I think there's an argument to be made that lawyers are underrepresented in science fiction, at least relative to their prevalence in other genres. Compared to, say, doctors, who show up all the time in pretty much every science fiction show (as an earlier post on this very site once examined), you generally need a pretty specific reason to bring a lawyer onto the scene, and a lot of the time even a trial won't do it.

After all, how many times have science fiction protagonists found themselves in kangaroo courts, forced to offer their own best defense? There's apparently not much of a right to legal representation in the future. For instance, roughly half of all Doctor Who stories find the Doctor under arrest for one reason or another, and I can't name a single character in the entire history who could really be considered a lawyer (with the possible exception of the Valeyard, which I'm not counting for so many reasons).

That's not to say there aren't any great lawyers in science fiction - far from it. Here are some of the best.

Samuel T. Cogley, Star Trek

In most of the trials seen over the course of the Star Trek franchise's long history, the defendants simply represented themselves. This probably had something to do with the fact that the characters were all in the military, but it's just as likely that this made it easier to give the show's stars big dramatic speeches. (Seriously, check out this list of the show's "lawyers" from Memory Alpha. It's basically just a list of the various shows' captains and first officers.)

But, when Kirk found himself faced with a case even he could not theatrically bluster his way out of - and keep in mind we're talking about William Shatner at the height of his hammy powers here, so this is a seriously impossible case we're talking about - he turned to super-lawyer Samuel T. Cogley to lead his defense. Famous for his Luddite tendencies, which included such eccentricities as reading books on paper instead of on computer. Not one to do anything halfway, Cogley's spirited defense included references to "the Bible, the Code of Hammurabi and of Justinian, the Magna Carta, the United States Constitution, the Fundamental Declarations of the Martian colonies and the Statutes of Alpha III", all of which I plan on citing as precedents should I ever find myself standing before a judge.

Cogley's defense didn't exactly lead to an acquittal, but it did provide Kirk and Spock enough time to prove the man Kirk had supposedly murdered was, in fact, alive and well and tampering with the ship's systems. With his case concluded, Cogley decided to move on to defending Kirk's supposed victim, noting he felt very good about his chances.

And let's also give a quick shout-out to Worf's grandfather, who was also called Worf, for his thankless job advocating for Kirk and McCoy at their Klingon show trial in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Although I must admit that that throwaway cameo originally left me with the mistaken impression that Lieutenant Worf was about 150 years old by the time of The Next Generation.

Romo Lampkin, Battlestar Galactica & Joseph Adama, Caprica

Easily the best of Battlestar Galactica's later season additions (with all due respect to noted neurosurgeon John Hodgman), Romo Lampkin combined the sort of lovable sleaziness central to any Mark Sheppard performance, mixed with a brilliant if fractured legal philosophy. Seemingly just a mercenary lawyer taking on the obviously indefensible defense of disgraced president Gaius Baltar, he proceeded to build a case equal parts audacious (such as changing Baltar's plea to guilty just to make a point) and ludicrous (such as calling Lee Adama, his own partner on the defense and the son of one of the judges, to the stand to testify - this is a perk of trying a case in front of ship's captains instead of actual legal experts, I guess). Oh, and he's also a kleptomaniac and was briefly President of the Colonies. Although, quite honestly, who wasn't President of the Colonies towards the end?

In time, Lampkin reveals that he learned many of his best tricks from Joseph Adama, famous (some would say infamous) civil liberties lawyer back on Caprica. Much of his story remains to be told, as he will be the central figure of the prequel series Caprica, but it has already been revealed that he also defended members of the Ha'la'tha crime syndicate, which he had to do to repay them for funding his legal education. Still, he also defended the so-called "worst of the worst" partly out of a more altruistic need to air out society's failings. He always said his trademark silver lighter brought him good luck and made him unbeatable whenever he took it with him to court, a claim both his son and grandson later took much comfort in as they took the lighter with them on their most dangerous missions.

The law firm of Wolfram & Hart, Angel

The main adversaries for the mostly reformed vampire Angel, Wolfram and Hart represents the Earthly interests of an ancient group of demons. Beyond engaging in a variety of extracurricular activities that run the gamut from unscrupulous to criminal to utterly detestable (and, whenever possible, all three at once), the law firm also makes a point of representing society's most reprehensible slime, such as corrupt politicians. Supposedly, Wolfram & Hart would not exist without the evil inherent to all people. If I may make an exceedingly easy joke, I'm not clear how this distinguishes it from any other law firm.

Stephen Byerley, I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov's landmark collection of robot stories features two tales that might not actually have any robots in them at all. These two stories, "Evidence" and "The Evitable Conflict", focus on Stephen Byerley, a successful prosecutor currently running for Mayor of New York City. His enemies in the Quinn political machine accuse him of being a robot, forcing Susan Calvin and the rest of US Robots and Mechanical Men to attempt to verify that claim. Their various tests prove inconclusive, and Byerley refuses to prove his humanity on the grounds that that is not something any human should have to prove.

"Evidence" never exactly reveals one way or the other whether Byerley is, in fact, a robot, but the clues probably point to a cautious "yes." (Whether or not he is a robot isn't even at issue in "The Evitable Conflict", where he has moved on from Mayor of New York to the only slightly more powerful position of World Coordinator.) This is qualified by the fact that Susan Calvin argues convincingly that a robot could never be a lawyer, as the unshakable parameters of the First Law of Robotics would prevent a robot from ever understanding the complex concept of "justice."

His detractors' claim that he only prosecutes those that he is certain are guilty is rejected by Dr. Calvin, as Byerley could never get past the direct harm of imprisoning a man if he were a robot. The story makes a number of satirical points, such as pointing out that someone everyone thinks is a robot because he or she appears to follow the Three Laws of Robotics might simply be a very good person, as the Three Laws are essentially a simple code of ethics. Whether Asimov intends any further syllogism to be made when he suggests a robot could never be a lawyer is up to the reader to decide.

Livia Beale, Journeyman

The short-lived 2007 series followed Dan Vasser, a San Francisco reporter who travels randomly in time. During its brief run, Journeyman also introduced Vasser's former fiance, Livia Beale (played by Terminator Salvation's Moon Bloodgood), who had seemingly died in a plane crash. She was actually another traveler in time who was originally from 1948. Finding herself stuck in our time period seemingly for good, she decided to become a lawyer and make a new life for herself. She has to leave all this behind when the plane crash makes her resume her time jumping, although she is now able to help Dan in his own travels.

Linda Ziegler and Dale Rice, Illegal Alien by Robert J. Sawyer

Canadian science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer is one of the best when it comes to examining the ethical implications futuristic ideas. His courtroom drama Illegal Alien pits prosecutor Linda Ziegler against famous civil rights lawyer Dale Rice in just the latest trial of the century to hit Los Angeles. This time, it is the alien Hask of the Tosok race who finds himself facing murder charges, and Rice takes it upon himself to clear the alien of the charges. Both his and Ziegler's arguments are as much based upon slick theatrics and larger questions of alien rights as they are the pertinent facts of the case (which, as they so often do in science fiction stories, point to a larger conspiracy).

Nathan Petrelli, Heroes

Although Nathan Petrelli started out as a lawyer in the New York City District Attorney's office, this is pretty much behind him before the show even starts. Like many real-life lawyers, he used his legal career as a springboard into politics, with the first episode of Heroes already showing him as a Congressional candidate.

The law firm of Crane, Constable, McNeil & Montero, Century City

This 2004 show mostly came and went without anyone noticing, and it hasn't even picked up the modest following of something like Journeyman. Still, the show deserves plenty of credit for being probably the closest thing to pure legal science fiction ever shown on TV. Set in 2030, a time when Oprah Winfrey is president, the moon is colonized, and there is universal health care for all, Century City looks at the various cases undertaken by the four partners at the law firm of Crane, Constable, McNeil & Montero.

These cases touch on everything from the ethics of cloning to identity theft that actually entails stealing entire personalities. It only ran for four episodes before CBS canceled it. Perhaps we'll just have to wait for the seemingly indestructible Law & Order franchise to make a futuristic spin-off (it can be called Law & Order: Futuristic Spin-Off!) for legal science fiction to get a real foothold in the TV landscape.

Harvey Birdman, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law

What Century City tried to do for all of science fiction's many tropes and elements, the Adult Swim classic Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law did far more successfully for the rather more narrow field of sixties Hanna Barbera cartoons. The washed-up hero turned barely qualified lawyer Harvey Birdman was probably the sanest person at his largely psychotic law firm, and he too was in all probability certifiably insane, which had mixed results when it actually came time to go to trial. (The fact that the judges themselves were also completely bonkers was a big randomizer.)

The show's science fiction credentials weren't always particularly strong, but it did retain enough of a flavor of Birdman's old job as a third-rate superhero for me to feel comfortable including it on this list. The show also occasionally featured cases that highlighted some of Hanna Barbera's more obviously science fiction programs, including the Jetson family (from the far future time of 2004!) suing the past for destroying the environment and forcing their entire society to live high above the clouds of the destroyed Earth.

Judiciary Pag, Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams

His High Judgmental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed, might technically be more of a judge than a lawyer, but I'll still include him for a couple of reasons. One, he probably started out as a lawyer, and two, he's easily my favorite minor character in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy saga. Judiciary Pag was most famous for sentencing the people of Krikkit some ten billion years ago to imprisonment in a Slo-Time seal after they tried to kill everybody in the entire universe (which, he points out, he feels like doing the same thing some mornings).

He was hated by pretty much all of his colleagues for his unprofessional manner and supremely laid-back approach to the law. (For instance, he marked what he rightly recognized as the most important moment in legal history by sticking some gum under his chair.) He got away with all this because he was, in fact, the greatest legal mind the cosmos would ever know. Pag or, as he preferred to be known for reasons that made sense only to him, Zipo Bibrok 5 × 10⁸, handed down his ruling on the Krikit matter to great acclaim and thunderous, which he would have been around to receive if he hadn't already slipped away with one of the more attractive members of the jury to whom he had slipped a note about a half hour beforehand.

A whole bunch of characters from Marvel and DC Comics

There's no shortage of lawyers among the superhero community. As superhero (and villain) origin stories go, former lawyer was particularly popular in the Golden Age. The first costumed crimefighter, Brian O'Brien was a former district attorney who took a more direct role in meting out justice when he became the masked vigilante The Clock in 1936. Numerous others followed, including the Quality Comics character Mouthpiece, the Timely Comics hero Laughing Mask, and the original version of the Batman foe the Thinker.

In more recent years, Marvel has created a bunch more lawyers, including Sharon Ginsberg, Cameron Hodge, and Black Bishop - and those are just the ones who are X-Men villains. There's also the X-Men's own attorney, Evangeline Whedon, who can turn into a dragon, the rather obscure seventies superhero Dominic Fortune, and Captain America's ex-girlfriend Bernie Rosenthal.

But Marvel's two most famous lawyers really have to be Matt Murdock and Jennifer Walter, better known respectively as Daredevil and She-Hulk. Matt Murdock's legal career has probably been a more consistent part of his character over the years, but Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk arguably did the most sustained (and most fun) exploration of the intersection between superheros and the law, as Jennifer Walter (and, quite explicitly, not She-Hulk) is hired by the law firm of Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway to help defend heroes whose vigilante activities lead to all too common misunderstandings with more traditional law enforcement.

On the DC side of things, the most famous lawyer would probably have to be Harvey Dent, who of course was Gotham City's district attorney before he became Two-Face. In the current Batman: Reborn event that is launching Dick Grayson's tenure as the Caped Crusader, Gotham's new DA is Kate Spenser, better known as the vigilante Manhunter. An even more brutal lawyer-turned-crimefighter was the eighties version of Vigilante, who in his civilian life was New York City prosecutor Adrian Chase. Other lawyers in the DC universe include the Atom's very estranged and now villainous wife Jean Loring, Power Company hero Josiah Power, the mostly immortal Resurrection Man, and, reaching a bit further back into DC lore to the wonderfully ludicrous times before Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Robin of Earth-Two.

The Hyper-Chicken, Futurama

Is there any greater lawyer in all of science fiction than this simple hyper-chicken from a backwoods asteroid? Tasked with some of the thirty-first century's most impossible cases, he does about as well as can be expected, which is to say he doesn't completely lose all of them. He did help Bender beat the rap for non-drunk driving after he crashed a dark matter tanker into the Pluto penguin sanctuary (although he wasn't nearly as successful in his own trial for that there "incompetence"). He helped Fry and Bender avoid serious jail time after they unwittingly abetted a bank robbery by successfully arguing they were both insane, offering the simple evidence that they had hired him as their lawyer.

In his prosecution of Zapp Brannigan for blowing up DOOP headquarters, his oddball legal tactics ranged from the brilliant (like calling the jury, which was entirely composed of DOOP delegates, to the stand just so they could confirm they were going to convict Zapp) to the somewhat less brilliant (like his insistence on establishing whether or not Leela was wearing a hoop skirt at the time). A deleted scene from the most recent Futurama movie finally provided the name Matcluck for the character, but really he'll always simply be the Hyper-Chicken, and that's all he needs to be. Just don't mention badgers in front of him.

In this scene, the soldiers have fled to a little family farmhouse, whose owners are mysteriously missing. When they attempt to escape back to town in the family's truck, they get their first look at the creatures who've been stalking them in the woods. And it's not pretty - not at all. Though of course McKidd is looking pretty. And you'll be feeling pretty excellent after you check out this insane funny-scary movie. Even the twist ending is fantastic, and I normally hate twist endings. [Dog Soldiers via IMDB]

Aint It Cool interviewed Falls last December about the direction the show was going to take, post-WGA strike, but didn't publish the piece for fear of spoiling any potential return for the series. Now that we all know that there isn't going to be any more Journeyman in our future, they felt free to run the interview and reveal who was behind everything, and how Heroes ruined everything. Here're some of the best bits:

Falls on who was behind Dan's time traveling:

Let’s just say it was too specific and grand to be science or government... We would have led you to the water's edge and let you figure it out.

On whether Dan's time travels were for the greater good:

I think the end game was for the good. We wanted to explore some darker themes early on, but our ratings dictated otherwise. I wanted Dan to have to shepherd a hit man through his life to kill someone. It would really fuck Dan up, but there'd be a bigger reason for it. Sort of like life (not the TV show) we would have done it [late in the first season].

On Why Livia Faked Her Own Death:

We kept going 'round and 'round about that. We felt that Livia was keeping some secret from Dan that was huge and tragic.

On what was originally going to end the first season:

Well, it was going to be a plague, but then “Heroes” did that. When we were told “Heroes” was doing it, they suggested we change ours. No way we were going to win that one. We would have come up with something, but remember, I could read the tea leaves in mid-October. I decided then, let's think in terms of 13 [episodes]... [In the never-shot final nine episodes of the season,] Katie and Dan were going to split up for a while. [Dan’s brother] Jack and Dan were going to live together and then Dan and Katie would get back together. Livia was going to die in episode 20. Dan was going to save her in 21. And in 22, Dan would come back to his house in the present like he did in the pilot and someone else would be living there. Katie and Zack would be gone and this time Dan would have no idea how to get his family back.

Aint It Cool also includes a brand new interview with Falls at the end of the story, talking about his upcoming projects.

What Was Hurling Dan Vasser Through Time?? Series Creator Kevin Falls Reveals The Secrets Of JOURNEYMAN!! [Aint It Cool]

In both versions of Mars, this sequence comes at a crucial point: Sam Tyler, trapped in 1972, has decided to help the cops solve a murder that he thinks may be related to the kidnapping of his girlfriend in the future. So he's giving a little talk about the psychology of the killer, and he decides to bring a woman police officer, Annie, into the mix.

Everything about the British version of this sequence is better. First of all, the sexism of the cops is way more believable — although in the American version, they do have a cop make a weird remark about Annie's boobs. It's way, way more clear that the female cop doesn't belong in this milieu, and in the British version she acts embarrassed, sheepish. In the American version, she's just sort of wooden and never really seems to doubt herself much at all. She's believable as a 1990s woman, but not a 1970s one.

And then there's the fact that in the American version, Sam Tyler does all of the talking — he's just brought Annie over to serve as a prop. (So he can grab her neck as if to strangle her, thus showing there's sexual tension between them.) He doesn't actually need her input, and she has nothing useful to say. (She only has a B.A. in psychology in the British version, not the American version.) It's creepy in both versions, but in the American version it's only creepy because Sam is a creep. The end.

So how does the American pilot (due to be totally reshot with a new cast except for the lead, and a new producer) compare with the British version otherwise? Well there's good news and bad news.

Okay, first the good news: The American version follows the story beats of the UK version, pretty much note for note. There's a guy kidnapping and killing women, and then Sam's (ex?) girlfriend, a fellow cop named Maia, goes after him and gets kidnapped. Sam is upset, and then he's hit by a car and finds himself in 1972. He finally decides to accept the reality of his surroundings and helps the 70s cops to find the same guy who apparently kidnapped Maia in the future.

Also, there's no funkay disco music in the actual episode — that was just for the promos.

Now for the bad news. There's not as much ambiguity about whether Sam is really in a coma. At the very end of the episode, we hear the bleeping and wheezing of Sam's life-support system, indicating to the slow viewers that he really is in a coma.

The relationship between Sam and Maia, his ex-girlfriend and current subordinate in the future, is way way more cheesy and pulpy in the American version. In the UK original, the tension between them is fairly subtle, but apparent enough to hit home. In the American rendition, it's a total sledge-hammer. When the cops go to pick up Colin Raimes, Sam orders Maia to hang back and protect the perimeter. "You can't protect me!" she bleats.

Later, it's Sam (not Maia, as in the British version) who insists that Colin Raimes is connected to the murders after Raimes has a perfect alibi. Instead of Maia being stubborn and insisting on investigating Raimes further, Sam orders her to look into it some more. "I have a feeling he's connected," Sam says. "It's nice to know you have feelings," Maia bleats. He gets all gruff with her and orders her to do his bidding.

And then there are the 1970s cops, who are just way less convincing. I love Colm Meaney, but he's not able to convey the asshole thuggishness of Philip Glennister's DCI Hunt. Meaney's version of Gene Hunt is a total pushover, a pansy. Yes, he roughs up Sam Tyler a bit here and there, but he's way too kindly. In one key scene, Hunt says Dora, a witness, is a "pain in the ass." (Just like in the British version.) But then he turns to Sam and says, "like you," in a sweet fatherly way. And later, Sam actually kicks Hunt's ass, which is just wrong. And there's none of the great stuff like the cops ruining evidence with their greasy food, or eating sandwiches and smoking in the morgue.

After they capture the serial killer, there's no debate over whether to destroy the psych report that could help him cop an insanity plea — it just never comes up in the American version. (Maybe they're saving it for episode two?)

One thing that was really elegant about the British version is that most of the characters just sort of ignore Sam's ravings, and assume he's just another weirdo. Only Annie actually listens and engages with Sam's belief that he's in a coma in the future. But in the American version, everybody seems to be aware of Sam's belief that he's from the future, and they all mock him for it. Which, you would think, might make it hard for them to take him seriously as a detective. The episode ends with the other cops still making fun of Sam's delusions that he's from the future. And the relationship between Sam and Gene has none of the complex mixture of male-bonding and mutual loathing that you see from early on in the UK version.

Speaking of which, there's absolutely no chemistry between Sam and his fellow cop Annie in this version — in fact, there's reverse chemistry, the kind that makes it impossible to believe they would even belong in the same room together. In fact, Sam has no chemistry with anyone in the American Mars — and I don't think replacing the entire cast except for Sam will fix the problem.

The creeptastic scene where Neil, Annie's ex-boyfriend, pretends to be a hypnotherapist who's reaching Sam in his coma makes no sense this time around. Instead of being Annie's ex-boyfriend, he's just a random psychotherapist friend of hers (who's mentioned in passing earlier) and he decides to introduce himself to Sam by trying this random-ass "treatment" and reach Sam in his own logic. It literally makes no sense and just feels weird.

In Minority Report, newspapers constantly update themselves, thanks to miracle e-paper. While you look at the cover of this e-paper version of USA Today, the headline changes from "Molecular nano-technology?" to "Precrime Hunts its Own!"Minority Report takes place in 2054, but we could have the technology to make this type of paper happen as soon as 2015, a Washington Post reporter predicts. And here's a prototype.

One of the earliest interactive newspapers turns up in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, where it's called the mediatron:

Bud took a seat and skimmed a mediatron from the coffee table; it looked exactly like a dirty, wrinkled, blank sheet of paper. "'Annals of Self-Protection,'" he said, loud enough for everyone else in the place to hear him. The logo of his favorite meedfeed coalesced on the page. Mediaglyphics, mostly the cool animated ones, arranged themselves in a grid. Bud scanned through them until he found the one that denoted a comparison of a bunch of different stuff, and snapped at it with his fingernail. New mediaglyphics appeared, surrounding larger pictures in which Annals staff tested several models of skull guns against live and dead targets.

The second-to-last episode of Journeyman featured our time-traveling newspaper reporter landing in 1984, where he drops a digital camera. When Dan returns to the present, everything has changed because someone reverse-engineered his digital camera. Everybody's using fancy nano-tech and smart electronic paper. It sucks that we don't get a really good look at the newspaper Dan works for in this alternate 2007 before he changes the timeline back.

First, in Monday's episode, we had the classic "leaving advanced tech in the past" plot, only with a clever twist. Dan drops a 2007-vintage digital camera in 1984. When he returns to the present, people are using fancy "nano-tech" computers and smart paper. And Dan has a daughter instead of a son, because this fancy technology failed on the night he was supposed to conceive his son. The glimpses of an alternate 2007 with more advanced tech are pretty cool-looking. It also showcases one thing Journeyman has done well all along: showing how time travel creates alternate timelines.

Then on Wednesday, we met Evan the veteran time-jumper. Evan has been time-traveling for 15 years, until he's ended up a total wreck, trapped in a mental institution. After a maniac shot his wife, he kept going back in time and trying to "fix" the problem, but it only got nastier and nastier. So finally, Evan changed history so he never met his wife, leaving himself more broken-hearted than ever. It reminded me of a sadder, darker version of The Man Who Folded Himself. Evan also warned that meeting his own past self was what triggered his total mental collapse.

Finally, there's the scifi standby of the shadowy conspiracy. "They" are watching Professor Elliot Langley, the scientist who has extremely vague knowledge about Dan's time traveling. This was the least satisfying part of the episode, because it was our last chance to hear some answers about Dan's situation. And instead, we got wheel-spinning. But even this disappointment only made us wish Journeyman would have a new lease on life.

The good news: in a night of reruns and crappy reality programming, Journeyman finished second among adults 18-49 in the ratings. It came in third overall, with a respectable 4.6 million viewers. So maybe there's hope, especially if the strike drags on long enough to prevent anybody making new series pilots.

There's another new (to Americans) episode of Life on Mars on Tuesday at 9 PM on BBC America. A bomb scare leads the cops in 1973 to believe the IRA is mounting a new bombing campaign in England.

Also on Tuesday at 9, PBS has a new NOVA (check local listings.) "Missing in MiG Alley" narrates the first ever jet war, as American and Russian pilots faced off over North Korea in the 1950s. The battles pitted the American F-86 Sabre against the Russian MiG-15, and some downed pilots disappeared without any trace. Archival footage and "dramatic reconstructions" put you in the cockpit.

More PBS science porn: Wired Science has a new episode on Wednesday at 9 (again, check local listings.) The Wired gang explores a "space junkyard," shows how researchers are using human perception to digitize books, and interviews DNA pimp Craig Venter.

And "level five" of Rise of the Videogame talks about the development of emotional and intimate dimensions in gaming. In other words, teledildonics. That's Wednesday at 8 on the Discovery Channel.

Thursday's Smallville is a rerun of the one where the three "meteor freak" girls want to use Clark's super-cousin for their own bad-girl aims.

Friday on Starz, there's a new documentary: Anime: Drawing A Revolution. As you'd expect, it's a look at the rise of Japanese animation and how it's affected live-action movies like The Matrix. Early buzz says it's worth watching.

Sunday night, Fox is showing Spider-Man 2, on the off chance you don't already have the special-edition DVD with the three extra hours of Peter Parker unmasking himself to random strangers.

And that's it for this week. It's a slow week, but not because of the life-sucking effects of the writers' strike. This is just the normal holiday TV blahs. Next week will undoubtedly be worse.

Thursday's Smallville is the last new episode for a while. Don't worry, there are six more episodes already in the can, which will air starting in January. So how does Chloe get stuck with a bomb? It's Clark's fault, not surprisingly. Clark convinces Lana to help him take down Lex Luthor, and this leads them to someone named Adrian, who freaks out and sticks the bomb to Chloe. And Chloe's trapped in an elevator with Jimmy and the bomb, while Lex looks torn and pouty.

Meanwhile, NBC burns through one of its last few Journeyman episodes tonight at 10. When layoffs at his newspaper threaten to hit home, Dan travels back in time to the Register's Christmas past. And he runs into his own absentee father, whom he encourages to spend more time with his family. And no, that really doesn't sound too promising for one of Journeyman's last few chances to pull off a ratings miracle.

More time travel happens on Tuesday night with two new (to us) episodes of Life On Mars on BBC America. A cop from 2006 (John Simms from Doctor Who) gets stuck in 1973 and has to deal with the more unpleasant aspects of that era (bad hair, racism), plus his own past. Also, Cinemax is showing V for Vendetta around the same time, and Sci-Fi has Ang Lee's Hulk.

On Wednesday, the Discovery channel has "level 4" of Rise of the Videogame, which deals with the development of virtual worlds and lifelike characters. It's probably worth checking out just to see what "troubling cause and effect" they think The Sims and Everquest had. I'm betting it's that whole take-away-the-Sims'-toilet thing.

Also on Thursday at 8, the TV Guide Channel has an hour-long documentary about the making of I Am Legend, including an interview with Will Smith and behind-the-scenes footage. Just in case you haven't already made up your mind about whether you're going to see it this weekend.

On Friday, Sci-Fi has a Firefly marathon, for the three of you who don't have the DVDs yet.

Apart from that... there are a lot of reruns. If you channel surf enough, you'll hit a Star Trek episode.

• Christian Bale hasn't committed to starring in the new Terminator movie, but he is in serious talks, sources say. Here's hoping he comes to his senses and does a smarter film instead. [MSN via Cinemblend]
• Heroes is one of the most family-friendly shows on television, according to the Family Friendly Programming Forum. Heroes took home the drama award in the Forum's annual awards night. Have these people been watching the same show as I have? The whole second season has been one big creepiest-dad contest. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Bionic Woman star Michelle Ryan is dating Owen Wilson, who's still recovering from that suicide attempt a while back. They've gone to dinner and the beach. She entertains him by delivering her famous "you don't own my body" speech. [Hollyscoop]
• Don't count Journeyman out yet, insists creator Kevin Falls. NBC has decided to air the final three episodes that Falls already filmed, in mid-December. We'll get some answers to our nagging questions, like: WTF is up with all the cross-temporal stalking anyway? And there's still a slim hope that the show could come back at some point after that. "Don't rest yet," he urges fans. But if Journeyman does die for good, Falls has only his own defeatist talk to blame. [AICN]

• The aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind may make a cameo appearance in the fourth Indiana Jones movie. Steven Spielberg is avoiding CGI in favor of puppets, and he decided to pay tribute to the 30th anniversary of Encounters. There's retro, and then there's crazy retro. [MovieHole]
• The Hollywood writers' strike could be settled by Christmas, says Nikki Finke, a blogger who claims to have inside sources. That could allow stalled TV shows to get back on track, and let movies do some desperately needed rewrites. [Deadline Hollywood]

• One Journeyman producer already landed a new gig, after the show's apparent cancellation. Alex Graves will direct the pilot for Fringe, the new J.J. Abrams X-files clone, as soon as he's done with Journeyman in December.
• Chuck spoilers: in an upcoming episode, Chuck finally gets his cover blown. He has to leave town and live under permanent security. Anything to get rid of those horrid short-sleeved nerd shirts. [E!Online]
• Star Trek IV and Soylent Green both appear in Environmental Graffiti's list of the top five environmental films of all time. [via SFSignal]
• Tom Cruise could star in a Doctor Who TV movie in 2009, say unnamed (and probably completely bogus) sources at the BBC. Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Madonna are also being approached, the source says. [Stuff]

If you were going to judge from the above promo clip, the plot of Wednesday's Bionic Woman is that Jaime crashes her motorcycle and the annoying tech guy says something annoying. But according to the TV listings, there's way more to the episode than that: Jaime and her sister go to a spa resort for a vacation. But Jaime gets "drawn into a deadly cat-and-mouse game with another guest." I'm picturing lots of bionic mud-pack battles.

But if you're looking for an example of how to build your narrative to a climax, you only have to check out NBC's line-up tonight. In Chuck, Chuck's old frenemy Bryce turns up after supposedly dying in the first episode. (Bryce is the guy who inflicted the spy database on Chuck's brain.) And then in Heroes, Hiro goes after the guy who killed his dad: Adam. But the 400-year-old villain is supposedly helping Peter avert that viral apocalypse thingy. And in Journeyman, Dan's brother is trying to have him committed. And a serial killer that Dan put in prison during one of his jaunts to the past stalks Dan's family.

Then Friday night has two new episodes of Sci-Fi Channel shows. On Flash Gordon at 8, Dale Arden becomes possessed. And on Stargate Atlantis, McKay's sister gets kidnapped and the team has to go back to Earth to rescue her.

Meanwhile, some pretty good movies are on this week. Like The Matrix, on Sci-Fi at 6 PM today. Relive the gothy fetish love. Tuesday at 3:30 PM, there's Pitch Black, the first Riddick movie on Sci-Fi. And Tuesday at 7 PM has Armageddon, on FX. You can relive the start of Kevin Spacey's slump with K-Pax on Thursday at 11 PM on Sci-Fi. But best of all, there's Timecop, that classic Van Damme knuckle duster with the awesome deadly-kitchen scene, at 8 PM Saturday on Spike.

Those stories suggested that the new Terminator film will feature a character who is the Ben Hur to John Connor's Jesus. Whoever he plays, Bale could lend some desperately needed gravitas to yet another stop-Skynet movie. Image by Dara Kushner/Goff Photos. [CHUD]

• Maggie Q may play Silver Fox, Wolverine's CIA operative girlfriend, in the new Wolverine movie. The Irish-Vietnamese actress has appeared in a lot of Asian films, plus Mission Impossible III and Live Free Or Die Hard. [IESB]
• NBC's Journeyman could be canceled if the ratings for its next couple of episodes don't soar. NBC might not even bother to air all of the episodes that have been filmed. Part of the problem? NBC isn't interested in ratings from viewers who tape the show on their digital recorders, or watch the show online. NBC may have sabotaged the show by advertising widely that you can watch episodes online, and then refusing to count those viewers. [Zap2It, Via Slice of SciFi]
• You won't be seeing Teeth any time soon, in spite of the cool trailer that came out last week. The acclaimed vagina dentata movie has been pushed back to late 2008 by a skittish distributor. [Bloody Disgusting]

The Good:

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• The Twilight Zone: Time travel has long been a staple of Twilight Zone stories, and numerous episodes have featured things like soldiers traveling through time to Custer's Last Stand, people revisiting their pasts, and trying to alter the future. One of the best shows was "A Stop in Willoughby," which featured an overworked businessman who would dream that his train was stopping at a utopian city in the 19th century called Willoughby.
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• Doctor Who: Following hard on the heels of The Twilight Zone was Doctor Who, a series about a time-traveling alien that first appeared in 1963. It's the longest running science fiction series in history, and its recent seasons have been hailed by fans and critics alike, even if the special effects are still a bit craptastic. In a great episode called "The Face of Evil," the Doctor (played by the excellent Tom Baker) revisits a planet he'd been to in the past, only to find that they now fear a giant stone effigy of his face. Meddling in the past sometimes leads to poor results.
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• Voyagers!: This time tripping series featured a traveler from the future, Phineas Bogg, teaming up with teenaged Jeffrey Jones and "fixing" history. They'd do stuff like make sure the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. They traveled around with a device called The Omni, which looked like a big pocket watch. It had two lights on top: the red one meant there was a problem with the timestream, and the green one meant all was well. Yes, it sounds cheesy, but it was great fun.
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• Quantum Leap: Yet another show about fixing mistakes in history, but this series made the episodes a bit more personal, as Dr. Sam Beckett could only travel through time within his own lifespan. With his holographic pal Al from the future, he had to figure out what was wrong and fix it so Sam could "leap" out into his next adventure. One of the more emotional moments had Sam leaping into Vietnam to try to stop his brother from dying.

• The Bad:
  

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  • Time Tunnel: This campy series from the 1960s featured a government project (called "Tic-Toc," ouch) which was basically a giant tunnel that could take people back through time. When an irritated Senator threatens to shut the project down because of ballooning costs, Dr. Tony Newman enters the tunnel and is shortly followed by Dr. Doug Phillips, who is trying to save him. They become "stuck in time" and somehow transported to the scenes of major events, like the Titanic sinking, Pearl Harbor being bombed, this show being canceled after one season.
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  • Back To The Future — The Animated Series: This cartoon version of Marty and Doc Brown could have been whimsical fun, but it only manages to capitalize on very early 90s cheese. You can check out the opening for the series, but be aware that you won't be able to travel back in time to unwatch it.
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  • Time Trax: this series features Dale Midkiff as a cop from the future who was sent back to capture over one hundred criminals who had escaped into the past. Armed with his sentient and holographic computer SELMA, which looked like an AT&T MasterCard, he'd zap the baddies with a shot from his car alarm alarm remote and send them back to the future. Okay, so it was really a futuristic device disguised as an alarm remote, but still. Ouch.
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  • Timecop: Yes, they made a TV show after the semi-cheesy Jean Claude Van Damme movie of the same name. In it, Jack Logan tracks down criminals who try to go back and alter time. If only they could go back and cancel this show before it began. Mercifully, only nine episodes were produced.
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  • Do Over: 34-year-old Joel Larsen accidentally gets zapped with a defibrillator, and wakes up in his 14-year-old body, back in the past. Armed with the knowledge of a thirty-something, he tries to change his life for the better, and promptly fades into television obscurity. 80s nostalgia just couldn't keep this one alive.

  • The Fringe:

    These are the shows that haven't quite proven themselves yet, but are very promising so far.

  • Life On Mars: This much-lauded BBC series features a cop who gets struck by a car in the present day, and suddenly wakes up in 1973. He's able to keep working as a policeman in the past, but it isn't made clear if he's imagining everything via a coma in the present, or if he's just a bit mentally deranged back in 1973. It's getting an American makeover, in the grand tradition of taking great BBC shows and turning them into sludge, so try and track down episodes of the original.
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  • Journeyman: This show is pretty much 'Quantum Leap Redux,' except the storylines and acting keep us coming back for more. San Francisco reporter Dan Vasser finds himself traveling through time and changing the destinies of people he meets along the way, which is somehow related to his time-tripping. We'll see if it can travel through time and avoid the writer's strike and the new show chopping block.

A bigger reason: Journeyman is forming a more and more complex tapestry as Dan Vassar travels into the past over and over again. He keeps changing his own past in small but subtle ways and entangling himself in more "coincidences" that look suspicious to outsiders. This week's episode sets up two knife-edge cliffhangers that show how Dan's meddling may finally ruin his present-day life: a kidnapper he put behind bars in 2001 comes back for revenge, and his brother threatens to have him committed. Linear time is a prison to most of us, but according to Journeyman, time travel isn't an escape tunnel. It's solitary confinement.

Bionic Woman is off the air this week, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The show will air one more episode Nov. 28, and then it's not clear when the final episode will appear.

NBC's three-hour science fiction bloc continues to eat your Monday nights. Journeyman has its first ever two-parter this week and next week, where he travels back in time to the early 1990s to face a serial kidnapper. (Next week: the kidnapper strikes back in the present day.) Heroes shows its new resolve to kick things into high gear, after a lazy start, by having a lot of confrontations: Claire's dad and boyfriend hold Elle (Kristen Bell) hostage, while the Company holds Claire hostage. Lots of gunfire. And Chuck? He dates a sandwichmaker (Rachel Bilson) and his CIA handler gets jealous. But the sandwichmaker may turn out to be a smuggler. Oh kay then.

Movies on TV: Robots launch a quirky, feel-good killing spree in i robot, on FX at 5:30 today. TNT will have Men In Black and Men In Black II back-to-back starting Saturday at 7 PM. The Sci-Fi Channel has The Matrix on Sunday at 9 PM.

It turns out that Livia is actually from the year 1948. She travels forwards in time, Dan travels backwards. When she and Dan got together and dated for several years, she was five decades ahead of her time. Dan's visits to some fucked up era (crazy 70s swing parties! Weird 90s unabombers!) always turn out to be a metaphor for his own freaky past. But Livia visits those same eras from the vantage point of a 1940s woman and sees huge progress. It goes some way towards explaining why she always seems so smug and self-satisfied.