While I've previously called Gemini a poor-man's Blade Runner, after watching the first two episodes, it looks like the only thing it takes from that sci-fi classic is the premise. Korda is a military cyborg (known as a SIM) that was built in secret with a handful of others. After fighting for his country, he and a bunch of other man-bots go AWOL. Korda shacks up with NYC detective Diaz... which is exactly where Gemini begins.

The Gemini story is told entirely from the point of view of Diaz, who's played by Dawson. Each episode is a series of video "transmissions" sent from Diaz's PDA to an unknown recipient, and with this PDA as almost the cornerstone of the project, whether people will get annoyed with the letter style story-telling completely rests on their believing in this "near-future" PDA device.

Her first transmission puts the couple in Paris, where - surprise! - Korda has popped the question, but streetwise Diaz has second thoughts. Why? Maybe because she lied to him about being a cop, and when Korda got naked and surprised her with flowers, she almost shot his head off. So she had to tell him about being an undercover police officer, and Korda then told her that he had a pacemaker. She proceeds to tell her unknown friend how much that freaked her out but, I'm sorry, but I think being a secret cop would trump that particular argument on the weirdness scale.

But that's not important, because they're in love and in Paris... which you can tell because of the cheesy background on her PDA (which I hope they ease up on in the future). But it's not all cheese and wine in France, sadly; Diaz gets the feeling that they are being stalked, and then a lot of strange things start to happen to her boytoy, like having seizures and then trying to strangle her.

Anywho, Diaz starts to freak out and pick up on little clues to Korda's secret lifestyle, because, you know, she's a cop and all. Which is where the first two episodes end. It's mostly background work to give you a feel for each character, but already you can start to see where they will be tying in the ARG/video game component. For example, when Diaz finds yellow goo in the bath after Korda is finished using it, she holds it up to the screen. Immediately the PDA begins to analyze the bio-materials of the goo. Breaking down clues like the goo will be one of the many mysteries you get to crack in the ARG, according to Executive Producer Brent Friedman.

Friedman, who is writing and producing with Electric Farm, explained that each property and story is going to open up different opportunities for how you can interact with Gemini. After they debut the first four episodes (two next week, and another two the following week), the ARG begins on Friday the 29th. In the game, audience members, "can become a Gemini Agent," according to Friedman, "so you can get recruited and face the same moral choices [as the characters]. When you join Gemini Division through the ARG, you get your own PDA [and] the longer you spend on the site and on your PDA, you get widget upgrades. So it enhances your experience. We want to be able to replicate the way Anna uses her PDA on the show. You're going to be sent on investigatory missions that will ask you to find different things that will lead you to different sites."

Gemini isn't entirely new territory for Electric Farm. Before Gemini, they released Afterworld, the scifi post-apocalyptic YouTube series that had a small but loyal cult following. But this new NBC webseries is a much larger undertaking - especially when you add the famous leading lady, embedded product placement, mobile video game, and planned comic book.

After the first two premiere weeks of Gemini new episodes will be released Mon through Thursday (around 50 episodes are planned for the season) and every Friday the ARG will be updated. There's original material filmed just for the ARG as well, so you'll be able to explore deeper into the Gemini world.

While I commend NBC for making better web-product than the awful Heroes mailman drek, it's doing to be interesting to see how this plays out. It very well could be the future of television. And with the rise in video game success it wouldn't be a colossal surprise if ARGs became the new way to watch original material. As for the series itself, it's hard to say if it's entertaining. The first two clips felt like filler, and if this is what they're trying to sell the world on, they may want to throw in a little more drama besides Nick Korda's almost-naked surprise. It's wonderful having good actors carry the weight of the storytelling on their shoulders, but right now it's all sizzle and no steak, and in order for something like this to really explode, I fear they should have given the viewers a little bit more to chew on.

The series premieres tomorrow.

Lots of Gross, Cool Pseudo-Science
Though our hero Olivia points out in this scene (above) that she's not dealing with "pseudo-science," but rather "fringe science," I think we're mincing words here. Nobody wanted to name the show Pseudo, so they came up with something edgier. I love this list of "sciences" in an "area called fringe science" that Olivia spouts off as she tells soon-to-be-protagonist Joshua "Dawson's Creek" Jackson all about his mad doctor dad and his experiments. It's pretty much a here's-what's-coming sign for the entire show. So get ready for some invisibility, mutation, astral projection, resurrection, etc. This means hours of amusement for people who understand real science (I couldn't stop laughing when Olivia did a search online for "dissolve + flesh"), as well as a renewed sense of purpose for people who have missed the X-Files' spooky blend of government conspiracy and para-scientific bullshit that basically boiled down to REALLY COOL ALIEN STUFF.

In the pilot episode of Fringe, I can guarantee that you will get to see no fewer than three charmingly improbable pieces of "fringe science," one of which involves somebody taking a giant dose of Ketamine mixed with LSD and lying in a sensory deprivation tank. (Hello, Altered States?)

Add Alias Intelligence Ninja, Then Sift in Some Acid-Fueled Freakery from Lost. Stir.
Inevitably, people are going to compare Fringe to X-Files, and with good reason. But I think it's much closer to being a perfect blend of two previous Abrams projects: Alias and Lost. Olivia is practically a mirror-image of Sydney from Alias — she's got the smart-newbie thing going on, as well as the hot babe in a ponytail look. Though Sydney could be an annoying character, she was likable because she was a total ninja as well as being vulnerable. Like Sydney, Olivia is clearly going to be a smartypants rule-breaker who gets some hot spy-on-spy lovin' when she can manage to overcome her trust issues.

Here's the really good news for people who enjoy Lost's what-the-fuck quality but are sick of mysteries wrapped in enigmas swaddled in conspiracies painted over with secrets. Fringe is seemingly built to be episodic. Yes, there will be an overarching mystery — probably for the whole first season — involving the "pattern" and a Genentech-esque company called Massive Dynamics. There's some kind of conspiracy, a bunch of weird "turn you into a skeleton" experiments, and Olivia and her scooby gang have to figure it out. But each week promises to solve at least one mystery, or at least if the pilot is any indication it will. Hopefully, Abrams has finally found a format where he can give us a lot of standalone episodes without sacrificing those epic, Byzantine plot arcs he loves so much.

Suddenly DHS Is Totally Awesome
Do not expect any form of realism from Fringe whatsoever — not scientifically, and not in terms of how spy shit actually works. In the pilot episode, there are a series of rapid-fire discussions of how the people involved in the "incident" Olivia is investigating are from the CIA, DHS, and the FBI. Plus local police. Olivia is a "liason" of some nebulous description, which basically means that one week she's with DHS and the next she's with the Feds or SD-6 or SHIELD. Most of the pilot, however, focused on DHS, which is probably because most people have no idea what the hell the DHS does, except for maybe wave the USA-Patriot Act around a lot. And indeed, there is some waving of the USA-Patriot Act, which apparently has the power to get you into insane asylums to interview mad scientists.

It's Not Just a Government Conspiracy — It's a Corporate Conspiracy
In the post-government terrorist era, nobody would really believe that the US could muster up enough of a spy conspiracy to satisfy TV fans week after week. So Fringe adds corporate conspiracies on top of its blooming FBI/DHS potential conspiracy. Olivia is investigating a runaway chemical compound that reduces everybody to jelly. Turns out that the elder mad scientist in her scooby gang knows how it works, and he also worked on it with the elusive, Craig Venter-esque zillionaire who runs Massive Dynamics. (A road sign helpfully tells us that Massive Dynamics "does everything," but in the episode they mostly do creepy things with genetics and cool things with bionic arms.) Somehow Massive Dynamics is working with the FBI or maybe some other even more shadowy government agency. But the point is that the conspiracy stretches beyond the spies and into the crazy terrain of Big Science. I can't wait for Fringe to do an episode about some Google-esque company that is injecting evil code into the astral plane.

Bottom Line: The pilot was creepy, cool, and kind of gross. The scooby gang could use some work: Do we really need to have the irritating Frasier-esque banter between rebel scientist son and crusty old mad scientist dad? Also there is an unexpected and wonderful use of sans-serif fonts. Really awesome.

What was most interesting about the episode was watching the four new cylon deal with discovering that they are not human. As we learned at the end of season 3, some of the most unlikely members of the crew have turned out to be skinjobs.

The newly-revealed Cylons include Tigh, the ship's XO, who was tortured by the Cylons on New Caprica so brutally that he lost an eye. And there's Anders, Starbuck's ex, who was leading the human resistance against the Cylons on Caprica when Starbuck rescued him. Then there's Chief Tyrol, whose discovery that he's got toaster in him means he's also got a hybrid baby. Almost as an afterthought, there's Foster, the president's aide. Each plays a pivotal role on the ship, and each could easily kill the Admiral or President if "activated" from afar by the Cylons.

There's a lot of soul-searching among these Cylons, as they wonder if their memories are implanted lies and what it means to find out they aren't who they think they are. Will they be activated? Can they be sure they're in control of their actions? Things get especially interesting when Starbuck returns in a cloud of suspicion — she thinks she's been gone for a few hours, and the rest of the fleet know she's been gone for months and suspect her of being a Cylon or at least a spy for them. In a great moment, Anders tries to comfort her — and Starbuck, in her usual way, is a total dick about it. Yup, our beloved crew is back.

When they're not fighting Cylons, the humans are dealing with a new antagonist in their midst. Baltar goes all Jesus on everybody after being adopted by a strange band of nubile lady cultists. This is where the season's yuck factor comes in, and no surprise that Baltar is all over it. Will he become a creepy, fake-ass messiah to the downtrodden of the ship, willing to pretend to be anything they want as long as they give him protection, food, and sex? Or is he really starting to believe in his own godlike power, and to worship the Cylons' one god?

While it certainly wasn't the best episode of BSG I've seen, it was still a strong one. Most important, it set up some genuinely compelling tensions that will animate the final season as we come closer and closer to Earth. I like a show that can kick some toaster ass, and still find time to worry about the nature of human identity. And this episode does all that and more. Welcome back, BSG. We missed you.

What pleases about BSG, for a mainstream audience not necessarily inclined to freak out over spaceships, is the careful way the show's creators David Eick and Ronald Moore have created an entire political system for the characters to inhabit. We aren't just motoring from battle to battle. Instead, we watch as the human president fights with political pretenders and the military for power over the few thousand people left after the Cylon attack. There are press conferences and elections, worker strikes and Cylon sympathizers. The humans even become suicide bombers at one point.

This isn't a show that gives us a simple, Star Wars-style good vs. evil fairy tale. Everyone, even the steely Cylon, are ambivalent and ethically fungible. With next season concluding the epic tale of the human and Cylon battle to reach Earth and colonize it first, the action is sure to be intense. But don't expect the meaty political allegory to fall by the wayside. Things are just starting to get interesting.

We'll be watching characters dealing with a legal battle over who is to blame for last season's witchhunts, where accused Cylon collaborators were summarily executed without trial. And the Cylons have started having children with humans, raising the question of whether the us vs. them, human vs. machine binary really makes sense at all.

It's possible that what allows BSG to be so overtly political, complete with subplots about suicide bombing, is precisely the fact that it's set in a science fictional world. There is a narrative comfort zone for audiences: We don't have to worry that what we're watching is about ourselves because it takes place in a fantasy world. And yet there's no mistaking the fact that the characters in BSG are us. And I don't just mean the humans. We are the Cylon too.

The new season of BSG starts airing Friday, April 4 on the Sci Fi Channel.

FRIDAY

1:30 Battlestar Galactica panel with Richard Hatch
Who doesn't love Richard Hatch? Certainly not the man himself.

2:00 Spotlight on Astro City
Meet Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson, writer and artist of this awesome indie comic.

4:00 Spotlight on Darwyn Cooke
Hear the latest from the writer/artist behind DC: The New Frontier.

5:00 DC Nation
This is when DC makes all its announcements for what's coming up next for the oldest comic book publisher around. Graeme warns, "This might be boring."

5:30 Boom Studios
The scoop on what Boom is up to.

5:15 Universal Studios movie preview blah blah MEET KRISTIN BELL
Seriously we don't know or care what this dumb movie is. But KRISTIN BELL! We only refer to her in all caps, OK?

6:15 Sneak Peek at Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D with Brendan Fraser
OK — you've got a goofy movie, you've got 3D, you've got Brendan Fraser. Let's all ask about that cool cell phone reception at the center of the Earth.

7:00 Sneak Peek of Appleseed Ex Machina Bioroids and cyborgs in love. Annalee says, "Hellz yeah!"

SATURDAY

12: Comic Book Arts Session with Douglas Wolk
Wolk, author of the terrific book Reading Comics, gets all smartypants on you by talking about the ways comics could become the new "novel of ideas."

1:30 DC U Countdown to Crisis, followed by Spider-Man panel at 3:00 in the same room
"This could get really weird — apparently there was some kind of incident with the Spider-Man fans last year," says Graeme.

1:30 Making an R2D2
We're gonna make one. Oh yes. We will.

2:00 X-Files preview.
With special guests Gillian Anderson and that guy from Red Shoe Diaries.

3:00 Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's live art jam
Jim Lee and Terry Moore drawing shit live on stage while you watch. Hellz yeah.

3:30 Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan
Beloved creators Wood and Cloonan talk about their work and share an "exclusive announcement."

4:00 Iron Man sneak peek
We are hoping to hurl some iron underwear on stage.

4:00 Hang out with J. Michael Straczynski
He's written Spider-Man; he's written World War Z (the movie); and he wears a cool black hat.

5:00 Inside LucasFilm
Hello? Star Wars? Duh we're going to this.

5:00 Vertigo
The latest from Vertigo, publishers of pretty much every cool comic book we read this year.

5:00 Sneak Peek: Starship Troopers

5:30 Sneak Peek: Gabriel

8-11 PARTY WITH IO9!!
io9 co-sponsors a party with Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and Last Gasp. Ten bucks at the door — all proceeds go to CBLDF's fight for free speech in the world of comics. Come out, say hi, get drunk with us!

SUNDAY

11:30 Japanese Superheroes Now!
Giant monsters will be discussed. Need we say more?

1:00 Jericho Sneak Peek

1:00 WildStorm: Revelations Revealed!
Catch up with the publishers of Astro City, and chit-chat with Jim Lee, editorial director. Apparently a revelation will be revealed. Graeme is really amped.

2:30 Terminator Sneak Peek
Charlie is freaking out about this. In a good way.

3:30 Justice League: The New Frontier (encore sneak peek)
Encore sneak for people who did things like party on Saturday night instead of going to Justice League!

Picture above by the awesome Scott Beale, taken at last year's WonderCon.

First off, ignore the (cool-looking) cover featuring Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and two other Jedi ready for action; that scene happens only as psychic dream in the opening pages of the book (see below) - the majority of this opener to the year-long story is all about setting the scene and introducing readers to characters and concepts that don't come from the movies. Luckily for "Expanded Universe" virgins like myself, it all follows well-known Lucas formulas pretty well, including a annoying comedy sidekick for the hero: Having the plot revolve around a prophecy makes a lot of sense, considering the movies' reliance on prophecies about balancing the force and all, but there's also an element of Indiana Jones in the way that our heroes are questing after an artifact that gets found by the bad guys first. Sure, there aren't any Sith to give us hot lightsaber action in this first part (Replacement zombie-like aliens the Mandalorians feels a little too generic and dull, right now), but it all zips by fast enough for you not to care: The dialogue is better than at least, oh, five of the movies - writer John Jackson Miller gets his derring-do on without the humorlessness of the last three movies - and the art strikes the right note of being cartoony but not distractingly so.

Dark Horse know what they're doing with their movie and TV comics - They're the ones behind Joss Whedon's awesome Buffy comics - and this is a pretty good launch for what could be a fun story for both Star Wars obsessives and those who just like reading about people shooting each other in space. After four issues of Knights Of The Old Republic, the story crosses into companion title Dark Times (set just after Revenge of the Sith) for two issues, then original trilogy-era Rebellion for two, before ending in Star Wars: Legacy - starring the descendants of Luke, Leia and Han - at the end of the year. If nothing else, you know you want to pick up the ones with 1980s Empire Strikes Back-era jumpsuit Luke, right...?

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic #25 - Vector part 1 [Dark Horse.com]