Baccarin plays Anna, the leader of the alien Visitors (or Vs) who come to Earth professing peace and friendship and promising healthcare and advanced technology. And of course, it's all too good to be true. Some pundits have been saying her character is meant to be Barack Obama, and Baccarin seemed to be aware of the comparisons. So we asked her if she thinks she's playing our new president, and she says:

I don't think we're saying Anna is President Obama. But she is the leader of her people, and she is coming down to Earth and offering healthcare, and offering cures for diseases, and things that sort of clean out and give people hope, and there are definite parallels to be drawn and our intentions are to create a show that people relate to. And I think this is something that's been on people's minds, even before Obama... finding hope again, and healthcare, and finding a leader, and someone who can save us from the hole we've gotten ourselves into.

Don't expect Baccarin to play to the cheap seats. One thing Baccarin stressed over and over again, in our interview, is that she's going for a subtle portrayal of Anna, and she never plans to become as out-and-out sinister as Diana, the evil alien leader in the original miniseries.

"We're working with Anna being a little more subtle than in the original," says Baccarin. She wants Anna to be "creepy" and "scary" but also have qualities that the audience can relate to. That said, in the next few episodes, we'll get to see Anna "show her true colors a little more."

Baccarin says her goal is to make the audience feel drawn to Anna, even though they know they shouldn't be:

It's really true of all the characters on the show: We walk a fine line. It's way more interesting to question why they feel they want to follow this character. There should be qualities that [the audience] can identify with, that we see them in ourselves. People identify [with Anna] and feel compelled by her, and feel like they want to follow her... and can't understand why they feel drawn to her. [The audience should be saying,] "I don't know, this isn't right that I'm going for it."

This was something the producers had worked out early on, she adds:

We had discussed early on, when I auditioned, [that] she couldn't be robotic or alien. She had to be nurturing and human, to be allowed into people's lives, so that people would trust her... We created this character who's very calm and controlled and nurturing. You don't see her losing her cool, and you don't see what's behind her motivations. It's like having your neighbor turn out not to be who you thought they were.

This subtle approach means that you have to watch Baccarin carefully to catch the little cues she drops in. The way she flutters her eyelashes. The way she lifts one eyebrow, or looks straight at someone, or looks away. Says Baccarin, "Obviously, Anna lives in a very constrained space, in that she is very precise, but there is a lot of freedom of subtlety and nuances."

I asked Baccarin how she felt about playing a villain after playing the more sympathetic Inara on Firefly, and she responded: "It really is fun. I'm not going to call her a villain. I'm going to say that you said that." (She really is good at the slippery politician thing.)

From Anna's perspective, "she is is being the best leader she can be. And if it's at the expense of a couple of humans, so be it."

Baccarin admits she gets asked whether she'll be eating a live hamster — like, pretty much all the time. She says:

We haven't done it in these [first] four episodes, and I'm bracing myself. And so many people ask about it, I think it's imminent. I think we are going to pay homage to those moments, but not maybe do them the same way — so hopefully I won't have to put a hamster down my throat.

Finally, I asked Baccarin how, as an immigrant from Brazil, she feels about taking part in a show that promotes xenophobia and suspicion of visitors. She says you shouldn't read too much into V:

I think we should all be suspicious of aliens. We're not saying be suspicious of people from other cultures, I think we're saying be suspicious of people from outer space. So we're very safe there. There's a lot of ethnic diversity in our world now, and we're not commenting on that all. It's literally about people coming from another world.

V airs on Tuesday nights for the next three weeks, and then goes away until March due to some kind of sporting event.

In Men Who Stare At Goats, in theaters today, Bridges plays Bill Django, a Vietnam veteran who founds a group of "psychic soldiers," who are warrior-monks steeped in the counterculture. And the film follows him from the 1970s to the present day. Meanwhile, George Clooney is Lyn Cassady, the best of Django's psychic soldiers, who takes a young reporter, played by Ewan McGregor, under his wing.

Both Bridges and Clooney manage to play their characters in the 1970s (in Bridges' case) and the 1980s (for both actors), as well as the present day. It gives you hope that Bridges really will be able to pull off his role as two different Flynns, an aged version and an ageless copy, in Tron Legacy.

So how did they manage to make Bridges and Clooney appear to span a few decades in the movie's flashbacks and present-day sequences? Heslov explains it was a tough decision:

We spent a lot of energy on that, even when I was just starting casting and George [Clooney] and I were talking about him doing the role, I was [wondering], "Do I have a younger guy play George in the past, and then George plays himself in the present? Or do I have George do it all?" And the more I thought about it, the more I hated the idea [of another, younger actor stepping in.] It's always hard to jump back and forth in time. I just felt like, if I had another actor playing George, the audience would be questioning, "Does he look enough like George?"

So once they had decided to use the same actors throughout, "it was just a question of how to back it up," and where to place the actors' current ages in the narrative. And how to use wigs and mustaches, among other things, to make the actors look younger in their flashback sequences.

For the 1970s sequences, they pulled Jeff Bridges' face back, to tighten the skin. "They use this kind of tape," explains Heslov. "They basically pull back under the hairline, and they tape it and pull back a little more, and then they use strings." The make-up people "use all sorts of gadgets" to get rid of Bridges' wrinkles, which sounds a bit painful. "It was fun, but it was time-consuming." Luckily, Bridges is "kind of a perfectionist," who "loves all that character-detail stuff." some actors don't want to be bothered, but Bridges will obsess over every aspect of his characters, including wardrobe, hair and makeup.

Also, for scenes set in the past, Heslov used as much soft light as possible, and in the present, "it was all about as much harsh light as we could use."

Escape From The Valley Of Elah

The majority of Goats' present-day sequences take place in Iraq, where Ewan McGregor's character travels to try and cover the war. So I asked Heslov if he was worried that his film would be lumped together with Iraq movies like Valley Of Elah and Stop Loss, which have bombed at the box office.

But Heslov says that he doesn't think of Goats as an Iraq war movie. "It has very little to do with Iraq, except that that's the backdrop of where the story takes place." The movie does touch on modern-day issues like torture and the military's habit of hiring huge contractors like Halliburton to take care of basic security and other functions, but "it was never my intention to make an Iraq war movie."

Counterculture meets military culture

One of the most striking images in Goats is the way Jeff Bridges' character brings a hot-tubbing, Zen, druggy counterculture influence to bear on the 1980s military. The merging of two opposite cultures in the "warrior monk" program is so loopy and weird, it feels like an alternate history. We asked Heslov if he thought the counterculture and military culture ever could really coexist, or learn from each other like that.

Heslov said he really does believe that the military is always exploring alternative ways of fighting wars. And he definitely does believe that in the wake of its experience in Vietnam and the 1960s and 1970s in general, the military was "beaten down by that experience, and they were searching for ways to change it up." But at the end of the day, Heslov thinks it would probably never have worked out, even if the individuals involved had behaved differently. Plus, if the military really learned to win without killing people, then it wouldn't really be war any more.

A debt to Dr. Strangelove.

Heslov says the weird blend of comedy and horror in his movie owes a lot to influences like Dr. Strangelove, M.A.S.H. and Catch-22. Certain directors, like Altman and Kubrick, have been very influential to him, and he did think about their works as he was creating this film.

Heslov says he tried to keep Goats from falling too far into horror or comedy, by keeping it as grounded as possible. Even at the most absurd points of the story, "I tried to keep it as real as possible, so the absurdness of the actual" situation would come through. Things like George Clooney trying to burst clouds with his mind, or people trying to run through walls, were played straight instead of playing up their silliness. "I hope that by maintaining that real tone, you could slide back and forth" between the absurd and the real.

We talked to Cusack yesterday as part of 2012 interviews:

With comic book films being so huge right now in Hollywood and big-name actors like Robert Downey Jr. starring in films such as Iron Man, would you ever consider doing a comic book adaptation or a superhero film?

I don't know, but yeah, for sure. I think the adult comics are some of the best film ideas out there.

Are there any comics in particular out there that you'd like to make?

Not one that I particularly know that I would like to do, but whenever I've come across one, I've really liked them.

Are there any [comic book movies] you've seen floating around in Hollywood that you'd like to see made?

Yeah, I can, there was one or two that I heard of that sounded really cool. One of them was about, I think... it's a vampire and a killer, and they're on the road, and it's this really strange story. I thought that sounded pretty cool. Also some of the obscure ones, I don't know if there are any more superheroes left.

That sounds a little bit like Preacher?

I think it might have been Preacher.

You should get involved with that!

I'm trying to. I heard about that one, I like that.

Who would you want to play?

I'd say either the vampire or the priest. One of those two guys.

So just the two best characters in the comic?

Why not?

So I'm not 100% sure if Preacher is the script that Cusack saw, but the name definitely struck a chord with Cusack. I can't even imagine Cusack as an murderous Cassidy, but he could make a pretty bad ass Jesse or even Arseface's daddy. John August's screenplay may not even be finished yet, and it's possible Cusack was merely talking about it as an idea he'd heard floating around Hollywood.

Last we heard about the adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's comic series, Sam Mendes was possibly going to direct and the script was half finished in May. But at least Mendes said he was trying to translate it just right so there might be a second or a third.

At the premiere for The Box we stole a few minutes with director Richard Kelly and finally got to the bottom of a lot of questions that have been plaguing us for years, like his constant use of water imagery, what it's like coming back after Southland Tales and what he really thinks about the Darko sequel made without him.

Why are you drawn to science fiction?

I think that science fiction is something that can capture the imagination of any human being, in the way that it lets us speculate and analyze the mysteries of the world. We live in a world that's filled with a lot of mystery. Fundamentally it gets to the heart of why we pay fourteen bucks to sit in a movie theater for two hours with a bunch of strangers. It's to discover new mysteries. And you know, with something like Avatar coming out, it sort of helps me reclaim the childhood sense of discovery I got from Jim Cameron when I saw Alien or when I saw Terminator for the first time, seeing the trailer for that film brings back all of those memories and makes me realize why I got into this business so… I think science fiction is where some of the most exciting stories are told.

Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are seen getting water dumped all over them in this movie, you've used water before as a supernatural element, can you tell us what that's all about?

Well I think sometimes the concept of saltwater coming from the ocean and the ocean being the driving force of the planet and our bodies being made of saltwater almost entirely… there's something fascinating about embracing that, the essence of it as a higher intelligence, a higher technology of some sort and it allows you to portray a higher intelligence in a visual way that provokes a lot of discussion and interpretation for audiences. So that's sort of been the reason behind my thought process. People may not understand that when they first see it but it plants a seed in your mind. It's something that we actually did with Donnie Darko and a little bit in Southland Tales so hopefully people are kind of connecting the dots.

What was it like directing this movie after doing Southland Tales?

It was a pleasure for me to have a simple concept to embrace, where I could still design an elaborate mystery behind it all and to try to design an elababorate roller coaster ride. And also to work with intimate characters and… really it's a three-character melodrama, it's the husband and the wife and the stranger who knocks on their door. And there's something wonderful about that simplicity and also being able to work within the studio system… is such a relief for me. To know that my film is going to get released and here we are, red carpet, and there's people here! So I'm very grateful for that.

One last question, have you seen S. Darko [the sequel to Donnie Darko]?

I have not seen it.

Are you planning to?

No. I kind of... it's not… I didn't have anything to do with it and I just.. kind of want the movie to exist in my heart the way I made it and I just I won't… I don't have any plans to see it.

The Box is theaters November 6th.

Even though John Cusack tried to be pretty mum on the details, the actor (who's also a producer) filled us in exclusively about the movie's status, and just how R-rated this film will be.

Let's talk Hot Tub Time Machine. Where's the film at right now?

I won't give anything away, but we are cutting the film right now. But it's about four guys who go back to the 1980s.

From what we saw in the trailer it seems like a pure group comedy. Who is your character in that group? What is your role?

I play sort of a guy who is a little bit of a control freak. He doesn't like to look back, and he gets forced to go back.

Since you are dealing with time travel is this going to be a Peggy Sue Got Married scenario with the actors from the future stuck in their child bodies, or will you have younger versions of yourself playing 80s you?

I'm not gonna tell you.

You are killing me.

I'm not killing you I'm trying to tantalize you.

Well the trailer looks like a return to the heavy drug usage, heavy on the swears, super fun type comedy? Are you guys doing a lot of drugs?

That's true [about the comedy]. There's not a lot of it, but there's some, you know it's the 80s, it's got drugs and sex and all the things that you know...

Why should we be excited for this movie?

I think Craig Robinson, Clark Duke and Rob Corddry are hilarious. It's pretty fun if you like those old movies. There are some characters that make fun of those old movie characters like the stock bad guys on the ski patrol and the things like that.

What about the stock good guys? Anyone skewer your past characters a little bit?

We'll we have those too [for the good guys]. I think somewhere in there it's doing that. Crispin Glover is in it and he was in Back To The Future and is an 80s icon. He's in it. Chevy Chase is in it.

Besides the cast, why did you want to get involved with this project?

Because MGM was making it, and they only had about half of a script and they wanted to start making it before the summer. So they said, you have to just go shoot it right now, and you can produce it, but you'll have to rewrite the script and write it, but you'll have to start in seven weeks. So it was a very insane project and time frame, but we decided to do it anyways. It was a mad dash. Because you know what the fuck? It's just this insane juggernaut.

With a title like that, it kind of has to go to that extreme.

Even the filming was that way, we only had about 60 pages of the script. We just had to write it as we went. A lot of it is improv.

How has the response been when people found out you'd be in this major genre reboot?

So far it's been pretty great. Our first sort of big dose was going to Comic Con to screen the pilot, and it was really incredible. I'd never seen anything like it, I obviously know - I'm a fan of a lot of scifi shows and genre shows and so there's a level of imagination and depth to the storytelling and it really draws people in. So seeing people react to some of our other cast members who have done other genre shows before was really incredible. When they embrace you, it's pretty great and complete and intense. In a way I feel like a bit of a newcomer into the world of it, and I hope I'm welcomed in. But the response to the story and to our show was really really incredible. We screened the pilot for 4,000 people and that's a really unique experience, you just don't, (you) rarely get a chance to see a piece of work that you've done with that size audience, and they seemed to love it. So it was really encouraging.

You said you were a fan of genre and scifi shows, what shows are you a fan of? Did they influence you at all while making this series about aliens?

Wolf: I grew up watching Star Trek and the original Battlestar and Six Million Dollar Man, Lost in Space, so I think there's a level of imagination in the storytelling, there's really no limits and that's really kind of exhilarating. For the most part, playing a newscaster who, as far as I know, is not an alien, is a human, a lot of my stuff has been interviewing people and acting as a media, so there's hasn't been a ton of special effects stuff. But there's been a bit - and interviewing Anna, the leader of the Visitors on the space ship, we work on a virtual set and then they create this world around us, it's really intense. I mean, to see what they're able to create nowadays, and our show winds up looking like a movie every week, because the limits to what people can accomplish on television seem to be blowing wide open, so there's really no difference between the effects an the storytelling that you see in theaters that you will now on television. So it's exciting to be part of a story that feels epic.

Your character [the news anchor] is ambitious but relegated to being just a talking head. And then when Anna, the leader of the aliens, tells him to ask only positive questions, he goes along with it. Do you think he'll ever actually try to get to the bottom of what's happening with these aliens?

I think he's just so looking for that thing that's gonna launch him, that I think his first thought when aliens land is, 'This could be it.' But only after his encounter with Anna, the leader of the Visitors, and she selects him to do this first worldwide interview where she's going to basically tell the human race why they're here, obviously then he knows he's got the opportunity of his lifetime sitting in his lap. So I don't think he foresees that he's going to wind up being manipulated the way that he gets manipulated, and I don't think he saw himself having to sell his soul to the visitors quite as quickly as he's asked to do it. As our story continues, you see him really fight the good fight. I think he's sort of morally up-for-grabs, because he wants, he's ambitious enough to go to great lengths to accomplish the things he wants to accomplish, but whether his better self or his lesser self will win out in the end is kind of, I think, the fun of his story.

The world treats the Visitors differently because they're so beautiful, do you think that's a real life metaphor for any existing groups right now because of the way that they're treated?

Absolutely, I do. I think one of the things that's intriguing about this version of this story is oftentimes when we imagine aliens and their arrival on Earth, we imagine these scary green men or monster creatures, and in our story they're beautiful, human-looking creatures. So the fact that so many people, because of their appearance, because of their message, fall in line and are inspired by them and feel a sense of hope that these creatures are actually going to do what they say and peacefully enhance the life that we're all living, I think if they were really creepy looking, not as many people would jump on board.

Yes, I think on the surface, there's definitely a commentary on why we embrace certain things and reject other things and that's one of the underlying themes, which there are many of.

With my character, with Chad, one of the themes that they're dealing with is how much faith we place in our media and is that faith honored and is it well-placed or is it ill-advised? And if you place that in the wrong hands, if there's somebody who's sort of morally up-for-grabs, potentially, like Chad Decker is, and you've charged him with getting the truth, you could have a very dangerous situation.

Did you base Chad on anybody that we know?

You know, yes and no. I mean, I think he's described in the pilot script as being an Anderson Cooper wannabe, so there's some of that in there I think. I mean, he's a modern day news guy who sort of lives and dies on people feeling like he's their buddy. It's not this kind of parochial father-figure news guy, he's more of your buddy who's going to give you the scoop. There's definitely a lot of people who I watch and have sort of drawn from, but hopefully he winds up being a product of who our producers and writers are creating.

To me, he's a really fascinating character, because I think he represents a lot about how we function, day in and day out. Which is I think we see the story we want to see oftentimes. And sometimes that's OK and sometimes that gets us into trouble.

Even though we thought the film Gentlemen Broncos rose above the bad buzz, to become an intensely personal film from a different person's perspective — awkward moments and all — some disagreed.

Entertainment Weekly complained that the film lacked the ever-present kitsch, and didn't celebrate its oddball characters as director Jared Hess has done in his previous works...

As they did in Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, the Hesses claim to celebrate the amusing qualities of misshapen people and their misshapen dreams, insisting that amateurism and bad taste (both in filmmaking and in life) are intentional artistic choices. The audience may have bought the act in Napoleon Dynamite. But this time, the act bombs.

AICN went even further accusing Hess of "Bully Porn."

Jared Hess doesn't make comedies. He makes Bully Porn. His characters, devoid of any likable qualities whatsoever, serve only to mope around pathetically, dressed in the hand-me-down isn't it ironic clothing of the late 1980's, to be laughed at for how miserable, lowly and despicably uninteresting they are. By us. The bullies. You see, this is supposed to be funny. We're supposed to giggle and chortle at the mom who wants nothing more from life than to make nightgowns for a living, or the indie-from-home filmmaker who grins like he's had reconstructive facial surgery. That's funny, right?

We knew this was coming, because a few audience members just didn't laugh the way we did during the screening. So we asked Hess if he was prepared for a potential backlash against this film. And how he walks the line between skewering these outcast characters, versus paying them homage.

Hess told us:

I don't really think about walking a line, I'm just doing what I love and casting the people that I love and ... it's funny. I think especially when Napoleon came out for the first time many people were like, 'Gosh this is condescending to rural America and their way of life; how dare he!'

And I don't know if these people have ever really been, you know, the people that didn't understand it, didn't really understood the love.

It's, for me, giving these smaller stories and characters that you normally wouldn't see in film, giving them a chance to be heard. In this fight, they've got bizarre life goals. It's still cool to be able to see them succeed in their own little sphere.

We also grabbed producer and snake-holding actor Mike White, and asked him what he would say to people that don't understand it and might accuse Broncos of making fun of science fiction fans and science fiction in general. Is it teasing or an homage?

I really don't think that that's true because I feel like Jared [Hess] really has an affection for all these people, and really relates to all these people — if you meet him, he does all the voices, it's like he really ... is inside it. I think Jared has a certain sensibility that if he's not into something, he just won't focus his attention on it. And the things he does focus his attention on are things he's really an enthusiast of.

I think some people don't share...I think some people don't have a sense of humor, period. And whether it's teen life or the troubles of a misfit teenager, or the travails of a writer who wants to write science fiction, some people, if all they want is for all of that to be taken very seriously, they're gonna have that reaction, yeah.

But don't mistake not taking something seriously for making fun of it. I think he wants to have fun with his characters and with scenarios, but I think the reason he chose this world is because he was that kid. I think he's more big-hearted than some people [see]. Some people come to it with their own prism.

We felt the movie was less an assault on the nerd culture and more an extremely personal revelation. Each of the characters struggles with his/her own failures, insecurities and successes — if anything, it was so realistic I almost cried when the main character threw up before getting kissed, because some of us might have been there before.

I don't want to spoil Hunter Prey for you too much, but suffice to say it's a twisty thriller that will remind you a little bit of Enemy Mine and (surprisingly) of Treasure of Sierra Madre. There is no "treasure" per se, but Collora's tale of shifting loyalties among a group of aliens and their prisoner - stranded after a crash on an alien world - brings to mind classic movies about desperate, selfish men in who would rather die than work together to survive.

Shot on a microscopic budget in Mexico, the film's concept design is fantastic. Collora's greatest strength lies in creating settings of rich depth and designing characters who simply kick ass. It's easy to forget you're watching what is basically a labor of love when the design is so stunning and cool.

Hunter Prey asks a question that has preoccupied a lot of recent science fiction, from Doctor Who to the new Star Trek movie: When somebody has exterminated your whole planet, what do you do? One of Hunter Prey's characters is the only remaining member of his species, and a large part of the film is about whether he's justified in trying to exterminate the species that committed genocide against his own.

So when can you see it? Collora has just completed the movie, and is working out details on a distribution deal, but hopefully you'll have a chance to look at it in 2010. For now, revel in these exclusive stills from the movie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion Season Four on Borders.

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.

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

What's left?

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

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

Don't download "The Plan!"

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

So what's the deal with Starbuck?

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

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

Love is the key to "The Plan"

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

Rick Worthy is the catalyst

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

Humor is part of "The Plan":

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top image from Gateworld.

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.

From the synopsis it sounds like the crew holds a "who will live and who will die" lottery for the remaining shuttle, which only holds a few people. Those who lose will be stuck on board forever. So how do you say goodbye, via Kino of course. What do you all think of the Kino's thus far anyways?

Bridges is channeling the weirdo genius that made "the Dude" in The Big Lebowski such a terrifically memorable (and quotable) character. Starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor, The Men Who Stare At Goats is about a longterm Army project to bring psychic powers into combat - especially in the War on Terror.

Here we see Bridges' character trying to teach rough-edged military types about how love and wholeness will allow them to become "warrior monks" who will end all war. I love the way all the men are clutching at bouquets of flowers as they consider the possibility of walking through walls and predicting the future in order to rid the world of Al-Qa'ida.

The Men Who Stare At Goats hits theaters November 6.

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

Oh, and this post includes minor spoilers for Astro Boy, but doesn't give away any major plot twists. Mostly, it's about the world-building, which is unveiled at the start of the film.

We expected Astro Boy to be a fun ride, but we ended up liking it way more than we'd expected (full review coming Friday.) And a huge part of that was its fascinating world-building: we weren't prepared for how strange and vivid this world seemed. Astro Boy takes place in Metro City, which has been levitated a few miles above the ground — and they levitated the mountain it was built next to as well. The result is really cool-looking, and the city's buildings also don't look like your standard "city of the future" buildings, at all.

The movie's robot population also looked much weirder than we're used to. From the various types of slave robots to the thundering war-bots, they paid homage to their Japanese roots but also drew on influences as diverse as Wallace And Gromit and classic monster movies. Metro City also levitates over a ginormous trash heap, where the city has been depositing all of its used up robots, and we get to meet a few obsolete robots, including the ginormous Zog, who reminds me of a Hiyao Miyazaki character:

So we were eager to talk to writer/director David Bowers, plus art director Jake Rowell and character designer Luis Grane. They told us about all the thought processes behind crafting this weird future city, the various types of robots, and the rocking warships. Bowers says the production aimed to keep the fun of the original Osamu Tezuka cartoons, including the larger-than-life battles and crazy boot-jet adventures, while creating a fun new world.

The Robots

It's really different to make an original robot right now," says character designer Grane. "There are so many movies and comics and books about robots, and I think it's really difficult to make one that's unique or different than the rest." Obviously Astro Boy is the only robot in the movie who looks human, because he's designed to replace Dr. Tenma's dead son — every other robot looks utilitarian and yet weird.

Bowers adds that he went for "very unique looks" to the movie's robots, many of whom are supposed to be grunt workers — the audience immediately knows they're the underdogs, doing the jobs that we don't want to do. The movie features a Laurel-And-Hardy double act of a squirt bottle and squeegee who fly around the city cleaning windows... and complaining endlessly.

Like everything else in Astro Boy, the robots are frequently assymetrical and odd-looking, rather than the sleek bots you might have been expecting. Everyone we talked to cited the work of Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a huge influence on the movie's basic shapes. Noguchi was famous for his odd, organic-looking sculptures. Here are a few, courtesy of Getty Images:

"I brought a book about [Noguchi] to the production designer, and he said it would be cool to base our visual language on him," says Grane.

Grane says he tried to merge that Japanese sculpture with the work of pre-Columbian sculptors in Mexico — but not the Aztec or Mayan sculpture, but more Western Mexico, where "the figures are more like caricatures, and I love that."


Getting to mash up Japanese sculpture and pre-Columbian Mexican art made this a "dream project" for Grane. A lot of the robots moving around the city sort of blend in with the architecture, because they have friendly shapes with rounded edges. And Grane says you'll have to free-frame the DVD a fair bit to catch all of the weird little robots that pop up in the film, including one tiny cleaning robot that's dancing under the feet of the bystanders during the movie's climactic battle scene.

When we meet some of the older robots on the surface, they look clunkier and more mechanical, and more rusted and distressed. For example, we meet the hapless Robot Revolution Front, a trio of former servant bots who are fighting for robot freedom — but are completely useless, because they must abide by Asimov's Three Laws Of Robotics. It's in these characters, who include a robot refrigerator, that Bowers shows his roots — he worked at Aardman Animation, which put out the Wallace And Gromit films. The leader of the robot revolution, Sparks, is also based on Peter Sellers' union organizer character in I'm All Right Jack, plus other classic Sellers comedies.

And then there are fighting robots, including the cutting-edge, terrifying Peacekeeper. Rowell says some of the sequences of the Peacekeeper in Metro City were designed to look like old-school Japanese monster movies, with Peacekeeper peering around buildings and looking huge and fierce.

The movie starts off with a hilarious, old-school-looking instructional video that explains that robots are our friends, and narrates their helpful role in our future society. Grane crafted this segment towards the very end of the production process, with just a few other people involved. The "instructional video" has a very hand-drawn feeling, unlike the CG of the rest of the film, and that's because the drawings were animated, sort of by hand, in After Effects.

Grane says that despite the tight deadline and scant resources, this opening sequence gave him a chance to experiment — like in one bit, where you see nanobots crawling inside someone's heart to repair it. Instead of using the standard image of a heart, Grane reached for an image from abstract art, which looks like arteries and heart muscles in context, and the result is a lot splashier and more stylized.

The Wall-E Factor:

So obviously, this movie features weird, servant robots who do all the unpleasant chores for people. And there's a giant trash heap that stretches for miles — so I asked Bowers if he worried about comparisons to last year's Wall-E. Pre-production on Astro Boy was already quite a ways along when Wall-E came out, but Bowers and his crew did make some changes to try and avoid looking too similar.

Bowers says Astro Boy's trash-can robot dog was originally planned to be a trash-compacter who crushes scrap metal into "little bricks of trash" — but it was "just too similar" to Wall-E and had to be changed. And Astro Boy was still doing production design on its trash heaps, so Bowers worked with his designers, and "we went to great lengths to make sure the trash looked different than the trash-heaps in Wall-E." The trash in Astro Boy, he says, has more of an "organic" feel to it, plus it's all robot parts.

The City

Metro City floats high above the ground, and the city builders chose to levitate a mountain as well. The buildings look airy and spacious, and more organic than the sort of buildings you see in the standard Futurama future city. Bowers says he wanted Metro City to look like a great place to live, and he wanted the audience to be wondering just how much an apartment in one of those soaring towers would cost.

"I wanted to make sure the two worlds — the people who live on the surface, which first appears to be a trash heap... and Metro City, where Astro Boy is created, which is this gleaming futuristic beautiful utopian society," had as strong a contrast as possible. "It's very interesting to do worldbuilding. I love the original [Osamu] Tezuka look," adds Bowers. The city was designed to be retro-futuristic, but without any irony to it. And there was a huge Asian influence to the city's design.

Here's more exclusive concept art, showing the streets of Metro City:

Says Grane, "The buildings are weird shpes, they are not like typical buildings, sometimes they are very organic, but sometimes they are very unexpected."

The mountain sitting on one side of the floating city definitely helps it stand out — Bowers says he was influenced by Hokusai's famous woodcut prints of Mount Fuji, which are "iconically Japanese."

Rowell says when he and the production designer first heard that the floating city included a mountain, they were perplexed and not sure what to do with that. Finally, Bowers explained that the city's founders decided to raise up their oasis that had been on land, including excavating their nearby mountain and raising it up as well, and that gave the designers "something to build around."

In early design sketches, the mountain was in the center of the city, which was built around it on all sides, but Rowell decided to stick to the movie's visual theme of assymetry and avoid a circular shape. Instead, the mountain is over to one side, and the city is on the other, meaning the floating city has an odd toothy shape.

The principle of assymetry, borrowed from Noguchi, also applied when it came to the buildings in the city — they tend to be fat on one side and skinny on the other, with a slope on one side, says Rowell. "So looking at it from different angles, you get different design language," and the city looks like a much bigger world as a result. He was also influenced by some of the sloping, cool-looking buildings that China created for its recent Olympic Games.

The designers' first instinct was to go with the Jetsons/Futurama "city of the future" imagery, but instead they chose to make the buildings look more like what we have today, except two or three versions past our current iterations. The buildings also look very light and airy, and Rowell said he conceived of them as being made of lightweight carbon-fiber, which people are already using to create stuff — but this would be several generations along, and thus people would be able to use it for structural supports.

And Rowell says he and the production designer sketched out the layout of the entire city, so they knew where everything was in relation to each other. There were a few major landmarks — the penthouse apartment of Dr. Tenma, Astro Boy's creator, the Ministry of Science, where Astro Boy is created, and the mountain — and you always know where you stand in relation to them. Dr. Tenma's penthouse is at the very front of the city.

In that key scene where Astro Boy is realizing he's a robot, and then the soldiers in power suits come to grab him, he's sitting on top of Dr. Tenma's building, looking backwards at the Ministry of Science (thus, looking back at the place where he came into being) when those floodlights switch on:

This juxtaposition between his father's penthouse and the Ministry of Science lets you know that Astro Boy is torn between his identity as a boy, who seems to be human, and his origins as a robot.

The slanty, curvy "shape language" of the movie, borrowed heavily from Noguchi, shows up in Astro Boy's boots, in the "stinger" attack vehicles which chase him in that clip above, and in all the buildings and robots, says Rowell. And then when you go down to the surface and it looks more like our present-day world, it's a bit of a shock.

Astro Boy comes out this Friday.

It's nice to know that Stephen Sommers was completely and utterly aware of what he was making: giant splodey toys! G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra will be released on DVD and Blu-ray release on November 3rd. Kabooooom.

After a screening for their upcoming film Gentlemen Broncos, Jared and Jerusha Hess, co-writers of both Gentlemen Broncos and Napoleon Dynamite (Jared also directed both films) answered audience questions and gave a little background about the movie. During the session, Jerusha mentioned that, if Jared had his way, Napoleon Dynamite would have been about crop circles and UFOs.

Later, during an interview with the pair, we asked them to elaborate on this more science fiction Napoleon Dynamite:

Jared: I don't know, it just involved Napoleon researching crop circle crap and weird extraterrestrial —

Jerusha: Paranormal —

Jared: — stuff going down in the farming community. I don't know. It didn't get much further than that. She [Jerusha] stopped it right away.

Jerusha: There are a couple of white Bronco scenes, where he [Napoleon] was being chased by some government officials.

Jared: Yeah, it was bad. It was bad. But we didn't pursue it. We kept it —

Jerusha: Jared was so focused on the story for Napoleon, when really it was just the character that was so entertaining. And I kept saying "Jared, we don't need the story. Let's show a little glimpse of his life."

Gentlemen Brocnos opens October 30th.

We're all really excited about Ian McKellen in this role, you really couldn't ask for a better new Number Two. The miniseries premieres on AMC November 15 and lasts three nights.

As you might know, the writers' strike forced Bay to start work on TF2 without an actual script — all he had was an outline by writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. So a lot of the movie's early designs and ideas came about without a real script, and when Orci and Kurtzman came back to work after the strike, Bay was able to tell them which robots he wanted in the movie. As he says in this clip, all of that pre-visualization work and brainstorming with artists actually informed the movie's script, once it finally had one. You probably have your own ideas about whether that was a good thing.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen comes out on DVD tomorrow, October 20, on Blu-Ray and DVD, wherever awesomeness is available.

Here's what the press release says about the two-disc DVD/Blu-Ray edition:

Two-Disc Special Edition DVD & Blu-ray:
The TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen two-disc Special Edition DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, French 5.1 Surround and Spanish 5.1 Surround with English, French and Spanish subtitles. The Blu-ray will be presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital with English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles. The disc breakdown is as follows:

Disc 1:
• Commentary by Michael Bay, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman

Disc 2:
• The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen-This multi-chapter documentary chronicles the entire creation of the film and includes interviews with the cast and crew:
o Seeds of Vengeance - Development and Design - After the overwhelming success of 2007's Transformers, how do the filmmakers top themselves for the sequel?
o Domestic Destruction – Production: United States - Michael Bay believes in going big: Big action and big explosions. Cast and crew are pushed to the limit as they traverse the U.S. from New Mexico to Pennsylvania.
o Joint Operations – Production: Military - No other filmmaker in the world enjoys the kind of military access and cooperation Michael Bay has. Here we see just how efficient our armed forces are and the awe and respect shown by the cast.
o Wonders of the World – Production: Middle East - You can't really reproduce Egypt anywhere but Egypt so off we go to Giza and Luxor.
o Start Making Sense - Editing - In order to turn over the massive amount of film as quickly as possible to VFX, four editors work tirelessly in a unique tag-team approach to shape the film.
o Under the Gun – Visual Effects – Revenge of the Fallen features the most complicated VFX in film history. So complicated in fact that the filmmakers were unsure they would make the deadline. The DEVASTATOR VFX alone required 83% of ILM's total render farm capacity.
o Running the Gauntlet – Post-Production and Release - Working seven days a week, Michael Bay and company usher the film through sound design, Digital Intermediate color-timing and a globe-trotting whirlwind of premieres.
• A Day with Bay: Tokyo-An intimate and fun all-access journey with Michael Bay as he travels to Tokyo, Japan tor the world premiere of the biggest film of the year.
• 25 Years of TRANSFORMERS-Access an all-new featurette celebrating a monumental milestone for one of Hasbro's most successful and popular franchises.
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub-Explore conceptual artwork created by the production for 12 of the most popular AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS from the film.
• Deconstructing Visual Bayhem with Commentary by Pre-Vis Supervisor
Steve Yamamoto- A series of multi-angle pre-visualization sequences allowing viewers to learn how some of the film's most spectacular scenes were created with an introduction by Michael Bay.
• Extended Scenes
• Music Video: Linkin Park's "New Divide"

BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVE:
• The ALLSPARK Experiment-Viewers get their chance to unleash the power of the recently recovered ALLSPARK shard on Earth vehicles. Begin by selecting and customizing a vehicle with a selection of parts and accessories. Then apply the ALLSPARK to this creation and watch what happens. Applying the ALLSPARK to certain custom combinations enables four new robot characters with special powers. If viewers discover all four, they unlock a fifth vehicle, which reveals a top secret message about the future of the TRANSFORMERS movie franchise.
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub-A database of some of the TRANSFORMERS characters that appear in the new film, offering users access to each robot's confidential file including:
o Innovative 3D spin galleries of each robot
o A timeline for each TRANSFORMERS character charting its origins, back story and design evolution from toys to animated series to comics and finally feature films
• Giant Effing Movie – A very personal look at the making of the movie.
• The Matrix of Marketing-An archive of the film's promotional media including trailers, posters and television spots.

A lot of people were confused by SGU's first heavy handed use of flashbacks, especially since the the character ended up BSG-ing it right in front of Lt. Scott. But I think this opens a new door for SGU and as the season moves forward these little past moments will help open up the characters one by one. I have faith, unlike Lt. Scott.

In other news, the live audience numbers grew for SGU in the second episode. The numbers increased for the second episode by 50%, ending up with 2.4 million viewers. Not bad for a Stargate series on a Friday night.

IDW's official solicitation for the project goes a little something like this:

Master of Horror Clive Barker offers up an all-new, standalone tale presented in chilling 3-D and featuring the art of Eisner-nominated artist Gabriel Rodriguez (Locke & Key)! When celebrated architect Harold Engle first glimpses the small cloud of darkness inside a glittering, priceless diamond, he can't possibly be aware of the terrible plague contained within. "Seduth" follows Engle on a surreal journey through murder and madness to the very heart of existence and a terrible, impossible choice-to unravel the very fabric of the world, or to save it?

Seduth 3-D is released on Wednesday.

We're actually lucky enough to feature two chapters from the new edition of Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Neil Gaiman, pubilshed by Titan Books. The first chapter is from fairly early on in the book, and deals with the various stage adaptations of H2G2, including the absolutely disastrous Rainbow Theater run, in which a 3,000 seat venue failed to find a big enough hovercraft for the audience.

And then the second chapter we're featuring is from towards the end, and deals with the 2005 movie adaptation of Hitchhiker's, and the reasons why it was also not terribly successful. It's sort of a nice book-end.

Oh, and the new material in the 2009 edition of Don't Panic is written by author Guy Adams, who I believe is no relation to Douglas.

10 ALL THE GALAXY'S A STAGE

There have been three major productions of Hitchhiker's in the theatrical world. Two of these have been successful. The other was a disaster of epic proportions. It is somewhat unfortunate, in this case, that the disaster is the one that got noticed. The first production was put on at the ICA [Institute for Contemporary Arts] in London on 1st-9th May 1979, presented by Ken Campbell's Science Fiction Theatre Company of Liverpool. ‘Staged' might be the wrong word for this production. The actors performed on little ledges and platforms, while the audience, seated on a scaffolded auditorium that floated around the ICA on air skates, filled with compressed air, was pushed around the hall at the height of 1/2,000th of an inch by hardworking stage hands.

The ninety-minute-long show was a great success.

Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters were on sale in the bar, and, for the eighty people who fitted into Mike Hust's airborne seating system, it was a great evening. Unfortunately, every hour brought 150 phone calls for tickets, all doomed to failure as the 640 tickets for the show's run had been sold out long before it opened. (Apparently an organisation with the same initials as the ICA, the International Communications Association, got so fed up with misrouted calls for tickets that they wound up closing their switchboard for a week, and stopped Communicating.)

The reviews were unanimous in their praise. A typical review from The Guardian, having praised the costumes and hovercraft, stated, "Chris Langham is an utterly ordinary Arthur… and is thus a beautiful counterpart to the cunning Ford (Richard Hope), the two-headed schizophrenic Beeblebrox (Mitch Davies and Stephen Williams, as a space-age version of a pantomime horse with two heads, two legs, and three hands) and the pyrotechnics of Campbell's production." At the time it was announced that they were hoping to revive the show "as soon as they could find a hall large enough to accommodate a 500 seater hovercraft".

Image from Douglas Adams fan page

This was, it should be borne in mind, before the publication of the book or the release of the first record, when nobody knew how much of a cult success Hitchhiker's was or was going to be.

The next performance began life some 300 miles due west in the Theatr Clwyd, a Welsh theatre company. Director Jonathan Petherbridge had taken the scripts of the first radio series and transformed them into a play, performed around Wales from 15th January until 23rd February 1980.

Announced as the "First Staged Production of Douglas Adams's Original Radio Scripts" the company would either perform two episodes an evening, or, on certain long evenings, the entire three hours of script in ‘blockbuster' performances, during which "essential space rations" were handed out to the audience at half-hourly intervals. (Not only did the bar sell Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, but the Coffee Lounge sold Algolian Zylbatburgers.) The Theatr Clwyd performance was so successful that they were offered the opportunity to take their production to London's prestigious Old Vic Theatre. Unfortunately, by this time Douglas had offered the stage rights to Ken Campbell, who had decided to stage another production at the Rainbow Theatre in London, a rock venue that seated three thousand people, in August.

Douglas Adams, displaying perfect hindsight, said, "I should have known better, but I had so many problems to contend with at that time I really wasn't thinking clearly. The thing at the Rainbow was a fiasco."
Douglas wrote additional material for the play (including the Dish of the Day sequence in Milliways, which subsequently found its way into the literary and televisual version of the show).

An article appeared in The Stage, the theatrical newspaper, about the Rainbow production, in July 1980:

A five-piece band backs the twenty-strong cast of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a musical* based on the radio series that opens at the Rainbow for an 8 week run on July 16th 1980. Production has a £300,000 budget, and the front of the Rainbow will be redesigned as an intergalactic spaceport. Tickets £5, £4 and £3.

[footnote]* No, it wasn't a musical, although there was a backing group.

The foyer of the theatre is being converted into the control deck of a spaceship, with banks of video screens, flying saucers hanging from the ceiling, and possibly a talking computer to advise passengers when the trip is going to begin. There will be usherettes dressed like aliens - ‘Probably coloured green,' says co-producer Richard Dunkley - and a ‘space bar' selling galactic-sized burgers and the now famous Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

One of the diversions will be rock musician Rick Wakeman, soaring down from the roof on a flying saucer and dressed like the legendary Mekon, SF's most endearing little green man.

This week workmen installed a vast revolving stage while others completed a backdrop for the day the Earth gets demolished.

In California, the people who brought the Laserium to the London Planetarium were devising a spectacular new bag of tricks. Co-producer Philip Tinsley said, ‘This will be the first show since Rocky Horror to appeal directly to young people.'

As the publicity for the show gained momentum a twenty-five-foot inflatable whale was thrown off Tower Bridge into the Thames, and made almost no splash in terms of news. ("The police were very, very cross", said The Standard in the 3⁄4 of an inch they devoted to it.)

Then the show opened.

In retrospect this may have been a mistake. Such descriptions as "I cannot imagine a more tedious way to spend an evening" (Daily Mail), "clumsy without ever being cheerful" (Time Out), "embarrassing" (Observer), "never-ending and extremely boring" (Standard) melt into insignificance when placed beside the actual reviews, most of which dissected the show with fine and sharp scalpels and left nothing wholesome behind. A fairly average example of the put-downs was Michael Billington's in The Guardian, which stated that, "What happens on the Rainbow stage is certainly inchoate and barely comprehensible… Ken Campbell has directed this junk-opera and I can only say he gave us infinitely more fun in the days of his Roadshow when the highlight used to be a man stuffing a ferret down his trousers"*.

[footnote]* The man who stuffed the ferrets down his trousers was Sylvester McCoy, later the seventh televisual Doctor Who.

What went wrong? A number of things. The length, for one. The laser beams, sound effects and backing band for another. What was almost universally acknowledged as appalling acting for a third.

Douglas Adams explained it as, "The size of the Rainbow - a three thousand-seater theatre - and, because Hitchhiker's tends to be rather slow-moving and what is important is all the detail on the way… you put it in something that size and the first thing that goes out the window is all the detail. So you then fill it up with earthquake effects and lasers and things. That further swamps the detail and so everything was constantly being pushed in the wrong direction and all the poor actors were stuck on the stage trying desperately to get noticed by the audience across this vast distance. If you'd put the numbers we were getting into a West End theatre they would have been terrific audiences - 700 a night, or whatever. But 700 people isn't much when the producers are paying for three thousand seats. So the whole thing was a financial disaster."

Ken Campbell, a man almost impossible to get hold of, claimed the reason for the success of the ICA and failure of the Rainbow was simpler than that. "In the ICA we put everybody on a hovercraft. We just never found a hovercraft big enough for the Rainbow," he told me in the shortest interview I did for this book*.

Four weeks into the run the show was in financial difficulties.

On 20th August The Standard reported co-producer Dunkley as saying, "I think we should struggle on. The cast and crew agree with me, and a certain number of them agreed to wait for their money. We had a very negative press, and it wasn't known at the beginning how many Hitchhiker's fans there were." The next day, however, The Standard reported that, "Last night the big musical** version of the cult radio show did not go on and after playing at times to twenty percent capacity [ie. 600 people] its season has been ended three weeks prematurely. Richard Dunkley reported that everybody concerned had lost a lot of money, but it was impossible to say how much."

[footnotes]* That was it.
** It wasn't a musical, honestly.

It is easy to be wise after the event, but it would appear that the biggest mistake was that of trying to create a Cult Success. You don't gain a cult following for something big and bold and heavily hyped: a smaller, less flashy, less expensive production might well have succeeded where the galumphing Rainbow production failed.

As indeed, it has. Helping the fans and public to get over the Rainbow disaster was the Theatr Clwyd production. It surfaced again quietly a year later, and has been regularly and successfully staged by other theatre companies since. This adaptation, which, alone of all post '79 versions includes the Haggunenon sequence, and indeed actually has an inflatable Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, is uniformly popular with critics and public alike, and will, one hopes, still be revived and performed when the Rainbow fiasco has completely been forgotten.

FORD AND ZAPHOD: Zaglabor astragard!
Hootrimansion Bambriar!
Bangliatur Poosbladoooo!
ARTHUR: What the hell are you doing?
FORD: It's an ancient Betelgeuse death anthem. It means, after this, things can only get better.
THEY START TO SING AGAIN.
THE COMPUTER BANK EXPLODES.
END CREDITS.
- Alternative version.

(Image from 2003 San Francisco staging of H2G2, via Laughing Squid.)

At least twenty amateur stage productions are known to have been performed around the world over the years, variously adapted from the novel, the radio scripts or the Petherbridge script. Hitchhiker's has been presented on stage as far afield as Bermuda, Australia, Hawaii and Germany; it has been performed once as a one-man show and once as a musical*. There was also a stage production of Douglas's novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - retitled Dirk - in Oxford in 1995, which has enjoyed periodic revivals.

[footnote]* This actually was a musical, although the audience wished it wasn't.

34 POSTCARDS FROM DAVELAND

"It seems to me that we can either slip into the traditional stereotypes - you're the studio executive who has a million real-world problems to worry about, and I'm the writer who only cares about seeing his vision realized and hang the consequences - or we can recognize that we both share the same goal, which is to make the most successful movie we possibly can.

"You have a great deal of experience nursing major motion pictures into existence. I have a great deal of experience of nursing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into existence in every medium other than motion pictures… Why don't we actually meet and have a chat?"
- Excerpt from a letter written by Douglas Adams to David Vogel at Walt Disney Pictures, as reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt.

On 28th April 2005 a rather startling thing happened. A big budget* movie of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy appeared in cinemas. Unfortunately, to quote that most remarkable of source material, "this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

[footnote]* Well, relatively big budget anyway, the word ‘big' when relating to cinema budgets enters a whole new sense of scope which the human mind cannot truly encompass. Certainly it cost the sort of money that if found on one's doorstep one morning, say in several large skips guarded by men with machine guns, would force you to delicately lose your mind for a month or two, just while you decided what country to buy.

Douglas had spent many years trying to make such a thing happen. In fact, many years, many phone calls, many draft scripts, many contracts, many lawyers arguing about those contracts, many directors signed up, many directors signed off again, and much moving to LA then moving back to Islington because LA just wasn't very nice then moving back to LA again anyway because, well, you live in hope and at least the sun shines there…

It is forgivable to assume a project stranded so long in Development Hell (that peculiar creative graveyard where movie ideas go to have the spirit beaten out of them by film producers) will never see the light of day. Jay Roach, director of the first two Austin Powers movies as well as Meet the Parents and its ‘Focking' sequel, was attached to the project for many years, ultimately stepping down from the director's chair (due to other commitments) but retaining a role as producer. Roach passed Douglas's last script draft on to Spike Jonze, director of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are. He declined the offer to shoot it, but suggested Hammer & Tongs, a British production company comprised of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith, known for their innovative pop promo work. And there the film finally took root.

The script was passed to screenwriter Karey Kirkpatrick, writer of the stop-motion animation movies Chicken Run and James and the Giant Peach, to produce a final version to put in front of the cameras.

The casting seemed rock solid, with Stephen Fry as the Voice of the Book, Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent, Sam Rockwell as Zaphod* and Zooey Deschanel as Trillian. The only slightly controversial choice - and it must be clear here that when we say ‘controversial' we mean ‘likely to get people who know a little about movie-making saying belligerent things online' - was actor turned rap artist turned actor again Mos Def as Ford Prefect.

[footnote]* Who claimed, somewhat jovially, in the DVD extras that the only reason he got the part was that they couldn't afford Jim Carrey.

Much was made in the movie's press releases about how closely the film was based on Douglas's own most recent draft, though caveats were given with regard to the film's divergence from established Hitchhiker's narrative (like we needed to be told. Since when has one form of Hitchhiker's shown the least concern for how similar it is to the last? We really don't care…). Robbie Stamp, Douglas's friend and CEO of The Digital Village, was an executive producer on the picture* and, in an interview on the Slashdot website, said, "All the substantive new ideas in the movie… are brand new Douglas ideas written especially for the movie by him… Douglas was always up for reinventing Hitchhiker's in each of its different incarnations and he knew that working harder on some character development and some of the key relationships was an integral part of turning Hitchhiker's into a movie."

[footnote]* As was Douglas himself, the film also being dedicated to him.

Which is no doubt true, but doesn't change the fact that the film doesn't really work.

One can level a number of criticisms at Douglas's writing. Yes, the comment about character development is valid, as would have been an accusation of flimsy plotting. But to mention these flaws is rather to miss the point of Douglas's writing. When he does it, it works. Douglas is one of those inspired creators who is impervious to such overarching technical issues - his genius lay in the detail. And it is precisely in the film's adherence to the broad, sweeping generalities of Douglas's work, rather than paying attention to what it was in the minutiae that made it so effective, that it fails.

In the same Slashdot interview, Robbie Stamp commented that, "I know how easy it is to see every decision to cut a scene as ‘studio' pressure, but it was always much more to do with pacing and rhythm in the film itelf." And here we see perhaps the most telling issue with converting Douglas's work to the big screen. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy never much concerned itself with the need to be fast-paced. The gems found in both the books and the radio series are often in the asides, the guide entries, the small moments of absurdity. The rhythm of Douglas's writing is that of a comedy writer hitting his punchlines; an obsessive ear for comic dialogue and the best way to sell his unconventional ideas.

It is this rhythm and pacing that the film loses, sticking instead to telling the story in a dynamic fashion. Jokes were cut, dialogue was trimmed and, arguably, this is where the spirit of Douglas's writing fell by the wayside.

Perhaps it is a sad fact that Hitchhiker's just doesn't work well in a visual medium. Certainly the BBC TV series was Douglas's least favourite incarnation of the work. Film places different demands on its source material and in doing so it played to Hitchhiker's weaknesses rather than its strengths.

The film performed adequately at the box office and was released later the same year on both a single disc DVD and a double disc gift set (which included a copy of the original novel). It is unlikely that we shall ever see a sequel.

Don't Panic © 1987, 1993, 2002, 2009 Neil Gaiman.

We spoke with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick all about the long journey this zombie epic made from television to film. We learned what changed, and how many more zombie movies these two guys have in their brains.

How much did the film change over the years?

Rhett Reese: It's surprisingly similar, interestingly. It underwent multiple devolopment experiences. We wrote it as a TV pilot and sold it to CBS, and they had a lot of notes, which we addressed. And then when they decided to not make the pilot we unaddressed a lot of them. We went back to what we had, because we liked it more. In most cases. In a few cases we kept what they added because they did have some good notes.

Paul Wernick: Interestingly the last bit of the movie is essentially episode two of the TV show.

Rhett Reese: When we decided to expand into a feature we took what we thought supposed to be episode two and we plugged it in. And the big change that we made when it became a movie was that Ruben [Fleischer] our director wanted to set the third act at an amusement park. Originally it was set as a big huge fight at a gas station. But it's awfully similar strangely.

Paul Wernick: Strangely and wonderfully.

Is there a Zombieland 2 in the works?

Rhett Reese: We don't know it all depends on how the first one does. So grab your friends, and make them cast their vote for Zombieland 2 by buying a ticket to Zombieland 1.

Paul Wernick: We've got some really fun ideas. And interestingly the last day of the movie, Woody told us that, "I generally never go back to a world, I don't love sequels, but this is one I would be honored to do." So pending the movie doing well and everyone being excited and loving it. As we hope they will, we'd love to do it.

Rhett Reese: And we'll take what we intended to be episode three of the television show and start movie number two.

Paul Wernick: We got a 23 episode season in our head. So divided by two that's about 12 movies in our head swimming around.

So that's Woody and Jessie Eisenberg tld us he was interested as well, let's make it happen! I wouldn't mind Zombieland 1, 2, and 3 at least.

Again, this is a big spoiler, so avert your eyes if you want to your Zombieland experience to be spoiler free.

The giant cameo that people saw inside Zombieland this weekend was none other than Bill Murray himself, pretending to be a zombie, so he could remain safe inside his Hollywood mansion. I almost died from laughter when they all reenacted Ghostbusters, but the kicker was watching the skinny Jesse Eisenberg fire off a few rounds into his chest, mistaking him for an actual zombie. Now we all know the Murray is a legendary comic and improviser so we all know there had to be more to his death scene that what was screened. So we asked the Murray murderer himself....

Were you disappointed you didn't get to get high and reenact Ghostbusters with Bill Murray?

Jesse Eisenberg: We did, right after.

That was, without a doubt, the best thing I've ever seen.

JE: It was awesome. No, I was ... the whole joke of the setup was that my character is scared, and I would not know when he tries to scare me, so I would kill him. So I was so thrilled to be in that position.

You mean you were thrilled to be the one who gets to kill Bill Murray?

Yeah. I mean, it's my favorite part of the movie. You've just got used to this guy, and you think it's so cool that he's in the movie, and then he gets murdered like five minutes into it.

What was it like watching him die?

I was just in his death scene, and he was hysterical. He improvised the funniest things you'll ever hear.

I can only imagine that with him there's like seven different deaths scenes that we didn't get to see.

More than that, yeah. My favorite was not in the movie. She (Abigail Breslin) says to him, "Do you have any regrets?" And he says, "Only that I tried to scare this guy." ... And then Woody says, "Is there anything I can do?" He goes, "You can kill him for me." And Woody says OK.
Then he says, "And the little girl."

But that's not the only death scene available, if you stay until the end of the credits Murray surfaces again, to drop a Carl Spackler Caddyshack reference....

That's Murray saying, "In the words of the immortal philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre... au revoir, gopher."

But you may have read that it wasn't always going to be Bill Murray in Zombieland? In our exclusive interview writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese, they filled us in on the many big celebrities they had in mind for the zombie cameo. Thankfully, Bill won out. But we wouldn't have minded a Kevin Bacon Footloose dancing zombie or two.

Was it always supposed to be Bill Murray?

Paul Wernick: In our DREAMS, we had Bill Murray. Interestingly, you have a list of the people you would absolutely love to have play the role and people who are just un-gettable. And Bill Murray is pretty much at the top of that list. He doesn't have a manager, he doesn't have an agent, he has an 800 number you call and leave a voicemail and he either gets back to you or not. He's notorious for being impossible to land and even if you land him, when he says yes, the chances of him showing up is ... you get lucky once he's on set.

So he was a dream, and we had gone through about 15 drafts with 15 different actors. It started with Patrick Swayze — this was before he got sick obviously — and then went Sylvester Stallone, The Rock, Matthew McConnaughy, Jean Claude Van Damme, Joe Pesci, Mark Hamill Kevin Bacon.

Rhett Reese: All those people, for one reason or another, would not or could not do it. And we were down to the eleventh hour, and we had written a version with no celebrity, just a zombie-fighting version where they fought more zombies, and we were prepared to shoot it but Paul just wouldn't take no for an answer and pestered Woody and said, "Well, is there any one else you can think of to be in this thing?" And Woody had two names: Dustin Hoffman and Bill Murray.

And Paul said, "Yes to Dustin Hoffman and yes to Bill Murray!" Dustin couldn't do it and I don't even think that got ... But Bill said, "Well, send me the script." So we found the script, and he loved it, and he ended up being in the movie. It was a true Christmas miracle in April.

I hear that originally Bill was a zombie in it, that he was dead, so he decided to change it?

Rhett Reese: Correct. Well Bill wanted more to do. Because a zombie can only do so much; they can't talk, they have to snarl an attack and do all these things. We had some really fun celebrity zombie moments, I mean we had Patrick Swayze running up and attacking Tallahassee and Tallahassee lifting him into the air, like Patrick Swayze did to Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing. He did the perfect lift and smashed him into a pillar and killed him that way. So we had been specifying the zombie attacks to the actor.

But Bill wanted more to do. And so the solution to that was why make him a zombie at all? Why not have him be alive, and then, oh my god, how about killing him? That all came out of the fact that he wanted more to do, so it was a blessing.

When Bill said "I want more to do," we thought "Well, let's go ahead and take a risk and put stuff in front of him that he may or may not do. Let's do Caddyshack jokes, let's do Ghostbusters jokes, and see if he reacts." We feared that he would not wanna make fun of his career or that he wouldn't want to do anything self-referential. Instead, he totally embraced it. We're calling Sony, going, "Get us the Ghostbusters outfit down here immediately! And see if we can get the rights to 'I'm Alright' by Kenny Loggins from Caddyshack!" So that all got put into motion in a hurry based on his willingness to do these crazy things.

Paul Wernick: It's so very rare that an actor is willing to make fun of himself and I think it endears, that ability to laugh at yourself, endears and audience to you. And I think it just really, really worked and we couldn't be happier and more proud that Bill Murray was in our movie. It was the most exciting thing in the world.

We couldn't be more excited for the release of Genesis II, which was one of a few attempts by Roddenberry to create another science-fiction TV show to rival the popularity of Star Trek. Just from the clip above, you can get the flavor of it — like much of Trek, it's preachy and yet cerebral. The Tyranians (their name sums them up, conveniently) are mutants. They have two navels, and they enslave and dominate all the regular humans. That device that Lyra-A (Mariette Hartley) is showing Alex Cord, her stim, is actually like Star Trek's "agonizer," which the Tyranians use to keep the humans in line. So it's sort of giggle-worthy when she says it "confers dignity."

Here's the official description for the DVD, which is exclusively available through the Warner Archive:

"My name is Dylan Hunt. My story begins the day on which I died." Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, brings fans another enthralling tale of the future. Set in a time between now and the era of the starship Enterprise, Genesis II follows Hunt (Alex Cord), who awakes after 154 years of suspended animation into a post-apocalyptic world that's torn between the peace-loving citizens of Pax and the militaristic, mutant Tyranians. Both want Hunt to join their cause. But the Tyranians have two cruel weapons to persuade Hunt: a device of torture called a stim. And an alluring mutant (Mariette Hartley) with two navels…and one ice-cold heart.

"GENESIS II" Starring ALEX CORD Guest Stars MARIETTE HARTLEY TED CASSIDY

And PERCY RODRIGUES As Primus Kimbridge Written and Produced by GENE RODDENBERRY

Directed by JOHN LLEWELLYN MOXEY A NORWAY Production in Association with WBTelevision

This version of Dylan Hunt is a scientist, and not quite as badass as the version played by Kevin Sorbo in Andromeda. But he still manages to see through the Tyranians' pretense of being enlightened rulers. Maybe the pain sticks and the evil name clue him in somewhat. And yet — Mariette Hartley! With two navels!

Genesis II actually aired on CBS, but it didn't get picked up as a series, alas. And it's never been available on home video — until now.

Also being released on Tuesday: Planet Earth, which was Roddenberry's second attempt at making a pilot about Dylan Hunt in the future. In the second version, the role of post-apocalyptic dominatrix is played by Diana Muldaur, who also appeared in the Trek episodes "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" and "Return To Tomorrow," and played Dr. Pulaski in TNG. It also features the monstrous Kreeg soldiers, who have the head-bumps that Star Trek: The Motion Picture's Klingons made famous.

Both Genesis II and Planet Earth will be out on DVD on Tuesday, as part of the new Warner Archive DVD series. So now where's our Questor Tapes DVD?

The announcement was made by the network yesterday afternoon, with insiders acknowledging that the move is likely, in part, a way to save money, but also suggesting that the decision to restructure was also made to give the show a more dramatic launchpad, with the possibility that Day One could then spin out into a regular series afterwards, a la Battlestar Galactica's launch on Syfy. We asked Alexander for his take on the decision, and he told us,

I worked very closely with NBC on this decision. We decided a more targeted, shock and awe approach was the best way to expose a great Day One story to a massive audience. Airing four hours over two nights is much more exciting to me than rolling out just one hour per week... I didn't want to suffer the same fate as many first year shows and be moved to another time slot mid story, or worse, not be able to air the final episodes. This way, the fans get a kick ass story, and the show gets the best chance to succeed.

The first two hours of Day One have already been shot; Alexander is reworking the next two to bring plots to a climax, as well as create potential spin-offs for a follow-on season.

NBC opts to air 'Day One' as miniseries [Variety]

Ming-Na: When I first signed on as Camille, that wasn't part of the revelation of who she was. And what I think is so great about Brad and Robert is that sometimes an inspiration comes to them, or they're willing to take a risk. I mean this whole Stargate series is a risk because they are taking a whole different approach to the look and the feel of this series versus the Stargates before. And so when they approached me, and said, "You know we're thinking of taking the character in this direction. Are you comfortable with that?"

I've never played a gay character, and for me that was such an incredible challenge. And I said, "As long as you write her with absolute depth and she's well rounded, and there's no stereotypes, and she's a real person — then yes, let's go for it." I'm thrilled. I just think that it's a great challenge for me as an actor. There are certain mindsets that are very different. But being an Asian woman in this business, I have had to deal with a lot of adversities, I have had to deal with a lot of issues that are pertinent to being an Asian woman. So I relate a lot to Camille's character, because I think being a woman who's also gay in an environment where she has to be the head of a department - she's an IOA officer, head of the human resources department, and she is in charge in a man's world. So it's a really great challenge.

David Blue (who plays Eli) adds: They didn't write a character who's out there; she's not campaigning for anything on the ship. She's herself and this is an aspect of her character and they play that very well because it's the realistic quality of, this is who she is. And this is just part of ... I mean even the way they revealed it on the show, it's very natural, it's very respectful.

MN: I think it's out on some of that internet stuff. And yes, yes you do. And I absolutely rose to the challenge. Girls' lips are very soft, let's just say that! ... Oh, is that the wrong thing to say?!

Blue: No, I'm just trying to pretend like I'm here doing an interview and not just hearing that as a normal guy.

And here they are talking about stepping up the dialogue and getting hot and heavy on the Destiny:

You're kind of an unlikely hero, which is kind of a tradition in a lot of zombie and horror films. Did you pull from any past unlikely heroes or personal experiences?

No, maybe the writers did. But no, for me, when I read it, it just seemed like a new character. Maybe they were playing on conventions or something, but no, for me, it just felt like an everyman type guy.

So I'm surprised you're in this big zombie flick. Were you a fan of zombie movies?

No, no I've never really seen them before, I don't really like zombie movies. The zombies are kind of like secondary in this movie — you know, it's really about these four characters. Zombies aren't even in large chunks of this movie, where its like just the comedy of these four characters who are living in this post-apocalyptic world. Which I think is much more entertaining than a chase scene. But I love the movie — I've seen it twice and I never see movies I'm in. I think it's just the greatest movie. I love it.

I loved your character's check list of zombie rules and how in the movie they would appear on the screen did you know they were going to do that? Stick words right next to you?

I didn't know how good it would be just like that. Ruben [the director] had showed me before we shot mock ups of what they were going to do and I thought it was good but not great, like there was this company that made this like extremely detailed creations. Like taking pieces of broken glass and turning it into words and stuff and I thought it was good but it seemed like almost like too creative, almost so you almost couldn't read it and then the stuff in the movie. But when I saw it I was just ecstatic. Wow, it's so perfect and everybody just loves it. Every time the words come up it feels like the audience is on the inside joke of the movie and that's just the most fun you could have when you feel like you're in on the inside joke of the movie and it doesn't feel like it's pandering to you.

Right and you kind of kick a lot of butt with a lot of guns. This is new sensation for you, with all the action and violence, right?

JE: Um yeah, I don't really want to hold guns in movies, or promote violence... but I mean, we're killing zombies not people.

But when you're with Woody and it's the end of the world and you maybe have to put yourself in that frame of mind, that had to be at least be a little fun?

Oh yeah it's an adrenaline rush. The jumping and hurdling things. We're actually doing all of that. It's hard work. I have a scene in the beginning, where I'm running laps around a parking lot. We were running all night. It's exhausting, it's genuinely exhausting, like you end up sprinting miles and then you have to do another take and then you have to act and think about what would be funny here. It was really taxing.

But it'that scene you just described was amazing, so it was totally worth it. You run around in big circle to move the zombies away from your car.

A lot of that was improvised but all those very clever set pieces were very smart. There were a lot of broader concepts like that in the script. The script was incredible, it constantly surprised you with its own self-awareness, its own sense of irony — like you know running around the parking lot from zombies and then I get to the car and I try to put the keys in, but the keys dropped, so instead of picking up the keys I decide to run around again to try to get some distance between me and the zombie. It's just constantly cleverly kind of playing on itself.

You mentioned earlier that it wasn't really zombies that made you want to do this movie, it was the relationship between the four characters. So what is it about the end of the world and what do you think that does to humanity? Why did it bring these characters together?

Right , right, right. Geez I don't know what the other movies do. Like for this one it was very, these four people could bond in a way they otherwise wouldn't have, you know like if there were still other people. You know there's kind of a logic behind these very different people coming together. I guess if the movie didn't take place in a post-apocalyptic world then it would seem unbelievable that these people were joining together because they all would hate each other, probably. Also, what I loved about the movie is, there's only four characters in the movie and it's just really wonderful. Most movies have like thirty characters in them. It just really felt like it was just focusing on this small group of people and we all had rich inner lives and back stories that were interesting, and authentic.

I also enjoyed how the characters thought things out like normal humans. If they are the last people on Earth, why not sleep in a beautiful mansion as opposed to a shack? What would you do if the world ended?

I'd probably go to a studio apartment, because the characters take refuge in this like mansion with a million rooms which is really a dumb thing to do, you know they want to relax and go to the coolest place but there's so many rooms in that house that you would never be able to make sure that it was not infested with zombies. Whereas like the apartment I live in, in New York I'm pretty much aware of every square inch of it, because there's only four square inches of it.

Do you think you'll make any more genre films?

Maybe they'll make a sequel [to Zombieland]. It's great, after I saw the movie, I thought they should make another.

Oh, and what ever happened to The Stanford Prison Experiment film?

I don't think the movie is happening. It was a good script, and my dad teaches about that experiment in school, so he was disappointed too movie isn't happening either. It's a tough movie to make, since there is no real protagonist.

Ming-Na and David Blue's characters are probably the two must buzzed-about crew members aboard Stargate Universe's Destiny. Ming-Na plays the first openly gay Gater, Camile Wray. And we'll have plenty more from Ming-Na for you very soon, but this half of our exclusive SGU interview we focused in on David Blue's character Eli Wallace.

This role is oh so important to the new series because what is Stargate with out its trademark banter and playful humor? Blue has been cast to fill this role as hacker/slacker/genius Eli, who joins up with the new crew after solving an impossible online video game. So can he bring the funny? Does he know his stuff? Is he trying to replace McKay, since his character seems like the junior-version of this past character? We asked him everything we could as Eli very well could be the saving comedic grace to this series. If all goes well.

Here's a few highlights from the videos...

The breakdown of the role is kind of from a comedic perspective. I like to describe him like Matt Damon from Good Will Hunting. So the humor is kind of ingrained under the skin and just kind of comes out at times. But the writers have been really good about giving the other side of the coin as well, so I've had these great opportunities to do really deep, dramatic stuff as well. And that just makes the comedic side more fun. They've fleshed out the characters very well.
And even though you do have the humor like a McKay or an RDA, I guess Daniel Jackson, isn't that funny; no offense to Michael Shanks. Not him, the character! But even though you have that, you get this other side. The writing is great. they're nerds like the rest of us and they're funny.

As a dork, any thing I'm interacting with the technology I think is great. I honestly feel like it's more pressure than fun. Anytime I'm touching the computer or any type of console, ... I'm hesitant to say this because somebody's gonna call me on it in two years and say that I don't do it anymore, I know what each button on the console does. And I know what order I'm supposed to hit it in to do each thing. I know how to open a door, I know how to do the comms, and they've even told me that I don't need to do this, but I know from having watched too many shows that I need to.
... It's exciting to me as a fan of like, Next Generation and what have you, to kinda be creating the world. Like when I do something on a remote and they write it down so that you know in future episodes that's how you do that, that to me is one of the most exciting things. Because it feels ... like I'm part of it.

Blue: The first thing I have to say is, "Replace McKay?"
I consider it flattery that I am even capable of replacing McKay, which I don't. Something I said the other day: We're not replacing the shows of the original cast, just walking alongside them.

MN: Wow.

DB: I know! I was like, Oh my gawd! No, I'm not replacing him. I mean you have in any situation, especially when you're surrounded by intelligent people, someone witty. Because intelligence leads to finding the humor in everyday situations. So Eli is very much that. Plus the background that he comes from, the hacker society, kind of secluded from the world side, you're always gonna have this humorous perspective.
I was drawn to this role because of a conversation I had with Brad and Robert when this process was first going on and they said that Eli and Chloe are the roller coaster that the audience straps into to experience the ride. And for me, it's a lot of pressure. But it's fun, its flattering to think that I'm everyone's representative - and I love the scenes that they've written where you don't know that Eli is capable of these emotions and it just comes - but also to diffuse situations. You're surrounded by people who are fighting around the ship.

MN: Well, I think he uses the humor to cope with his own stress and his own fears, so it does come from something. That's what I mean when I say that the humor isn't these punchlines. It's coming out of this need. And I think that's how he cope with stress.

DB: I think it's how he relates to people, which is what I like. If you see Rush and Young, possibly disagreeing about something and Eli's in the room, I think he wants to calm everyone down. So I think the easiest way to do that is to make a joke; granted with these people that doesn't always go over well, but I think the audience will enjoy it.

All in all we were floored with Blue's knowledge and excitement. Tomorrow we'll bring you more details straight from Ming Na's about her character and prepping for this big undertaking.

Camera work by Lauren Davis, and thank you Caitlin Petrakovitz.

A tipster (who fit into a key demographic that Syfy is looking for) took part in a survey in which he/she was asked about Syfy's programming — and because he/she expressed a lack of interest in paranormal reality shows, the questioning shifted onto Caprica, Syfy's big show premiering in 2010. The survey showed our source these six posters, and tried to suss out which of the posters resonated the most positively.

We asked Syfy about these posters, and a spokesperson said, "We routinely and confidentially research numerous concepts which are not limited to the images you have inquired about."

So you have the two sexy posters featuring Zoe looking mysterous and sultry, not to mention naked... it doesn't scream "cybernetically resurrected girl," but it does seem intriguing at least. And the "one million consequences" thing is curious.

And then there's the "huddled naked figure" poster, which has an adult (I think) in a fetal position — suggesting cloning or something else. For some reason, this poster is the most "science fictional" looking to me.

The other three posters seem much more "soap opera" or "thriller" oriented to me, with the emphasis on "two families." The ones with the heads of Joseph Adama and Daniel Graystone, and all the weird writing going between them, looks more thriller-ish, whereas the others seem more soap-operatic. And then there's that weird floaty apple, symbolizing forbidden knowledge.

All in all, there seems to be a dichotomy between "sexy/mysterious science" and "drama about scowling men."

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies is available On Demand and via Digital Download, and it also comes out on DVD and BluRay today. You can get it from the WBSHOP.com here. (You can read our review here.)

Here are some more clips, that have been posted on Youtube:

And here's some promotional artwork:

Written by 2000AD veteran Ian Edginton with lovely art by Davide Fabbri, the six part series comes from DC Comics' Wildstorm imprint, who describe the first issue a little something like this:

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Those are the words of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, yet even he finds his skills tested to their limit as he and his erstwhile comrade Dr. John Watson are confronted with the most extraordinary case of their career – the dead are returning to life! Can a plague of Biblical proportions be far behind for Victorian London? And who – or what – is behind the resurrection of these ravenous revenants?

Here's a look at how the series opens:

Victorian Undead hits comic stores on November 18th.

[Wildstorm]

How does having a movie impact the books? Not just the promotion of the books, but you're also writing another Surrogates book...

I don't think much has changed. I understand that right now, it's in the news and it's something that's on everyone's mind because of the marketing campaign, but I am fully prepared for the fact that, next week, the world will have moved on. I'll just keep working away on the stories, and hopefully people will keep enjoying them, whether they be Hollywood people or readers at the bookstores.

I've got two other Surrogates books I want to do, but I'm not working on either of those at the moment. Surrogates isn't the only thing I want to do, so I'd like it to be one of those things I come back to around other projects that I'm working on. Right now, I have The Homeland Directive, which is more of a modern-day political meta-thriller, and that whole book was written before I started on the prequel to The Surrogates [Flesh and Bone, which came out earlier this year], but the film went into production so fast that we put the Surrogates prequel into production to come out before the movie, and that pushed Homeland Directive back another year. It'll come out next year.

I'm also adapting Percy Jackson and the Olympians young adult series into graphic novel format, and I have an Iron Man oneshot coming out in October, as well.

You're a busy man! Was Surrogates your first book?

Yeah, that's the first book I ever wrote.

So what was the impetus behind, not just Surrogates, but also just wanting to be a comic writer?

I'll tackle the comic writer first, then come back to The Surrogates. I always wanted to be a writer. When I was very, very little, I wanted to be an animator; to animate Bugs Bunny cartoons was like the highest form of achievement for me, and that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had all the animation books and I kept working at it, but I could tell that I had no talent for it, I mean, it was obvious. I think I turned to writing stories to explain what I couldn't draw with my hands. I was writing short stories at a very early age, like second, third and fourth grade. So I knew I wanted to be a writer, but it was always prose. I didn't grow up reading comics, comics weren't something on my radar. So when I was in grad school, getting my MFA in creative writing, through a friend of mine who worked in Borders, he got me to read Astro City, and I just really enjoyed it. It had all the complexity, the deep characterization, the subtext and the themes that the literary fiction I was enjoying had, but it also had this very strong visual element, and it just sort of struck me that here was an opportunity, that I could write a story and someone else could render it into art and it was probably as close as I would ever get to that original ambition of being an animator.

That was in 2000, that I decided to try and write comics. I wrote The Surrogates in 2002, I spent some time - I'm not sure I'd want to call "researching," but looking into it, trying to figure out what a comic book script looked like, and also boning up on some of the classics of the medium. I didn't start writing The Surrogates until May of 2002.

As far as writing The Surrogates, again when I was in grad school, we read a book called The Cyber Gypsies, which was a non-fiction book where a guy had spent a lot of time with people addicted to online games, and these people in the book had become so identified with the personas on their computers that they'd lose their jobs or get divorced or any number of things because they were devoting so much of their time to maintaining that persona that they were neglecting the basic steps of living. It was an idea that stuck with me, this basic human desire to be someone other than who we actually are. It just clicked for me in 2002: What if there was a technology that would allow you to create a persona that, instead of being bound in a machine or have a virtual reality situation, what if the technology was reversed and the machine would go out into the world and do all the things you need to do to live for you? You could be that persona all the time and still maintain all your responsibilities.

I was explaining the concept behind The Surrogates to a friend, and she both couldn't understand what was bad about the idea of having a Surrogate, and didn't see any conflict of who you "are" using that technology.

Well, I think there's a lot of good that could come from that technology, I think there's a lot of benefit. Like any technology, it can be abused, you know.

The Surrogates - more the first book than the second, perhaps - struck me not as an anti-technology book, but definitely something that warned of the dangers of becoming too enamored and relying too much on technology that divorces you so much from the majority of your life. Was that something you were trying to get across?

I definitely wanted that to be one of the themes. And like you said, I didn't want it to be anti-technology. I didn't want someone to read it and think, that's what this guy thinks, this is what he's saying, because in many cases, I don't have the answers. I'm just sort of asking the questions and it's up to the readers to answer them individually. In this case, I had these questions: What does technology do to our interpersonal relationships? What would it mean if we could all redefine not just our physical appearance, but also deeper notions like race and gender? In what ways would it be freeing, and in what ways would it be confining? All these sort of things, and I just wanted to put it out there. Writing for me, as an exercise, is a way for me not to find an answer as much as explore a question, whatever that question may be, that's behind the story I'm telling.

That's what I wanted to do, to pose those questions to the readers, but not at any point feel like I was answering them. I think that's when, as an audience, you start feeling like you're being preached to, and I don't enjoy that when I'm reading or watching a movie. I try to not do that when I write.

I think it's left very ambiguous, especially with the prequel, which explains a lot of the concepts behind the first book. Why did you go back and do Flesh and Bone?

That was always the intention. It was always meant as a trilogy of books, but back in the day, all the other books were very dependent on how successful the first book was. It was always intention to tell that middle story, then a prequel, then a sequel to continue the story from the first book. I'm writing them in the way I always intended to; I think it makes sense to go back before you go forward again, to see the origins of Harvey and Margaret Greer, of the Prophet and how he built his church and get that background before you go forward again.

With the Prophet and his church, were you playing on the traditional science versus faith theme, or was he and his church just the most obvious counterpoint to the blind faith the rest of society has in the technology in the first book?

A little bit of both, but definitely the science versus religion debate... It becomes this question of, Where does it end? If we're going to use science and technology for reasons purely based in vanity, because there's something inherently wrong in that, then where does that end? If you're going to say that there's something wrong with someone getting a facelift, if that is a misuse of technology, how is that different from plastic surgery because they were a burn victim? I understand a difference, I understand the practicality, but if you look at it from a purely religious - versus scientific - stance, and you try to draw a line between black and white, you see that it is the grey area I was talking about earlier. There aren't any easy answers to these questions, and it's up to people to answer them for themselves.

It's not only the religion versus science argument, but also the Prophet himself, the character; I wanted him to be a grey area himself. You see this more in the prequel, but you don't really know: Is he a con man, or is he doing this because of a deep and abiding faith in Christ? All of these things that he does can be construed in either way.

Something I really like about your writing in general, especially the second book, is how much you want to leave open to the reader's prejudices. You argue both sides about whether the technology is worthwhile or a bad thing.

I wanted to populate the book with people who are using the technology for different reasons. I think the movie focuses more on just the physical aspect, and the personal beautification element of the technology, but I wanted to fill the book with people who use it for different reasons. I mean, Greer's surrogate pretty much looks the way he looks, he looks a little bit different but only because he's aged since he bought the surrogate, but you get the impression that, on the day he walked out the showroom, he looked exactly like that. For him, it's not something about changing the way he looks, it's about something he needs to do his job and be safe. I wanted to have these people, have different reasons, so the reader could see different things, whether it's law enforcement or to improve public health, and say "Wow, these are benefits that this technology could give" so that it's not just something that people use for vanity or self-servedness.

Do you think that sort of subtlety can come through in the movie?

Am I worried it's going to be lost in the translation? I don't think it will be. To me, the most important part of the book, even though it's a very small element, is the relationship between Harvey Greer and [his wife] Margaret. I think maybe it accounts for ten pages, if that, of the entire graphic novel, but it's what drives home the human toll of the entire technology. It also lays bear the dichotomy of people using it for beautification and people using it for more utilitarian reasons, because Margaret is using it because she's uncomfortable with how she looks, but Harvey's just using it because it's something he needs to do [for his job]. All of that is retained in the film, and the relationship plays out very much like it does in the book, and I think because that is in there - and in the film, I think more screentime is devoted to it than pagetime in the book - I think that stuff will still shine through.

If you had a surrogate, what would you do with it?

I'd like to think that I'd be like Greer, I'd be a guy who'd use it for utilitarian reasons, not for any kind of vanity. But I understand how seductive technology is, and if I lived in a world like Greer does where everyone is using these things, it's be very easy to get sucked into that. I don't know if I'd perform as admirably as I'd want to.

Surrogates is in theaters now. The two graphic novels, The Surrogates and The Surrogates: Flesh and Bone are both available in bookstores and comic stores now.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles went off the air last May, and seems unlikely to come back to television. But fans have become increasingly focused on the idea that the show could have a direct-to-DVD movie sequel. The show's creator and showrunner, Josh Friedman, told us back in May that the show was over, and unlikely to be revived.

But fans have kept clamoring for a direct-to-DVD continuation. So we decided to ask producer James Middleton (who also produced Terminator Salvation) if there was any hope whatsoever that fans might get their wish. Have there been any meetings about a direct-to-DVD sequel, or other continuation? Middleton responded via email:

The quick answer is, yes, there have been many discussions. I can't go into more detail about the subject until I have something truly substantial to report. What the fans should know is that I hear them and I too would love to see T:SCC come back in some form.

So it sounds like there's reason to hope after all. At least, the reference to "many discussions" sounds encouraging, as does the notion that Middleton may actually have something "substantial" to report at some point. So fingers crossed!

And here's a better look at that mobile billboard, which drove around near the Warner Bros. studio offices for three days this past week:

As with a few other videos we ran lately, we talked to Freeman on the red carpet at the SyFy/Entertainment Weekly party at Comic Con, where we did literally 35 interviews in a couple hours. Freeman gave us some great hints for the ninth season of Smallville, which starts tonight.

So if Lex does come back, Freeman isn't sure if they'd have a love connection or a brother-sister bond... but most likely, she thinks they'd fight it out. And as for Ollie, her relationship with him will keep on being back and forth... Ollie will rekindle some feelings for Lois Lane. But Ollie's connection with Tess is still there. And she is going to play a little "match of the minds" with Zod (Callum Blue). But sadly, she doesn't get to have any scenes with Brian Austin Green, who plays Metallo.

But the biggest question is — who will Tess find romance with? Ollie? Lex? Or maybe Lois, Freeman suggests. Yes — we endorse that last idea. Let Clark pout from the sidelines: We'll be Lois/Tess shippers.

In Surrogates, people stay at home all the time, and jack their brains into glamorous, super-strong robot bodies, so you don't have to risk getting hurt or let people see your bad skin. Mostow explains to us how it all works.

So explain to me how this stem chair works, how does it save people from bed sores if they sit in it all day?

If you literally were in a chair all day long, you would have to worry about things like bed sores. But in the movie, they have these fantastic chairs that are constantly stimulating your body parts so you never have to suffer from those problems.

But how do they eat and go to the bathroom?

Well you have to get up occasionally, things like that technology can't do for you. There are a couple moments in the movie where the surrogate is completely immobilized and you find out that their operator was in the bathroom or getting a snack or something. Basically your Surrogate freezes in the action of whatever it's doing, and you can go into action and go and do whatever it is you need to do — then go back online. It's no different [than] if you were in a chat room, and you got up and and had a salad in the refrigerator and then come back. Everybody who was talking to you would just see a blinking cursor for a moment.

I've seen in the trailers that you can customize your Surrogates and I believe I saw one Surrogate with eyes on the side of its head. What else can you do?

Actually that's one of the few scenes that's not in the movie anymore. We have a scene in a bar where the bartender had put eyes in the side of his head so he can be helping out one customer, yet seeing what the patrons at the other end of the bar wanted. That's actually no longer in the movie, but there are other customized Surrogates in the movie. Most people chose to have an idealized version of themselves, but some people chose to completely change their identity. Some people chose to change their gender.

You see a girl who has literally put spikes coming out of her skull — metal spikes. She's gone a bit punk with their Surrogate. And there are Surrogates who have completely changed their skin color. We don't spend a whole lot of time on that because it's not germane to the central plot of the movie. But it was an idea that we wanted to pay some lip service to.

My personal favorite things about movies in the "not so distant future" are the little things that the crew and writers come up with, the things that set it apart as the future.

We have a lot of blink-and-you-may-miss-it details like that. I made the decision, early in preproduction, to do what the graphic novel did: even though it's set in the future, he made the world look like it does today, just with Surrogates in it. I didn't want this to be a movie where the question was, "hey do you think cars are really going to look like that in the future, will they be flying around?" These are the question marks that can distract you, when you watch a movie that is set in the future. So I said, let's just make this movie in the near future, and this technology will have come a long way very quickly. So it looks like the world we live in but it's just populated with all these robots.

What was that thing in the trailer that the Surrogates were stabbing themselves with, it looked like a drug or electricity or something like that?

There's a scene in the movie with something called "the jacker," and it's at a party. There's this glass tube that's sending this blue energy. There's a party scene where Bruce's wife is home with some friends and she's a Surrogate and they are all Surrogates too. And they are engaged in this sort of communal thing... that is, sort of... it's unclear if it's a drug-like thing, is it sort of a sexual thing, is it a combination of the two? And it basically is giving these people back in their stem chairs at home a rush by applying this energy field to their Surrogates.

Well how well policed is this Surrogates program? It seems to be owned by a private company, and yet the police use them as well?

Think of it like Microsoft, where Microsoft is a private company but everyone from law enforcement to criminals use their software. This company is the leading manufacturer of Surrogate robots and it spread like wildfire...There's no formal relationship between the government and the Surrogates.

What did Bruce Willis think about the idealized version of himself?

Bruce was an active participant in all that. We explored a lot of different looks and settled on this look as the best choice. The best thing about Bruce is he's in such good shape and a good looking guy we were able to make him look younger with a variety of old fashioned techniques and some CGI. And for his real self, we were able to make him look like he had more milage on him, with a series of old fashioned film techniques, and with his own performance. As opposed to getting a guy who's 25-years-old and [trying to] make him look 50, Bruce was the perfect guy for this film.

Was it his decision to make his ideal robot self blond? That's some beautiful robot hair there.

We wanted something where you look at it and say I've never seen Bruce Willis look like that before. We wanted something to catch your attention. And that's the whole point, people don't look like themselves. And in Bruce's character's mind he'd like to look as if he was 20 years younger.

Oh, and there are spoilers in here — especially if you haven't seen the end of Dollhouse season one, or Battlestar Galactica.

We were excited to talk to Penikett, who's one of the most compelling actors on television, at Comic Con. In case you can't hear the audio on that clip, he told us not to be too sure that former FBI agent Paul Ballard is really working for the mysterious Dollhouse that he was fighting to destroy for so long. In fact, Penikett hints that Ballard still has his own agenda. As for the peppery relationship between Paul Ballard and Boyd Langton, which included a fistfight as well as a team-up in last season's "Omega," Penikett tells us to expect a lot more conflict between those two.

We had a question we'd been dying to ask about the end of Battlestar Galactica — before the final episode aired, Penikett told some interviewers that he'd convinced the show's producers to change Helo's fate. In the original script for the finale, Helo had an ending which seemed too obvious, according to Penikett — until talked the producers into changing it. So we were dying to know — what was Helo's original fate? And according to Penikett, Helo was supposed to die in the final battle.

We were also excited to talk to Penikett about Riverworld, the Syfy miniseries based on the classic novels by Philip José Farmer. He's starring in this adaptation, which airs this January or February and which could turn into an ongoing series. He praised everyone involved with the production and says that Mark Deklin is great as Mark Twain — and he does build his riverboat, like in the books. Most importantly, though — we needed to know if Penikett will be resurrected in the buff, just like everyone in the books? Here's what he said:

In Pandorum, opening this Friday, Quaid plays Payton, one of two space travelers who awake from hypersleep aboard a massive spaceship. (The other one is Bower, played by Ben Foster.) Hypersleep always leaves travelers with total amnesia, so Payton and Bower don't know who they are. Normally, there's supposed to be someone there to help reorient you when you reawaken from hypersleep, but they're on their own. And they're locked in the tiny room they wake up in. The first part of the movie is about their struggle to escape from this room — but once they finally get out, "that's when all hell breaks loose," says Quaid.

Are we ready for the return of space horror? "I sure enough do hope so," says Quaid. "If you have a good story — and this is a great story — a good movie, a fun, exciting movie, the audience will show up." He says Pandorum is "pretty amazing, in that it's part thriller, part horror movie, I guess... it's a myth, asking who are we? Are we who we think we are?"

And even though you've seen weird white creatures attacking our heroes out of the bowels of the spaceship in the trailers and clips, there aren't any aliens in this movie, says Quaid. "The aliens are us."

In the clips we've seen so far, Quaid's character seems like the steady voice of reason, compared with Foster's jumpy, paranoid character. But "that's only what it seems like," says Quaid. "My character is hiding something that even he himself doesn't know." Besides that, all Quaid will say about Payton is, "He's not who he thinks he is, let's put it that way."

He had fun playing off of Foster's jumpy, paranoid character, but also has some "pretty interesting" repartee with Cam Gigandet, who plays Gallo.

Quaid has heard the inevitable comparisons with District 9, what with humans peeling off their own skin and slowly turning into some kind of inhuman creature, but "this is a very different type of story." The film's title, Pandorum, "actually refers to a syndrome that occurs with prolonged space flight, where one begins to lose their grip on reality."

Quaid also appears in the upcoming Biblical horror film Legion, in which people have boils bursting out of their skin, among other things. We asked him which movie was grosser to film, and he said "I think they're about even." He says special effects are much easier to shoot than they used to be — in the old days, they were all mechanical, and now "they basically just build the whole thing around you."

Enemy Mine is one of our favorite films, so we had to ask Quaid about it — many accounts say the space epic was filmed twice, in its entirety. The studio fired original director Richard Loncraine, and director Wolfgang Petersen started over from scratch. But Quaid tells us they didn't quite get to film the entire movie before Loncraine was fired:

We didn't film it completely twice. We shot in Iceland with another director, for about four to six weeks, something like that. [It was] a very different concept of the film, and then the director was fired. And we shot in Germany with Wolfgang Petersen.

Nobody's ever seen the footage that Loncraine shot, and it's rumored to have been junked. But Quaid says it still exists somewhere, "but I'd like to see it myself." Quaid Loncraine's original version of Mine was "grittier," at least partly because it was filmed on location, with real weather, and Petersen shot his version on a soundstage. "It had a grittiness to it." But it was still the same basic story of a human and an alien, enemies in a bitter war, learning to become friends.

And finally, we asked Quaid if he's still on board for G.I. Joe 2. And he says, "Yeah if they do one, i'm there."