Let's start off with what may be turning into a regular feature: Marvel's Iron Man releases for the week. This week alone, the House of Ideas prepares for the upcoming Iron Man 2 with the following collections: Iron Man: Armor Wars Prologue (Collecting some great late-1980s work), Iron Man: Iron Monger (If you're wondering where the end of the first movie came from, look no further), Iron Man: The End (An alternate future finale for Tony Stark!) and Ultimate Comics Iron Man: Armor Wars (Warren Ellis continues his fun drunken take on the alternate-continuity version of the character).

Lest you think Marvel only publishes books about Tony Stark these days, they're also putting out the first issues of Hercules: Fall of An Avenger and X-Factor Forever (For those who loved Louise Simonson's 1980s run on the original X-Men, this is a sequel), as well as the one-shots Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades and X-23.

Further superhero thrills can be found in DC's Batman International (wherein the Dark Knight fights crime in countries other than the US), Superman 80-Page Giant (wherein writers who haven't done much - if any - work for DC tell short stories about the Man of Steel), the Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird collection (Continuing the New Krypton storyline, and recommended) and golden age reprint collection Wonder Woman Chronicles.

Dynamite continue to get into the costumed hero action with Green Hornet Year One (written by Grendel creator Matt Wagner), while similar pulp action thrills are offered up by two Flash Gordon collections, Mercy Wars and The Secret History of Mongo.

Elsewhere, IDW's Transformers not only get a new hardcover collection of movie-continuity comics (Transformers Movie Collection Vol. 1) but also a new series written by TF-meister Simon Furman: Transformers: Nefarious. IDW also have a collection of guilty pleasure extraordinaire, The Last Resort, which is a must for fans of slasher movies. For the more high-minded amongst you, Days Missing, the time-traveling series from Rod Roddenberry, gets a hardcover collection for your attention.

Despite all of that, we've still not gotten to the really good stuff, which is the following three Picks of The Week: Image Comics have what they're calling the Titan Edition of I Kill Giants, a 300-page hardcover collection of Joe Kelly and JM Nimura's masterful tale of a schoolgirl who either kills mythical beasts in her spare time, or thinks that she does; it's the entire series, plus new extras.

Meanwhile, DC's Wildstorm imprint have a collection of Mysterius The Unfathomable, Jeff Parker and Tom Fowler's severly underrated series that reads like Douglas Adams and looks like MAD Magazine and should be loved by anyone who has a taste for the unusual without managing to lose their sense of humor (Which is my way of saying, buy it, people), and their Vertigo imprint has the first, beautiful, issue of Scott Snyder and Stephen King's American Vampire; even if you're not interested in an alternate history of the US as populated by a new breed of bloodsucker, you owe it to your eyeballs to pick it up for the artwork of Rafael Alburquerque alone. Really, a spectacular-looking book.

All of those, and more, can be found in this week's shipping list right now, and then your local comic store tomorrow. As long as your list includes Mysterius, Giants and Vampire, we'll all be good.

Seriously, after watching The Day The Earth Stood Still, we're even more convinced than ever that "updating" or otherwise attempting to refresh the classics of the genre just leads to horrible soggy messes. It's hard to believe there's something worse than endless sequels, but remakes of perfectly great films might just be it. Especially when there are so many great books left unfilmed, many of which are made for a film adaptation.

Instead of remaking Videodrome...
Universal snapped up the remake rights to this Cronenberg film last year, and Ehren Kruger (co-writer of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and sole writer of Transformers 3) will write and co-produce. The new version will "modernize the concept, infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller," says Variety.
...Film Jennifer Government by Max Barry instead.
Seriously, if you want to see a huge paranoid thriller set in a dystopian future world, you're actually crying out for a Jennifer Government movie. In a dark future, everybody's last name is the company they work for — and now companies have started engineering murder as a means of marketing their products. Horror and strangeness blend together with snarky humor — even the Michael Bay version would be interesting.

Instead of remaking Robocop…
If I want to watch the Darren Aronofsky version of Robocop, I'll just put in the DVD of the Verhoeven version and turn the brightness way down, while occasionally sticking my head into a bucket of Christmas lights. Actually, I love Aronofsky's work, for the most part, but Robocop is a film that requires no "reimagining." It's already fully imagined. Leave Robocop alone!
...Film Mark L. Van Name's Jon And Lobo novels.
We've praised these books before, but the story of the only cyborg in a society that believes cyborgs don't exist is tailor-made for a film. Jon can talk to machines thanks to nanotech implants, and he forms a close partnership with a sentient tank, which helps him go kick ass across several star systems.

Instead of remaking Escape From New York...
Apparently the script for this remake by Allan Loeb is really quite clever, and this time around Snake Plissken's rescuing a female senator (instead of the president) from the walled-off Manhattan. The banter is said to be razor-sharp, and New Line Cinema is putting this on the fast track.
...Film Glasshouse by Charles Stross instead.
Why has none of Stross' brilliant novels been filmed yet? In any case, Glasshouse is one of his best, and it's a brilliant portrayal of a town that's also a dystopian prison, where the people are tagged. Another good alternative is Catherine Fischer's Incarceron, but that's already becoming a movie.

Instead of remaking Forbidden Planet...
Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski just wrote his second draft of the screenplay for this remake — after the first draft leaked on the internet — and he hints that it'll be full of surprises, including stuff that wasn't in the first version. But given that the original was already a remake of Shakespeare's The Tempest, we're not convinced that trying for the "surprise" factor is such a great idea. We love JMS, but this is a perfect example of a film that still holds up.
...Film Lensman instead.
Luckily, JMS' other big-screen adapation project sounds a lot more promising. The classic original space opera, E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series has been begging for a movie adaptation for decades now — as long as JMS can strip the icky eugenics stuff and sexism out of the books, we could be looking at the next Avatar. (Or the next Green Lantern, really.)

Instead of The Thing prequel...
Seriously, a prequel to The Thing? Featuring backstory about the original doomed Norwegian expedition that we don't need to know, and characters we don't need to see die? (Including, rumor has it, the brother of Kurt Russell's character from the original film.) This just seems wrong. Even though it's not technically a remake and thus might not fit in this film, we must lodge our formal protest. Ronald D. Moore was writing the script, but I believe he's been replaced.
...Film Finch by Jeff VanderMeer instead.
In VanderMeer's awesome book (spoiler alert) the alien spore people can take over humans and control huge parts of our civilization. It's got much of the same body horror as The Thing, plus the idea of alien life that can take over humans and transform us into parts of them. It packs the same sort of "aliens replacing us" punch, and would make a crackerjack movie.

Instead of redoing When Worlds Collide...
Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, G.I. Joe) is on board to direct this remake, with Steven Spielberg collaborating on the script. He told Cinefantastique magazine (in the July 2009 issue) that he's still on board, but the project's been delayed slightly to avoid competing with Emmerich's 2012. Instead of a cerebral tale about another world on a collision course with Earth, as scientists ready an ark to take some humans to another habitable planet, expect the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower to melt.
...Film Spin By Robert Charles Wilson instead.
It's got the same "global disaster strikes the Earth" thing, but Wilson's tale of a membrane encompassing the Earth that slows down time on Earth relative to the rest of the solar system is more original, and a darn sight more interesting. Unknown beings called "the Hypotheticals" have slowed down time on the Earth to such an extent, we'll be destroyed by the expanding sun within one generation. The clever premise lets humans found a colony on Mars and develop high technology while relatively little time seems to pass on Earth — and the final reveal about why the aliens have done this is the kind of thing the Day The Earth Stood Still remake was going for, and failed to deliver. In the hands of a Duncan Jones or Steven Soderbergh, this could be an instant classic.

Instead of remaking The Bride Of Frankenstein...
As of last summer, Universal was in talks with The Illusionist's Neil Burger to write and direct a remake of this James Whale classic, and it's rumored to be set in present-day New York. (Of course, The Wolfman's lackluster performance may have soured Universal on monster remakes for a while.)
...film John Kessel's Pride And Prometheus instead.
You want a smart, witty look at the Frankenstein story? Look no further than Kessel's story, which is also the best of the recent Jane Austen mash-ups. The Bennet sisters meet Victor Frankenstein, and after the younger sister Kitty dies, her body disapears, and well... you can guess the rest. A film of "Pride And Prometheus" could capitalize on two hot trends — but more importantly, it could bring the Frankenstein mythos back to life.

Instead of remaking Creature From The Black Lagoon...
Another Universal monster movie, this property has gone through a bunch of possible directors, including John Carpenter, Peter Jackson, John Landis, and most recently The Crazies director Breck Eisner. Now Carl Rinsch is reportedly on board, for a more violent Alien-inspired take.
...Film The Scar by China Mieville instead.
This novel, set in the same world as Perdido Street Station, has a monstrous major character, the "remade" criminal Tanner — but more importantly, it features the Avanc, a sea monster that the Lovers raise and attempt to capture in their desire to reach the Scar, where reality is in flux and anything is possible. Plus there's pirates! War! And a city made up of floating ships. This is the watery monster story you want.

Instead of remaking The Brood...
After Eisner dropped out of Creature, he was in talks to do this Cronenberg remake instead. But he's said a few times recently that he's only had preliminary talks, and he might love the Cronenberg original too much to try and redo it.
...Film Geek Love by Katherine Dunn instead.
If you want people acting out their psychoses through their mutant babies, this is the book you want. It has the potential to be every bit as grotesque and disturbing — and horrifying — as Cronenberg's film. The Binewskis' circus is faltering, so they decide to try something new: They breed their own freaks by using drugs and radioactive substances to turn their own unborn progeny into mutants. Some are lucky, like Miranda, who only has a pig tail and works as a stripper. But then there's the twisted Arty, who launches his own cult called Arturism in which his followers compete to mutilate themselves. Consider this a plea for the long-awaited Geek Love movie.

Instead of remaking Flash Gordon...
Unlike The Brood, this may actually be Eisner's next project, assuming The Crazies' weak opening-weekend box office doesn't sap the fuel out of its rockets. This would be an "origin story" for Flash, fairly true to the comics, and would feature lots of planet-hopping.
...Film The Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold instead.
The three-time Hugo-winning saga of the disabled Miles Vorkosigan and his awesome military career is like Flash Gordon on steroids. Just the story of the romance between Miles' parents and the war that brings them together could be a whole movie by itself. And Ming only wishes he was as merciless as the Barrayarans at their worst.

Instead of remaking Short Circuit...
After the success of Wall-E, it was pretty much inevitable, no? Steve Carr, director of Paul Blart, Mall Cop, is attached to direct this film, from a script by Robot Chicken's Dan Milano. Same deal: A military robot gets struck by lightning and develops a conscience, befriending a young boy.
...Film When Harlie Was One by David Gerrold.
Still one of the greatest "cyber-consciousness goes loopy" stories of all time, Gerrold even rewrote this early 1970s novel in the early 1980s, giving you two versions to choose from. Harlie attains artificial sentience, and then threatens to become virtually godlike, all the while running loops around his human creators. The bit where Harlie "drops acid" would make for a pretty hilarious film sequence — although Harlie isn't mobile, which could be a dealbreaker.

Instead of remaking Metropolis...
Okay, seriously? The good news is, this remake hasn't been mentioned since 2007, when producers Thomas Schueler and Mario Kassar bought the rights. At the time, Schueler said, "With the overwhelming role technology plays in our daily lives, the growing gap between rich and poor, including the gradual elimination of the middle class, the story of 'Metropolis' is a frightening reflection of our society that takes place in an all too possible not too distant future."
...Film Virtual Girl by Amy Thomson
Thomson's novel about a man who creates a robot woman who decides to seek her freedom is absolutely crying out for a big-screen version. With shows like Caprica exploring robot consciousness, it's the perfect time to explore the perspective of a cyber-mind that views a body as a "peripheral" and risks going insane from the rush of input that the real world offers.

Instead of remaking Let The Right One In...
This is a case of a remake that it's too late to stop — Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is already filming the American version of this Swedish vampire movie. And early comments from Reeves and star Chloe Moretz seem to hint that the U.S. version will abandon all of the original's troubling hints that the vampire, Eli, is just using young Oskar, the way we see Eli using another guy. Here's hoping we're wrong, since that creepiness is an integral part of the story.
...Film Fledgling by Octavia Butler
Butler's last novel, the first in a series that we'll never see the rest of now, is actually told from the point of view of a 53-year-old vampire who happens to look like a 10-year-old black girl. Butler brings much of the same creepiness as the Swedish film, with the vampires needing seven or eight human volunteers, called syms (or symbionts) to survive — and the syms receive an erotic pleasure from their situation.

Instead of remaking Buffy The Vampire Slayer...
Buffy? Without Joss? That's unpossible. Seriously, it seems like a weird idea, and I'm not entirely sure what the point would be. We haven't heard much about this since last May, but like all Demonic plots from beneath the Earth's surface, I'm sure it's still bubbling away.
...Film The Strange Adventures Of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt instead.
It's like Buffy mashed up with Promethea — Marzi is an art-school dropout running a quirky Santa Cruz coffeehouse, and it turns out the coffeehouse's murals are actually a kind of art magic, dedicated to keeping an evil force at bay. And now it's escaping. It's up to Marzi — and her comic-book fantasy character Rangergirl — to stop the evil force from getting out into the world.

Instead of remaking Total Recall...
Keep your ass off Mars! Okay, don't panic, but Kurt Wimmer, the mind behind Equilibrium and the "what the hell was that" Ultraviolet, has been hired to write a remake of Dan O'Bannon's classic script, based on Philip K. Dick's writing. Okay, go ahead and panic.
...Film Software/Wetware by Rudy Rucker instead.
There are many heirs to Dick's crown of weirdness, but Rucker makes a bold claim to the Dickian tradition with the first two novels in the "Ware" tetralogy. You've got your strange questions about identity (as Cobb Anderson becomes his own android duplicate) your weird conspiracies, and your off-Earth settings (the emancipated robots set up shop on the Moon). I'd actually be curious to see what Wimmer (or someone else in Hollywood) would do with this.

Instead of remaking He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe...
Joel Silver (the producer who's spawned his own universe) has teamed up with writer Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li) to put together a new version of this sagahttp://www.variety.com/article/VR1117965714.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2564. Actually, there have only been vague rumblings lately, but the success of Transformers probably makes this film inevitable.
...Film Titan by John Varley instead.
Captain Cirocco "Rocky" Jones travels to Saturn and encounters centaurs, the Titanides, and bird-like creatures, the Angels. She discovers a controlling intelligence, called Gaea, and becomes its super-powered agent, or Wizard. It's a great blending of space opera and high-fantasy tropes, and the perfect alternative to another He-Man.

Instead of remaking Logan's Run...
It's not clear where this project is — Bryan Singer was on board, with a script by Valkyrie screenwriter Chris McQuarrie, and as recently as a year ago, he was still saying he might do it. But Silver and Tron director Joseph Kosinski were also announced to be making this film at one point. So who can say?
...Film any one of a number of dystopian novels instead.
It's amazing that there's still been no real big-screen adaptation of Huxley's Brave New World, which is in many ways the inspiration for Logan's Run. (We're still hoping Ridley Scott will get around to this one, as he's hinted he might.) But there's also Vonnegut's Player Piano, Wyndham's The Chrysalids, Ness' The Knife Of Never Letting Go, and many others.

Instead of remaking The Fly...
This might be the one remake that's worth being excited about. David Cronenberg is directing the remake of his own film, because he's excited by the film-making possibilities of today's technology. Given how much Cronenberg's directorial skills have matured in the past few decades, it could be fascinating to see how he approaches the story of a teleportation experiment gone wrong this time around. But still...
...Film David Marusek's Counting Heads instead.
We'd still rather see Cronenberg do something new. How many more Cronenberg films are we going to get? If we could pick one SF novel for Cronenberg to adapt, it would be David Marusek's clone-angst novel Counting Heads. It's such a Cronenberg story, full of weird doubled characers and nano-plagues. Or else maybe Kathleen Ann Goonan's Queen City Jazz, which is packed with weird body horror done in a literary way, as people are transformed horrifically into early 20th century Jazz Age figures by the malfunctioning nanotech city. Or maybe Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake.

Instead of remaking Highlander...
Fast And The Furious director Justin Lin is helming this remake, from a script by Iron Man scribes Matt Holloway and Art Marcum that focuses on the backstory of the immortals. Could be meat, could be cake.
...Film The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan.
You want epic sword fights, complicated heroes, sweeping backstories and dire prophecies? This novel demands to become a huge, big budget movie. (Although the copious amounts of gay sex might disturb the Hollywood execs slightly.)

Instead of remaking Fantastic Voyage...
James Cameron himself is involved in producing this remake, and says that everything we've learned about medical imaging will make the new film much more realistic than the original. No director is named yet, but Cameron seems pretty determined to make it happen. And he's got a bit of clout these days.
...Film Surface Tension by James Blish.
Humans arrive on a distant waterworld, with seed banks to help colonize it with adapted human-like offspring. But the ship crashes and the seed banks are ruined — so the ship's crew reengineers their own descendants to become microscopic sea life, retaining human intelligence but reduced to a primitive civilization. Instead of just being temporarily microscopic, these offspring of humanity are permanently tiny, struggling to survive and develop civilization anew. You could also film Isaac Asimov's quasi sequel, Fantastic Voyage 2: Destination Brain.

Instead of remaking The Incredible Shrinking Man...
It's like all your worst nightmares rolled into one. A remake of Shrinking Man starring Eddie Murphy — and directed by Brett Ratner. Couldn't we just watch Meet Dave on Nyquil instead?
...Film Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask by Jim Munroe.
Actually, we're not sure we want Eddie Murphy or Brett Ratner anywhere near this amazing novel about a mild-mannered guy who can turn into a fly, and who teams up with a woman who can make things disappear to right social wrongs. It's a hilarious, weird, silly book that would make a fantastic movie in the right hands — and actually, it already did make for a great short film.

Other upcoming remakes we don't particularly want to see, but we ran out of time to suggest alternative books for: Mannequin, All Of Me, The Illustrated Man, They Live, Scanners, Fahrenheit 451, Weird Science, The Blob, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Altered States, The Entity and Westworld.

Additional reporting by Annalee Newitz. Thanks for coming up with some great book ideas!

Anyone ever explore doing a homo erotic take on the show?

#flashgordon

jetskidiver2000

We've read a lot about your upcoming work, after The Crazies. We heard you might be the director for The Brood, and that you are involved with a new take on the Flash Gordon franchise. Which movie would come first?

Well, The Brood, I was just approached about it. I haven't decided. I'm not sure if its one I want to take on. I love the original, and I'm not sure if it's a movie that I think is ready for a remake. I've been soul-searching and deciding if I want to do that.

Flash Gordon is a project that I've been pursuing for years. I absolutely love that movie, and that strip. It's at Sony, we have the writers on, we've done one draft. I've been brainstorming with them over the past couple months, when I finished post [for The Crazies]. They are busy writing right now, so we will have a script from that in short order, hopefully. It's a big, giant movie. And these things have a lot of different roads to go down before they get green light. Hopefully we'll get there, but it's always a long-shot, but it's one that I feel incredible passion for. In developing it, I've really gone back to the original Alex Raymond strips and pulled information from those.

I read that you really want to strip Flash Gordon of its campiness, what would have to go in order to accomplish this?

Yeah. Well inherently there are two key elements, I think, that removes the camp from the movie. When you re-read Raymond's strips, which were drawn from '32 to about the mid-40s you can't read them as a human being living in today's world. You have to imagine living in a world pre-space travel, and the world of the 30s. It's kind of a more naive view of the Universe. It's a mistake to try and [take] the sensibilities from then, and transplant them into today. So we, what the writers have been saying, is "What would it be like if Raymond was still alive today? If he was writing the strips now? What would he be doing? How much more sophisticated would it be?" And that's one one of our points of view. The other is, it's not just the level of sophistication in the world and in Mongo, and the design and the creatures. It's also the sophistication of character in Flash, and Dale, and Ming. What characters are more realistic and human? What characters have more flaws, and journeys to go on in the course of the movie?

It's such an iconic image, the Flash Gordon figure, just the costume and his boots alone. It's hard to imagine losing the costume or other classic images from the strip. Are those the type of things you think you'll have to do away with?

No, I think it's all a careful balance. I can tell you there will be Hawkmen, there will be Lionman, [and] Ming will be in the movie. In a version that is going to take place on Mongo. I love the source material, so lots of it is going to be in it. I'm not rediscovering, I'm not recreating a take on his original material. There are elements that will be in it, and there will certainly be elements that change. And unique takes on it that might not have been in reflected on before.

So were you a fan of the TV series?

No. Not at all, [ughhh]. I thought the TV series was not good. I think it did a lot of damage to the brand. To do Flash Gordon right — one of the reasons you can't is because of budget. I don't typically ever equate budget [with] a level of sophistication, or success in a project. Certainly, if you have all the money in the world, it doesn't mean you're going to have a good movie. But in a big movie like Flash Gordon, that takes place on another world, if you don't have the budget to do it right or the technology to do it right, it's going to inherently come out campy, whether you want it to or not. It's the only way that you can put that through to portray another planet. My take on this is to not do it, unless we have the right budget and can do it the right way.

But until then see Breck Eisner's work in The Crazies, this Friday.

Iron Man 2:

Don Cheadle says he's doing a reshoot on Friday. From the way he says it, it doesn't sound as though it's a major thing, possibly just a few special-effects shots pickups. But maybe they're tweaking War Machine's performance in the film? Cheadle won't confirm whether Rhodey and Tony actually fight in the movie, saying he's not actually sure what happens. "I haven't seen the finished product. I don't know what's going to happen in the film." [MTV]

And a few new screens from the Wii tie-in game give some glimpses of War Machine in action. [DS-X2.com]

Flash Gordon:

Director Breck Eisner was talking up this movie again, and hitting much the same notes as before: It'll be based on the original strips, but as if artist Alex Raymond were drawing them today. And he describes the film: "It's action, it's adventure, it's intense, it's dynamic. It's a strong central character who goes on a dynamic journey. It should be a really amazing movie if we can get it made." [Sci Fi Wire]

Toy Story 3:

Here are a couple new promo pics. [Celebutopia]

And a smattering of new posters. [IGN]

Twilight: Eclipse:

Jackson Rathbone talks about the non-stop action in this third movie, where he teaches the Cullens to fight vampires. [Reelz Channel]

Doctor Who:

Comedian James Corden was memorizing lines from an upcoming episode of this show on the train to Wales, and let slip to a fan that, yes, he has a role in the series. But his role remains a secret. [STV]

V:

So yeah, the baby gestating inside Valerie really is an alien lizard baby, thanks to her secretly V boyfriend Ryan. And by the time the show breaks for the summer, we'll have an inkling about what's been born and what's coming. The gestation will be more eventful than the birth, says Rosenberg: "What happens when the baby kicks? Or when Val gets her ultrasound?" [TV Guide Magazine]

Supernatural:

Even though psychic Pamela Barnes first went blind trying to see Castiel's true form, and then died helping the Winchesters deal with reapers, she'll be back. Actor Tracy Dinwiddie tweeted that she'll be in episode 5x16, "Dark Side Of The Moon" — not the upcoming zombie episode, but the one after that. [BuddyTV]

Caprica:

Matthew Scott Porter, who plays the youngest husband in that infamous group marriage, says his character is "part of an organization that is responsible for the Cylons having consciousness and we are kind of the beginning of the end for humanity as we knew it. We are a bit of religious zealots. It is crazy to put yourself in those shoes but it was something I have never been afforded the luxury of playing before. He is definitely a character that has beliefs in something so deep and he is affected by it so much that he is willing to do great deeds of evil to get [things] done. It is a very cool character to play. I don't want to spoil the plot too much but I think you kind of see the seeds of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are right off the bat." [Cinemaspy]

And here's the synopsis for Friday's episode:

The avatar of Tamara Adama wanders V-World, scared, lost, and unaware that she died nearly a month ago in the MagLev bombing. Falling in with a group of gamers, Tamara discovers a new side to V-World — New Cap City, a place where people live random lives of violence and crime in search of the game's elusive meaning. Forced into aiding a digital crime spree, Tamara befriends a young gamer, until she discovers a devastating secret that threatens everything she knows.

Plus a few promo pics. [CapricaTV]

Chuck:

When this show returns March 1, we'll finally see Jeffster again, as the employees barricade themselves inside the Buy More. And Dietrich Bader plays an over-the-top Buy More exec with an ulterior motive. [E! Online]

Smallville:

A wee sneak peek from this Friday's episode:

Lost:

In tonight's episode, we meet L.A.-verse Dogen: a father who advises Jack to be a hands-on dad. And on March 2, Dogen has his final face-off with Sayid (which may end with the two of them forging some kind of friendship, hints Hiroyuki Sanada.) Also on March 2, we'll learn how Dogen left Japan for the island, and what his secrets are. He may actually be a dad in the island-verse as well as the L.A.-verse, and his assistant's name, Lennon, may turn out to be significant. [TV Guide Magazine]

Boone will reappear before the show ends, and in fact his reappearance is "more involved" than everyone had originally planned. Also, we will soon know what the island is — possibly even tonight! [E! Online]

Harold Perrineau says he has a scene with Hurley and Libby where he apologizes for shooting her:

I did get to apologize. Every time I did it, it was really emotional. There was something really nice about it. It's not just apologizing to her, but to Hurley as well.

And Jorge Garcia says he got really emotional doing that scene too. Michael is definitely a ghost in this scene, and Garcia's pretty sure Libby's not the Man In Black either. But we won't be seeing an off-island version of Michael at all. [TV Guide]

Here's a new Canadian promo for tonight's episode. [DocArzt]

And here are some screencaps. [SpoilersLost]

This is pretty interesting — you know how Smokey shouts "Don't tell me what I can't do!" in last week's episode. Terry O'Quinn says there's a lot of Locke left in Smokey, and he's made a deliberate choice, as an actor, to play that up:

Occasionally there's residual Locke emotions or feelings that Smokey gets that may surprise him, may irritate him, that he can't completely control, so he'll be smug or make fun of John Locke. Or say he was a loser and he was pathetic and he was broken. But for my own edification, I keep a little spark of John Locke alive in this being, whatever he is… so that if for any reason, anybody wants to summon that spark, it's there. And I think sometimes Smokey's indifference is my choice. Smokey's puzzled by it: What is this persona he's inhabited? Maybe it's stronger than he thought it was. But that just gives me things to play in the scene, gives a little bit of color to a scene. And I enjoy it. He was moved when he told Ben that John Locke's last thought was, "I don't understand." And he was surprised to be moved.

And he says that Smokey's recruiting drive has to do with fulfilling one of the many sets of "rules" that Smokey is bound by. "It's like a children's game." [EW]

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Oh, and we're trying something slightly different today - the Lost spoilers will be at the very bottom, to make them easier to scroll past.

Avatar 2:

James Cameron says that the second movie will pick up right where the first one left off:

It would be a continuation of [the key characters'] story. I expect that those nasty humans didn't just go away forever [and say], 'well, that didn't work.'

[MTV via Cinematical]

Spider-Man:

A teeny bit more evidence that the new Spider-Man reboot will be influenced by Ultimate Spider-Man comes in the form of Brian Bendis tweeting that he met with the Spidey movie team. [MTV]

Flash Gordon:

The Crazies director Breck Eisner is still determined to do this movie, and he says he's working with the writers on breaking this story. "It's a very complicated story," he tells reporters. He hopes to have a finished draft in a couple months. He adds that the main inspiration for this film will be the adventure strips of the 1930s and 1940s, not any of the recent, campy versions. "It'll be exciting and active and actiony and it'll be intense and dramatic with a really strong lead character." [Cinemablend]

Toy Story 3:

Here's another new poster, this time showcasing Buttercup the unicorn. And interestingly, John Lasseter says the Totoro cameo in the most recent trailer was to let Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki how much they've meant to everyone at Pixar. [MTV via Slashfilm]

Doctor Who:

The show is apparently doing a lot of filming at someone's house, and rumor has it that it's for episode 11, written by Gareth Roberts. It's reportedly called "The Lodger" and based on a strip Roberts wrote for Doctor Who Magazine. In it, the TARDIS gets sent forward in time a week, so the Doctor has to hang around waiting for it to catch up. He stays in a house, plays soccer, and wins the quiz machine at the pub over and over again. And sources claim the first new episode starts by zooming into Amy's eye. [GallifreyBase and GallifreyBase]

Fringe:

Awesomeness! Sources claim Leonard Nimoy will be back as William Bell in episode 21 or 22, as part of the season finale storyline. Also, Kristin Kreuk is in talks to appear in an episode called "Northwest Passage," filming next week. She might play a law-enforcement officer, or a different role. Those unnamed sources also say the season finale will feature a BMW 12 Series — and BMW doesn't make a 12 Series car, in this universe anyway. [Cinemaspy]

Caprica:

Paula Malcomson hints that Amanda may get to meet Zoe's electronic version, in one form or another, eventually. [TV Star]

Chuck:

The title of episode 3x17 is "Chuck Vs. The Living Dead," according to writer Ali Adler. [ChuckTV]

Lost:

The official description for episode 6x06 follows:

"Sundown" - Sayid is faced with a difficult decision, and Claire sends a warning to the temple inhabitants, on "Lost," TUESDAY, MARCH 2 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network... Guest starring are Kevin Durand as Keamy, Anthony Azizi as Omar/Arabic man, Hiroyuki Sanada as Dogen, John Hawkes as Lennon, Andrea Gabriel as Noor "Nadia" Abed Jaseem, Kimberley Joseph as Cindy, Cas Anvar as Omer, Kailee Velasco as Eva, Aramis Knight as Sam, Peter Stray as doctor, Salvatore Abbadessa as cabbie, David Griffith as screaming Other, Mickey Graue as Zack and Kiersten Havelock as Emma.

And here are a bunch of pics from Tuesday's episode, number 6x05. [The ODI]

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder.

Now that David S. Goyer has left FlashForward just a few months after taking over as the sole showrunner, the show has named three replacements: Goyer's wife and past collaborator, Jessika Borsiczky, Lisa Zwerling, who worked on ER, and former Law & Order/CSI producer Timothy J. Lea. The trio may be able to re-energize the struggling show, but the network's decision to reduce its order for the first season from 23 episodes to 22 can't be seen as a vote of confidence. (The season's original length was 24 episodes, but the network upped its order to 25 installments, then changed its mind and went back to 24 episodes. And then 23. And now 22. The network also put FlashForward on hiatus in November, to "boost the writing.")

As for Caprica, its slide is looking pretty perilous — from 1.6 million viewers for the pilot to 1.4 million for the second episode, to 1.1 million for its third outing. That's a pretty steep slide, and the numbers are careening into Flash Gordon territory. As TVByTheNumbers was keen to point out, Caprica was beaten by the Discovery Channel's Swamp Loggers.

So what's the prognosis? Both shows will probably finish out their first seasons, and Syfy seems to have a lot of confidence in Caprica, which could well generate some healthy DVD sales. But if you could flash forward six months into the future, it's not looking too likely that you'd see either show prepping a second season.

There's nothing wrong with a good origin story — especially if it's actually the first thing we learn about a character. Comic book characters get origin stories to set up who they are in an easily identifiable way — not just what their superpowers are, but also why they choose to spend their time dressing up and fighting maniacs. Michael Chabon's Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay does a great job of encapsulating the importance of the origin story to superheroes, the way in which it propels everything that happens after. But here's the thing — and I know this is kind of a mind-blowing concept — but not all heroes are superheroes. And not all heroes need the canned "ordinary guy, had a trauma, fell into vat of radioactive Cream of Wheat" explanation. For some heroes, the standard origin-story is actually diminishing rather than enhancing.

Remember when we didn't know every detail of Captain Kirk's backstory? He was so much cooler back then. Even though we loved J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie, our main complaint was the way it diminished James Tiberius.

Want to know Captain Kirk's origin, according to original Star Trek? Here it goes: Kirk joined Starfleet, which is a meritocracy, and worked his way up through the ranks until he became the youngest Captain in the service. That's it. And that's really all we need to know, although the tantalizing hints about his childhood on Tarsus IV, his service on the Farragut as a lieutenant, and other details help to flesh him out. By contrast, the movie Kirk is diminished by receiving the classic hero origin. Now we're stuck with a Kirk who was a Rebel Without A Cause who got himself expelled from the Academy, until a father figure talked to him, and gave him a shot, and then he miraculously became Captain overnight. The more we learned about how special he was, the less special he seemed — because he was just like every other movie hero of the past decade. Call him James T. Witwicky.

Actually, Maureen Ryan with the Chicago Tribune put it perfectly the other day, during her Q&A with Lost producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof: "I did not need to know more about Boba Fett. He has a jet pack. He a ship named Slave 1. I don't need to know more than that." (It's amusing that she was speaking those words to Lindelof, one of the architects of the "overexplaining Kirk" movie.)

So here are ten science-fiction heroes that don't have an origin story, and don't freaking need one.

Deckard (Blade Runner):. Let's just sidestep the whole question of whether Deckard is a Replicant, shall we? I'm serious. Because whether you believe Ridley Scott (who insists Deckard is a replicant, and reworked the Director's Cut to bolster that viewpoint) or Harrison Ford (who's pretty sure Deckard's a human) neither answer is an Origin Story. Deckard can be a Replicant, or a human, without us knowing how he became a blade runner, and why he quit doing it, and why he has such an ambivalent relationship with his job and his colleagues. In the movie version — let's leave Dick's vastly different novel out of this — Deckard is sort of the archetypal noir detective, and part of what makes him an archetype is that we don't get told that he is the way he is because his diapers weren't changed enough when he was a baby, or his fifth-grade sweetheart trashed his locker, or what have you. I live in dread that any day now, some movie studio is going to announce a Blade Runner prequel movie, in which we get to see Shia or Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the young Deckard, busting heads and learning about Replicants. The stuff. Of. Nightmares.

Beowulf Schaeffer (Larry Niven's Known Space stories) My memory's quite hazy, but as far as I can recall, when we first meet Schaeffer, he's an out-of-work pilot, who's deeply in debt and easily bamboozled, and then the alien Puppeteers convince him to make a flyby of a dangerous neutron star. We know that he's a Crashlander, hence the albino skin and red eyes, but we never learn that much about how he came to be a washed-up pilot in the first place. And that's totally fine.

Flash Gordon (Flash Gordon): First off, let's all just agree to ignore the recent Syfy series — I suspect even Syfy is happy to pretend it never existed. The original 1930s comic strips don't really give us much background on Steven "Flash" Gordon at all — he's just described as a polo-playing Yale graduate, who's sort of a man of action and winds up going into space. And most versions of the character have followed this template, although the 1980 film turns him into a football quarterback and the 1950s serials made him part of a futuristic bureau of galactic investigation. The main thing is, he's an action hero whose name is "Flash." Danger is his dinner, peril is his pastry, mayhem is his meat and drink, etc. Like the Operative in Dashiell Hammett's classic stories, Flash is just Flash, and his adventures are the most remarkable things about him. That, and the aplomb with which he greets them. Just check out the first ever Flash Gordon strip, via Wikipedia, above.

A-ko (Project A-ko) I watched this anime over a decade ago, but Wikipedia confirms my recollection that we only get weird hints about who A-ko really is, and where her superpowers come from. There are little cheeky clues that her dad is Superman and her mom is Wonder Woman, hence her bracelets and her unstoppable strength, but those are only hints and may just be in-jokes thrown in for the hell of it. Since the whole series is just a collection of in-jokes, including the title which references a Jackie Chan film, the lack of a drawn-out explanation is in keeping with the spirit of the series.

Captain Harlock (Captain Harlock): The rough-and-ready anime space pirate is willing to do whatever it takes to save Earth from decline, alien gods, or interplanetary invaders. Where does Captain Harlock's badassery come from? What's his backstory? We never find out, as far as I know. He's just an awesome space pirate — and isn't that enough?

Molly Millions aka Sally Shears (The Sprawl Trilogy): I forget which of my Twitter friends suggested Molly, but she's a great example. It's been years since I read Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, but Molly stands out as a great mystery and an unholy dispenser of death. Her eyes are vision-improving mirrors, and she has razor-sharp retractable claws under her fingernails. She's the razor, killing without mercy and sparing no compassion for most of the sad souls she encounters. We only encounter random speculation about her origins, although she does mention she worked as a "meat puppet" to pay for her cybernetic upgrades. (Image of Molly by DeadInsane on Deviant Art.)

The Tick (The Tick): Spoooooon! I mean, why would you want to explain the Tick? He's the Tick, the ultimate goofy superhero parody, and somewhat ineffectual do-gooder. Like another Ben Edlund creation, Bad Horse, the Tick is archetypal and stands alone, without any need to fill out his early life. There are hints in the comic that he escaped from a mental institution, but it's best just to think the Tick appeared, fully formed, when we needed him most. Maybe as a manifestation of his Drama Powers, bringing him into existence when the situation demanded — cried out for — it.

Kei and Yuri (Dirty Pair): The Dirty Pair are another set of anime heroes who don't get any huge explanation — and don't need one. They're the trouble-shooters who shoot first and seldom ask questions. Their propensity for leaving a trail of destruction in their wake leads to the "Dirty Pair" moniker. Kei likes to shoot her way into and out of every situation, while Yuri prefers energy whips and deadly playing cards. I think the Adam Warren comics may have explained a bit more of where Kei and Yuri came from, and how their shared telepathy led to their recruitment in the first place, but I tend to ignore those.

The Doctor (Doctor Who): You could argue the Doctor has an origin story. In his very first episode, he describes himself and his grand-daughter Susan as "wanderers in the fourth dimension" and exiles, cut off from their own people. Over time, we learn that the Doctor is a Time Lord, who rejected his mega-powerful race's policy of non-interference in favor of trying to make a difference. So he stole a time machine, a TARDIS, and went on the run. Okay, sure. But the Doctor doesn't have an origin that explains who he was before he ran away, or what his childhood was like. (I'm ignoring the novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt, which I'm pretty sure isn't canon, and which I have severely mixed feelings about.) The Doctor is one character whom I'm nervous about — we already got a totally ridiculous origin story for the Master (the Roger Delgado version was hearing warlike drums in his head the whole time? The whole time, really?) and now we've apparently met the Doctor's mother in the most recent episode. I'm not opposed to discovering new facets of the Doctor, or even more about where he came from — but we do not need to know who he was before he became The Doctor.

Han Solo (Star Wars): Maybe the Expanded Universe comics or novels have explained to us who Han Solo was before he started flying the Millennium Falcon. I'm not sure. Maybe there's a video game where you play as Baby Han, crawling around in black diapers and a little vest, and fighting baby Stormtroopers. But as far as I know, we've never had an official Han Prequel. And thank goodness. Can you imagine if George had somehow shoe-horned Han into the prequels? If Han Solo's dad had been the pilot on Anakin's star-fighter during the Clone Wars? Maybe someone once told the two-year-old Han Solo not to get cocky, and that's why he tells Luke the same thing in the original Star Wars? Or, I know — what if the baby Han Solo had a stuffed Wookiee toy that he loved a whole lot, and it was taken away from him, and that's why he hangs out with Chewbacca all the time! Just thinking about it is making me break out in hives. Let's just be glad there are a few nooks in the original trilogy that Lucas hasn't tweaked and explained into oblivion... yet.

Thanks to Deric Hughes, Annalee Newitz, Barclay Sylvester, Lun'Esex, Scott Edelman, Espana Sherrif, Joe Gross, Kiala Kazebee, Charles A. Tan, Jason Von Evil, Graeme McMillan, zbohannon, Rus McLaughlin, Patricia White, and anyone else I missed for suggesting some heroes without origin stories.

Ain't It Cool News asked the Terminator Salvation and Clash of The Titans star about the rumors, and he replied via email,

[T]here is no validity to the rumours... [S]ometimes, as you know, studios tend to just scat ideas and they leak out - but its the first i have heard about it mate.

Good. Not that we aren't Worthington fans, or wouldn't like to see a (well done) Flash Gordon movie, but still: After Terminator, Avatar and Titans, it'd be nice to see someone else get a shot at heroic roles for a bit.

Sam Worthington tells me there's no truth to the Flash Gordon rumors [Ain't It Cool]

Iron Man 2

Marvel's Joe Quesada has seen a rough cut of the movie, and he's unsurprisingly effusive about the film, especially the role of War Machine:

"[Don] Cheadle is one of the greatest living American actors, what do you expect?" said Quesada of the actor playing War Machine's alter ego, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, in the blockbuster sequel. "I think fans are going to love it - especially fans of War Machine - and he does kick some major ass."

[MTV]

Thor

Quesada also talked about Kenneth Branagh's film, saying it won't be what we expect:

"It's going to be pretty epic, and regardless of what you think it's going to be, it's going to surprise people," he added. "It's an interesting piece for a superhero movie. It's going to change the conventions of the superhero movie."

[MTV]

Book of Eli

Here's a new TV spot for the post-apocalyptic film. [via Spoiler TV]

Plus, we get tons of images of the bibliophile post-apocalypse. [Fantasy.fr — Thanks Manu]

Legion

We get lots of killer angels and Frosty Treats guy in the latest TV spot for the religious Armageddon thriller. [via Spoiler TV]

Doctor Who

The Master has the Doctor all tied up in this clip from "The End of Time, Part Two." [Blogtor Who]

And here's a rumor we're calling shenanigans on. A reader wrote in claiming that a BBC source "who has ALWAYS been right about Doctor Who spoilers" says that the Doctor will not regenerate at "The End of Time." And he's calling the new season a sort of reboot, with the Matt Smith Doctor actually being the First Doctor. It's an interesting thought, but we've already seen tons of set pics showing Matt Smith wearing David Tennant's costume, plus reports on the TARDIS getting a makeover and Tennant's sonic screwdriver exploding and being replaced. So it seems clear that Tennant's Doctor almost definitely regenerates into Smith's Doctor, in spite of Russell T. Davies' hints to the contrary. Just in case you see this rumor circulating elsewhere.

Lost

E! is still playing their game where they list a bunch of spoilers and only one is true. This one involves Ilana and the survivors of Ajira Flight 316. Once again, bear in mind that only one of the following spoilers is true:

1. They were sent by Charles Widmore to kill Ben.
2. They were sent by the Man in Black (Jacob's nemesis) to find the island's time travel mechanism and destroy it.
3. They were sent to protect Jacob.
4. They were sent to revive John Locke.
5. Ilana is future Sayid in drag.

Apparently, we'll find out which one is true fairly early in the season. [E!]

True Blood

The werewolf Alcide is primed to throw a wrench into this Sookie/Eric/Bill love triangle business. Joe Magnaniello says it hasn't been decided how much the True Blood Alcide will resemble the character from the books, but we do know he's a physically large presence, strong and protective from a construction background. And his living flesh and blood and his ability to radiate heat, will prove incredibly enticing to Sookie after her experiences with chilly vampires. [EW]

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Russell T. Davies has officially confirmed that the show will return for a fourth series. [Planet Gallifrey]

Clone Wars

The New Year's Eve episodes will give us plenty of General Grievous. In the first episode "Grievous Intrigue:"

General Grievous emerges from the shadows to stir up trouble for the Jedi heroes, ensnaring them in a trap that threatens their mission and their lives. It's a deadly game – and the scheming Separatist cyborg doesn't plan on playing by the rules!

In the second episode, "The Deserter," we will see clones pit against each other in an idealogical battle.

Smallville

Just why is Zatanna kissing Clark in the promo for "Warrior?" It's not clear yet, but you can bet that Lois is less than pleased. In that same episode, which takes place at Comic Con, Lois will be in costume — possibly superhero-themed. [Fancast]

Chuck

Zachary Levi talks more about the new season. [Chuck TV]

Additional reporting by Josh C. Snyder and Charlie Jane Anders.

Hollywoodscoop, the site that claimed Taylor Swift is the next Supergirl, now claims that Worthington and Reynolds are dying to dye their hair blond and visit planet Mongo.

Here's their summary of the Flash Gordon movie:

The role calls for Flash as a handsome polo player and Yale graduate, who travels to the planet Mongo, where it's discovered that the meteors are weapons devised by Ming the Merciless, evil ruler of Mongo.

First off, Worthington cannot do an American accent. Second Reynolds is already trying to convince the American public that he is, in fact, two separate comic book characters over a stretch of the next few years, Deadpool and Green Lantern. It would be absolute insanity to take on another iconic character, even if he wanted to do it.

So yeah... it's probably another fake rumor.

I actually kind of love the Jason Of Star Command credits, for the whizzy spaceship and the friendly dragon, among other things. But it is pretty cheesetastic and insane. My favorite part: about 40 seconds in, we get a tight closeup of the evil Dragos, looking like Brian Blessed crossed with a Borg, and then it zooms out jerkily to show he's sitting with a bunch of coke-snorting lizards. And then we zip back to the tight closup on Dragos so we can learn his name. Awesome!

But that's not even the worst TV opening credits of all time. We'll save time and put that one first. The absolute weakest theme tune and opening montage almost certainly belongs to...

K-9 And Company:

The first ever Doctor Who spin-off: he's a sassy robot who likes to sing his own name! She's an alcoholic who sits around drinking! Together they, erm... get sloshed and sing off key! Yeah, that's it! Seriously, was everyone involved with this drunk the whole time?

Space Academy

A group of well scrubbed young people learn to harness their amazing abilities, guided by Dr. Smith from Lost In Space. And Peepo! Don't forget Peepo the friendly robot! This one has the best "explaining the show's premise" voiceover.

Flash Gordon

Running running running... And then smiling! Nice teeth! Warrior woman. More running! Gateway in space, and then cue the drum machines, because planets are flying at your head. Zoooom! I like that the planets get drum machines.

Ark II

The voice of Landru narrates about pollution and waste. We're in a post-apocalyptic Winnebago — check out the long lingering shot across its side, to let you know it's a stretch Winnebago. Evil, scary flower of doom! But the best part is the bumper, where the guy carefully says everyone's name into the log, while their faces and names flash on the screen. Subtle!

Pain Killer Jane

There's only one type of pain she can't kill. Can you guess what it is? Anyway, dark gloomy city, then strippers! Then explosions! Then action! Then showering. Then bra! Then more montage, showing that these people shoot each other a lot, but they also smile and nod, and share a beer in their top secret lab. Ooh, back scars!

Mission Magic

Okay, so it's more like fantasy, or maybe urban fantasy, but wow. This is the show that launched Rick Springfield's career, before he was a soap opera actor or a pop singer. The show is all about a young witch named Miss Tickle, but Springfield gets top billing. More importantly, check out the incredible psychedelic cartoon visuals:

Prey

It starts with the most boring lecture in history, full of vague stuff about "okay, so there was an advanced species, and we wiped them out, and then there's another advanced species, and now we're the prey. Except when we're not." Confused yet? Cue montage of spermatazoa and monkeys, with words like "EVOLUTION" and "SELECTION" wibbling onto the screen. Now it all makes sense!

UFO

If we end up doing a list of the best opening credits as well, this will most certainly be in there. It's easily among both the best and worst TV show openings I've ever seen. The weird typewriter exposition! The men hugging themselves and breathing deeply! The purple wigs and crazy cars! It's all just so great! And yet, terrible.

Project UFO

This one is sort of the opposite. Where UFO was kicky and jazzy, Project UFO is sort of austere, with the Jack Webb-esque voiceover and the slow, dull scrolling across unidentifiable drawings of spacecraft:

Journeyman:

We grew to love this short-lived show, but its credits were part of why we had misgivings about it in the first place. Random years are flying over the Golden Gate Bridge! Now birds are flying backwards! It's Journeyman, the man with the power to confuse birds!

Fantastic Voyage

This one is pure groove, with the Peter Gunn-esque music, and the echo-y voice reading every single thing on the screen. "CMDF! Combined Miniature Defense Force!" If we're invaded by anything miniature, they'll protect us. Authority: TOP SECRET! HIGHEST CLEARANCE! And then there's Guru, master of mysteroius powers. Yeah. This is the sort of thing that fuels a million Adult Swim shows.

Time Trax

This one makes me sad, because Time Trax holds a special place in my heart. But these credits? So bad.

Electra Woman And Dyna Girl

This is another one that's great but awful — they move so stiffly, jumping out of their flying ship. And yet they're so awesome. They fight tigers! And spiders! With lasers! They shoot Sarah Jane Smith's wine glass, so she'll dry out and stop getting drunk when the Zarbi are attacking. They're hip women of today! And they have lyrics!!

Smallville season five

The posters over at Television Without Pity singled this opening out for particular badness, and it's not hard to see why. The weird dissolve-o people, the choppy montages, the cheesy video effects, it's all just a melange of badness.

Alias season four

Here's another one the TWOPers singled out. I used to love the techno music/deep purple mystery vibe that you got from this show's credits in the first couple of seasons, but this version of the opening credits slides over into ridiculousness, with the cheesy dance music getting too overhyped and the medley of Sidney's wigs getting over the top.

Automan

He's so cute and blue and glowy, and his little glowing bug flies around harrassing women! What's not to love?

SeaQuest DSV

There's a dolphin, and it's flying around the show's logo as if it wants to play, but then it gets tangled up in a net of too many clips from the show on screen at once, and the poor thing ends up mangled and destroyed. This is why we need dolphin-safe opening credits.

Code Name: Eternity

More awesome techno music. My favorite bit is at 0:12, where the hero sort of snaps his forearm up and raises his fist, so it looks like he's dancing, and then a defiant closeup of him smashes into the camera like he's striking a pose. But the whole thing is great — the screen being sliced up into vertical chunks, the sillhouette of a guy standing in front of his own wobbly face, the seasickness-inducing zooms. Rockage!

Dollhouse

I wrestled with including this one, because Dollhouse really is a fantastic show in general, and I hate to criticize any aspect of it. And Jonatha Brooke sang a couple of my favorite songs of all time. But these credits? Not doing the show any favors. Whenever you try to get people to take this show seriously, they watch these credits and start giggling. The "la la la la" sounds unfortunately lobotomized, and Eliza Duskhu's magic power is changing outfits as she walks. Also, "Active Secure" as she does yoga — what? It's like a computer scanner is monitoring her yoga progress. Uh, no.

Logan's Run:

They're torturing the dolphin from the Seaquest DSV credits to make those "Chew! Chew! Chew!" noises.

Star Trek: Enterprise.

Both Deep Space Nine and Voyager had similar opening credits: the treacly instrumental music, the slow montage of spacey scenes, the terrible empty dullness. But at least they felt sort of epic. The Trek behemoth tried to set a change of pace, with this schlocky ballad from Diane Warren, writer of timeless gems by Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, Chicago, Heart and many others. (Plus "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" by Aerosmith.) And they paired it with a totally cheesy video. Result: awesomeness! Here's the revised, boppier version:

The Invisible Man (1970s version)

It's the love boat, except with an invisible David McCallum. The way it zooms out when the effervescent Melinda Fee tosses her dice - like she's throwing the camera - is just special. And then there's just too much excitement, so the screen has to split into four cubes of awesome.

Voyagers!

They're being flung at the camera through space again and again! This may actually be the best example of the "explaining the show's premise in the credits" phenomenon, especially with the lost Osmond brother talking us through the whole "red is for temporal wrongness" thing. Zippee!

Crusade

What is your name? What is your quest? What is the wingspan velocity of an unladen sparrow? If you can answer these questions, you'll love these opening credits:

The Phoenix

He's sort of writhing in ecstasy a lot of the time as he strokes his medallion — either that or staring into the camera with a crazed exuberance, like he wants to stick his tongue through our TV tube and lick our eyeballs. But we're viewing the whole thing through a flaming triangle, so it all holds together surprisingly well.

The Powers Of Mathew Star

He's a space prince! And he plays football. But mostly, we have Louis Gossett Jr. explaining the whole deal, and having Louis Gossett Jr. talking about how special you are is probably actually better than being an alien prince with super powers anyway.

Future Cop

Oh, Ernest Borgnine. He just loves to confuse his African American partner, with the help of his wacky android cop from the future. When Borgnine laughs, it's actually really scary - and that's the signal to launch into the 1970s action disco music. And funny pixelated graphics. Whee!

Time Cop

The greatest movie of all time (well, almost) spawns a really sad set of TV credits, with footage of the time-travel train interspersed with vertical wedges of the same bit of footage three or four times at once - because the time-travel train splits the world into simultaneous chunks of sameness! Don't you get it? People who we don't care about are talking, and all we want to see is someone policing. In time!

Star Cops

Another one that makes me sad - Star Cops is a vastly underrated show, a classic from the pen of Chris Boucher (Doctor Who, Blake's 7) but wow - this theme tune is horrible, sounding like Spandau Ballet had a horrible mishap. And the Earth gets squished and turned into a boot sole... why?

Fantastic Journey

Another one with the screen divided up into squares, this time of different sizes... there's a lady walking, and we zoom in on a cat! The cat looks really bored — I can haz glowy portal? Oh, and Roddy McDowell is an android, or just a flasher.

Dark Angel

"In a broken world, she is haunted by her past..." The worst thing that happened to opening credits in the 1990s was that technique that lets you have five different versions of someone's face blending into a swirly of awful, all at once. This is a particularly bad example of the multi-face overload:

Man From Atlantis

It feels like he's swimming around, half naked, for several minutes before he finally breaks the surface and we go into the traditional montage of people having Personalities.

Earth: The Final Conflict

Aaaaa it's Enya! I stumbled on this one, when I was searching for the season two credits of Andromeda, which have the overly caffeinated voiceover talking about how Dylan Hunt is the guardian of a dead civilization protecting the galaxy from everything. But this is almost as good:

It's a surprisingly good week for books this week, with a lot of unusual projects making their debut at the stores. How unusual?

Well, take Marvel's Lockjaw And The Pet Avengers, for example. It's a book about the superheroes of the animal kingdom, whether they're teleporting dogs, firebreathing dragons or frog versions of Thor. It's one of a number of first issues from the self-styled House of Ideas this week, with the others including Dark Reign: Young Avengers (wherein Doctor Who's Paul Cornell takes on Marvel's answer to the Teen Titans) and GeNext United (continuing Chris Claremont's alternate future tale of the X-Men's children).

But can anything really eclipse what may be Marvel's most eagerly-anticipated hardcover collection? No, not World War Hulk or X-Men: Manifest Destiny (although both are released tomorrow.) I'm talking about Secret Wars II, the seemingly-endless, seemingly-cocaine-fueled 1980s excess of Marvel Comics' then-boss Jim Shooter trying to write a story about the meaning of life. Seriously, if you can spare the $99.99, you owe it to yourself to experience it.

By comparison, DC has little to match up... But that's not to say that The Unwritten (which we previewed yesterday) and a new edition of The History of The DC Universe aren't worth picking up. And Superman: New Krypton Volume 1 catches you up on the current crazy status quo for the character, that sees him abandon Earth in favor of his own race.

Elsewhere, IDW launches a new Angel series, Not Fade Away, for the Whedonites, while also putting out Astro Boy Movie Prequel: Underground for those looking forward to this fall's revival of everyone's favorite atomic Pinocchio.

Similar nostalgia will be found in the Flash Gordon 75th Anniversary Special hardcover from Ardden Entertainment. But I'd rather draw your attention to Boom!'s Unthinkable - which Alyssa reviewed this weekend - and The Unknown, which offers up the start of a story that feels more than a little Fringe-esque in all the right ways, as the world's greatest detective decides to investigate what happens after death, considering she's only six months away from her end.

No matter what you're looking for, chances are you'll find some variation of it in this week's complete list of comics shipping to comic stores, and the Comic Store Locator will help you find where your closest store is, so you'll know just where to find your goodies. Just don't be too embarrassed to ask for that book with the frog God Of Thunder.

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Khoury talked to the true stars of the movie - amongst them, Topol, Brian Blessed and Queen's Brian May, who explained how the classic theme music was created:

So for the title track I wanted to portray the cartoon-like quality that I saw in it… but the ‘soaring guitars’ were just the normal vocabulary of my dreams!

Goddammit, I really want to dream like Brian May now. Blessed is just as helpful in the amazing quote department:

And it [the set] was full of dwarfs and all kinds of people. I love dwarfs. They’re the happiest people in the world. And I loved to chase them around the set and stuff like that. So the whole thing was colossal fun.

Even Topol offers up this helpful recollection:

Yeah, it was a fun movie to do it. And the main thing, I quit smoking on that film. [laughs]

Despite the somewhat scattered nostalgia of those involved, the article is actually remarkably fun and full of information about the movie and just why we never saw a Flash 2. It's still not too late, of course...

Hail Flash Gordon! [Comic Book Resources]

Woolsey was promoted to Commander after they axed Samantha Carter at Stargate Atlantis. Check out his new digs in the gallery.

Some help from Sentient Development.

The new series is written by former employee of the Weinstein Brothers' Dimension Films company, Brendan Deneen, with art by newcomer Paul Green, and is setting its aims... uncertainly, as Deneen explains:

While remaining true to the spirit of Alex Raymond's incredible creations, I'm looking to craft a story and world where our unsuspecting heroes come face-to-face with unimaginable threats and breathtaking landscapes (aided in no small part by Paul Green's amazing artwork). At the same time, the civil war on Mongo, and Ming's certainty that he is doing what's right for the 'insurgents' battling him, will ring true to anyone who's been paying attention to world events over the last five or so years.

Has anyone really been waiting for a "Ming The Merciless is really Saddam Hussein" moment? Does this mean that we're going to discover that Mongo really didn't have any weapons of mass-hawkman destruction after all? Is Prince Baron really a stand-in for Barack Obama? The answers to potentially some of those questions await you when the book launches in August.

Flash Gordon #1 Preview [Newsarama]