Lost Season Five comes out on DVD next Tuesday, Dec. 8, to give you a couple of months to relive the time-traveling insanity before the show returns for its last season. Here are some early preview clips:

Bloopers:

Filming the "White Light" sequences was a major headache:

Building 23 And Beyond with Michael Emerson:

The Others' Secret:

Kaliet:

Deleted Scenes:

Behind The Scenes: He's Our You:

Gallifrey News Base reports that the BBC told the Regenerations convention a recolored "Mind Of Evil" would be coming to DVD sometime in the next year or two. Actor Nicholas Courtney, who plays Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, has reportedly recorded a commentary track.

The idea of getting a color version of "Mind Of Evil" is especially thrilling — it's one of the least appreciated stories starring the Master, the evil time traveler who used to be the Doctor's friend. In one of his zillions of Earthbound disguises, the Master develops a machine that leaches the "negative impulses" out of criminals' brains — and whenever the machine is activated, you hear a sinister instrumental version of Edith Piaf's "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien," as the machine throbs with stored-up malevolence. And eventually, it makes the Doctor and other people see whiirling hallucinations. What could be better? Oh yes — there's also a "nerve gas missile."

Doctor Who originally filmed in black-and-white back in the 1960s, but went to color when Jon Pertwee took over as the show's star in 1970. But after the BBC trashed its only copies of many of the show's early episodes, several Pertwee stories only existed in monochrome. (Some of these stories were reportedly sold overseas in black-and-white, and only those versions remained.) A few of these stories, including "Doctor Who And The Silurians" and "Terror Of The Autons," still existed in color in off-air videotape recordings, and the BBC was able to transfer the color from the videotapes to the black-and-white masters.

But this still left some Pertwee episodes available only in color, including one episode of the six-part adventure "The Planet Of The Daleks." That Dalek story appears as part of the new "Dalek War" box set (also including "Frontier In Space"), and the BBC has managed to re-color that episode. The Doctor Who Restoration Team website provides an intensely technical discussion of the process that restored this episode to color — involving two different processes: the computer colorization process used by the American firm Legend, and the BBC's newly invented "Colour Restoration" process, created by engineer James Insell. Explains the Restoration Team site:

Some years ago, whilst watching a UK Gold broadcast of another Doctor Who episode that now only exists as a monochrome film recording, he had seen strong patches of spurious colour breaking through and realised that it meant that at least some of the colour subcarrier was still present in the film recording. He became interested in exploring the possibility that it might be possible to extract this information and decode it back to the original colour.

Insell met with bureaucratic resistance but founded his own working group, which finally cracked the problem, with a brilliance worthy of the Doctor himself.

Here's hoping the same processes really can restore vivid color to the long-forgotten "Mind Of Evil."

The DVD set, which came out on Tuesday, offers a few new ways to wrap your mind around the mysteries of the Dollhouse, that secret underground spa facility where beautiful people are programmed to become whatever rich clients need them to be for a day or so:

1) Watch the unaired pilot and finale back to back. The two episodes of the show that Fox didn't want you to see fit together pretty neatly, surprisingly enough. The unaired pilot contains as much story development for Echo (Eliza Dushku) as the first six episodes of the regular series put together, and it also raises all the questions you wish someone would ask, about the morality of turning people into your personal robot slaves. Watch Topher laugh as he justifies his life as the chief mind-blotter — and then watch "Epitaph One," the unaired finale, right afterwards. All of the questions raised in the original pilot find their answers here. You learn that, yes, this all does end very badly. Topher's bravado has been replaced with weeping inside one of the Dolls' coffins, and bosslady Adelle's sang froid has developed some serious cracks. Meanwhile, the pilot shows us Echo beginning to rediscover her selfhood and experiencing her first glimmers of memory. Watching those two episodes back to back makes for a kind of Dollhouse movie, with a beginning and an end — yet it leaves you wanting the next batch.

2) Watch a bunch of the episodes in a row, so they feel less episodic. One of the biggest complaints about the first half-dozen episodes of the season is how aimless and "stand-alone" they feel, with the "client of the week" and the "this week, she's a scuba instructor with a dark secret" feeling. But when you watch a bunch of them in one go, it feels a lot better — you do see something of a progression from episode to episode, with Echo showing her first signs of going beyond her programming in the "hostage negotiator" episode, followed by the mysterious ex-doll Alpha making his first move to push her to go further out of her parameters in the "bow-hunting" episode. And then Alpha goes further in the bank-robbery episode, giving Echo a remote mindwipe to try and push her further. It all leads up to the midpoint of the season, when everyone's pretty much aware that Echo is no longer just the usual empty vessel for people to pour their own desires into — she's becoming something more versatile, and maybe more dangerous. You see a bit more of a progression.

3) Listen to Joss Whedon complain about studio interference. The other great pleasure of the DVDs is the commentary track, where creator Joss Whedon talks about the creative process, and exactly how much Fox messed with his business. At one point during the first episode, "Ghost," Whedon talks about the network sending him tons of "notes" demanding more explanations for everything. After the episode was already stuffed to bursting with characters standing around talking about rewriting brains and creating real personalities to put into people's heads, the network came back and wanted just a bit more spelling out of the show's premise. He also admits that he knows nothing about how to do hostage negotiations, and if you followed Ellie Penn's techniques for dealing with hostage-takers, you would probably get everyone killed. But sounds good, and that's the main thing. His commentary track for the sixth episode, "Man On The Street" is even more revelatory, where he talks through the problems he had with the show, and the ways in which "Man On The Street" represents a turning point for the show, and how he wrote the whole thing in something like three days, all of his ideas pouring out of him. And the "Man On The Street" commentary is the deepest Joss has gone into discussing the wish-fulfillment and horror of the Dollhouse and what it represents to people. "We all have something that we would like Topher to slice out of us, so much so that it paralyzes us in some cases."

Mostly, the DVDs are a chance to flop on your couch and delve back into the Dollhouse universe in a big way, now that it's miraculously coming back. And maybe, to realize quite what a unique, rich story this actually is, and how much it takes the themes of wish-fulfillment and fantasy, and shows how they can lead down a dark path of wanting to erase other people — and eventually the entire world. They're in stores now, and well worth renting or buying so you can rewrite your memories of this vastly underrated show.

For those of you coming to this late, The Middleman was a graphic novel that spawned a television show on ABC Family last year. It followed the adventures of art student Wendy Watson, who takes a temp job that turns out to be an apprenticeship with the Middleman, a mysterious superhero who fights monsters and mad scientists. And the Middleman strikes up an awkward but really sweet flirtation with Wendy's roommate Lacey.

The Forbidden Romance Contingency: Show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach says he balked at having any kind of romance between MM and Lacey. "I was only willing to make it a joke in the pilot," but insisted that would be the end of it. The pilot, incidentally, was 90 percent the same as the first issue of his graphic novel, laying out the characters as broad archetypes: the stoic, quirky hero, the snarky art student and her idealistic roommate.

But this is what happens when you develop a TV show, Grillo-Marxuach says. You bring that story that you created sitting in a room by yourself into a room full of other writers, and they start putting in their own ideas and influences. And you bring in actors like Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson), Matt Keeslar (The Middleman) and Brit Morgan (Lacey Thornfield) and they have bring their own stuff to the characters. One of the things that really jumps out at you, if you read the graphic novel (which you should) and then watch the TV series (which you most definitely should) is how much more complex and nuanced the characters become. Grillo-Marxuach says that's a result of working on the characters in a collaborative setting.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And Grillo-Marxuach says he has "boundaries" in his own writing ability, stuff he can't or doesn't do. So when the other writers on the show started pushing for Lacey and MM to go on a date, Grillo-Marxuach pushed back. "But the writers in the writer's room kept insisiting... It's weird to be a showrunner at loggerheads with the writing room." He objected for several reasons: "He's older than she is, he's Wendy's boss and an authority figure." But in the end, he gave in, and that led to some of the more poignant moments in the show, and deepened the characters immensely. "If it was just me writing this in my room by miself doing every episode you'd never have seen that," says Grillo-Marxuach. "I'm not a megalmanical show runner, and I like it when people make my work better."

The Superhero Comedy Initiative: We just sat down and watched most of the show's run once again on DVD — the DVD box set comes out July 28, incidentally — and it's striking how much the show feels like a straight-up comedy when you watch a bunch of episodes in a row. Grillo-Marxuach is happy for people to view The Middleman as a comedy. "It was always a comedy, in that it always riffs on popular culture, and it always had this very specific pattery way of talking."

"If you want to send a message to the world — and I don't know that the show was a big message show — it's better to do it by making people laugh than by being preachy," Grillo-Marxuach says. The Middleman "was always a very sweet-souled show, and it had a lot of heart. It has a lot of pity towards villains. It says that evil is little people doing a lot of work not to be good, even though being good is probably easier."

And as we talked about last summer at Comic Con, a big part of the show's lightness is in response to the fetishization of darkness in genre entertainment of the past 20 years, shows and movies which insist that life is hard and full of struggle, and heroism will destroy your life. In response, "an affirmation of the possibility of joy and accomplishment is very much what the show is all about. Of course, my show got canceled after 12 episodes, and The Dark Knight made $600 billion," notes Grillo-Marxuach.

The Unlikely Terry Nation In-Joke Alert:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The fact that The Middleman is such an upbeat show makes it even funnier that — SPOILER ALERT — the unfilmed final episode is full of tiny references to Blake's 7, the famously depressing British science fiction series. I would list them, but we'd be here all day. "I was trying to find the show that has the most depressing series finale ever" to reference in The Middleman's finale, says Grillo-Marxuach. That unfilmed final episode, of course, is coming out as a graphic novel in time for Comic Con, and there'll be a reading of the episode's script, featuring the original cast, on Thursday at Comic Con. And for those who missed it, here's the official description:

Who is The Middleman's long-lost love? Can Lacey Thornfield ever forget her requited but never-acted-upon attraction to The Middleman? Is Manservant Neville a beneficent plutocrat or an evil madman with a nefarious plan for world domination? Will Wendy Watson and Tyler Ford ever find time for one another? Will Wendy Watson ever wear a slave girl costume? All your burning questions will be answered - and all your burning answers will be questioned - in this season-ending, series-concluding installment of The Middleman.

And at the right is a sneak peek at the graphic novel's final image of MM, from original artist Les McClain.

Anyway, all of those Blake's 7 references are there to set up a downer ending, but the graphic novel's actual ending is not that bleak, says Grillo-Marxuach. In fact, the graphic novel version of the series finale has a more upbeat ending than the actual episode would have had if it had been filmed as planned. By the time the show's creators were working on the 13th episode, they were exhausted from doing the first 12 and struggling with "big budget obstacles," and their beloved colleague Neil Levin had just died. (The show's 12th and final episode is dedicated to Levin.) But since Grillo-Marxuach had some time to rework the script slightly between the show's cancellation and the graphic novel coming out, "I found a way to end it on a more optimistic note... Had we shot it, it would have had more weariness."

So as Grillo-Marxuach puts it, "In our world, Blake is not evil, and the Federation is destroyed." (This led to us having a huge debate over whether Blake is evil in the Blake's 7 series finale.)

The "Never Say Never Again" Potential: So if the DVD box set sells a billion copies, could The Middleman still return in some form? Absolutely, says Grillo-Marxuach. "The nice thing is, this happened with Firefly, it happened with Futurama, it happened with Family Guy. There's a history of cult shows being found and further exploited by the corporations, in a good way."

So this seems like a great moment to plug the DVDs, which are coming out July 28 on Shout Factory. We'll post a review of the box set later, but they're already available for preorder at Amazon.com. And it's never too early to do your Christmas shopping. You never know when your local shopping mall will be overrun with gun-toting gorillas, after all.

In Alien Raiders, Ritter and his team of rogue alien-hunters track an alien infestation to a supermarket and start trying to figure out which of the people inside have aliens in control. As you can see from the clips below, they have some unorthodox methods of alien detection. And it's up to one smart cop, who keeps his head in a crisis, to keep the situation from going bonkers.

Here's the trailer:

And here are a couple of clips:




Alien Raiders is out on DVD from Warner Bros. tomorrow.

The complete first season will hit your shelves this summer. Writes show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach:

produced by the good folk of shout! factory (the incredible episode-box artisans who created amazing sets for "freaks and geeks," "my so-called life" and MST3K) - the DVDs will be out in time for the san diego comic-con and will be chock-full of the kind of extra goodness you have come to expect from the middleteam...

Hopefully those extras will include more details about the show's abortive thirteenth episode, plus tons of extra clips and stuff. (More Lacey mascot dancing?) But you know that this is only the start of your obligation, right? Once the DVDs are out there, you'll have to convert all your friends and try to ensure Firefly-esque DVD sales, which are the only way we'll ever see MM and WW in action again. [Thanks Hannah!]

I remember being blown away when I saw The Undiscovered Country in the theater. It was no Wrath of Khan, but it was an improvement on The Voyage Home. (Was there a film in between The Voyage Home and The Undiscovered Country? I'm really not sure.)

So when Trek VI came out on VHS, I couldn't wait to rent it. Unfortunately, this time around it felt draggy and dull. Maybe some of that was just seeing it a second time, and realizing quite how unnecessary some of prison-planet stuff was and how much the movie lost focus about halfway through. But a huge part of it was the lengthy scenes of the Federation President debating and discussing options and solutions, over and over again. And then I noticed on the VHS box that the VHS release included previously unseen footage. (Only a few minutes worth, supposedly, but it felt like a noticeably different film.)

That's the version of the film that came out on DVD in 1999, and the two-disc special edition includes a slightly longer cut than that. So, to the best of my knowledge, there's never been a VHS or DVD release of the movie's original theatrical cut, which I remember being quite a bit more fun and engaging. (Again, I haven't seen the theatrical cut in years, so memory may be exaggerating.)

The good news is, the upcoming Blu-ray release of Undiscovered will include the theatrical cut for the first time ever. Also, the Blu-ray of Wrath Of Khan will include that movie's theatrical cut as well — so no lengthy discussion of Tiberian bats — but you can also buy a used copy of TWOK's original DVD release, with the theatrical cut, pretty easily.

It'll be interesting to see the version of Undiscovered that appeared in theaters once again, to find out if it's really as good as I remember, or if the movie really was a bit bloated in all its forms. The Blu-Ray discs will be out in May, just in time for the new Trek movie's theatrical release. [Trek Movie]

I got a review copy of the Kyle XY season two DVDs, and have been watching all the early episodes from the season that I missed the first time around. I really only got hooked on the show during the second half of the season — I had dismissed it as insipid warm'n'fuzzy entertainment with a wholesome lesson in every episode until then. The thing is, the show is warm and fuzzy, and it does have wholesome lessons about family and stuff, but it's also surprisingly real and smart.

Season two is when Kyle learned more of the truth of his origins — that he was a scientific experiment based, very loosely, on some theories of Einstein's. And he spent the first years of his life maturing in a tank, until he was found, wandering in the woods with no memory of who he was (and no bellybutton). Season two also sees the introduction of Jessi XX, Kyle's female counterpart, who's sort of the Faith to his Buffy. (She's a psycho who fell into the wrong hands, instead of the right hands, after she got out of her own incubation tank.) Kyle has to learn how to try and live a normal life and deal with relationships and stuff, while simultaneously developing his secret mental powers and dealing with a million confusing super-science conspiracies.

And that's the thing about Kyle XY: I actually like all the characters on this show, even the sometimes excessively wholesome mom. I love his stepbrother Josh, who's a sarcastic nerd — in season two Josh encounters a video-game-playing nerd girl and tries to turn her into his best friend and honorary wingman, before finally giving into the inevitable and dating her. It is the cutest storyline EVAR! And Lori, the queen bitch step-sister. I've never watched Gossip Girl, but I imagine Kyle XY's teens are more believable and a million times less annoying.

And the wholesome thing? Not as overwhelming as you'd think. In one episode, Kyle locks himself in his bedroom for the first time, and his host family spends five minutes joking about whether Kyle has finally learned to masturbate. In another, Jessi the freak girl spots some condoms in a guy's box o' stuff, and asks whose pleasure they're ribbed for. (I think they end up hooking up, too.) Lori the stepsister, and her best friend, spend a whole episode scheming to avoid winning on their high school's slut-of-the-year competition. The host parents get all freaked out when they realize their son Josh has been smoking weed — and then they realize he stole it from them.

Okay, sure, it's not dark and edgy like BSG, but Kyle XY has become something of a guilty pleasure for me. I really want to see if Lori and her new sarcastic DJ boytoy manage to hook up, and what happens with Josh's nerdy girlfriend. I don't really care about Kyle's love life, but that's because he's dating the show's only weak character — if he hooks up with his fellow test-tube baby Jessi, then I'll be glued to the screen.

Here are some clips from the new DVD box set. And it's on ABC Family tonight at 9.

Explanation:

Pushing Too Hard:

Homecoming:

Trapped:

Social Services:

Matt and Jamie featurette:

Josh featurette:

Helo speaks:

The bittersweet final season:

Katee Sackhoff loves Starbuck:

The political thing:

Movies:

The Dark Knight just came out on DVD, and pretty much everybody who doesn't hate movies is going to want to own it. Our sister site Gizmodo just reviewed the BluRay version, and the picture quality on an HD screen is the next best thing to seeing it in actual Imax.
Extras: Nothing to write home about, sadly. No Christopher Nolan commentary track. No outtakes or gaffes, because Nolan doesn't believe in doing that to his actors. The second disc includes those "Gotham Tonight" faux news programs that were on the Internet a while back. Plus some featurettes, like this one:

Wanted is an unrated DVD, which means just a smidge more crazy violence and nudity in this story of a working stiff who discovers he's the super-powered heir to a society of mega-assassins.
Extras: There are tons and tons of featurettes, plus a music video to a song by Danny Elfman. I like this one, about how much fun it is to be beaten up by Angelina Jolie:

This one, about the special effects work behind the spinning train, is also pretty cool:

Wall-E is the best animated movie in years, and one of the best movies of the year. A lone trash-compacting robot is left behind on a destroyed Earth.
Extras: Two short films, Burn-E and the theatrically released Presto Amazing. Some deleted scenes, including this one:

And some featurettes, including this one about why Wall-E doesn't have elbows:

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. One of the best directors working today, Guillermo Del Toro, takes on a second installment of this supernatural superhero story, featuring a deeper look at Hellboy's alienation and tangled relationships.
Extras: There are two commentaries, one by Del Toro and one by some of the actors. Plus tons of deleted scenes. But for my money, the features that make it most worthwhile are the looks inside the making of GDT's amazing creatures, and his personal tours of the movie's elaborate sets, like the troll market:

Plus there's a giant two-and-a-half-hour documentary, "Hellboy: In Services Of The Demon." And a look inside the puppet theater, and a glimpse of Del Toro's notebook.

The Incredible Hulk, Marvel's less appreciated superhero film of 2008, is still a pretty satisfying monster romp, and the DVD gives you more of a sense of how ambitious a project it really was.
Extras: There are featurettes, showing how Ed Norton became the Hulk and Tim Roth became the Abomination. There's the original opening sequence, in a snowy wasteland, where Bruce tries to kill himself and turns into the Hulk. You can see some deleted scenes, which give you a glimpse of the much longer, more introspective movie co-writer Edward Norton wanted you to see. Like this one, where Bruce cries over psycho-babble at dinnertime:

Or this one, where Bruce and Betty look at an orchid together:

Johnny Mnemonic/Omega Doom/Universal Soldier. Yes, you heard me right. Sony just collected all three of these awesome 1990s instant classics and put them onto one bargain-priced DVD set. (As cheap as $14 on one site.) This is a whole day's viewing. You can drink coffee and watch Mnemonic, then get stoned and watch Universal Soldier, and then drink Drano and watch Omega Doom. (You've never heard of Omega Doom? It's Rutger Hauer playing a post-apocalyptic robot who's lost his memory. Okay?)

Extras: Ummm... Thai subtitles. Could come in handy.

Thirteenth Floor/Screamers/Solo. And here's another one. I bet you have a friend who doesn't own any of these movies. Again, going as cheap as $14 on some sites. The Thirteenth Floor was actually a pretty okay movie, part of the cyberpunk mini-boom of the late 1990s. Solo is Mario Van Peebles as a super-cyborg.
Extras: Umm... If you get stoned enough, you can watch these movies more than once.

David Lynch: The Lime Green Set. The notoriously wacky director has just put out a box set, including a remastered Eraserhead, plus Elephant Man and Blue Velvet. It also includes some new-to-DVD apocrypha, such as Wild At Heart's "Industrial Symphony No. 1" and Dumbland. And there are some early short films, like "Six Men Getting Sick."
Extras: There are never-before-seen Elephant Man DVD extras, plus a fancy booklet and a new sound mix for Velvet.

TV box sets:

Lost: The complete fourth season. Relive the season when this island-castaway show started getting exciting again, thanks to the flash-forwards and the saga of the Oceanic Six getting off the island.
Extras: There's a pretty hilarious Oceanic Airlines safety card, plus two whole discs of bonus features. You've got that wacky feature about flash-forwards that we showed you recently, plus the mockumentary about the hoax of the Oceanic Six. Documentaries cover topics like filming on location, creating that massive freighter set, and all the guns that everyone carries. Plus bloopers, which are never as funny as you think they'll be. And deleted scenes, like this one:

Jericho: The Complete Series. For your friends who just don't get why you were so pissed off that CBS axed this series about the town in Kansas that survives a massive act of nuclear terrorism.
Extras: Supposedly this set has everything the first and second season sets had, plus some bonus features. Including a wacky list of 100 reasons why you should watch Jericho, which include "Funny Arms Skeet." And a documentary showing a table-read for the script for season two, episode one.

The 4400: The complete series. This show about 4,400 people being abducted and given weird superpowers turned out to be a lot more bizarre and complicated than it looked at first, with a weird cult and Summer Glau as a psychopath with mind powers. And Jeffrey Combs as a mad scientist. Yay. And now here's the complete thing, for only about $66 on Amazon.
Extras: I think you basically get what you would have gotten with each of the separate season box sets.

Doctor Who: Series Four. In many ways, the end of an era for the BBC's time-travel action-comedy-soap. The last full season starring David Tennant and under the stewardship of Russell T. Davies, plus the final (probably) end of the story of Rose, the time-travelers most besotted companion. It's not the best season of the RTD years, but contains some real gems, like "FIres Of Pompeii," "Midnight" and "Turn Left."
Extras: I love the DVD menus, which feature the usual view of the TARDIS set, until you select something — then the Titanic crashes through the wall. There are the usual Doctor Who Confidential mini-documentaries for each episode. The "Time Crash" mini-episode, featuring two Doctors, is included, and there's also a David Tennant video diary. Plus commentary tracks. And deleted scenes, like this one:

And this alternate ending:

Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary. Has it really been twenty years of the guy on the space station watching bad movies with robots? Huh. In any case, this is a comemorative tin box set with four of the show's most popular movies: First Spaceship on Venus (1960), Laserblast (1978), Werewolf (1996), and Future War (1997).
Extras: The oral history of MST3K (sounds unhygienic.) A Comic-Con reunion panel. All six versions of the theme song. Four fancy lobby cards, plus a Crow T. Robot figurine.

Star Trek: Season Three remastered. Your friends may already have the seminal space opera on DVD, but do they have the fancy-schmancy remastered version? Now you can watch the show slide downhill into oblivion in better picture quality, with restored special effects.
Extras: There's a new version of the show's original pilot, "The Cage," with improved effects. And footage of the cast and crew goofing around, from home movies. And footage of makeup tests.

Transformers Energon: The Ultimate Collection If you're going to mess around with Transformers Energon, it might as well be the ultimate version, dammit. This was an animated series running from 2004-2005, most notable for featuring a lot of Unicron, the evil robo-planet formerly voiced by Orson Welles.
Extras: None that I can find out about.

Bubblegum Crisis 2040: Complete Collection. There's already been a "Perfect Collection," but now there's a "Complete Collection," which sounds even better. In the aftermath of a huge earthquake, an evil corporation wants to take over Tokyo using genetically engineered monsters. Oh noes! Luckily four super-powered women stand in their way, in this anime spinoff.
Extras: None that I can learn about.

Voltron Volume 6 A totally new Voltron is constructed to battle the Drule threat in this new DVD box set. This covers episodes 73-90 of the 1980s series.
Extras: Featurettes include "Vehicle Voltron Pilot," "Vehicle Voltron Fans Unite," "Vehicle Voltron Featurette," "Team Up Clips" and "Episode Synopses With Original Air Dates."

Wild Wild West: The Complete Series. If your own exposure to this weird steampunk excursion was the Will Smith movie, now's your chance to discover it in full.
Extras: It includes the two later TV movies, which weren't included with previous box sets. There are also audio interviews with creators like Fred Freiburger, John Kneibuhl, music composer Richard Markowitz, and special effects creator Tim Smyth. And you get to see one of star Robert Conrad's Everready battery commercials from the late 1970s, plus a network promo reel.

Other:

Thomas Pynchon - A Journey Into The Mind Of [P]. This 2002 documentary about the writer of The Crying Of Lot 49 and Mason & Dixon is finally out on DVD as of November. The Dubini brothers, Italian-German film-makers, try to unravel the mystery of the reclusive Pynchon through the use of photographs and archival films, plus tons of interviews with random Pynchon admirers and hangers on. Some reviewers have been a tad underwhelmed.
Extras: None that I'm aware of.

Timewave 2013: The Future Is Now Odyssey Two. Honestly, I would get this just for the title. Your friends will never look at you the same way again. It's the sequel to the acclaimed 2012 the Odyssey Armageddon Is Not What It Used To Be. Says the blurb:

This is definitely an adventure into the nature of time itself, with some of the world's foremost metaphysicians, sages and experts lending their wisdom. Buckle yourself in for a breathtaking ride! The experts in this film reinforce the notion of continual change, inner change and the amazing opportunities presented by the advent of the galactic alignment in December 2012.

Extras: You'll discover that the end of the Mayan calendar isn't really the end of time. Sort of.

Another DVD featurette we got to see was a conspiracy-theory faux documentary about the Oceanic Six and the unlikelihood of their official story being true. The nature of the plane crash, the place where it allegedly crashed and the island they allegedly reached are all counter to the laws of physics. And then there's the thing where they didn't starve, and Kate's supposed pregnancy.

And then Cuse and Lindelof answered some questions. Lindelof said Lost is made to be watched on DVD because of all the easter eggs, and "they're almost designed for repeat viewings... I sometimes think about how frustrating it would've been to read the Harry Potter books ONE CHAPTER AT A TIME once a week. I'd pretty much kill myself."

I asked if the fourth season will have an obvious break, style-wise, between the pre-strike and post-strike episodes when you watch the whole thing in one of two sittings. Lindelof replied:

Hopefully not... The fact of the matter is that we designed out — at least roughly — the entire sixteen episode season... planting flags as to what would happen where in the grand scheme of things. In that original design, there were a couple of episodes focusing more on the Freighter Folks (Faraday, Miles and Charlotte) that got pushed into this season, but more importantly, things like Jack's appendicitis and Keamy arriving at New Otherton and killing Alex happened SOONER than we had planned due to the collapsed schedule. I think if there's a sense of separation between the first eight episodes (ending with "Meet Kevin Johnson") and the final six hours, it's that the story is really moving at a much higher rate of speed than we're traditionally accustomed to.

And there's good news for those of us who don't want to see the Oceanic Six separated from the rest of the show's cast for an entire season. Lindelof wrote:

We're concerned, too! I think everyone, writers and fans alike, feels the show is at its best when our characters are together... but the fact of the matter is that the story is constantly twisting and turning to keep them apart. Let's face it — Absence makes the heart grow fonder... but there's nothing sweeter than a reunion. All we're willing to say at this point is that if we were to spend the ENTIRE duration of Season Five with the Oceanic Six trying to get back to the island, we are fully aware that the audience would strangle us.

Also, more good news: Cuse says the 17-episode seasons mean there will be no "stall episodes," and the show will just race forward every week.

Meanwhile, Cuse said the show tries to jump the shark all the time. And Lindelof said the fact that the audience was so open to flash-forwards in season four has inspired the producers to get even more bold in season five. "The cool thing about Season Five is that it takes a little while for your brain to fully absorb how the story is unfolding... but hopefully, once it does, you'll realize we're trying something new yet again." Also, there will be flash-backs and flash-forwards, but the show isn't limiting itself to those any more.

Also, the reapearance of Christian Shepherd in season four definitely ties into the empty coffin Jack discovered in season one. And it's "safe to say" we'll be seeing more of Christian in season five. "And what's up with those white tennis shoes he was wearing back in season one?" teased Lindelof. Also, he said Claire may not actually be dead. We'll get more backstory on Walt and Rousseau, but Libby's story may be already over. And we'll see more of the four-toed statue, for sure. The show will be in "answer mode" by the end of season five, and going into season six.

Also, the scene between Jack and Locke, in the greenhouse at the end of the season, is a pivotal one, says Lindelof.

Obviously, the ramifications of Locke telling Jack (once again) that he's not supposed to leave the island... but if he does, he must LIE about everything that happens... is essentially what kicks off the entire story of the Oceanic Six. We think its really cool that it was actually Locke's idea, even though Jack doesn't present it that way. And now that Jack is standing over Locke's coffin, the relationship between these two men becomes really central to the endgame of our story.

Meanwhile, Lindelof says it's liberating that the show isn't trying to hide its fantasy/scifi elements any more — but adds that it'll keep evolving and exploring the questions of science versus faith. He points to The Stand, which starts with an epidemic that kills 99 percent of the world's population and then slowly becomes more mystical until the hand of God appears at the end.

Rich Johnson with Lying In The Gutters cites sources who claim the whole Watchmen lawsuit is just a ploy by Fox to get the rights to release the 1960s Batman TV series on DVD. Allegedly, Fox owns the rights to the actual footage starring Adam West as the less growly version of the character, but Warner Bros. owns the copyrights to Batman and all the other characters. So Fox's Watchmen suit is aimed at brokering a Bat-deal where Warners okays DVDs of Bruce's campiest moments, in exchange for a go-ahead with Zack Snyder's "Batman can't get it up" movie.

(A side note: I'm a tad embarrassed — I thought the 60s Batman show was on DVD already, or I would have mentioned it for sure in my roundup of great science fiction TV that isn't on DVD yet. Also, sorry about Misfits of Science too.)

Other sources, like TV Shows On DVD, say it's not that simple — even if Fox gets Warners to agree to let Batman out of this fiendish rights trap, they still have to negotiate new contracts with every actor, propmaker and craft services worker from the original show. That's because the original 1960s contracts only covered broadcast rights. (But I'm wondering if that isn't the case with every classic show that gets released on DVD? Don't most of those shows have contracts only covering first run and syndication rights, not other formats? And yet, we get every episode of Matlock on DVD.) In any case, even the TV Shows people say it's quite likely that Batman will be the peacemaker who steps in and settles this bitter dispute between two media giants over Bruce's almost-lookalike and his dysfunctional friends. [Lying In The Gutters and TV Shows on DVD via IGN]

St. John wrote in an email to io9:

Last year I directed a little indie film called The Chronicles of Hollow Earth: The Next Race — it's the prequel story to my feature film trilogy and TV series franchise. This is a non-linear film, jumping back and forth as it builds to a major revelation centering around the Pryme family of Hollow Earth — Crecilius Pryme is the military leader who wants to eradicate the remaining human population who toil above-ground; Aiden is his loyalist brother; and Hannalin is their distraught mother whose sympathy for the humans puts her in direct conflict with her sons. There are many references to history past and present, all mixed together to create a new mythology . . . The film is dialogue/story-driven, given its limited budget. But my intention was to set the stage for the thrilling stories to follow.

I'm a little worried about any movie that its director calls "non-linear," but after watching the preview I'm definitely intrigued. Admittedly the protofascist underground villains' eyeliner looks a little Green Day, and the heroine needs to be a bit more Sarah Connor in the asskickery department. Still, I like that feeling of Gattaca crossed with the family power struggles of Dune.

What I find most interesting about this is that the cheapness of filmmaking these days allows people to do with movies what they once did with epic novels. Ten years ago, St. John would have been pitching this story to publishers as a 6-book epic. Today he's turning it into a straight-to-DVD feature film cycle and (maybe) a web TV series too. St. John kindly sent us a screener of the movie, so I'll watch it and let you know how it goes.

The Next Race [official site]

Step one: Discover Ace, the Proto-Rose.

The last couple of years Doctor Who was on the air in the late 1980s, the writers started experimenting with the often-boring relationship between the Doctor and his cute travel companion. They introduced Ace, a rebellious teenager with a love of explosives. At first, the Ace-Doctor relationship was just a little spicier than the traditional Doctor/ambiguous-friend pairing, but over time it became a lot more. The Doctor started putting Ace through a series of tests and forcing her to confront her fears. She, in turn, started questioning the Doctor's goals and methods more than any companion before her. The Doctor-Ace relationship provided an inspiration for some of the more fully realized companions of today, like Rose.

The final three Ace stories are all on DVD, and they're probably the best way for fans of the RTD era to delve into the new series. (Ignore the horrendous opening credits, the mostly cheese-tastic incidental music and the worse-than-usual special effects.)

In "Ghostlight," the Doctor takes Ace to the haunted house that freaked her out when she was a kid, except they visit it in the Victorian era and she discovers she had good reason to be freaked out. "Ghostlight" is full of weird clever touches and riffs on Victorian naturalism and the absurdity of the British explorer archetype. (And a lot of that stuff ends up being less than meets the eye, sadly.) But at its core, it's about Ace confronting her deepest fears and getting closer to being the Doctor's equal.

And then in "Curse Of Fenric," the Doctor takes Ace to World War II England, where she meets her own mother as a baby and discovers that someone has been manipulating her all along. But "Curse Of Fenric" is mostly the episode steps up and starts being the clever one — there's a fantastic moment halfway through where the Doctor is counting on nobody figuring out the secret of the Viking runes. And he doesn't realize Ace has figured it out ages ago, because he's understimated her intelligence. Finally, in "Survival," Ace returns to her juvenile-delinquent roots and discovers that all her old friends have gotten sucked into a planet that's basically a weird parody of the "survival of the fittest" world the stupid adults in her life were trying to prepare her for all along.

These three stories stand the test of time quite well, and they show Ace growing and developing as a character, whose inner life is just as important as the Doctor's latest scheme. (A fourth Ace story, "Remembrance Of The Daleks," is also on DVD and has some nice moments.) Supposedly if the show hadn't been canceled, we would have learned the reason the Doctor was putting Ace through so much trauma: he was grooming her to become a Time Lord. The following season would have seen Ace enrolling in the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey. (Her story continued in a different way in a series of novels, but a radio play, "Death Comes To Time," did show her going through a sort of Time Lord training.)

Step two: Sample the Baker era.

And yes, by "Baker era," I do mean "Tom Baker." I would never advocate anybody putting themselves through the torment of watching any of Colin Baker's mid-1980s tenure as the Doctor. Tom Baker played the Doctor from 1974 to 1981, and his manic (and sometimes menacing) portrayal was huge in England and won over American audiences. His portrayal degenerated into schtick after a few years, but at first he was the edgiest, funniest and most unpredictable of the Doctors.

I was surprised when I interviewed Julie Gardner, executive producer of the new Who, and she mentioned that showrunner Russell T. Davies had given her a list of classic Who episodes to watch before they relaunched the show. The list was all Tom Baker, instead of the later stories I'd been expecting: "Pyramids Of Mars," "Talons Of Weng-Chiang" and "City Of Death." (I wouldn't recommend "Talons Of Weng Chiang," though: the racial stereotyping is actually painful to watch.)

The best Tom Baker stories remain fresh because they're all about improvisation. Tom Baker is constantly improvising his performance, keeping the other actors on their toes. And his Doctor is written as the most improvisational as well. He's constantly being backed into a corner and bluffing his way out, making plans that fall flat and then making up new plans on the spot, and building gadgets out of scrap. And it's really in the Baker era that the show's scripts become so multi-layered that any child watching will probably miss half of what's going on. (And still love it.) Here are the Tom Baker episodes that actually hold up, weak special effects and all:

• "Ark In Space." Just remember that bubble wrap wasn't as common back then, and it actually looked sort of cool at the time. And "Ark" is a classic for a reason: the Doctor is out of his depth from the moment he's trapped in an airless room with the life-support turned off to the moment he's facing an army of spacewalking giant bugs, with no way to stop them. Classic Who moment: the Doctor makes a macabre observation, followed by "I'm afraid." His companion Sarah Jane tells him to stop making jokes, and he responds: "When I say I'm afraid, I'm not making jokes."
• "Pyramids Of Mars." Another one where the Doctor is outclassed and overpowered from start to finish, and he keeps making clever plans that fail horribly. The interplay between Sarah Jane and the Doctor is never better than in this episode — partly because the story's female director took some of the Doctor's dialog and gave it to Sarah Jane. So instead of the Doctor explaining everything to Sarah Jane, she's figuring stuff out on her own.
• "Robots Of Death." Here's a clever twist: robots go around killing people, not by shooting them with lasers or firing nanites at them — but by strangling them to death with their powerful robot hands. It's a surprisingly gruesome story, by Blake's 7 writer Chris Boucher, and it explores some serious questions about humans' dependence on technology. The society in "Robots" can't function without robotic assistance, but the humans are secretly (or not so secretly) terrified of robots. So what happens when a whole gaggle of robots go berzerk and kill everybody? "I should think it's the end of this civilization," the Doctor says far too casually. "Robots" also features Leela, the knife-wielding jungle woman who traveled with the Doctor for a couple of years, and whose first response to any situation is lethal force.
• "City Of Death." I'm hesitant to recommend this one, because it's pretty slow going at first — the Who team managed to film in Paris, and celebrated with lots and lots and lots of shots of the Doctor running around the city. But once it gets going, the script mostly written by Douglas Adams is pretty much irresistibly glib and clever. Not to mention a cameo by Monty Python's John Cleese in his prime.

Step three: Check out some other classics.

I'm pretty confident that if you've followed steps one and two, you should already be a fan of the classic series. At that point, you should be open to sampling a lot of the other stories from the show. Here are a couple of ground rules:

1) Don't watch any story over four episodes long. (Or about 90 minutes.) While there are a few notable exceptions, by and large the longer a Who story gets, the more it gets padded out for length. Even some four-episode stories tend to have a third episode where the Doctor is locked up for twenty minutes or gets captured and escapes a couple of times. The show's producers frequently dragged out stories for longer than they deserved, in order to save money on sets and costumes. A few possible exceptions: "Dalek Invasion Of Earth," "Doctor Who And The Silurians" and "Inferno."

2) Stay away from the black and white 1960s stories until you're well and truly indoctrinated. There are some definite gems remaining from the 60s, including the aforementioned Dalek invasion story and "Tomb Of The Cybermen," but the first two Doctors' adventures haven't aged as well, by and large, as the rest of the show. Not just because of the old-movie look of the black and white, but also because they were filming literally an episode per week, with a couple of sets, and most of the episodes have a very stagey quality to them. They're basically stage plays on film.

3) Try to take breaks between episodes. I should have mentioned this earlier. When I lived in England as a kid, we would have a week between 25-minute episodes, and those silly cliffhangers would feel all-consuming. A lot of stories feel stretched out and slow if you watch them all in one sitting, but they feel urgent and super-fast if you watch them an episode at a time. Although the Tom Baker stories were frequently shown in "movie" format in the U.S., with all the episode breaks edited out, and they seemed to hold up fine. (I remember watching a 7-part Jon Pertwee story in "movie" format, and I nearly clawed my face off.)

That said, here are a few other stories that are on DVD that are especially worth checking out for people who are new to the classic series:

• "Claws Of Axos." For now, at least, it's the only classic story featuring the original version of the Doctor's arch-enemy the Master that's out on DVD and isn't 6 episodes long. It's got some extremely silly/cheesy moments, especially pompous civil servant Mr. Chinn, but it's also got some fun action sequences with U.N.I.T. and a somewhat clever story about gullible humans being lured to their doom through their own greed.
• "Curse Of Peladon." Not out on DVD, but hopefully it will be at some point. It's a fun romp about the Doctor visiting a mock-medieval planet that's trying to join a galactic Federation. The aliens are goofy and fun, and it's the only story with the Ice Warriors that isn't overly long and/or in black-and-white.
• "Carnival Of Monsters." Another silly romp, written by supreme Who screenwriter Robert Holmes. It drags a bit in places, due to a time loop that makes some of the characters act out the same scene over and over. But it's also got one of Holmes' classic huckster characters: a carnival con-man, who's got a machine full of captured alien races (including humans) living out a moment in time over and over. The carnival attraction ends up causing a revolution on an alien planet.
• "The Time Warrior." It introduces Sarah Jane and the cloned warrior Sontarans. It's also one of the wittiest scripts from Holmes, having fun with rogues and ruffians in medieval England.
• "Genesis Of The Daleks." Almost mentioned this in the "Tom Baker" section above. If you're up for a six-part story, this one is pretty great. The only good story featuring Davros, the creator of the war-cyborg Daleks. It's famous for having the gritty opening showing people being machine-gunned in slow motion, but it also has a lot of other great moments, with the occasional slow bit.
• "The Keeper Of Traken," "Logopolis" and "Castrovalva." The return of the Master, and the regeneration of Tom Baker into Peter Davison. These stories are fun to watch, and you can't help wishing that some of the touches of character development in the companions had been followed up on instead of ignored. The new Master starts out wonderful, but manages to fall apart by the end of "Castrovalva," sadly.
• "The Visitation." Another historical story, featuring an alien who wants to supercharge the Black Plague and wipe out humanity. Peter Davison is still finding his feet as the Doctor in this story, but he gives one of his most fiery performances.
• "Earthshock." The story that brought back the Cybermen and broke one of Doctor Who's cardinal rules. Very, very action movie-ish, once you get past the slow first part, but in a good way. And the new Cybermen are pretty imposing in this story.
• "Caves Of Androzani." Davison's last story is also his best, by several orders of magnitude. It's the return of Robert Holmes to writing Who, with one last blaze of greatness. The villains are operatic, the story has a ton of great twists, and the end of episode three is one of the greatest moments in Doctor Who. Period.
• "Revelation Of The Daleks." The least bad Colin Baker story is a weird satire on human mortality, set in a funeral home with more than one sinister secret. This story would be much better if it dropped all pretense of being a Dalek story, and maybe if it didn't include the Doctor. But for what it is, it's pretty fascinating.

Okay, that's my advice for new-Who fans. What do you think?

Ace toy photo by Decepticreeps on Flickr.