather than some kind of vague Space Religion (TM) or misty spirituality.

Religion is part of society, and including religious points of view makes your world seem more realistic and three-dimensional — it would seem odd if science fiction on television never included a religious viewpoint, just as it would if people never mentioned politics at all. At the same time, there are ways to include religion that make sense (Firefly and T:SCC come to mind immediately) and ways to include it that feel gratuitous and weird (the Vatican is endorsing the aliens!)

And yes, when you throw in religion in a nonsensical way, it either feels like you're going for a cheap effect, or like you're pandering to religious people. Add to that the fact that scientists and people who use pure empiricism to deal with problems are far and few between — Walter Bishop and maybe the twisted Topher on Dollhouse are our only real avatars of tech nerdhood that I can think of off the top of my head. It's become a taboo in televised science fiction to show people doing science.

The show that's handling religion in the most fascinating manner right now is Supernatural, which is modern fantasy rather than science fiction. In the last year or so, angels have joined the show's long-standing demon characters — and now Lucifer himself is roaming around. And there are lots of hints that we'll actually be meeting God this season at some point. Theological discussions over why God allowed all of the horrors of the 20th century to happen are automatically more fascinating when they come out of the mouths of actual Angels, and the fact that the Archangels believe that God is dead makes for fascinating viewing.

So consider this a plea for more thoughtful portrayals of religion in science fiction — and fewer random, thoughtless, kitchen-sink inclusions. People who watch science fiction are smart. We can tell when we're being pandered to, and when we're being spoonfed religious ideas just because it makes your show seem more "mythic" or "relevant." Religion can make your science-fiction story feel like it takes place in a world we can relate to, and it can deepen your characters and add another layer to your story — or, in the wrong hands, it can feel like a random piece of baggage, tacked on to your story for spurious, external reasons. We can usually tell the difference between the two.

Avatar:

3-D movie blog MarketSaw says we'll be getting a second trailer for this movie soon, and it'll focus more on story, including a glimpse of Future Earth, and it'll showcase Sam Worthington's incredible performance as Jake Sully. Stephen Lang and Sigourney Weaver will also have more exposure. And the movie's viral site AVTR posted some new concept art, plus our first glimpse of Unobtanium, the miracle mineral they want to mine on Pandora. (I almost typed Pandorum. Bad, bad typo.) [MarketSaw]

Iron Man 2:

Entertainment Tonight aired a second video of their set visit to this movie... Mostly the same footage we saw before, but even more of Whiplash flailing around ridiculously. And Robert Downey Jr. spills that the racetrack scene is the first time in the movie that we see Whiplash in "his full glory." [Comic Book Resources]

Lost:

Another set pic confirms that the Oceanic Everybody are back on the island, despite that whole "alternate timeline" thing. An eyewitness (with colorful language) saw a scene being filmed at that elaborate temple set, with Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley and Claire. Sayid was there, and he was recovering nicely from his quasi-lethal gunshot wounds, but still covered with blood. Nobody was wearing Dharma jumpsuits. The gang got attacked by a group of "other Others," who looked sort of like Others except they were all wearing darker outfits with lots of red, plus bandanas, and they were vaguely Asian looking. They all had giant guns, and they got into a gunfight with our heroes, where Sawyer shot and killed someone. Jack is tending to Sayid's wound, and then Jack and Kate hug and kiss, and then our heroes get captured and taken into the temple. [SpoilersLost]

Also, Rob McElhenny from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, who appeared as Aldo in season three, will be back soon, apparently — he got an Aldo-ish haircut for the filming. [Lyly Ford]

Sarah Jane Adventures:

Here are the first pics of David Tennant as the Doctor, appearing in the Sarah Jane Adventures:

And here are the official descriptions for that episode, "The Wedding Of Sarah Jane" parts 1 & 2:

"The Wedding Of Sarah Jane": Sarah Jane has met Peter Dalton and wants him to become part of her life; to become a father to Luke perhaps. But Clyde thinks Peter is hiding a secret or two of his own, especially when he and Rani find an empty house where Peter says his home should be..."

Part 1: "The Doctor returns on the happiest day of Sarah Jane's life - but a deadly trap is waiting for them all! As the strands of a clever and careful plan draw together, can even a Time Lord save Sarah Jane, on the day of her arch-enemy's greatest triumph?"

Part 2: "The Doctor joins the battle - but is it too late to save both Sarah Jane and the Earth itself? As the power of the Pantheon of Discord grows in strength, the old friends are separated across different time zones, and must fight to save each other - but for one, there's a terrible price to pay."

[Digital Spy]

And Elisabeth Sladen reveals some details about the new season. K-9, her robot dog, is finally free of the black hole where he was trapped in seasons one and two — so he'll be around a lot more, making himself useful and getting into a rivalry with Mr. Smith, her computer. "He can sense things, he can shoot at things, and he can do mathematical things." Yay! And the kids can call K-9 on the telephone. Unlike Mr. Smith, who never got a phone line.

Sarah Jane gets a "reality check" in the wedding storyline, which is episodes five and six, and she realizes the Doctor really may come back into her life. There's a line where someone says "We'll face the future together." And then the Doctor gets a call or a signal that he's needed elsewhere. The Doctor has tons and tons of dialogue because they wanted to make the most of Tennant's presence. And this story was supposed to end the season, but will appear halfway through instead, due to Tennant's schedule. Also, there's a super-scary haunted house episode with a terrifying scene in a nursery, and Sarah Jane is not herself in the first two-parter, which involves the Judoon and another alien.[Digital Spy again]

Dollhouse:

Some cute new promo pics of our Big Damn Antiheroes. [SpoilerTV]

Fringe:

Sebastian Roche (General Hospital) landed a role as a new recurring baddie on this mad-science show. [SpoilerTV]

Here are some pics from episode 2x05, "Dream Logic". [SpoilerTV]

FlashForward:

A new poster makes this show look much dumber than it actually is. Heads in the clouds! [SpoilerTV]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

Cad Bane is up to no good, in a new image from Friday's premiere. Plus there's a clip!

Smallville:

Here's your first clip of Brian Austin Green's Kryptonite heart from Friday's episode.

Also, in this episode, we learn that Lois still doesn't know Jimmy is dead. (Really?) Lois' worship of "the Blur" is at its peak, and she gets too carried away. The Blur keeps contacting her. And there's a visual "easter egg" for fans of Chlois. Chloe points out to Clark that he shouldn't wander around in his costume so much. And we see the long-awaited reunion between Lois and Tess. [KryptonSite]

Stargate Universe:

Brian J. Smith plays 1st. Lt. Matthew Scott, who's thrust into command when the ragtag group is stranded on the Destiny, a spaceship on the other side of the universe. Scott argues with Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle), saying their first priority should be returning to Earth. With one word, "Please," Scott conveys all the fear and uncertainty he feels. [Chicago Now]

Heroes:

Coming up in episode six of the show whose superpower is Not Getting Canceled:

SYLAR BEGINS HIS JOURNEY TO FIND HIS IDENTITY AND PETER COMES TO THE RESCUE OF ONE OF HIS OWN – ELLEN GREENE, RAY PARK, DAWN OLIVIERI, DEANNE BRAY AND ERNIE HUDSON GUEST STAR – Under Samuel's (Robert Knepper) guidance, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) starts on a path to rediscover his true identity. Hiro (Masi Oka) helps Emma (guest star Deanne Bray) accept and understand the great possibilities that go along with having an ability. Meanwhile, Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) enlists HRG (Jack Coleman) to help him find a healer who can save Hiro's life.

[SpoilerTV]

And here are bewildering set pics of Nathan and Peter in the air. More at the link. [The ODI]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

You don't know Dollhouse!

You think you know what Joss Whedon's show is about: Dushku plays Echo, a girl whose mind has been erased so that rich people (and occasional pro bono clients) can have her customized to be whatever, and whoever, they want. But the second season, which started last Friday, is totally different.

This time around, Echo will be dealing with all the lingering effects of having all her personalities downloaded into her. And as you saw last Friday, Echo will be experiencing a lot more "flash backs" to her other imprints. Sometimes these will be by accident, sometimes Echo will be in control of it. But Echo will be figuring out how to use this for her own advantage, as she tries to gather a new family of people she can trust around her.

Dushku says that Echo will be becoming self-aware, but as Echo, not as her "original" personality, Caroline. And in fact, as she learns more "unsavory" stuff about Caroline, or just things that are "not Echo," she'll question whether she really wants to be Caroline after all. "She is getting farther and farther away from Caroline," Dushku says of Echo. "You'll absolutely see a new Echo this season."

And that was more fun for Dushku to play, since she doesn't just alternate between the "dumbed down doll" state and whichever personality she's taking on this week. Instead, we always know there's more going on with Echo than we see on the surface, and that makes her more grounded — and more fun to play. Echo is constantly pulling from her past imprints and processing and making sense of stuff, and evolving her own ethics and morals.

Adds Dushku:

When the pieces start to fall apart, and she starts to be taken over by a memory that she can't control, I think it's difficult. and there's that processing going on, and there's that authentic self that's holding on, and that's keeping her from completely losing it and completely being controlled by the personalities [she's pulling from. And that kind of] deeper work for me is sort of more interesting and more challenging to play.

We'll also learn more of the Dollhouse's backstory, discover more of the other Dollhouses around the world, and find out how some of the other Dolls came to this point.

Upcoming imprints:

According to Dushku, this Friday's episode is the "mommy" episode, and it was one of the hardest personalities for her to take on, since she's never been a mom. "Trying to tap into that maternal instinct was difficult, but a thrill," she says. And she hinted there will be breastfeeding involved, which sounds like it might be beyond even Topher's proven ability to create physiological as well as mental traits. "Mommy was definitely harder than serial-killer sorority girl." How does Echo wind up being imprinted as a serial killer? Dushku explains: "Episode 3, I start out as a college girl, but when the imprint goes haywire, it's more serial killer than soriority girl."

Summer Glau joins the cast:

The invincible Summer Glau has already filmed two episodes, and Dushku says they're just about to start working on episode seven. As we've mentioned, Glau plays a programmer, and Dushku mentioned she works at the Washington, DC Dollhouse. We'll learn a bit more about how things work differently at the other Dollhouses. And Glau's character has some backstory with Echo, which means Glau and Dushku have to fight. (Physically, it sounds like.) Glau "came in with her 'A' game" and they've had a great time filming together, says Dushku.

Echo Is Ophelia

We were curious to hear if Dushku felt like Dollhouse was a metaphor for the experience of being an actor in L.A., where people want you to fulfill their fantasies, and don't mind erasing you as a person in the process. She felt like the show is more like a parable of women's experiences in general:

[It] also translates to young women all over the world. And I remember my mother... I was the only girl in a family of three boys, [so] she did extensive reading. She read a book called Reviving Ophelia, about adolsecent girls, and the way young women were broken down in their early teens, [when] they're starting to get hit from all sides, from the media, and images, and the men in their life, and their peers, and everything starts to change and the spirit of young women is so fragile, and can be toyed with and broken. And my mother was really aware of that and tried to fight against that, and tried to teach me to sort of stand in my authentic self, and be comfortable in my skin, and with all of that research that she did, and applying it, it's still haunting me. And it's still, at times in my life, [people] have wounded me [and] have come close to breaking me. And so when I sat talking about that stuff to Joss... it's so extraordinary that he accented that in such a profound and intelligent way, that I can't think of anybody else that gets that, and can create an entire fantasy show that encompasses such a universal and serious thing in our society. And so yes, it's absolutely parallel to me, and I also feel, to women all over the world.

Dollhouse airs this Friday, Oct. 2, and the following Friday, Oct. 9. (And then Oct. 16, it gets preempted for a baseball game.)

Monday:

House -
How long will we have to suffer with this kinder, gentler House? Probably not for too much longer, as Foreman is now in control of the medical scooby gang. Can't wait to see which upstart doctor House makes cry this time, over on FOX at 8 PM.

Day After Disaster -
In the event of a nuclear attack, the first 24 hours are the most critical for deciding how many people live or die - so says the History Channel. Learn the Department of Homeland Security's plan for a nuclear attack on Washington D.C. at 8 PM.

Heroes -
While dealing with the repercussions of his heroism, Peter meets a new woman with special abilities. Claire is dealing with the ripples of her choices as well, with the revelation of her secret to her nosy new roommate. Elsewhere, Samuel hunts for memories of his brother, and Matt deals with the return of Sylar. Come on, NBC: let's keep this "not horrible Heroes" streak going, at 8 PM.

Big Bang Theory -
Lewis Black guest stars as an entomologist helping the boys settle a bet regarding the species of a cricket on CBS this week. Back on the ranch, Leonard and Penny are trying a different approach after awkward intimacy check at 9:30 PM.

Movies:

The Teen Titans track down criminal mastermind Brushogun in Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo on Cartoon Network at 6:30 PM.

Tuesday:

The Universe -
Studying star clusters, both open and globular, and what they reveal about the nature of galaxies and the expansion of the universe. Make a wrinkle in your brain with the History Channel at 9 PM.

Movies:

In The Eye, Jessica Alba gets some poor dead girl's eyes, and suddenly she can see. As if that's not crazy enough, she begins to see dead people — not in the same awesome way as Haley Joel Osment, more in a totally creepy way that requires her to hunt down the original owner of her eyes. That's on Showtime at 8:15 PM.

Wednesday:

Ghost Hunters -
Famous rocker Meat Loaf (no, seriously) heads out with the team to investigate an allegedly haunted island in New York. This will be the first Ghost Hunters that we're actually excited about. But if he doesn't sing, we're out. Eddie is back at 9 PM on the Syfy Channel.

Destination Truth -
Ghost sightings near the site of the Chernobyl disaster send Josh and the team to the Ukraine on Syfy at 10 PM.

Eastwick -
So just who is that devilishly handsome stranger that rode into town on the back of the wind who can stir up sex? And exactly how does one stir sex? Well ABC is determined to show you, in a PG manner, at 10 PM. Joanna and Penny try to unearth some real facts about Darryl Van Horne, talking to a reporter and an eccentric shut-in. Back in town, Roxie and her daughter deal with the repercussions of her "date night" and Kat tries to get out of her marriage without resorting to killing her husband.

Movies:

The most recent, anti-climactic X-Files movie — that's The X-Files: I want to Believe in case you've already blocked it out — is on Cinemax at 8:15 PM.

Thursday:

FlashForward -
What's more important than the present? Every person on the planet is now a prophet, and it's terribly dangerous. Or maybe magically delicious. As the cast struggles to figure out how to bring forth, or avoid, their individual visions, we see more characters, more offshoots, and more of Dominic Monaghan. But who was that mysterious figure in the Detroit Stadium and why, of all places for the FBI to be checking, did they decide to hit up that venue first? All the answer will most likely not be explained, on ABC at 8 PM.

Vampire Diaries -
The CW continues to push the vampire fetish right off a clip at 8 PM. This week Elena allows Stefan to take her to the Founder's Party where of course temptation incarnate, Damon, tells her about his family's past — leading Elena to question Stefan to no avail.

Supernatural -
All I really want is to see Sarah Palin as President in the post-apocalyptic world of 2014. Don't get me wrong - definitely, NEVER EVER in real life. But tonight, as the literal bromance spends more time apart, we see an alternate reality where the Alaskan runs the country, Sam becomes Lucifer's vessel, and Castiel loves orgies (despite how well his last sexual foray went). On CW at 9 PM.

Fringe -
This week on "what will Walter say next," a bomb goes off at a Philadelphia train station. The gang is stumped, Peter is sassy, Olivia is tough and they all go to Iraq because: time peg! Let's hope this means we're dragging skeletons out of Peter's closet, since he spent quite some time there. Don't miss the Easter Egg-filled goodness on FOX at 9 PM.

Movies:

Marvel's spinoff The Meteor Man makes his movie debut (and finale?) as a bumbling inner-city superhero battling crime, and heights. On BET at 8 PM.

Friday:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars -
The second season begins tonight with two episodes, as Cad Bane attempts to steal a Jedi Holocron and Anakin and Ahsoka hunt him down. Cartoon Network delivers the Star Wars we never even knew we wanted, but now can't live without, at 8 PM.

Ghost Whisperer -
There is an evil chain mail this week. Seriously an EVIL CHAIN MAIL. So in order to avoid getting caught up in the EVIL CHAIN MAIL link, send 4 emails to CBS asking them to bring back Moonlight. Then watch Ghost Whisperer at 8 PM, or just send CBS the emails...your call.

Smallville -
John Corben is transformed into a cyborg after a car accident. As a machine man, he uses his newfound strength and powers to hunt down The Blur, and kidnaps Lois to do so. We're still waiting for CW to roll out the Wonder Twins episode, so we can stop watching already. But Brian Austin Green, who plays Corben, will tide us over until then. Don't miss the shirtless Kryptonite-powered cyborg action at 8 PM.

Dollhouse -
Echo's maternal instincts kick in on the job when she's imprinted with the emotions of a new mother. Alexis Denisof returns as Sen. Perrin and continues his hunt for the prostitution ring known as the Dollhouse. And Adelle visits November, because maybe she's not as done as a doll as we previously thought. Fox rolls out the second episode of Dollhouse season two, at 9 PM.

Stargate Universe -
The "darkest installment of the" Stargates launches this week, with a two-hour premiere, calculated to give even newbies a chance to jump in. Robert Carlyle plays Dr. Nicolas Rush, a man intent on ... well, actually we're not entirely sure. He does, however, assemble a team to tame the mysterious ninth gate, which leads to an undiscovered expanse of space. Eli, played by David Blue, is the young hotshot Rush has brought along to "voluntarily" lend his brain. The third Stargate show gives us familiar cast members (with guests Amanda Tapping and Richard Dean Anderson) but a much darker Stargate this time around — and forget exploration: the piecemeal team must work on surviving, first and foremost, on Syfy at 9 PM.

Spoiler alert? Witness two possible deaths in this four-minute preview from Syfy.

Movies:

Nic Cage uses his powers of future vision to help prevent a terrorist attack in Next on FX at 6 PM. So ... how can he foresee an attack if his "power" only allows him a two minute glimpse into the future?

Saturday:

Movies:

In a description so boring and vague that you have to wonder why they're hiding that obvious images of demons and the devil, a young Christian girl has her faith shaken when suicides rock her small town, in From Within on Syfy at 7 PM.

Sunday:

Raging Planet -
The fury of blizzards are examined on the Discovery Channel, via computer simulations. The 1995 "arctic hurricane" that devastated Tromso, Norway, is examined using archival footage and testimonials. Moral of the story? Don't get caught in a blizzard if you can avoid it. Those suckers are earth wreckers. Unleash the furry at 10 PM.

Movies:

The Incredibles makes you wonder if Marvel and Disney weren't in bed before now, on the Disney Channel at 9 PM.

Iron Man 2:

How is this movie different than the first one? Co-star Sam Rockwell explains:

It's a bigger scope. There's a lot more action and fighting. More characters. It's bigger and there's a lot more to get your head around, so it's a tougher job for [Jon] Favreau and Justin Theroux, who wrote it.

And in case it wasn't already clear, Rockwell's character, Justin Hammer, teams up with Whiplash (Mickey Rourke) to take down Tony Stark. And he says Hammer is sort of the "smarmy cousin" of the character he played in Charlie's Angels. [IGN]

Predators:

Frequent Robert Rodriguez collaborator Danny "Machete" Trejo says "we're" doing Predators soon — leading some to speculate that Trejo is in reimagining of the Predator movies. [Slashfilm]

Zombieland:

Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) first meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) while making his way down a highway strewn with car wrecks. And it's Tallahassee who insists that they not call each other by their names, due to their short life expectancy. Tallahassee agrees to give Columbus a ride, so Columbus can locate his estranged family. And after they hook up with Little Rock and Wichita, the foursome decides to go to L.A. [IGN]

Lost:

Inside sources say Alan Dale (Charles Widmore) will be heading to Hawaii soon to film some scenes for the show's final season, to nobody's surprise. [The ODI]

Boone (and the other Oceanic 815 passengers who've been lost to the show) won't be appearing that much in the new season, judging from Ian Somerhalder's interview, where he says his filming on the show was "very quick." (Maybe we just see most of the 815 passengers getting off the plane at LAX, and that's all we see of them?) [SpoilersLost]

Another set report says that after Kate drives pregnant Claire to visit Aaron's potential adoptive mom in L.A., Kate drives Claire to the hospital (in the stolen taxi) and Claire gives birth. [Lyly Ford]

Meanwhile, even though there are all these reports about Oceanic 815 landing safely in L.A. with Kate on board, another source swears he saw the filming of a scene in which Sawyer and Kate talk on a dock on the island — so are there two simultaneous timelines? Or does our gang get back to L.A. safely, and then somehow reset the timeline to the "original" version? [The ODI]

Dollhouse:

Eliza Dushku was Twittering a storm on Friday night. Among other things, Alexis Denisof has an "extraordinary DH arc," and "next week's Mommy" was one of her hardest imprints to play. "Russian is hard too." [Twitter]

Want to know how the Echo-Ballard relationship will play out now that Ballard is Echo's WatcherHandler? Let Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett elucidate: [BuddyTV]

And here's a new promo for Friday's episode:

And Joss talks Summer Glau's upcoming guest spot, plus Dr. Horrible. [Zap2It]

FlashForward:

Here are a couple of sneak peeks from this show's second episode, "White To Play". [Spoilers Guide]

Supernatural:

Here are three sneak peeks from this week's post-apocalyptic episode. [SF Universe]

And here's the official description for episode 5x06, "I Believe The Children Are Our Future":

FAIRY TALES DO COME TRUE - Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) investigate a series of odd murders that strangely resemble fairytales and urban legends. The brothers track down an 11-year-old boy named Jesse (guest star Gattlin Griffith) and realize that whatever Jesse believes is coming true. Castiel (Misha Collins) tells Sam and Dean that Jesse is a serious threat and needs to be eliminated.

[Devoted Fans Network via SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

Remember how we mentioned that Clark is getting the superpower of "thought hearing"? Yes, in Smallville, sharks jump over you. It's happening in episode four:

THE TOYMAN RETURNS AND TAKES OLIVER HOSTAGE - Tess (Cassidy Freeman) forces Oliver (Justin Hartley) to come to a Queen Industries gala to put the Board at ease, but things go awry when the Toyman (guest star Chris Gautheir) shows up with a bomb and a plan to take revenge on Oliver. The Toyman tells Oliver he must confess to murdering Lex or he will blow the place up. Meanwhile, as part of his training, Jor-El gives Clark (Tom Welling) the ability to hear other people's thoughts.

And here are some pics from the episode. [SpoilerTV]

Stargate Universe:

Here are some descriptions for the season's fourth, fifth and sixth episodes:

"DARKNESS": Dr. Nicholas Rush (ROBERT CARLYLE) has been working throughout the night to try and determine why the ship's power reserves are critically low. He reiterates his mounting concerns to Colonel Young (LOUIS FERREIRA), who advises the crew to limit their power consumption to essential services only. Suddenly the lights dim to emergency levels and everything but life support goes dead. Overwhelmed by fatigue and frustration, Rush declares that all on board will perish within days. But when Destiny's flight path towards a solar system reveals the existence of three planets, they hope that one of them is habitable.

Meanwhile Eli (DAVID BLUE) records individual messages from the crew in case they don't survive.

"LIGHT": The Destiny is still without power and an attempt to alter their collision course with a star has failed. The situation is now critical. A plan is born to abandon ship using the last working shuttle, with the hope that one of three planets in close proximity will be habitable. Although this strategy initially raises the crew's spirits, it is short lived when Col. Young (LOUIS FERREIRA) announces there is only room for seventeen people and a lottery will determine who goes and who stays. Stunned by the implication of this news, everyone considers their fate. Some, including Dr. Nicholas Rush (ROBERT CARLYLE) and Col. Young, opt to stay on board. Others, determined to survive, vie for a seat on the departing shuttlecraft.

In the short time that remains, alliances are forged and others damaged while Eli (DAVID BLUE) tries to create a message in a bottle with the aid of a Kino. But, unbeknownst to all, forces are at work that no one could have foreseen.

"WATER" Despite severe rationing and around the clock security, the water reserves on board the Destiny continue to drop. Dr. Nicholas Rush (ROBERT CARLYLE) has no explanation for this latest setback but, if they are to survive, they must find a new water source soon. The only planet within range is a frozen wasteland surrounded by a thin and poisonous atmosphere. Donning two of the ships deteriorated spacesuits, Col. Young (LOUIS FERREIRA) and Lt. Scott (BRIAN J. SMITH) head to the planet's surface, hoping to retrieve enough ice to replenish their water supply. But once there, tests reveal that the ice near the Stargate contains traces of highly toxic chemicals. Young and Scott take off in search of drinkable samples knowing they don't have long before their air will run out and Destiny jumps back to FTL.

Back on board the ship, Lt. Tamara Johansen (ALAINA HUFFMAN) works with the crew to catch an intruder they believe is responsible for the lost rations.

[TV By The Numbers]

Star Wars: Clone Wars:

Here are a couple promos for season two that you might not have seen before, focusing on the new bounty hunter characters. [Examiner]

Eastwick:

According to a casting call, we meet Roxie (Rebecca Romijn)'s mom Edie in episode eight when she comes for a visit, and Edie reveals a memory that explains why she was so aloof during Roxie's childhood. And there are some actual casting script pages, which include a bit where Roxie gets zapped from her bedroom at night to a frozen lake on a different night. Edie shows up late and misses Roxie's art show opening because one of the Barkers' dogs got out and stuff. Roxie tells Edie her art show sold out, and Edie says it's amazing what people will spend their money on. Then Edie undermines Roxie's authority with her daughter Mia, who's supposed to be grounded.

Meanwhile, Darryl Van Horne bursts into the ER with an unconscious Greta in his arms. Greta's having a heart attack and crashing, and Darryl tells Kat she's a healer and she can help Greta now, rather than letting the doctors do it. There's more magical soap-operatics at the second link. [SpoilerTV and SpoilerTV]

Sanctuary:

Here are the official descriptions for the season's first two episodes, "End Of Nights" parts 1 and 2:

2.01: In the season two opener of Sanctuary, Ashley (EMILIE ULLERUP) remains captured, in the dangerous hands of the Cabal. While desperately searching for her, Magnus (AMANDA TAPPING), Will (ROBIN DUNNE), Druitt (CHRISTOPHER HEYERDAHL) and Tesla (JONATHON YOUNG), encounter Kate Freelander (AGAM DARSHI) a quick-talking con artist with Cabal connections. Pressing her for information, Magnus gets the location of a secret Cabal facility that may lead them to her daughter. Although aware that Kate is less than trustworthy, the team takes a risk and moves in on the Cabal way station. They quickly discover they have been led into a trap and that the Ashley they once knew has made a formidable and alarming transformation, with no intention of coming home to the Sanctuary.

2.02: Furious at being duped into a trap, Magnus (AMANDA TAPPING) takes on Kate (AGAM DARSHI), demanding information and complete access to her Cabal contacts. The Cabal's true agenda is revealed and Magnus realizes that they are not only holding Ashley (EMILIE ULLERUP) as ransom to obtain complete control of the Sanctuary Network, but turning her into the ultimate weapon. Now transformed into a Super Abnormal with devastating powers, Ashley and her newly cloned fighters begin their onslaught, destroying Sanctuaries in cities around the world. Tesla (JONATHON YOUNG) and Henry (RYAN ROBBINS) attempt to create a weapon that can stop the attacks…without killing Ashley. As the team prepares to defend the Sanctuary with Tesla's new weapon, Magnus must come to the realization that they may not be able to stop the Cabal's attacks without harming Ashley. She realizes she might have to choose between saving her only daughter, or losing the Sanctuary and all the lives and secrets within it.

[TV By The Numbers]

Vampire Diaries:

And then there's a sneak peek from this high school vampire show's fourth episode:

And here's the official description for episode six, "Lost Girls":

IN A FLASHBACK SEQUENCE, STEFAN REVEALS THE SALVATORE FAMILY HISTORY TO ELENA - Elena (Nina Dobrev) demands that Stefan (Paul Wesley) explain the frightening events that have been happening in Mystic Falls. In flashbacks, Stefan explains how his rivalry with Damon (Ian Somerhalder) began. Back in the present, Damon impulsively takes control of Vicki's (Kayla Ewell) future, and a confused and frightened Vicki runs away. Finally, Sheriff Forbes (guest star Marguerite MacIntyre) and Mayor Lockwood (guest star Rob Pralgo) take steps to protect the town.

[Vampiresite]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.