Geoff Johns
Best known for his DC Comics work on titles like Action Comics, Green Lantern, The Flash and Blackest Night, Johns is more than just the man who's single-handedly changed the publisher's fortunes in the comic book direct market: He's also a movie producer and writer, working on a movie with the people behind Robot Chicken (He's also written for the TV show) and part of the brain trust behind DC Entertainment's movie development team alongside Grant Morrison and Marv Wolfman. Not lacking in talent or ambition, he's already many comic fans' Master. How long before he wins everyone else over?

J. Michael Straczynzki
The onetime Babylon 5 creator already has a lot of Master qualities down: Huge fanbase, creation of/showrunning-upkeep of epic weekly television series, a surprising amount of power within Hollywood and geek credentials from comic book work that includes a longterm run on Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man. With future projects including the movie version of World War Z, a remake of Forbidden Planet and DC's relaunch of the Man of Steel, Superman: Earth One, expect JMS to become an even bigger name in our world. But is it enough to be our new Master?

Mark Millar
After dominating comics for the last decade with critic-proof hits like The Authority, The Ultimates and Civil War, Millar's mix of high-concept and big action did the same to movie audiences with 2008's Wanted adaptation. Mext May's independently-produced Kick Ass movie is already seeming like a blockbuster waiting to happen, and alongside new comic series Nemesis (already getting interest from movie producers) and Millar's first all-original movie project reportedly being announced at some point next year, expect to see Millar's star rise even further in 2010. But how high is Master high?

Roberto Orci/Alex Kurtzman
They wrote Star Trek, both Transformers movies, and co-created Fringe; there's not denying the success of the Kurtzman/Orci team over the last few years, making sci-fi mainstream without upsetting the genre faithful (too much). Besides continuing producing Fringe, they're working on adapting Whitley Streiber's 2012: The War For Souls, fantasy comic Atlantis Rising and working with the Iron Man dream team of Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. on Cowboys Vs. Aliens. Is that enough to win your hearts over forever?

Peter Jackson
Yes, The Lovely Bones may not have been a slamdunk for genre fans' interest, but don't think that Peter Jackson has abandoned you just yet. Along with his much-anticipated collaboration with Steven Spielberg and Steven Moffatt (The two movie motion-capture Tintin series), don't discount his producing return to Middle Earth with Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit movies. Oh, and don't forget his Weta Digital effects house, continually raising the bar on what our eyes can be fooled into believing. Maybe Jackson is already our behind-the-scenes, puppet-Master.

Russell T Davies
You could try and argue that the success of Doctor Who has more to do with David Tennant's "long streak of nothing" (Thanks, Donna) looks and charm than the writing, but all we'd do is point you in the direction of Torchwood: Children of Earth to prove that showrunner Russell T Davies is able to come up with the goods all on his own when he has to (Also, he's the one who chose Tennant, so there's that, too). Not content with not only resurrecting the BBC's longrunning SF series but turning it into the most popular drama on British television and a successful franchise, Davies has relocated to Los Angeles and turned his attentions to American television. With the adulation and respect of many in the industry already his, will mainstream audiences follow?

JJ Abrams
Maybe I'm biased, but with stewardships of Alias, Lost and Fringe on television, as well as Mission: Impossible 3, Cloverfield and Star Trek in movies, JJ Abrams feels like he's already taken the title of New Master. All he needs now is to wheedle his way into comic books to complete the media triumvirate (And, no; that Wired issue doesn't count).

Joss Whedon
Were we too hasty to count Whedon out? Sure, Dollhouse crashed and burned at Fox, but it lasted a season longer than anyone expected and was full of interesting ideas even when the execution lacked. With The Cabin In The Woods, his horror movie with Drew Goddard, upcoming as well as a new Dr. Horrible web series expected, amid rumors that he'll move into even more online content creation, will Whedon 2.0 prove that television is over once and for all? It's be an impressive comeback and reinvention, but maybe that's what we should expect from a former Roseanne scriptwriter who made himself into a television and movie powerhouse who liked things shiny.

What do you think? Vote below and share your thoughts in the comments.

Original image by Neil Crosby.

As we've been reflecting on the last ten years, we've been asking ourselves whether any true "masters" of science fiction and urban fantasy have emerged, especially in film and television. It's certainly been a decade of highs and lows, of old masters who've begun to fade and bright new stars just cresting the horizon.

To that end, I've attempted to chart the relative "master levels" of various directors and television producers over the several years. This is an utterly unscientific chart; I looked at the projects these folks have had since 2000 and assigned each one a "master level." The number reflects my understanding of the projects acclaim, its ability to attract an audience (i.e. box office/Nielsen numbers), its awards, whether it succeeded in something unusual (such as a relatively popular foreign language film in the case of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth or Dr. Horrible's status as a breakthrough web film), and the nebulous sense that it add or subtracted from the individual's "geek cred." The numbers themselves are largel subjective and, of course, you should feel free to nitpick.

The greater purpose was to offer a watercolorly sense of whether any "masters" have emerged from this crowd. Certainly, the last year has brought low some of the genres' promising potentials. Joss Whedon entered into the decade riding high on a Buffy/Angel cocktail. Though his name wasn't enough to overcome Fox's confusing treatment of Firefly, but the show's eventual cult popularity led to the Serenity feature film, and the Whedon brand helped make Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog an important moment for web-based content. Perhaps this all made Dollhouse — which has been, by turns, frustrating and brilliant — all the more disappointing, its impeding demise fairly readily accepted, even by Whedon's fanbase. Similarly, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, despite being regarded by some readers as the most overrated scifi of the decade, was regarded by many as a turning point for smart, politically savvy space opera. But a rocky final season punctuated by finale filled with dei ex machinae left a lot of folks sour on the entire series. And the Wachowskis, while doing a solid (though Alan Moore-enraging) bit of cinema with V for Vendetta, never quite lived up to the promises of The Matrix.

But there have been plenty of masterful bright spots as well. Bryan Fuller gave us some beautiful urban fantasy with shows with Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies, even if many of his efforts (including the truly amazing The Amazing Screw-On Head) were prematurely axed, or shafted before ever getting off the ground. Guillermo del Toro brought us to great heights with Pan's Labyrinth, even if his other eye candy films didn't hit the same heights.

So have we seen any masters? Peter Jackson has certainly come close. Granted, The Lord of the Rings movies are high fantasy, but they showcased Jackson's ability to handle a difficult epic in a way that not only pleased JRR Tolkien's fans, but also won him mainstream accolades. And his remake of King Kong, which should have been automatically anathema, proved both profitable and well-reviewed. The Lovely Bones has been his blip, earning him his worst reviews in 20 years. But it's more likely that 2009 will be remembered as the year Jackson introduced the world to filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, demonstrating that he has a good eye for new talent and the Hollywood cache to bring that talent to light. It's not for nothing that he made this year's power list.

Another power list member, JJ Abrams, has also given us a good spate of fun and thoughtful science fiction. While he didn't give us the decade's best monster movie, he did manage to reboot the Star Trek franchise in a way that was respectful to what came before and drew in folks who never turned into the TV shows. Of course, we still have yet to see as Lost will end and whether Fringe will survive.

Chris Nolan is on the list of promising possibilities for eventual masterhood. Although Memento wasn't science fiction, it took a "what if" concept (here, what if a man searching for his wife's killer had no short term memory) and portrayed it in a thoughtful, suspenseful, and ultimately heartbreaking way. And he not only shot fresh blood into the corpse of the Batman franchise, he made it Oscar-worthy. And now he's continuing the science fiction thread with Inception.

And, of course, there's the question of whether James Cameron will prove the kind of science fiction as much as he claimed to be the king of the world. His foray into science fiction television, Dark Angel, never fared particularly well in the ratings; it was eventually canceled in favor of Firefly, and it never achieved the posthumous popularity of the later show. But perhaps Avatar is the reinforcement of his previous scifi successes, proof that he can still be relevant where other long-time directors have started to fade away. Hopefully, we won't have to wait another 12 years to see his next installment.

Personally, though, after seeing the delightful Monsters Inc. followed by the superb The Incredibles and WALL-E, I have my fingers crossed for Andrew Stanton and Pixar Studios. Here's hoping that John Carter of Mars is something phenomenal.

Still, singling out directors and producers as possible masters might be missing the point entirely, even when we're talking about movies and TV. Alan Moore might well be your science fiction master, not just because he has written so many fantastic books, but also because those books have captured the imagination of so many directors in the last several years — albeit with varying results. And in the coming years we'll see how comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan — who has been working on Lost as well as the Buffy Season Eight comics — translates to the big screen when Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Runaways hit theaters.

So who, if anyone, do you see as your science fiction master? Someone from the list above? Perhaps Russell T. Davis for reviving and expanding Doctor Who? Or maybe writers like Jane Espenson, who have worked on so many of the shows we love? And, with filmmakers like Neill Blomkamp and Duncan Jones arriving on the scene, who might prove themselves master of the genre in the next ten years?

Graph by Steph Fox.

Here's a bonus chart, with more data:

Over the past few weeks, Dollhouse season two has started reminding me of Jericho season two — both shows came back from cancellation, with a limited number of episodes. Both shows' fans cherished hopes that they'd continue past those truncated second seasons, but the people making both Jericho and Dollhouse seemed aware that they shouldn't save any trail mix for the hike back. Both shows abandoned their slow, incremental approaches and started racing forwards... almost too fast. But I'd way rather have too fast than too slow... or a setup that never pays off.

The other comparison, while we're at it, is that both Dollhouse and Jericho have pretty unique spins on the apocalypse — both involving an evil corporation and entitled assclowns who just have to control everything.

So last night, Dollhouse served up one decent episode, and one great one. In the first hour, we learned, yet again, that you never really leave the Dollhouse. Victor's contract expires, and he gets set free, wealthy but adrift, and unsure why he's in love with a woman he can't remember. He's so used to doll life, he sleeps in his bathtub because it reminds him of his coffin. And then he gets kidnapped/recruited to become a soldier in a new Rossum unit, that's basically a linked group mind. And then in the second hour, Echo, Victor and Sierra get sent to the Attic, where they encounter Mr. Dominic, and a serial killer... who turns out to be one of the founders of Rossum Corp.

The first hour was a slight disappointment, but only a slight one. After seeing so many hints about Victor's war-related PTSD, I figured we were in for an exploration of the ways in which trauma comes back even after you think you've defeated it. Even though Topher seemed so confident that they'd "cured" Victor's PTSD, I assumed we were going to learn otherwise. But after waving a bit in that direction, the episode lurched towards the "hive mind" soldiers thing — which was a really neat concept, and yet another fresh spin on the Dollhouse's tech. (The execution was pretty good, but the "chanting soldier voices" thing veered towards being cheesy once or twice.)

Mostly, instead of being an homage to Kimberly Peirce's underrated movie about PTSD and getting re-drafted against your will, the episode "Stop Loss" served to show us just one more way in which Rossum is evil. And at this point, we're pretty much primed to think Rossum is more evil than a dozen standard evil corporations put together. So it's just as well that the show is moving forward beyond showing us how evil Rossum is — towards explaining how Rossum got that way, and how our heroes are going to fight it.

You have admire how quickly the second episode, "The Attic," ran through all the standard science-fiction cliches for this sort of situation. Echo is in a virtual shared world, along the lines of the Matrix, and then she and Laurence Dominic are being chased by a shadowy serial killer through people's worst nightmares. The first half of the episode was fun, and some of the nightmare imagery was pretty jarring — especially the vision of Echo and the other dolls on tables, with wires going into their brains and tubes going down their throats, as liquid slowly flows into their trays.

There's nothing wrong with a "chasing a serial killer through people's nightmares" episode — we all like a good mindscape serial killer. But it's probably just as well that the episode took a sharp lurch halfway through, when the good guys finally catch up to the evil mass-murderer Arcane — and he's revealed to be a British nerd.

The Attic turns out to be more than just the random hell all of the broken dolls and disloyal employees are sent to — it's a giant computer, made out of hundreds of human brains, all supercharged by experiencing trauma over and over again. It's another neat spin on the show's central "brain hacking" conceit, and then it leads to us discovering the origins of Rossum. Arcane, the serial killer, is actually Clyde, the co-founder of Rossum, who developed "encephalic coding and communication," only to be betrayed by his partner after he imprints someone with a more docile version of his own mind.

And ever since Clyde got sent to the Attic — in 1993 — he's been running statistical analysis and scenarios for the future of the ECC technology. And in all but 3 percent of these scenarios, the ability to read and write brains leads to the collapse of civilization. Presumably, Rossum has access to Clyde's data-crunching, and knows about this — but doesn't care.

Conveniently, Clyde's memory of the name of his partner in founding Rossum, as well as the person who was imprinted with the obedient "Clyde 2.0" persona, has been removed. But it turns out Echo's original personality, Caroline Farrell, discovered who they were before she was wiped and turned into a doll. (We know a lot of time passed between Caroline breaking into the Rossum lab on that college campus and her becoming a doll — so presumably she discovered more about Rossum during that time.) So after Echo and the others break out of the Attic, they know enough to start taking the fight to Rossum.

Once again, the star of last night's episode was really Olivia Williams as Adelle — her arc moved awfully quickly, but it was still pretty amazing to watch. In the first hour, she has one last fling with "Roger," her perfect lover who's installed into Victor's body — only to have Roger confess that he's in love with someone else... Sierra. Even a pre-programmed lover won't love Adelle. "Roger" only rubs salt in the wounds by scoffing at the idea that Adelle would be pathetic enough to hire a programmed doll to love her. This rejection, and evidence that Adelle has lost her grip on the Dollhouse by not preventing Victor and Sierra from "grouping," sends her into a tailspin, and she spends pretty much the rest of the episode drunk, while everyone around her schemes. Echo bursts in to tell Adelle that they're not equals, and Boyd tells Adelle that she needs to find the old Adelle quickly, or he'll help take her down.

And then Adelle takes a shower with the Actives, and when she comes out, she's apparently sobered up a bit — and chosen her side in the fight between Rossum and the human race. We think at first that Adelle has finally discarded the last little piece of her soul and become "Darth DeWitt" in full — but then it turns out she sent Echo to the Attic on purpose, to discover Rossum's secrets.

If these episodes had aired on a weekly basis, this progression would have felt a lot slower, probably — Adelle losing control of the Dollhouse to Harding, selling out to get it back, turning into a bitter shell of her former self, and then finally making her choice. But even getting all six of these episodes over a three-week span, it still feels like a pretty intense journey, with Olivia Williams fully investing you in Adelle's downward spiral.

Once again, I also really liked Echo — especially the bit where she went shopping in the Dollhouse's imprints and turned them into an all-you-can-eat skillset buffet. After so long of Echo being helpless and glitchy and confused and headachy, it was just beautiful to see her turning her previous source of weakness into an amazing strength. And yay for Echo taking on an army single-handed and winning, by hacking their brains with her super-brain. If we didn't already know the good guys were going to lose, I'd say maybe Rossum had created the engine of their own destruction.

And I wonder if Victor and Sierra are gone for good — are they just Tony and Priya now? Their love has overcoming brainwashing and programming, and now it's overcome a military hive mind as well. I wonder if we'll get to see what it is that drives them apart in the future?

Speaking of which, it seems like we're leaping over the flashforwards in "Epitaph One" at amazing speed now. I'm having a hard time figuring out where those segments fit into all this. I'm guessing we've already passed by the sequence where Echo is programmed to be a Russian girl and complains to Ballard about her headaches — when did that happen? Right before Alpha's visit? It doesn't seem like the sequence of events allows for that. (Or did that scene purely happen in Echo's nightmares inside The Attic?) And then the scene where the Rossum scumbag Mr. Ambrose takes over Victor's body and announces that the Dollhouse is now renting out its Actives to become spare bodies for rich people — did that happen during the three months Echo was away, but before Mr. Harding took over the Dollhouse? I'm a bit confused at this point.

In general, though, Dollhouse is delivering unforgettable characters and a mind-blowing spin on its basic premise, and it's really fully become the show it's hinted at from the beginning. It's going to be a long three weeks' wait to see our heroes posse up to take on Rossum, and I'm hopeful based on the past few weeks' incredibly strong track record that the revelations about Caroline's past aren't going to be disappointing. (It helps to know that the next episode is written by Tim Minear, the man who can do no wrong.) Even if you were hoping the show would plunge us into the post-apocalyptic Felicia-Day-on-the-run future right at the start of the season, you can't deny that getting to see the building blocks of that future sliding into place has been amazing. This show may be on its way to cancellation, but we're going to be seeing people building on it for years to come.

Also, I hate to be a broken record, but the more we see of season two, the sadder I am that the show didn't put its best foot forward. The season's first two episodes were just so lackluster, compared to everything that's come after, that it's depressing to look back on them. I get very sad when I think of the fact that Fox sent out DVD screeners of "Vows," the I-married-a-boring-arms-dealer episode, to every TV journalist in the country, thus generating bad or no buzz. What if Fox had mailed out the Sierra/Nolan episode instead? Or any of the episodes since then?

Anyway, there are just three episodes of Dollhouse left, including two present-day ones and then a return to the post-apocalyptic future. Now that the show has already proved it's not holding any plot (or character) developments back for a later that'll never come, those last three episodes are going to be the most anticipated television of January, as far as I'm concerned.

It's hard to believe this is still the same show that used to serve up timid "engagement of the week episodes" that only hinted at the questions that lurked in its premise. By my reckoning, this makes six outstanding Dollhouse episodes in a row. And what's more, the show is starting to race forward, at breakneck speed, as if to make up for its slow pace earlier.

Was it just me, or did your heart stop too when you read the words "Three months later"? Sure, BSG and DC Comics, among others, have pulled similar stunts before — but in the middle of a random episode?
It was gutsy. And yet, it turned out to be a brilliant move. As usual with the "jumping ahead in time" stunt, everything had changed, and part of the fun was figuring out how. (For a moment, I thought Echo really had just taken a nurse job using one of her imprints, and was just living quietly.)

But more than that, part of the coolness after the three-month jump was seeing how much closer we were to the glimpses of the future we saw in the post-apocalyptic episode "Epitaph One."

So after the jump, suddenly Echo is playing house with Paul Ballard (which feels logical, considering how much they were already conspiring together) and they're in cahoots with Boyd back at the Dollhouse. Meanwhile, Topher has gotten a promotion, and Adelle has gotten a demotion. Most of all, Echo is now fully in control over her multiple personalities and their talents, instead of having them triggered randomly. She's now much more like a superhero (who's occasionally glitchy) than a puppet who occasionally turns into a superhero, and really, thank goodness. I'm imagining the new Echo is like Chuck with the "Intersect 2.0" installed.

Last night's first episode, "Meet Jane Doe," subverted so many expectations, it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, we expected a story about Echo in her childlike "doll" state wandering around for an hour, while the Dollhouse tried to find her — instead, we got five minutes of that, then something totally different. And then, at the end, you expected Adelle to do something cunning and brilliant to regain her mastery of her Dollhouse — and instead, she kissed up to the evil scumbag, Harding. In the second hour, you think Alpha is just trying to take down the men that Echo has had romantic engagements with — but his real target turns out to be Ballard, because Alpha was spying and realized that Ballard and Echo are in love.

Even with everything else that happened last night, it's hard to avoid fixating on Adelle. Her transformation was incredibly painful to watch — first, from steely-but-sensitive mistress of her domain to subservient, resentful underling to Mr. Harding. And then, from underling back to boss — but this time, she's willing to do whatever it takes to please her masters and save her own skin. Olivia Williams was incredible last night — most of all in the scene where she is willing to give Alpha whatever he wants, because that's what she's become. She's lost her self-respect, and whatever shreds of idealism she may have had left, and become a monster. And it's fascinating to watch.

The other big star last night was... Eliza Dushku. A lot of people have doubted her ability to carry this series — including me, on a few occasions. But now that she's playing a more self-aware version of Echo, she's able to bring a lot more real acting to the table. Her scenes with Paul Ballard, where she's in love with him and he's unable to reciprocate because of his whole "Galahad" complex, were brilliant and rich, and she seemed to snap between different personas pretty easily. Dushku's talent has never been mimickry or creating different mannerisms — she's not an Enver Gjokaj — but she's a lot better at handling nuances of emotion. She's always Eliza Dushku, no matter who she's playing, but she's capable of bringing a lot of expressiveness and subtlety. And last night, we saw more of what she can do when she's in her comfort zone.

Meanwhile, once again Topher was ethical-dilemmas guy — turns out the remote wipe device he's been working on is just one piece of a larger puzzle, one that will lead to everyone in the world becoming mind-controlled slaves. Topher cracks the problem of how to program anyone, anywhere remotely — but it's Adelle who hands it over to the evil corporate overlord. No wonder those two are basket cases after the apocalypse.

As Adelle says towards the end of last night's first episode, with the kind of power Rossum has, you don't want to be on the opposing team. Apparently Rossum doesn't just control a sitting U.S. Senator (who's got an excellent chance of becoming President), they also have 22 Dollhouses, with a 23rd on the way — and that means thousands of current and former clients who will safeguard Rossum's interests. And now, they have the means to reprogram whoever they want. Shiny.

It was interesting to see Harding running the Dollhouse, in contrast to Adelle. Her fancy performance was always aimed at creating the impression of a humane, caring service that was therapeutic and philanthropic — much like Inara's "Companion" poise in Firefly. Inara and Adelle even both use tea to symbolize the fact that they're fancy and full of happy empowerment. Harding keeps the tea, but drops the empowerment schtick — he's happy to be a pimp, and his dolls are property. As Boyd points out, the only real difference is that Harding doesn't lie to himself.

So the first episode was, once again, all about how the wealthy get what they want, and the rest of us are just their soon-to-be-broken toys, what with the evil boys' club of rich assholes congratulating themselves in Adelle's office. And then in the second half, we discovered that the wealthy don't always fare that well with the Dollhouse — we meet a guy who blew his entire fortune on engagements with Echo, and get to see a bunch of her other clients killed horribly as well.

Patton Oswalt returns as the tech whiz who needs Echo to impersonate his dead wife, and he's somewhat unsettled to learn that even though he's never planning on hiring the Dollhouse to recreate Rebecca again, she still exists. You can't really delete a program — once a program's created, it has a life of its own.

Did anybody else think Alan Tudyk was channeling Heath Ledger's Joker, just a bit, in his performance as Alpha last night? Maybe I'm on crack. In any case, Alpha was nattily dressed, and was (thank god) doing less of the "crazy talking to myself and snapping between personas" thing, and more of the "super-genius psycopath" thing. I was "meh" about Alpha last season, but he went a lot further towards winning me over last night. Especially after having just gotten such a powerful glimpse of the real evil of the Rossum Corp., Alpha is looking more and more like the lesser of two evils.

I don't have much else to say about the second hour — Alpha's still obsessed with Echo, and wants her to love him. It's a bit underwhelming as a villain motivation, but I think it's partly supposed to be that Alpha is obsessed with Echo because he sees himself in her, and he wants to be able to understand the difference between programmed and "real" emotions. And he knows that Echo's feelings for Paul Ballard are "real," so he wants to be able to see where they come from. Maybe now that Alpha has imprinted himself with Ballard's personality, we'll get something new and different out of it, like an Alpha who struggles with doing the right thing occasionally. We know, from "Epitaph One," that Alpha does turn out to be something of a force for good.

I liked the Actives being turned into killer zombies, which was a nice twist. And the Monty Python references. And Boyd, Echo and Ballard choosing to trust Topher with Echo's secret — wonder how badly that'll backfire? And co-writer Maurissa Tancharoen doing her sassy "I ain't got time for no neurocondensing" act. And Ballard's "My ass does feel very pampered."

Bottom line: This show is now much more clearly about an evil corporation that wants to own your brain. This has been true from the beginning, but it was harder to tell in those early episodes. Now it's pretty clear and straightforward, and the storytelling that can come as a result (with alll of those broken, complicated people, squirming under Rossum's thumb) is going to be magnificent. For as long as it lasts.

If you're looking for the perfect gift for the comic geek in your life, this lot in the Portland Mercury's online charity auction should fit the bill: Along with the original Joelle Jones page above, there's also a Dark Horse Comics lithograph signed by Joss Whedon, Hellboy creator Mike Mignola and artist Travis Charest, a limited edition Umbrella Academy t-shirt (as well as both collections of the series to date), the complete set of Dark Horse's "One Shot Wonders" books (including Joss Whedon's Sugar Shock, Hellboy, The Goon and Star Wars, as well as a Zack Whedon-signed Dr. Horrible) and Goon-branded soda. Yes, we said Goon-branded soda. Be warned: You'll be bidding against us in this one. The auction closes on December 11th, and for the concerned, they'll ship nationwide if you don't happen to live in Portland.

So I totally did not see the revelation concerning Senator Daniel Perrin coming — that he's the doll and his wife is his handler. It was one of the coolest plot twists I'd seen in ages, and yet it totally made sense once the show explained it.

It goes like this: the evil Rossum Corporation has tons of power and influence, but the bastards in charge wanted more. They wanted their own puppet as a U.S. Senator (and maybe, eventually, as president.) So they kidnapped Daniel Perrin, the scion of a powerful political dynasty (think of him as Fred Kennedy or something.) And they took the dissolute party boy and reprogrammed him to be a fiery crusader for justice, with tons of political ambition. Daniel Perrin 2.0 quickly became a senator. And then they decided their lucrative, illegal Dollhouse operation was getting too much attention, so they decided to have their puppet Senator investigate these rumors — only to disprove them and exonerate Rossum completely.

Of course, poor old Madeline aka November would have to be the sacrificial lamb, stepping forward as a former doll only to be revealed as a crazy woman and then destroyed. But you can't achieve total political power without crushing a few people along the way.

Alexis Denisof did a fantastic job of bringing Senator Perrin to life, and the Dollhouse writers managed to find yet another fascinating twist on the idea of people's identities being erased and rebuilt: Here was someone the Dollhouse had made better. They'd taken a worthless shell of a human being and turned him into a good guy — except, of course, for the part where he danced to their tune. An extra layer of weirdness comes from the fact that they didn't just build a fictitious persona for him — they layered on a new personality on top of his old one, so that when he realizes he's been reprogrammed, he has a hard time separating his real life from his fake one. His fake marriage to a woman who loathes him is a new level of creepy from a show that seemed to have emptied its creepy-bag already.

The other big twist, of course, is at the end, when Perrin has killed his wife under the control of Bennett Halverson (Glau). And he starts to think that maybe it wouldn't be quite so bad to let the Dollhouse erase his memory of what happened, so he can go back to thinking of himself as a fine, upstanding senator. Who cares if it's a lie, or if the real murderers will get away with it? It's the easy way. And then Echo points out that Perrin didn't kill his wife, Rossum did. But if Perrin lets Rossum erase his brain again, then Perrin really did kill his wife. When you put it like that, there's no choice, right? Perrin has to do the right thing and hang on to his real memories.

Except he doesn't. The next time we see him, we think he's about to step up and expose Rossum, but then we realize that he's taken the devil's bargain. He's chosen to let Rossum wipe his mind one more time, rather than deal with the reality of his life. (Not unlike Sierra last episode, choosing to remain a doll rather than remember that she killed her tormentor.)

This was such a smart, challenging two hours of television, it's a crime that it's not the new 24 or House. Just rewatch the scene where Perrin is trying to explain to Echo that she's a doll, before he discovers he's a doll himself — his horror and disgust are so palpable, and then it turns out that he's the thing he's been describing all along.

If only this show wasn't airing on a Friday night. Or if only it actually appealed to the kinds of brain-damaged idiots that this Microsoft ad seems to think are watching:

It's Dollhouse for dummies! I will refrain from making any snarky comments about Microsoft's opinion of its own users' intelligence.

Meanwhile, November is all fired up to do the right thing — and you know it's not going to turn out well, even before you understand how she's being set up. She's still a puppet, even though she's no longer a doll. And just standing up and telling the truth about the Dollhouse is never going to work, because they can discredit her so easily. Weirdly, it's the best argument I've seen so far in favor of Ballard's decision to go work for the Dollhouse instead of continuing to work against it — there's no way to destroy it except from the inside. The scene where Ballard finally gets to talk to November and explains to her his version of events is pretty heartbreaking, but you can easily see why she's not won over. All she sees is another person trying to control her, and not being nearly as subtle about it as the Senator's people.

Ballard can't protect her from her own bad decisions, and when he realizes that, it's a crucial step towards him being less of a meathead. I actually love Ballard, but it's about time he got over his "knight in shining armor" fixation — and it's especially cool to see him starting to cast that off in an episode where the "you're my knight in shining armor" thing turns out to be a conditioning trigger for a mindwiped slave.

Adelle and Topher continue to be the best double act on television — the limo scene was great — and both of them had some great moments this week. After seeing Adelle acting a bit like a whipped puppy with Mr. Harding lately, it was great to see her regain her backbone and move to protect November. And the ball-grabbing scene with Ray Wise, cartoonish though it was, still totally ruled. Meanwhile, what's a better double act than Adelle and Topher? Two Tophers! Yet again, Enver Gjokaj proves that he can do pretty much anything, as he creates a spot-on impression of Fran Krantz.

So why did I say that the Summer Glau parts didn't work for me? Well, the stuff between Bennett and Topher was great — the nerd bonding, the rivalry, the scheming against each other, the flirting. I could have watched it for hours. The bit where Topher decides she's too pretty to be as smart as she is was a tad annoying, but also utterly believable. And I loved it when she's flattered that he tried to tase her. That was twisted and sweet and totally awesome.

But the rest of Glau's performance, for whatever reason, just did not work. I think it was the writing more than Glau's acting — they were trying to do something arty, and it fell flat. There were too many scenes of Glau soliloquizing and repeating weird phrases over and over, to show that she's tightly wound and psychotic. And the whole business where she has a vendetta against Echo because Echo's original personality, Caroline, left her crushed under some rubble just felt a bit contrived. It felt like way too much of a coincidence. And I just could not buy that Bennett would let the Senator and Echo escape, just so she could keep pursuing her vendetta against Echo a bit further. The whole thing felt, frankly, flimsy. And Glau struggled mighty to sell it, but the whole "psycho geek" routine felt a bit too close to a glitchy Cameron from Sarah Connor Chronicles. "Will you please make sure? Will you please make sure? WILL YOU PLEASE MAKE SURE?"

I think it was the fact that this is supposed to be such a huge operation for Rossum, and yet Bennett bungled it so hugely — first by torturing Echo when she was supposed to be mindwiping the Senator, then by letting the Senator escape, and finally by turning the Senator into a psycho-killer — seemed just a tad much. And I just couldn't buy into the "I got hurt in an accident and you ran away, so I'm obsessed with destroying your mindless shell even though you don't remember me" thing. It felt a bit forced.

Glau was a joy to watch whenever she had scenes opposite Fran Kranz. But the rest of the time, her scenes dragged the story to a halt. But I'm sure your mileage may well vary, and feel free to let me know in the comments!

But generally this was another fantastic outing — bringing the show up to four brilliant episodes in a row. There are so many ideas embedded in this story about what makes us who we are, and how much we're slaves to our programming — even the Bennett storyline, which fell flat for me, had an interesting spin on how she's a slave to her compulsion for revenge. It was depressing to see so many ads for Human Target, a show based on a comic book that explored similar ideas of identity and selfhood during its most recent Vertigo Comics incarnation but which is tossing all of those ideas away in favor of a dumb bodyguard storyline. Dollhouse is the show that fans of Peter Milligan's Human Target comics actually deserve.

Wee tidbits: We've had several hints lately that there was another Sierra before the current one, and that Adelle got a bit too attached to her, and it ended badly. I wonder what are the chances we'll find out what that's about before the show runs out of episodes?

Also, yet again we get another person telling us how special Echo is — this time, it's Bennett, saying that Echo has this magical ability to make people love her (or something.) I'm beginning to think she's turning into RTD's version of the Doctor, and we're going to have people saying that Echo is fire and ice and dragons and a lonely god and the reason the Earth doesn't turn backwards. Still, I'm willing to let it pass, since Echo being special turns out to be important in the post-apocalyptic world we're heading towards.

Also, more hints that Caroline wasn't a particularly nice person... and suddenly, Echo doesn't want to go back to being Caroline. After insisting in "Omega" and this year's season opener that she's just waiting for Caroline to come home, she's now gone over to Whiskey's point of view — if Caroline returns to Echo's body, then Echo is killed. So she'd rather remain Echo, and let Caroline rot in a wedge? It'll be interesting to see if that becomes an issue soon.

I love that the DC Dollhouse's Actives are named after Greek gods, like Hades and Aphrodite.

Great lines:

"This is the same tech that turned Echo into a serial killer." "We said we wouldn't dwell on that. He's dwelling."

"You just woke up a lot of people — and they all think you're a bitch!"

"How about the Senator beats his wife?" "The Senator doesn't beat his wife. The Senator loves his wife." "Lucky wife."

"No, no, you're very pale. White. Pinkish white. I mean, your skin. Your skin is like a pig. Because it's pink. People assume that pigs are bad, but I like them. I love them."

"Wasabi peas." "I'm excited and scared."

"Imagine John Cassavetes in The Fury as a hot chick." "Which you know I often have!"

"Oh, it's very nice." "She was kind of a hooker." "Mmm Hmm. How about while I build the magic bullets, you work on adapting your gun?"

"The Senator is filibustering."

Even though Fox forced Whedon to scrap the show's original pilot (which was much more mythology-heavy and set up a ton of ongoing storylines) and replace it with a bunch of standalone episodes, Whedon tells the Chicago Tribune that wasn't really Fox's problem with the series. Whedon explains:

The problems that the show encountered weren't standalone versus mythology. Basically the show didn't really get off the ground because the network pretty much wanted to back away from the concept five minutes after they bought it... The idea of sexuality was a big part of the show when it started and when that fell out, when the show turned into a thriller every week, it took something out of it that was kind of basic to what we were trying to do...

Part of what was going to be the show was the idea of ... these clients and what their fantasies were, what they expected, what they wanted. You know, what do we get from each other in our most intimate relationships, be they sexual or [whatever else]. The interest in the client kind of moved away.

We weren't going to tell little [client] stories. They were going to be scary, exciting or funny. They weren't going to just be people ruminating. But these little stories inevitably just took on a thriller component, and if Echo is sleeping with somebody it's to service something else...

Fox sort of has that reputation for sexy or edgy or blah, blah, blah, but they don't actually want that and it frustrates me. It's the classic American double standard —torture, "Great." Sex, "Oh, that's so bad."

And but this was also more complicated because people responded to this [by saying], "This is trafficking. This is sex for money." It wasn't just sex. It was also the other implications of what was originally supposed to be somewhat more of a fantasy. The real world version of [this kind of activity] was I think what made the network really twitchy and I can't really fault them for that. I just thought when I went in and pitched it ...you know, it frightened me too [but I thought] we all got that that was what we were doing.

Exploitation wasn't the whole theme. It was going to be a question of, how much of this fantasy will people let us have. Now, I didn't make exactly the same show [that was pitched], but we did get to delve in the territory a little bit. The idea was always, how much of the fantasy will [viewers] accept and how much will they go, "You know what, this just is too much like real-world situations that are truly appalling and so I can't let the fantasy happen."

Because as I said before, when you're dealing with fantasies, particularly sexual ones, you're going off the reservation. You're not going to be doing things that are perfectly correct. It's supposed to be about the sides of us that we don't want people to see.

The idea that Dollhouse's exploration of sexual fantasies would have been aimed at making the viewers uncomfortable — not so much because of the human trafficking or non-consensual aspects, but because they were too close to our real situations, is a fascinating one. Given that the show's sexual aspects already squicked tons of viewers in their watered-down form, I'm not sure how viewers would have responded to a full-on in-your-face version. Maybe it would have been more nuanced and gone a bit deeper, and thus been okay.

The full interview, in which Whedon talks more about what he thinks worked and what didn't work in Dollhouse, gives a few hints about the final episode, and talks about why he's more excited to make television for the Internet than for cable TV, is well worth reading. [Chicago Tribune]

We've selected ten types of science fiction fans, offering you great gift ideas for fans of the big franchises, this summer's biggest movies, and even something for the steampunks and zombie lovers. You can also check out our fan gift guide from last year, which also includes gift ideas for fans of Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter, and Batman.

Gifts for the Star Wars Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Star Trek Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Transformers Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the GI Joe Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Doctor Who Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Joss Whedon Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Terminator Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Vampire Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Steampunk Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Zombie Fan (Gallery-free view)

Additional gift ideas by Meredith Woerner.

The PGA has selected Whedon to be the recipient of the Vanguard Award at January's PGA Awards. The Vanguard recognizes achievements in new media and technology, and previous winners have included George Lucas, James Cameron, and the founders of YouTube and MySpace. PGA co-chairs David Friendly and Laurence Mark explained their choice by saying,

Joss Whedon has mastered the art of melding the newest technology with inspired storytelling, truly exemplifying the spirit of the Vanguard Award.

On the one hand, congratulations to Joss. On the other, am I the only person who thinks this is really odd timing? This is just about Dr. Horrible, right? Am I forgetting something else he's done with "the newest technology" that would fit here? And if I'm not, why is he being recognized now for something that's more than a year old, if not a subtle "Do more of this and less fighting with Fox over Eliza Dushku" message...?

PGA honors Joss Whedon [Variety]

Image via irgoodrnti.

According to the site, the series will be a motion comic adaptation of the current "official" sequel to the television series, and the casting sides they have make it look like an adaptation of the Faith-centric second arc, "No Future For You" (written by Brian K. Vaughan), with actors needed for parts including Faith, Lady Genevieve and the dream-sequenced Daniel Craig. The sides name "Maxx Initiative" as the people behind the motion comics, but aside from the mention of Jeff Shuter as casting director, no other creative personnel are named as being involved. Recording dates, according to the casting sides, are still to be decided, so don't hold your breath waiting for the end result, either - Although we are waiting to find out whether or not Whedon is involved in this any more than he was the Marvel motion comic version of his Astonishing X-Men comic.

We've got the scoop on a new Buffy series! [Sci-Fi Wire]

Fans at Whedonesque have been following the seemingly-Dollhouse-related ARG as its grown to include all-new elements which may cast doubt on just how Dollhouse connected it all is... Namely, a detective agency that is curiously long-lived. Those able to enter the Wipe The Future site (Username: 69B Password: 478, as per Twitter user @tombness) see this:

Those who take that and go to Spectrin.com will find an interesting detective agency:

Aside from our work, one of the things that the Spectrin team is most passionate about is history. Each of us is aware that our present is a direct result of our past, and for every action there is indeed a reaction.

Though having undergone several re-inventions during the company's lifetime, the core of Spectrin's business - our methodology, research, and services - have been family-directed and passed down from generation to generation. Founded by Augustus Hunter and Jonas Lockerbie in New York City, Spectrin's direct corporate ancestor (Hunter & Lockerbie) had its first offices on Bridge Street in lower Manhattan. Our current company was chartered in 1724 and we are proud to be New York's oldest investigative firm. Our case study archives chart their own story of the city's history, expanding in recent decades to cover our investigations throughout the U.S. and the world.

By enlisting Spectrin's services you benefit from centuries of knowledge, experience, and integrity. We are the partners who listen™. And we've been doing so for a very long time.

"Sara at Spectrin" would be Sara Kingsley, the company's Emeritus Investigator:

She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Astrophysics and Biology, and has been employed by Spectrin for the past 14 years. Her doctoral research, on recent advancements in synthetic thought, was referred to in "The Phenomenon of Man", a book by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the primary scholars in the field of matter and consciousness.

It's that last sentence that made some of Whedonesque's commenters pay attention:

Sara's page at Spectrin shows someone's having fun... or can't write. Anything she wrote couldn't be referred to in de Chardin's writings, since he lived in the World War I era.

ETA: ...unless that's part of the mystery. De Chardin wrote of an evolved human consciousness he called "The Omega Point."

The company seems to investigate the supernatural, so it's possible that Sara's older than we think. Especially given that "Our current company was chartered in 1724 and we are proud to be New York's oldest investigative firm."

I'm thinking either this will be the company that will take down Rossum or the company to supercede them. Didn't Joss say that by the time the last episode of Dollhouse airs we will already know what his next project is? A Temporal Displacement Investigative Agency? I'd like me some of that.

So is this ARG actually a stealth launch for some new Whedon project? We're doubtful. Although we'd love to see a time traveling detective agency show (Like Moonlighting, but with more period costumes!), there're three things that make this unlikely:

1. Why launch a new project off the back of a failed show? Yes, Dollhouse has its fans, but it also has those who've been disappointed by it, including some of the previous Whedon faithful. Wouldn't it make more sense just to start fresh, especially if the new project doesn't specifically share the same world as the old one?

2. Wouldn't Fox own some part of any spin-off? Presumably, Fox would have some ownership over material used in any Dollhouse promotion, and if a spin-off got started in this way, wouldn't they have some claim over it? Legal eagles, feel free to weigh in here; I may be entirely wrong.

3. Someone claiming to be from one of the sites connected to the ARG commented online that everything in the ARG is Dollhouse-related:

The Dollhouse ARG is not connected to Joss' new project or other future projects. Its purpose is simply to promote the current Dollhouse universe and the show, which returns on Dec 4th at 8/7c on FOX.

If this comment really comes from someone behind the ARG - which, in itself, seems unlikely, because why break the fiction to leave that comment? - then we're left with unexpected clues to how Dollhouse may end... and a frustrating lack of clues to what kind of "internet ventures/binge drinking" Whedon will be getting up to next. Although if he does want to do a time-traveling detective series online, we're already there.

[Whedonesque, (2)]

A show insider tells io9 that the network will definitely not be ordering any more episodes after the current 13, but the show remains in production for now. (They're making episode 11 at the moment.) The 13th. episode will serve as the series finale, and this gives Joss Whedon a chance to wrap up the show in a "significant" way.

And the insider told us this is the schedule for airing the remaining episodes:

Dec. 4 - 8:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episodes 5 & 6)
Dec. 11 - 8:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episodes 7 & 8)
Dec. 18 - 8:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episodes 9 & 10)

Jan. 8 - 9:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episode 11)
Jan. 15 - 9:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episode 12)
Jan. 22 - 9:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episode 13 / Series Finale)

Dollhouse has had a troubled run and some uneven episodes, but I persist in believing that one day we'll realize what we had here. When you sit down and watch the DVD box sets of seasons one and two, a year or a decade from now, things will fall into place and you'll suddenly realize quite how daring and mind-expanding this show was.

You'll find yourself waking up at three in the morning, your mind stuck on one of the show's candy-coated images of glamorous slavery. You'll be daydreaming at work, fantasizing about being someone else, or having the perfect person love you just the perfect way — and then you'll flash on one of Dollhouse's many episodes about how your fantasies can become a prison for other people who get trapped in them. Other shows offered escapism — Dollhouse gave us a commentary on how escapism can help create prisons for other people.

Still, if a few million extra people were to tune in to watch a two-hour dose of Summer Glau on the 4th., then you never know, right?

Update: Joss Whedon posted this comment over at Whedonesque (thanks for the heads up, Bonnie!):

mm. Apparently my news is not news.

I don't have a lot to say. I'm extremely proud of the people I've worked with: my star, my staff, my cast, my crew. I feel the show is getting better pretty much every week, and I think you'll agree in the coming months. I'm grateful that we got to put it on, and then come back and put it on again.

I'm off to pursue internet ventures/binge drinking. Possibly that relaxation thing I've read so much about. By the time the last episode airs, you'll know what my next project is. But for now there's a lot of work still to be done, and disappointment to bear.

Thank you all for your support, your patience, your excellent adverts. See you again. -j.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Yesterday, the website for the Rossum Corporation — the nefarious technology company that operates the Dollhouses — launched. On its face, it's a standard corporate website, touting the remarkable abilities of Rossum's technological advances. It also outlines the terms and conditions for becoming a Rossum client, and includes a response to Senator Daniel Perrin's allegations of illegal and unethical activities perpetrated by Rossum.

But the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper. One of the posters at Whedonesque called Rossum's corporate phone number and received a call back, ordering them to "Ditch the tech." The poster then found the Ditch the Tech website, which displays the video below:

The site also includes these anti-cell phone fliers:

Another Whedonesque reader noted the site's source code includes the following information:

Civilization will fall apart in the year 2019. The Rossum Corporation is responsible. It is already beginning at the L.A. Dollhouse right now. Don't let them wipe the future!

And it appears there will be more Dollhouse teasers forthcoming. Another reader found a link to the site Wipe the Future, which for now only includes the text, "Soon."

[Whedonesque]

Zack Whedon's one-shot Dr. Horrible comic hits stands on November 18th and will delve into Billy's childhood, his first meeting with Captain Hammer, and his drive to join the Evil League of Evil. Whedon told Newsarama that Penny will make a small appearance, though sadly there will be no singing.

The full seven-page preview is available at MTV and offers some insight into what drove Billy to become Dr. Horrible.

[via Whedonesque]

So last night was the long-awaited debut of V, the show about beautiful aliens who show up and claim to come in peace and offer us lots of goodies... but turn out to be rapacious lizards in disguise. The pilot moves along at a brisk pace, introducing the aliens in the first 10 minutes and setting up various characters as anti-alien and pro-alien. The younger priest is suspicious, but the older priest is an alien-sympathizer. Elizabeth Mitchell's FBI agent is suspicious too, but her teenage son guzzles the Kool-Aid. The nice-suited African American guy is conflicted and doesn't want to be "that guy" any more.

By the end of the first episode, it's already made crystal clear that these aliens are up to no good. They've had sleeper agents on Earth for years, including Alan Tudyk's FBI agent. And other aliens living secretly among us are part of an anti-alien resistance, which may look like terrorists to the uninitiated.

So now that you've had a chance to see the pilot for yourself, you can judge whether it's actually a broadside aimed at our president. The Chicago Tribune's Glenn Garvin seems absolutely certain it is:

Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care.

The news media swoons in admiration — one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: "Why don't you show some respect?!" The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: "Embracing change is never easy."

So, does that sound like anyone you know? Oh, wait — did I mention the leader is secretly a totalitarian space lizard who's come here to eat us?

Welcome to ABC's "V," the most fascinating and bound to be the most controversial new show of the fall television season. Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it's also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president's supporters and delight his detractors.

The meme spread throughout the right-wing and left-wing blogospheres yesterday, with Ana-Marie Cox weighing in over at Huffington Post.

So now that you've had a chance to see the pilot for yourself, is it really all about how we would have been better off with McCain in the White House? Umm... Probably not. But it was definitely not a subtle episode. The aliens had "too good to be true" plastered on their faces from the beginning, and because the episode moves so fast, we're left wondering why anybody would have bought this dog-and-pony show in the first place.

And there are some little winks at the right-wing tea-partiers that may just be intentional, like when Anna (Morena Baccarin) talks about "change," and the sleazy journo guy asks her about universal health care. Mostly, though, the show seems designed so that you can project whatever ideology you want onto it — not unlike Anna's luminous screen, floating over the world's major cities.

The show isn't subtle, but that's part of the point — there are no hidden messages here at all. The messages are all right on the surface, and they're pretty basic science-fiction standbys, like "aliens who seem too good to be true usually are." Even the show's little jabs at the media and our dumb youth culture feel like they're just slapping a 21st century paint job on the show's 1980s fable. Media talking heads are blow-dried and dumb, young twerps enjoy tagging and Youtube — it's not exactly incisive social criticism.

I really doubt Obama is worried here.

The fast pace, though, is a good thing — that's one of the things that endeared me to this pilot in the first place. Anyone who remembers the original show is going to know these aliens are hucksters, so the faster that's revealed to the audience, the better. And compared to the pilot of FlashForward, which fixated on the crashy destruction and chaos attendant on the future vision/blackout in its pilot for several minutes, V got the disruption of the aliens' visit over fairly quickly, with one desultory plane crash.

Watching the pilot for a second time, the main problem that jumps out at me is that those two teenage kids are going to make me want to claw my face off. And it seems like Smallville's Laura Vandervoort is going to be somewhat painful to watch as well, with the woodenness. But getting to see Elizabeth Mitchell kick more ass and be less angsty than she was on Lost pretty much makes up for those drawbacks. And priest guy, who hails from The 4440, is still just as fun to watch as ever. Plus Baccarin can only get slyer and more engaging as the evil Anna, once her evil plans unfold.

I'm pretty sure this version of the pilot was significantly different from the version we saw at Comic Con. We knew the final sequence was going to be different — that laser shooting robot drone (in the clip above) was not there before, and the last few minutes were generally zippier. But also, my favorite scene is missing from the televised version. In the original version, when we meet Chad Decker, he's just had sex with the vice president's cougar-ish assistant, who promises to get him an interview with the Veep in return for the booty call. It lets us know right away that Decker is a man-whore, and is sort of hilariously trashy besides. In the televised version, that's replaced with a bland scene of him wanting to interview the Veep, but being told that he's just the talking head who reads the news. I have a feeling there were other weird, funny touches removed before the show aired, but I can't remember the others off the top of my head. This definitely felt a bit blander than the original pilot, although how much of that was editing and how much was just seeing it a second time, I'm not sure.

But despite some quibbles, this was a pretty fun outing, and a nice start to the series. It got us to the "OMG the aliens are evil lizards" part quickly and zippily, and set us up for three more episodes of alien intrigue and human gullibility, with an anti-alien resistance simmering under the surface. Now if those two teenagers can just get blown up in a tragic shuttlecraft accident, preferably next week...

Not only is there a title, but Joss, Zack Whedon, Jed Whedon and Jed's wife, Maurissa Tancharoen have all worked out a few songs, and Fillion has heard a few verses. But he's mum on the potential title.

Says Fillion:

Joss, I was talking to him right before we won the Emmy. He said that he's finished writing a song or two. He told me a couple of verses to the song...It's going to be great. I know a bunch of cast members of Dr. Horrible who would love to get back into it.

See the video interview at MTV.

Whedon's open letter to Halcyon proves just why this man should be given the keys to the cyborg car:

An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners. From a Very Important Hollywood Mogul

Dear Sirs/Ma'ams,

I am Joss Whedon, the mastermind behind Titan A.E., Parenthood (not the movie) (or the new series) (or the one where 'hood' was capitalized 'cause it was a pun), and myriad other legendary tales. I have heard through the 'grapevine' that the Terminator franchise is for sale, and I am prepared to make a pre-emptive bid RIGHT NOW to wrap this dealio up. This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is not available on TV. I will write a check TODAY for $10,000, and viola! Terminator off your hands.

No, you didn't miscount. That's four — FOUR! — zeroes after that one. That's to show you I mean business. And I mean show business. Nikki Finke says the Terminator concept is played. Well, here's what I have to say to Nikki Finke: you are a fine journalist and please don't ever notice me. The Terminator story is as formative and important in our culture — and my pretend play — as any I can think of. It's far from over. And before you Terminator-Owners (I have trouble remembering names) rush to cash that sweet cheque, let me give you a taste of what I could do with that franchise:

1) Terminator... of the Rings! Yeah, what if he time-travelled TOO far... back to when there was dragons and wizards? (I think it was the Dark Ages.) Hasta La Vista, Boramir! Cool, huh? "Now you gonna be Gandalf the Red!" RRRRIP! But then he totally helps, because he's a cyborg and he doesn't give a s#&% about the ring — it has no power over him! And he can carry it AND Frodo AND Sam AND f@%& up some orcs while he's doing it. This stuff just comes to me. I mean it. (I will also offer $10,000 for the Lord of the Rings franchise).

2) More Glau. Hey. There's a reason they're called "Summer" movies.

3) Can you say... musical? Well don't. Even I know that's an awful idea.

4) Christian Bale's John Connor will get a throat lozenge. This will also help his Batwork (ten grand for that franchise too, btw.)

5) More porn. John Connor never told Kyle Reese this, but his main objective in going to the past was to get some. What if there's a lot of future-babies that have to be made? Cue wah-wah pedal guitar — and dollar signs!

6) The movies will stop getting less cool.

Okay. There's more — this brain don't quit! (though it has occasionally been fired) — but I think you get my drift. I really believe the Terminator franchise has only begun to plumb the depths of questioning the human condition during awesome stunts, and I'd like to shepherd it through the next phase. The money is there, but more importantly, the heart is there. But more importantly, money. Think about it. End this bloody bidding war before it begins, and put the Terminator in the hands of someone who watched the first one more than any other movie in college, including "Song of Norway" (no current franchise offer).

Sincerely, Joss Whedon.

For this, Joss is forgiven all of Dollhouse.

(According to the Financial Times, real parties interested in Terminator include Sony, Twilight studio Summit Entertainment, and Media Rights Captial, the people behind Bruno. The rights will be auctioned later this month.)

An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners [Whedonesque] (Link updated, thanks all.)

River, you may remember, decimated the field in our first week of Smackdown, showing everyone the strength of the internet Whedonbase that she was the Baddest of Television Badasses, defeating the likes of James T. Kirk, Buffy of Vampire Slayer fame and even the Doctor without breaking a sweat. But now that her army of followers have most likely dispersed, we have to wonder... Can a sneak attack by Witches topple her reign?

We're not even doubting this outcome in our heads - Any real battle between a competent witch and River would end up with a supernatural victory because, dude: River's strong and programmed with fight moves, but if she can't get close to her enemy because of whatever magic techniques you care to imagine, then she's SOL. Plus, that whole "safeword" thing. But, as we learned last time, logic doesn't matter a whole hill of beans in Smackdown, so we'll see whether the Tam Dynasty survives to fight another day or not this time around.

The poll will be open all week. Feel free to vote multiple times, just to ruin the clearly-scientific nature of the endeavor.