Get Smart Season 4
Maxwell Smart finally gets the girl in this 4 disc collection of the fourth season of the 1960s TV show. Agent 99, you could've done so much better.

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth - The Director's Cut
The surprisingly not-terrible reunion of the late 80s, early 90s comedy comes to America in the "As it's meant to be seen" format fans would rather watch. Expect behind the scenes footage and the traditional Smeg-Ups to round out the package.

Oct 13
Land of The Lost
Will Ferrells's not-especially-well-received remake of the classic TV series may not have made much of a dent in the box office earlier this year, but somehow we wouldn't be too surprised if it found a (potentially stoned) enthusiastic audience awaiting it on DVD.

Oct 20
Blood: The Last Vampire
Swordplay! Vampires! Violence! They're all coming to your house, as Chris Nahon's take on the Japanese anime gets released on DVD and Blu Ray.

Drag Me To Hell
Sam Raimi's return to off-kilter horror promises to be even more fun on DVD; it's a re-edited "unrated" version.

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
Michael Bay's ridiculously successful Robots In Disguise sequel gets multiple editions as it transforms into something you can take home: There's a single disc DVD, double disc DVD and double disc Blu Ray. We'd recommend the latter, if possible, for that authentic HD overwhelming robot carnage effect.

Oct 27
Adult Swim: In A Box
A truly bizarre seven disc set, collecting Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume Two, Space Ghost Coast To Coast: Season Three, Moral Orel: Season One, Robot Chicken: Season Two, Metalocalypse: Season One, Sealab 2021: Season Two, and the pilot episodes for The Best Of Totally For Teens, Cheyenne Cinnamon, Korgoth Of Barbaria, Perfect Hair Forever and Evan Dorkin's awesome Welcome To Eltingville, none of which made it to series. Don't ask. Just buy it.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Edward James Olmos' after-the-fact TV movie promises to fill in some of the gaps in just what the cylons' plan actually was, and this DVD version promises footage that won't be shown on Syfy when it airs November. So that's even more gaps filled in, I guess?

Like the movie preview, we've split this preview into months (and, inside those months, into weekly releases), but with releases still unconfirmed and unannounced, we've pushed November and December together. Don't worry; it'll make sense when you click on the links below.

September
October
November/December

Leaving aside characters with alphanumeric names (like Star Wars' R2-D2 and C-3PO), characters who also have serials number imparted to them by their governments but are not generally addressed as such (as in Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Giver), and characters whose first names happen to mean a number in a different language (as with many of the characters in Stardust and Mobile Suit Gundam), there are several characters who are either designated with or often called by a number:

Number One (Star Trek "The Cage"/"The Menagerie"): More than two decades before Captain Picard started referring to William Riker as "Number One," Majel Barrett filmed the original Star Trek pilot, where her character was known only as Number One. Like Riker, Number One was the Enterprise's first officer, but the novel Vulcan's Glory suggests Number One was her actual name, given to her because she possessed the top intellect of her planet's generation.

Number 5 (Short Circuit): Although roboticists Newton Crosby and Ben Jabituya were out to create artificial intelligence, they probably didn't expect any of their prototypes to suddenly gain sentience, and so assigned them numbers in lieu of names. But after prototype Number 5 becomes self-aware (and escapes the clutched of the US military), he decides that, as a living being, he should have a name, and calls himself Johnny Five.

Fifth (Stargate SG-1): One of the few characters with an ordinal number for a name, Fifth gets his name in a fairly straightforward manner: he's the fifth human-form Replicator to be created on the planet Halla.

V (V for Vendetta): Most people who live through encounters with the mysterious anarchist V think they're addressing him by a letter, and his propensity for using V-based alliterations when introducing himself seems to confirm this. But it's much more likely that V derives his name from the source of his vendetta; when he was subjected to medical experimentation at the Larkhill Resettlement Camp, he was the man in room five — marked with the Roman numeral "V."

Number Six (The Prisoner): Residents of the mysterious Village are known by a number rather than their actual names — including at least 16 individuals known only as "Number Two" — probably to protect the secrets they all inevitably carry. Number Six, the titular prisoner, protests in the opening that he's a free man, not a number, but it's implied that Number Six may be known by yet another number: Number One.

The Cylons (Battlestar Galactica): The creators of Battlestar Galactica have said that cylon Number Six is a tribute to The Prisoner, and it follows that each humanoid cylon model would have its own number, with the notable exception of the Final Five. Most cylon models are known collectively by a human name as well (the Sharons, the Leobens, the D'Annas), but individual Sixes tend to have individual human names, like Natalie, Caprica, Shelly, and Gina, perhaps because of they are so often used as infiltration agents.

Seven of Nine (Voyager): Names designate individuality, a concept the Borg have no use for, but sometimes it is convenient for the Collective to identify individual Borg drones. So when the formerly human Annika Hansen was assimilated into the Collective, she was given the designation Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One. Even once she was unhooked from the hive mind, she preferred the shortened "Seven of Nine" to her human name, the latter of which she does not take up again until her Borg implants are completely destroyed.

Eight (The Specials): It's fairly obvious how Eight earned its superhero name. A hive mind, Eight consists of eight individual bodies who can physically act independent of one another, but share a single consciousness.

Thirteen (House): As long as we're labeling House as science fiction, we may as well mention Dr. Remy Hadley, better known as Thirteen. In one of his trademark moves to dehumanize his fellowship applicants, Dr. House assigned each applicant a number (and occasionally a humiliating nickname). Thirteen really took to the numerical naming system, refusing to divulge her actual name to her fellow applicants, and continuing to answer to Thirteen long after she'd earned a place on House's team.

Henchmen 21 and 24 (The Venture Bros): With the exception of the ill-fated Speedy, each of the Monarch's henchman is known only to their boss as a number. Henchmen 21 and 24 (the former is known to his mom as Gary) are genre-savvy enough to be content with their numerical positions in the Fluttering Horde. When they learn their new teammate is Henchman 1, they rightly assess that he's marked for death.

84 (P.S. 238): In a school filled with superheroes, Julie Finster has a pretty routine set of superpowers: flight, invulnerability, speed. In fact, her power set is so ordinary that instead of getting a cool superhero name, she's just called "84," since she's the 84th person to possess that particular grouping of powers. Needless to say, it's a tad demoralizing.

Agent 99 (Get Smart): James Bond may have been called 007 from time to time, but Agent 99 takes use of her code number to the next level, never answering to any other moniker (okay, in one episode, her fiance calls her Susan Hilton, but that isn't actually her name). In fact, she married Maxwell Smart and bears him twins without him ever learning her real name, proving once and for all that she's the better spy.

Agent 355 (Y the Last Man): In the historical spy network known as the Culper Ring, there was a female agent code named 355, whose identity has never been definitively determined. Similarly, in the fictional Culper Ring of Y the Last Man, Agent 355 is a highly competent spy whose name is never revealed (at least not to the reader). Her odd relationship with her name parallels that of Alter Tse'elon, the Israel commando whose real first name is not spoken (until the end) for fear of attracting the Angel of Death.

Experiment 626 (Lilo and Stitch): The alien mad scientist Dr. Jumba Jookiba created 626 strange and dangerous lifeforms. The wanton destruction caused by the final experiment, 626, condemns them both to life in exile, but the experiment escapes to Earth, where a young Hawaiian girl names him "Stitch." Of course, once Stitch's destructive nature has been reigned in, there are still 625 other experiments to contend with.

1812 (Farscape): In terms of numbered names, the DRD robot 1812 gets his from a fairly unusual source. Instead of 1812 being a serial number or a numbered designation, it's a reference to the 1812 Overture, which Crichton teaches the little service bot to play.

Subject 781227 (Kyle XY): Zzyzx, the company funding Adam Baylin's research, saw the child-shaped being Adam Baylin developed in his lab as a biological computer rather than a person, reflected in him getting a serial number in lieu of a name. It's only after 16 years, an escape, and a bout of amnesia that Subject 781227 finally gets a name: Kyle Trager.

Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog reports that the live action reboot of the popular Japanese cartoon that was being worked on by 20th Century Fox — which had a completed script, courtesy of Justin Marks — is no more, thanks to rights reversion.

Once the rights became available, Atlas Entertainment — namely Dark Knight producer Charles Roven and his Get Smart producing partners Richard Suckle and Steve Alexander - quickly snapped them up, and are developing a brand new version of the character along with Wanted producer Jason Netter. Ted Kopler, another producer involved in the project, admitted that the success of Michael Bay's Transformers movies helped with the decision to grab the movie rights, but described their take as something different:

[U]nlike other robotic action movies, 'Voltron' is the personification of the human spirit, a quality that will set this movie apart.

Wait, "personification of the human spirit"? This is the same Voltron that's a giant robot made up of other robots, right...?

No studio has been announced as being involved with this project yet.

Voltron comes together again [THR Risky Business]

Maybe it's because of that whole serious-actress cred she's clutching for with her new Jonathan Demme movie, but Hathaway wants to see her cool sexy spy character Agent 99 have a bit of a breakdown:

I’d like her to get into unexpected trouble. I’d love to see 99 lose control. I’d love to see something happen to 99 where her heart gets broken, and you see her have a complete emotional collapse. That could be really funny.

Strangely enough, I don't really associate "Anne Hathaway," "complete emotional collapse" and "funny." Of course, any Smart sequel would have to show us Agents 86 and 99 dating, but I would still hope they'd keep a bit of her superior, polished agent who's done it all vibe. After all, Max Smart's not going to stop being a bumbling doofus, and he needs someone to bounce that lost-puppy vibe off of. I'm not sure it would be much fun to watch if they're both losers.

Experienced in this whole press junket thing, Nate explained the idea behind the straight-to-DVD spin-off:

We were so amazing [in Get Smart] that they were like "Stop the presses! What are we doing? We need more of those two guys!" Not really. We knew from the beginning, the whole audition process, we knew that there were going to be two movies. [Bruce and Lloyd is] written by the same writers as the first movie because it's on the same timeline. Our DVD shows what we're doing back in the lab when Agent 99 and Max go off and do their mission. We end up having to go on a mission of our own. One of our inventions gets stolen, it's an optical camouflage technology is what it's called, OCT. And it's like an invisible blanket. And Max and Agent 99 need it in Russia, so we're trying to get it back for them. There you go.

For those of you with a more theatrical bent, Masi translated:

So Get Smart is Hamlet but we get to do Rosencrantz and Gilderstern Are Dead. We didn't get to play the questions game, which is the sad part, though.

Despite Get Smart's TV history, the duo weren't that familiar with the concept before signing up for the movie, as Nate explained:

I loved it, I loved it... I was just too young. I remember teething and watching it and thinking "I wanna be on that..." No, It was, what, the sixties? So it was a good twenty years out, or fifteen years out, before I saw it. I saw it in reruns and didn't actually know too much about it.

Maybe it was the chance to act out his apparently-real-life inventor fantasies that lured him in:

The gadgets in the movie were pretty cool. We have exploding dental floss, which is pretty amazing, a Geiger counter watch, knockout spray that comes out of a cellphone... that's a good one. I like that one. If I were a mad scientist, I'd do knock-out and then I'd have something that could change it, and then it could just be perfume or, like, mouthwash. You know, like a breath spray. I just like that it's already up there [by your mouth], it just sprays in the mouth. "Oh, I actually physically have to talk to someone now." Look at that! Banaca! Someone write that down. It could go far.

Of course, now that the movie's "a summer smash," inventing is but a distant, non-lucrative second place to acting. Does the success of the movie mean that we should expect to see more of CONTROL? Masi spilled the beans:

I know the writers are actually already beginning to write it. The box office just kind of determined how big our sets are going to be, whether it's going to be a very small telephone booth or a very big telephone booth.

However, he's much less forthcoming about the next season of NBC's Heroes, sarcastically saying "everyone dies in the first episode" when asked what's coming up this September. That said, he did tell us just how evil Hiro will be next year. Kind of:

Masi: On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say about... I don't know, that's an interesting question. Probably about 8.
Nate: That's pretty evil.
Masi: But is 1 evil, or is 10 evil? That's the question.
Nate: Okay, he kills a baby.
Masi: Don't tell!
Nate: But then he brings it back to life. It's a great episode, I've seen it.

And on his cameo in Pixar's Wall-E [His portrait is shown in a scene where we see a wall of portraits of the former captains of the BnL cruise ship that's been in space for 700 years]?

Masi: I'm in Wall-E? I had no idea. I gotta check this out. I had no idea!
Nate: That's awesome.
Masi: Well, I know a lot of the Pixar guys, I used to work at Industrial Light and Magic, so maybe some of those guys put me in there...
Nate: I smell residuals!

In closing, the two actors had a very special personal message to all io9 readers out there:

Masi: I want everyone to buy tickets to Get Smart and then sneak in and see Wall-E. That's what we should do!
Nate: Just keep buying Get Smart tickets. Every movie you see, just buy a ticket for Get Smart and sneak next door. That ten dollars is gonna move the world. That's all it takes.

Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out Of Control

Consider Get Smart alongside the summer's other goofy Jewish spy flick: Don't Mess with the Zohan. Like Smart, Zohan is a Jewish intelligence agent on a series of wacky adventures. The difference is that Zohan comes from the contemporary world: He's an Israeli ninja, fleeing contemporary political intrigue. He's openly Jewish, makes hummos jizz jokes, and basically takes the whole wacky Jewboy thing to its extreme. It works because we exist in a world where Israelis are, in fact, super-ninjas of the intelligence community. This is contemporary Jewish humor: It acknowledges that Jews can be tough, but that they might in fact aspire to be something else. You know, like hairdressers.

But the original Get Smart comes from a time when Jewish identity, and Jewish humor, were tickled by a very different set of issues in the West. It was an era when Jews in the U.S. were still struggling to be seen as anything other than mouth-breathing nerds or commie spies. Maxwell Smart is a Jew from that era: He's a total dork who struggles to be a super-agent. In fact, he's not even openly a Jew, though every Jew who watched that show knew what was up. (Jewish pranksters Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created the show, and a ton of Jewish guys worked on it as writers.) What's jarring about the movie remake is how little the writers tried to update the humor.

The new Get Smart film's references to nudniks, and Alan Arkin's hilarious hand-wavey schtick, seem retro because they are still the covert Jewish jokes of the 1960s. They are straight from an era when Hollywood Jews were closety about their ethnic backgrounds. Despite the fact that the Get Smart TV show featured a robot named Hymie and was packed with Yiddish references, you can bet that most of its audience had no idea they were giggling at Jewish humor. To update Get Smart for a new generation, the writers needed to make all that old-school covert Jewishness into something hilariously overt, or just get rid of it.

The anachronistic Jewish humor of Get Smart is indicative of the film's entire problem, which is that it can't decide whether to be a futuristic spy satire, or to pay homage to a bygone era. It strikes an awkward balance, incorporating a post-feminist Agent 99 (who is Maxwell Smart's boss this time around) and a black Agent (Dwayne Johnson, who turns out to be the bad guy, so much like a schwartze, nu?). And then are the two nerds, including Oka, who are supposed to represent the iPod generation but unfortunately figure very little into the plot. Basically we're left with a temporally-challenged satire.

Get Smart also tries unsuccessfully to update the Cold War scenario with KAOS vs. CONTROL. There are a ton of funny places they could have gone with this. KAOS could have evolved into the Russian mafia, or could have joined up with those cartoonish "terrorists" from Iron Man. And CONTROL could have been absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security. Whatever — I'm not asking you to give me a writing job in Hollywood, I'm just saying there are a lot of funny ways they could have updated the Cold War humor and they didn't. It was still basically KGB vs. CIA, and the premise fell as flat as a Shelley Berman routine would today.

I'm not saying the movie wasn't fun — it was, especially for a person like me who grew up with a family that worshiped Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce and Groucho Marx. Will it work for a generation that loves Sarah Silverman, the Beastie Boys and Adam Sandler? Probably not — but it missed by this much.

Get Smart:

Here's a new Get Smart trailer, that includes a ton of awesome new footage, including a weird Kim Jong-Il joke. I'm already starting to forget there was ever a movie with "Almighty" in the title.

Transformers 2:

Some guy (who was hanging around at 4:00 AM looking for info) got some details of the Transformers filming: there are some new Transformers, including a red Acura NSX, a grey and black Audi RS6, and an old Chinese ice-cream truck that splits into two Autobots. (Really. An ice-cream truck double-Autobot.) There's a scene where a Hummer in a military convoy gets flipped over, and a firefight ensues. In another scene, Megan Fox and Tyrese get chased up the stairs that run along the steel plant's blast furnace. [Seibertron]

Incredible Hulk:

Another new Incredible Hulk TV spot was airing on the Sci Fi Channel today. Among the bits that I think are new: A very stoned guy describes the Hulk, and maybe coins his name for the first time. Liv Tyler's Betty seems a tad whiny. We get to hear the Abomination talk. And the Hulk does his trademark super-destructive handclap (near the end of the clip.)

Heroes:

What would make you excited about Heroes season three? If you answered, "Ali Larter dressed as a cheap hooker," then you're the show's new target demographic. Someone caught a few seconds of footage of the show's filming, in which she's out on the street in an over-the-top outfit, and then she gets handcuffed by a man in uniform. Which of her personalities is this one, do you think? [Hollywood Bubble]

The Middleman:

Among the monsters that The Middleman and his sidekick Wendy fight are: ancient Chinese terracotta warriors, aliens, succubi and a gorilla. Wendy has a special Middleman uniform she wears to fight crime, but sometimes the call comes when she's lounging around in her leisurewear. (What are you gonna do?) Her friends start to suspect something when they see her toting a gun around. She's not your typical sidekick, and is more of a female Han Solo-type character, says actor Natalie Morales. [Slice Of Scifi]

Doctor Who:

Here's a new clip from this Saturday's Doctor Who episode. I literally found myself shouting at the screen when it ended at the worst possible moment. What do you want to bet we don't actually find out what she whispers to the Doctor on Saturday, if ever? [Ebbyzone]

Smallville:

A ton of new Smallville season eight spoilers have come out. Clark learns about a new superpower, and finds a new love interest halfway through the season, which makes Lois take another look at him. Lois will be in 13 of the season's episodes, and will be "a little catty" with a new female character. (That new villain, Tess, or someone else?) Lana may be back for six or seven episodes, which will wrap up her story arc forever. The Martian Manhunter will only be back for a couple of episodes, and we'll see the Justice League again — with three new members.

Lex won't be back at all, but producers are still hoping Michael Rosenbaum will agree to turn up in the show's final episode, so he can turn out to be the evil mastermind behind everything that's happened. Brainiac will also be back for a couple of episodes.

We'll see Martha Kent again. And Chloe will mention that she's been in touch with someone surprising. And the show will break one of its own rules towards the end of the season. [SpoilerTV]

Also, a new audition scene has turned up for Tess, that new villain who's going to play a major role in season eight. Tess is speaking with Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow, and she says she knew Lex "before," but didn't realize what bad things he'd been up to all these years. Oliver says he's sorry the state declared Lex dead. Tess doesn't believe Ollie, considering what he thought of Lex. But Ollie says he never wanted Lex dead, scumbag though he was.

Tess won't believe that the Lex she knew could be such a bad guy, but Ollie tries to convince her that the "good Lex" didn't really exist. Tess says maybe Oliver doesn't understand what it's like to get to a point where you just give up on yourself. And then she decides that actually, maybe Oliver does understand after all. She winds up asking Ollie to let her hold onto the Lex she knew. [Chocolate 84]

Fringe:

Here are a couple of new TV spots for Fringe, J.J. Abrams' new FBI/mad-science show. [Spoiler Geeks]

[IESB]