(And no, I don't believe Dollhouse is for-certain doomed — the ratings are picking up slowly, and the show still has a shot. The fact that it's being left out of November sweeps, and won't be back until December, is a very bad sign, but we've already seen miracles. Joss doesn't seem to think it's necessarily the end. So, you know, be mighty and all that.)

Dollhouse is one of my favorite TV shows right now, but it's not my absolute favorite — sadly, that honor belongs to Glee, which isn't even science fiction. It's not just the show's brilliant musical numbers, its visual flair, or its amazingly rich character-driven comedy. It's not even the relentless pushing of the "it's okay to be different" message. It's the storytelling — even in a year that has seen Torchwood: Children Of Earth and the final half-dozen episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Glee has been making me see whole new possibilities for television as a unique medium, with its own storytelling toolkit.

So here are a few things we'd love to see Joss Whedon bring back to Dollhouse after his visit with Glee.

1) The pacing. That's actually the main thing that jumps out at me every time I watch an episode of Glee. They pack so much into one episode, and none of it feels forced. Last night's episode would have been ten episodes, or maybe even a whole season, of any other show. The Puck-dates-Rachel subplot alone would have spanned several episodes and featured a whole host of scenes of them discussing it and other characters reacting. The bit where Mr. Schu and Sue Sylvester are suddenly doing a dance number together — was it a dream sequence? Was it an imaginary story? No! — it came out of nowhere, and then made total sense.

No other television show burns through plot lines as fast as Glee, and it's exhilarating to watch. It makes other TV shows feel like they're doling out story in little doses, with a teaspoon or something. And it makes each episode of Glee feel more like a movie.

Dollhouse, in particular, has a problem with pacing. It was worse in season one, when Fox pushed the "remote-free viewing" idea, in which every episode had limited commercial interruptions and Whedon's crew had to fill 50 minutes instead of 42 minutes per episode. But the pacing continues to lag quite a bit in season two. Whedon has done faster-paced television before — many Buffy season two episodes rush forward as if they're on fire — but maybe it's time to return to that kind of downhill-racer story-telling. Like, for example, maybe instead of the assignment of the week, we could get the assignment of the next ten minutes?

2) Fun villains. Okay, so Joss probably can't put a gun to Jane Lynch's head and march her over to the Dollhouse sets. If he tried, she would probably disable him for life using her retractable ginsu blades. But maybe Dollhouse could use some more characters who actually enjoy being evil? Adelle has her moments of smugness, and Alpha seemed to have some fun with being nasty, in the tail end of season one — but they both mostly seem tormented. Dollhouse is full of morally gray people who feel really bad about all the awful things they're doing, and what's better to put that into relief than giving us at least one character who just revels in his/her badness? I'm holding out hope for Reaper's Ray Wise, as the head of another Dollhouse, in some upcoming episodes. Also, it's possible we'll be meeting some more high-up Rossum Corp. people who can show us more of the full-blooded nastiness we've only glimpsed so far.

3) More fantasy sequences and montages. Quinn's "You Keep Me Hanging On" sequence last week was just insane — and Dollhouse has shown lots of potential to go to the weird montage/dance sequence/bling-covered fantasy place. Just watch its unaired pilot, which is on the DVD box set. There's so much crazy jumping around between Echo as a gangster and Echo as a ballroom-dancing wedding date, and everything is colorful and zingy — I feel like maybe some of that spirit got lost in the show's revamp, after Fox nixed the original pilot. But it wouldn't hurt to get a bit of that back. I'm picturing mindwiped synchronized swimming, and brainwashed hot-air ballooning, set to showtunes. Come on, why not?

What do you think? Could Dollhouse use just a touch more Glee?

(Sorry, I know this DVD box set came out a couple weeks ago — I didn't get a chance to sit down and look through it until this week, for reasons too complicated to go into.)

Watching the second season of Sarah Connor Chronicles in one go, you really get way more of a sense of how cohesive and powerful this story actually is. Watching it in weekly installments, the show often felt frustratingly uneven, until its final six-episode burst of genius. But when you sit down and watch four or five episodes in a row, a lot of the episode-to-episode flaws fade away, to be replaced by a much stronger sense of character development, and a really clear narrative arc. The awesome ass-kicking moments also just keep coming.

In particular, when you watch the whole thing in one go, you realize it really is about Cameron, the Terminator played by Summer Glau, and what happens when she goes bad. In the season opener, a car bomb damages Cameron's chip and she reverts to her original programming — to kill John Connor. Instead of shutting her down, John Connor decides to try and repair her, and take a chance that she'll work properly again. (Is this partly because she tells him she loves him? We'll never know.) And at the end of the episode, Cameron tells John that he made the wrong choice, and this decision has changed everything — people are going to be upset that John spared Cameron's life. John thinks that Cameron means his mom and uncle, but she says that's not whom she means.

And then in the very next episode, we meet Riley, the chirpy blonde chick who cozies up to John — and it turns out she's one of the people who were indirectly affected by John's decision to spare his Terminator friend. It's a lot clearer, watching the season in a few sittings, that when John makes that choice, he's changing the future — and bringing it a lot closer to the future we see in the nuclear submarine flashforwards, where John Connor is a ghostly presence that nobody ever sees — he only speaks through his Terminator companion, Cameron. That future drives Jesse Flores to go back in time and bring Riley, to seduce John and then become a victim of his jealous Terminator, to drive John away from Cameron — basically, to unmake John's decision to let Cameron go on functioning.

A lot of the episodes, one way or another, deal with whether Cameron can be trusted, including the one where she "reverts" to the original human she was based on, and the one where we start wondering just what she's been doing at night while everyone sleeps.

I also gained a slightly better impression of Thomas Dekker's acting as John Connor — he really does grow as a character throughout the season, becoming tougher and more like a leader, even as he's more and more compromised by his dependence on Cameron. Dekker is probably my least favorite actor in the series, but he does manage to sell Connor's transformation way better than I'd remembered, and his scenes in "Today Is The Day, Parts 1 & 2" are pretty heart-stopping.

And of course, the other great story strand in season two is the artificial intelligence that Sarah Connor thinks is destined to become Skynet, but which we discover is actually a separate A.I., called John Henry. While the Connor clan struggle with just how much they should depend on Cameron — and by extension, how much people can rely on machines in general — a machine super-intelligence has been gestating, learning to play with action figures and hashing out the tricky details of human ethics and morality. Every time Garret Dillahunt, as John Henry, and Richard T. Jones, as Ellison, are on screen together, it's just fantastic to watch.

It's too bad those two strands only come together in the very last episode, and we only really glimpse how John's Cameron issues and Ellison's John Henry issues intersect. It's just enough to make you wonder how great a third season could have been.

But all in all, the season feels much more satisfying when you view it as one novel with individual chapters (despite the occasionally clunky episodic bits), and when viewed as a novel, it does reach a conclusion that stays with you. John's been wondering about the future world all this time, and now he's stuck there. He has tangly emotional ties with Cameron, and now he's meeting her human version. And John Henry is finally going to see for himself a world built by another A.I.

Not every storyline flows perfectly, though — the business with the dying man from the future writing all over the wall in blood still feels a bit contrived and random, and the "three dots" that he leaves behind never quite gel as a plot device.

On the other hand, in case you ever forget how lucky you are to be watching this version of Terminator, each disc begins with a trailer for Terminator Salvation, to make you give thanks all over again.

The special features are pretty much a Summer Glau fan's dream — if you're one of the people who thinks Glau can beat Darth Vader and Galactus with one hand tied behind her back, then you owe it to yourself to get these DVDs. The first disc has a great feature on storyboards for the big "Cameron goes bad" sequence that include lots of great pulpy drawings of Glau looking evil and menacing — suitable for framing! I like the way they compare the original storyboards with the final filmed version:

And then, the second disc has a great featurette showing rehearsal footage from the big fight between Cameron and Rosie the contortionist Terminator (the big elevator fight sequence). You get to see Glau in a T-shirt and sweatpants, running through this incredibly complicated fight choreography in real time — I knew she'd been a ballet dancer, but this definitely gave me a new appreciation for how limber and dancerly she really is. Plus you get to hear the second-unit director telling the actors, "You can kick and Summer just grabs it — and choke her with her own leg!" And you watch Summer do just that.

The best featurette is probably the "Writing The Future" documentary, which lets you inside the writers' room, giving you glimpses of the whiteboards on which the writers sketch out the show's future direction:

And there's a great bit where we see Creator Josh Friedman saying that we already "know" the Turk (which becomes John Henry) is Skynet and we're just waiting for it to wake up and become evil — and the implication is that Friedman is about to suggest that the writers should subvert that premise, and make The Turk not turn out to be Skynet after all. You also see some great discussion happening about just how much Cameron is evolving — is she having an emotional awakening, or just pretending? How much is she programmed to pretend to evolve as a human, and to make John love her?

And then there are these fascinating glimpses of directions the show didn't actually end up going:

There are also some great design featurettes, including one about the making of iconic sequences like the urinal-becomes-Catherine-Weaver sequence. You also get some lovely behind the scenes glimpses of Rob Hall's distressed Terminator-face makeup and the endoskeleton action, and then all of the show's surprisingly ambitious sets, including the submarine and the horrible future world.

Not all of the special features are that great — the deleted scenes are mostly pretty disposable. There's one scene which seems to exist purely to allow Derek Reese to namecheck the family's black Dodge truck — just an extra bit of product placement for the show's main sponsor.The "gag reel" is also pretty meh.

But generally, this box set will really make you see Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in a whole new light — even if you've already watched every episode. And if you've been on the fence about joining Sarah Connor's army, and you're still not sure what the fuss is about, this is your best chance to discover it for yourself. Not to mention, with Christmas coming up, it makes for a tight present.

Help me out please! Which episodes should I watch first? Which episodes are absolutely skippable? What do I need to know before plunging into the Andromeda-verse?

Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman tells The Hollywood Reporter that even though Fox isn't happy with Dollhouse's ratings, the network plans to air all 13 episodes — although during November sweeps, Fox might have to air something else, to goose up its numbers. Fox won't make a decision about giving Dollhouse the other nine episodes of season two until after the first 13 episodes finishes airing — which means the show still has a chance. But it also means the show will have to shut down production after it finishes shooting episode 13, and then ramp back up if it gets another order.

Joss Whedon tells THR he's currently shooting episode eight, and he'll make sure the script for episode 13 gives fans a degree of closure, in case the show does not come back after that:

We'll definitely have closure, but will leave some doors open. When we got our first numbers, which were bad, the first thing [Fox president of entertainment] Kevin Reilly said was, 'You'll have all 13,' which was great. They're not going to pull the rug out from under us.

Beckman says he didn't want to face the wrath of Whedon's fans for yanking Dollhouse before the end of its current block of 13 episodes, given the fact that he's already pissed off the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fans:

If you cancel it, you're an asshole; if you renew it and then don't put it back on, you're an asshole. I'm still paying for 'Terminator.' 'Dollhouse' has a small rabid fan base that in the world of social media seems bigger than it is. We gave them another season knowing full well we were going to burn in hell if we pulled it.

It really may not be too late to save Dollhouse — last week's episode, "Belle Chose," did see a nice uptick in ratings, and luckily all of those people saw a much better episode than the first two of the season. If the show keeps improving in both ratings and storytelling, we might just see a second miracle. On the other hand, it's nice to know the show's not planning on leaving us totally unsatisfied. (And I'm betting that closure includes another glimpse of the "Epitaph One" future.)

Oh, and there will be some spoilers for recent TV episodes here — most notably Fringe.

This is mostly a list of people whose characters died or departed forever, but then they went on to play a totally different character. This doesn't include people whose characters died and then came back to life, which is a totally different trope. (And I'm not including actors who played more than one minor character in a show, or a minor character followed later by a major character.)

Garret Dillahunt on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

This amazingly versatile actor plays Cromartie, a Terminator sent from the future to kill John Connor. And after a season and a half of cat and mouse games, Cromartie finally gets blowed up good. But then his body gets repurposed and used as a UI for the childlike AI known as John Henry. (You could also say the same for Brian Austin Green, but that's slightly different — he came back as the exact same character, Derek Reese. It was just a different timeline where Derek hadn't died (yet.))

Sheryl Lee on Twin Peaks.

Laura Palmer dies (as you may have heard), but then actor Sheryl Lee shows up as Laura's nearly identical cousin Maddy. Good thing they wouldn't kill off the same actor twice... right?

Ali Larter on Heroes.

Larter plays the troubled webcam girl Niki, who's also the psychotic killer Jessica sometimes. But then Niki/Jessica dies... but it turns out Larter has an identical sister named Tracy. (And another one named Barbara, but apparently we'll never actually meet her.) And there's a mad scientist guy involved, who decided to give one sister weird water powers, and the other sister weird "psycho mirror" powers, because hello, mad scientist!

Doctor Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis

This jolly Scottish doctor is great at cooking up retroviruses and coming up with last-minute saves... but after he died at the end of the third season, fans were outraged. Good thing he was able to come back as his own clone. Also notable: Elizabeth Weir dies, but comes back as a machine intelligence (although I'm not sure if Torri Higginson ever played the mecha-Weir.)

Kirk Acevedo on Fringe .

This is the somewhat spoilery one: Acevedo's character, Charlie, dies at the end of the first episode of season two. But he's been replaced by an evil (or at least morally suspect) shapeshifter from an alternate world — where, presumably, there may also be another Charlie Francis running around. So we could eventually see Acevedo playing a third character. (And then a fourth, when the shapeshifter impersonates alt-Charlie?)

Amy Acker on Angel.

We were heartbroken when Fred died, but then chilled and shocked when she was reborn as the psychotic demon god Illyria. And then we learned to love her new persona almost (well maybe half) as much as her original one.

Terry O'Quinn on Lost.

Locke appears — emphasis on appears — to be stone dead, although maybe he's alive in another timeline? In any case, after Locke died, someone (or some thing) impersonated him, allowing O'Quinn to stretch his acting muscles and play Locke as, well, kind of a dick.

Denise Crosby on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Oh. The pain. Tasha Yar dies, but then Crosby later reappears as Tasha Yar's daughter (from an alternate timeline) with a Romulan. You see, Picard sent alt-Tasha back in time to the Enterprise-C so it could be destroyed by Romulans and the timeline could be repaired, but alt-Tasha didn't die, and so she shacked up with the Romulans, and... oh, whatever. It's Crosby with pointy ears. Look!

Steve Bacic on Andromeda.

He plays Gaheris Rhade, who betrays Dylan Hunt and is killed in the show's pilot episode — although Gaheris reappears several times in flashbacks and one alternate history episode later. And then in later seasons, Bacic takes on a new character Telemachus Rhade, who's the descendant of Gaheris. (Thanks to Xicer for the heads up!)

Lalla Ward on Doctor Who.

Okay, so Ward's character, Princess Astra, didn't actually die — but she did get written out of the show forever. And then the Doctor's Time Lady companion, Romana suddenly decided to regenerate, and randomly chose to refashion herself into the guise of Princess Astra. You could also mention Anthony Ainley, who played Tremas in "Keeper Of Traken." Tremas died — but then his body got taken over, and he became the new incarnation of the Master — but Tremas was always just intended to be a new host body for the Master.

Katee Sackhoff on Battlestar Galactica.

This is another edge case — Starbuck definitely died, because there was a body. But did she come back to life? Is Sackhoff playing a different character in the final season of BSG? Your theory is at least as valid as mine, because I haven't a clue. Like the video says, "You Will Know The Truth."

Thanks to Alexis Brown, Meredith Woerner, Sam J. Miller, Paul McEnery, Sean Passmore, Katrina James, Rus McLaughlin, Kathleen Warnock, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, S.J. Edewards, David Daw, Debcha, Barclay Sylvester, Karen Meisner, Brooklyn Erica, and "Dillahunt News" on Twitter (is that actually Garret Dillahunt, or a fan?), plus anyone else who helped out.

Oh, and there are some spoilers for upcoming TV shows here.

We can't help noticing the odd religious moments in a lot of the fall's biggest SF TV shows, and how shoehorned-in the references to God or the Bible often seem to be. Unlike Firefly, which featured a man of God as one of its major supporting characters and naturally sparked theological discussions, or BSG, which took place during an apocalypse, the newest crop of shows seems determined to mention God even when it doesn't make that much sense.

Take the scene above from the season opener of Fringe, where FBI agent Amy Jessup goes through all of the Fringe Division's cases and compares them with Bible verses — it's all in the Book Of Revelation! (Thanks to Meredith for suggesting this one.)

Or FlashForward, whose pilot includes one character who randomly questions whether God gave everyone on Earth a glimpse of the future as a punishment. Leaving aside the fact that clairvoyance seems like an odd shape for divine punishment to take. There's also the fact that the slutty/Christian babysitter just happens to be making out with her boyfriend (while the girl she's looking after is asleep) and thus feels guilty — so she decides that God gave the entire world a future vision just to punish her for making whoopie on the couch. Make sense? Absolutely not. Unless you think that some studio exec in a meeting said, "We need a religious angle here. There oughta be one character who decides that this was all God's doing. Because that'll play well in the God states."

And then there's V, which — spoiler alert — has aliens visiting us and claiming to be benefactors, who've come to help us. Plenty of people are suspicious of these allegedly enlightened visitors, but then we meet a Catholic priest who's decided to preach that these aliens are "God's creatures," with the implication being that they're sent by God. And the priest tells his underling, Father Jack, that he must preach the aliens are divinely sanctioned — or else. It's even sort of implied (if I remember correctly) that the Vatican has made support for the aliens official policy. WTF? Why would the Catholic church come out in support of random aliens that we know nothing about? It's one of the few moments in the V pilot that literally makes no sense whatsoever, and it inspired much head-scratching when we saw it at Comic Con.

And then there's Stargate Universe, which — spoiler alert again! — has a character experience weird religious visions for no discernable reason in its second episode. (Or third, if you count the two-hour pilot as two episodes.) It's never entirely clear why one character, stuck on a weird, inhospitable planet, is having visions of being in church and talking to a priest, and it seems partly designed to give us a chunk of this character's backstory. But it also feels like a quick-and-dirty way of conveying that this character is having a spiritual wandering-in-the-wilderness thing, without actually having to create any real religious/spiritual content to go with it. It feels a bit cheap: he's in the wilderness, and he sees some churchy stuff. Oh! So that means it's deeply symbolic or something.

And of course, Dollhouse gave us the ultra-stereotypical "Christian cult with guns" in one of its first-season episodes — the one where Echo gets turned into a blind religious zealot with cameras in her eyes, and everybody's sorta Amish and sorta Mormon.

Honestly at times, watching current SF TV it's hard not to feel like someone watched too many early John Woo movies and thought "church with birds in it — deep!" Or maybe too many early 1980s New Wave videos, where Duran Duran dance around pews and it randomly turns black and white. (And yes, I know that those videos are directed by Highlander auteur Russell Mulcahy.) But it also feels like a bit of pandering to a Christian nation that's perceived as being a bit suspicious of science-y stuff.

The Genesis of religion in SF TV

Once, it seemed like religious iconography and rhetoric was rare in science fiction — the original Star Trek confronted Captain Kirk and his crew with Greek gods, as well as godlike aliens who just wanted to toy with our heroes. You might have a hysterical crewman babble something about "If God had wanted us to go into space, etc," and the Roman episode did end with Uhura staring at the camera and saying the rebels were worshipping "the son of God." But these were just grace notes. (We won't get into Star Trek V, since that was a movie, and it came much later, and it makes the head hurt.)

After Trek, you certainly had the occasional SF program where the good guys were confronted with bog-standard space gods, who were notably free of any religious dogma that people on Earth could recognize. In fact, one reason why space gods are so often ridiculous and campy is the fact that they're trying so hard to be ecumenical. One common SF trope, over the decades, was the "meeting the real-life alien behind the ancient Earth myth — but this was usually the creature who inspired the Aztecs or the Egyptian religions, not the Judeo-Christian deal.

But in general, when television SF did grapple with religion prior to recent years, it was to reveal religious icons as aliens, using high technology to impress the superstitious. It wasn't until the final couple of seasons of Stargate SG-1 that this "superstitious humans worshipping aliens" storyline seemed to be an overt critique of organized religion. The show suddenly introduced a new antagonist for our heroes, a set of "ascended" (non-corporeal) aliens called the Ori, who encourage humans to worship them and preach from the Book of Origin. Writes blogger Chris Bateman in his 10-part essay on religion in science fiction:

It is almost impossible not to interpret the Ori as a paper-thin parody of Christianity... Much of the shallow critique of Christianity occurs between Claudia Black's ex-Goa'uld host Vala Mal Doran – who takes over Richard Dean Anderson's role as comic relief in the later seasons and fulfills this role magnificently – and her Ori-worshipping husband Tomin. Vala and Tomin square off in debate after Tomin reads incessantly to her from the Book of Origin, with Vala accusing him of taking a bunch of stories about how to live well and using it as a justification for war and murder. The scene serves a narrative purpose – Tomin later witnesses a Prior blatantly distorting the meaning of one of the verses in the Book of Origin, causing him to question his faith – but it also reads as a clumsy attack on contemporary Christianity.

Bateman theorizes that the producers of SG-1 were aghast at the Bush Administration's war in Iraq and wanted to satirize what they perceived as a right-wing Christian crusade against Islam. To some extent, The 4400 also seemed to be taking jabs at organized religion on occasion.

But before SG-1 introduced the Ori, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine took a huge leap forward in introducing religious themes to SF, with the Prophets, aka the "wormhole aliens." For most of DS9's run, you could choose to believe the secular theory that the Prophets were merely interdimensonal aliens, who lived outside space/time and saw future and past as the same thing. But towards the end of the show's run, the messianic overtones around Benjamin Sisko made it harder and harder to sit on the fence. And meanwhile, Babylon 5 won praise for including characters of faith (including a Catholic commander, and a group of Catholic monks who come to live on the station) as well as including religion in many of its storylines.

Most recently, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles included Agent Ellison, who's frequently shown to be a Baptist, and religious references became more and more predominant in the show (which is about the actual apocalypse, so it does make sense to bring it up.) Most fans of BSG would agree that the show's monotheist/polytheist divide made it a much richer experience than a simple robots-vs-humans show would have been otherwise — regardless of how you may feel about the Baltar Cult, and the hand-wavy "Starbuck turns into ZZ Top" ending. And it's pure blasphemy to suggest that Firefly would be better without Shepherd Book.

The rise of Space Jesus?

Lately, though, it's seemed almost required to have some kind of religious discussion among a TV show's themes — and it's more likely to be Christian rather than some kind of vague Space Religion (TM) or misty spirituality.

Religion is part of society, and including religious points of view makes your world seem more realistic and three-dimensional — it would seem odd if science fiction on television never included a religious viewpoint, just as it would if people never mentioned politics at all. At the same time, there are ways to include religion that make sense (Firefly and T:SCC come to mind immediately) and ways to include it that feel gratuitous and weird (the Vatican is endorsing the aliens!)

And yes, when you throw in religion in a nonsensical way, it either feels like you're going for a cheap effect, or like you're pandering to religious people. Add to that the fact that scientists and people who use pure empiricism to deal with problems are far and few between — Walter Bishop and maybe the twisted Topher on Dollhouse are our only real avatars of tech nerdhood that I can think of off the top of my head. It's become a taboo in televised science fiction to show people doing science.

The show that's handling religion in the most fascinating manner right now is Supernatural, which is modern fantasy rather than science fiction. In the last year or so, angels have joined the show's long-standing demon characters — and now Lucifer himself is roaming around. And there are lots of hints that we'll actually be meeting God this season at some point. Theological discussions over why God allowed all of the horrors of the 20th century to happen are automatically more fascinating when they come out of the mouths of actual Angels, and the fact that the Archangels believe that God is dead makes for fascinating viewing.

So consider this a plea for more thoughtful portrayals of religion in science fiction — and fewer random, thoughtless, kitchen-sink inclusions. People who watch science fiction are smart. We can tell when we're being pandered to, and when we're being spoonfed religious ideas just because it makes your show seem more "mythic" or "relevant." Religion can make your science-fiction story feel like it takes place in a world we can relate to, and it can deepen your characters and add another layer to your story — or, in the wrong hands, it can feel like a random piece of baggage, tacked on to your story for spurious, external reasons. We can usually tell the difference between the two.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles went off the air last May, and seems unlikely to come back to television. But fans have become increasingly focused on the idea that the show could have a direct-to-DVD movie sequel. The show's creator and showrunner, Josh Friedman, told us back in May that the show was over, and unlikely to be revived.

But fans have kept clamoring for a direct-to-DVD continuation. So we decided to ask producer James Middleton (who also produced Terminator Salvation) if there was any hope whatsoever that fans might get their wish. Have there been any meetings about a direct-to-DVD sequel, or other continuation? Middleton responded via email:

The quick answer is, yes, there have been many discussions. I can't go into more detail about the subject until I have something truly substantial to report. What the fans should know is that I hear them and I too would love to see T:SCC come back in some form.

So it sounds like there's reason to hope after all. At least, the reference to "many discussions" sounds encouraging, as does the notion that Middleton may actually have something "substantial" to report at some point. So fingers crossed!

And here's a better look at that mobile billboard, which drove around near the Warner Bros. studio offices for three days this past week:

Cameron tells John that she'll find a workaround to avoid trying to kill him again:

Okay, so it's not exactly an essential scene — we got to find out about Cameron's little self-destruct mechanism workaround in a later scene that did air. But it's a nice moment of tension between John Connor and the robot he depends on way too much. And it's always nice to see Summer Glau doing that creepy stalker thing she does so well.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete Second Season is out on DVD/BluRay Sept. 22, and here's a list of the special features:

- Write the Future - An inside look at creator Josh Friedman and the writing process and how it guides the creative decisions for each episode.
- Conceptualization - Visual Effects supervisor James Lima and others discuss the production challenges of bringing the sci-fi world of Terminator to television.
- Blood and Metal - Go behind the scenes with special makeup effects artist Rob Hall and the cast as they reveal the process of creating realistic cybernetic organisms.
- Designing Destruction - Production Designer Marek Dobrowolski and others discuss the challenges of combining real locations with futuristic sets to create a world in which the present fights to avoid a horrific future.
- Choreographing Chaos - See how Stunt Coordinator and 2nd Unit Director Joel Kramer and Special Effects Supervisor Steve Galich work closely to create the stunts and on set effects that add an undeniably kinetic quality to each episode.
- War Stories - From an unexpected earthquake on the jam-packed Santa Monica pier to the intricacies of filming underwater sequences, the producers and cast reflect on some of the most memorable production challenges from Season Two.
- Setting the Tempo - Composer Bear McCreary and the producers explain the process of taking cues from the Terminator mythology and incorporating them into the score. Bear, Josh Friedman and Shirley Manson also talk about the process of recording the season opening song "Samson and Delilah."
- Motivations - The producers and cast discuss the themes of Season Two and how these informed both the writing and acting.
- Terminated Scenes
- Cameron vs. Rosie: Fight Rehearsal - The raw fight rehearsal and choreography session between Summer Glau and a contortionist is interwoven with storyboards and interviews explaining this intricate battle sequence.
- The Storyboard Process: Cameron Goes Bad - The production team outlines the process for mapping key sequences from the show in Storyboard format.
- Audio Commentary with Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau and Shirley Manson and Executive Producers Josh Friedman, James Middleton and John Wirth
- Gag Reel
- Collision with the Future: Deconstructing the HUNTER KILLER Attack - Interactive exploration of the climactic Hunter Killer attack featured in the Season Two finale. Four simultaneous points of view show all elements of the filmmaking of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles from Production, Direction, Visual Effects, and Special Effects. Additional focus points allow the viewer to explore even more elements of what it took to create this dramatic stunt sequence. (Blu-ray only)

Can. Not. Wait. [MovieWeb]

So if you're as obsessed with the Sarah Connor Chronicles as I am, you'll remember the season ended with John Connor having jumped forward in time to a future where nobody knows him. He left his mom, Sarah Connor, behind in the past. But Dekker hints that John might have met a future version of Sarah, who miraculously survived past Judgment Day. At least, Dekker says there are two possibilities: that Sarah's dead in the future, or that there's an older Sarah running around. And Dekker says Friedman told him it was "the more interesting of the two to me." (It's just barely possible that Dekker finds the idea that Sarah's dead in the future more interesting. But it seems a bit unlikely.)

Also, Dekker says John would have been torn between Alison, the flesh-and-blood person whose body the Terminator called Cameron was based on, and the actual robot Cameron, whose chip was taken to the future by the A.I. called John Henry. (Here's where it gets a bit complicated. John Henry has Cameron's chip, not her body, right? But is the Cameron "software" still running on that chip?) It would have been fascinating to see that play out.

But neither of those things is the most intriguing bombshell: Dekker also says a major character in season three would have been Danny Dyson, the son of the man who helped create Skynet in the first place. That would have been interesting because "it harkened back directly to the second film," says Dekker.

Oh, and Dekker says that if T:SCC were to continue, it would be as a direct-to-DVD movie, similar to the Stargate SG-1 films. But don't hold your breath:

Obviously it's difficult because the show is based on a movie and they just had one come out, so it's kind of hard to make a movie with our show because everyone has kind of forgotten about us. But they're hoping, at least when I spoke to [Producer] James Middleton that's where they are with it.

[The TV Addict]

It's the classic trade-off: on the one hand, self-contained weekly episodes are newbie-friendly and easy to show in reruns, because it doesn't matter what order you show them in. On the other hand, how deep can your characters and universe really get when nothing ever changes and the situations get fully resolved within 43 minutes?

You probably already know the story of how television shows got arced: It used to be that every show was like the original Star Trek, with a neat resolution (and, usually, forced laughter by the main cast) at the end of each episode. And then shows like Blake's 7, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (among others) experimented with having more long-running storylines even as individual episodes usually told a standalone story. At last, we ended up with shows like Lost, where an individual episode may just add one tiny pebble to the overall zen rock garden, with no resolution whatsoever. And yet, some shows are still stubbornly episodic, and others try to find a balance between long-term storytelling and singleton episodes.

Really, every show finds a balance — even shows that land really far one end or the other. Nobody is doing pure arcs, nobody is really doing 1960s-style interchangeable episodes any more.

And yet that balance shifts constantly, for individual shows as well as for the television landscape as a whole. Almost any time you hear television showrunners being candid about their arguments with the networks over the direction of their shows, the standalone-vs-arc thing comes up. Watch the unaired pilot of Dollhouse, and you'll see a show that's setting out a ton of long-term storylines in its first hour — but Fox wanted Joss Whedon to deliver a half-dozen episodes that anyone could watch cold, without knowing anything about the show. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles got renewed for a second season, but only on the condition that most of the episodes would stand on their own — hence the wall of messages written in blood, each leading to a different adventure. And according to Wikipedia, one reason Robert Hewitt Wolfe left Andromeda was because the network wanted more self-contained episodes and less mythology. There are hundreds more stories like that.

Some viewers complain about story arcs because they're hard to follow and you have to trust the show's producers not to drop the ball. It's like that trust exercise where you fall and someone catches you — except that you fall, and hope that two years later, someone will still be there to catch you. You trust that the clues and questions dropped in season two will get paid off or explained in season four — and that there will be a season four.

Really, though, both arc-based storytelling and episodic storytelling can lend themselves to tremendous laziness. Bad arc storytelling can consist of nothing but random wheel spinning, pointless melodrama and random "clues" being tossed out, to keep the juggernaut chugging along. Bad episodic storytelling can consist of cookie-cutter plots, the "rinse, repeat" syndrome, and "monster/artifact/whatever of the week." But really, anything can be done badly — even if it could also be done incredibly well.

On the other hand, whenever you hear about producers saying the network forced them to do more standalone episodes, the result is almost always a drop in the show's quality. That's not because standalone episodes aren't as good as complex arcs — it's just that standalone episodes done by creators who wish they were doing complex arcs instead are usually not as good. And often, the showrunners who are most eager to feature longer-running storylines are the ones whose shows are most prone to the "X of the week" problem. (See Dollhouse, Terminator, etc.)

The main point is that today's audiences are no longer willing to believe that someone can meet God, or battle a sentient nebula, or get tortured, or have space amnesia — and then never refer to those events again. An adventure isn't really even epic unless it leaves some mark on you.

On the other hand, there's only one thing worse than a standalone episode that leaves its heroes and universe completely unchanged: a whole, season-long storyline that ends... and then leaves its heroes and universe comopletely unchanged, and is never spoken of again.

Oh, and then there's the faux arc, where standalone episodes are gussied up with little clues here and there. One of my biggest pet peeves about the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who was his habit of pretending he was doing more arc-based storytelling than he was actually doing. If the Doctor mentions the "Medusa Cascade" in random conversation half a dozen times, that doesn't make it an arc — just makes it clumsy foreshadowing.

One other generalization occurs to me: shows that offer complete resolution every week tend to be lighter, maybe even fluffier, than shows that draw out stories over months or years. A show that's totally content bringing up a problem and then sorting it out, with no loose ends, tends to be one that's bright and sunny simply by virtue of showing that problems have tidy solutions. A show that tries to show the consequences of decisions over time, and the psychological effects of events, will inevitably go much darker.

One last thought about arcs: they're usually (but not always) the hallmark of more complex, three-dimensional characters. But when those more complex characters get lost in layers of mystification and randomness (the sort of thing Josh Friedman was talking about in his guest post earlier today) then I'm not so sure that's a worthy tradeoff. But the most important thing is to tell a good story — whether it's just this week, or over five years.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Riff Regan vs. Alyson Hannigan)

What they changed: Joss Whedon financed the original pilot himself, formatting it as a half-hour episode. It is, for the most part, a shortened version of "Welcome to the Hellmouth," but with different casting. The role of the Sunnydale library was played by Torrance High School's library — a much larger and airier room than the cramped Hellmouth library we've come to know and love, with a handy second floor for showing off those Buffy backflips. Instead of Ken "Hyena Chow" Lerner as Principal Flutie, we get a much more straightlaced interpretation from character actor Stephen Tobolowsky. But perhaps the biggest difference is in the role of Willow. Instead of Alyson Hannigan, the geeky witch was originally played by Riff Regan.

How might the series have been different? Flutie probably would have still ended up in the stomachs of his students, but the Scooby Gang might have never been the same. Regan's Willow was a sweet doormat, but she didn't have quite the neurotic, eager-to-please quality Hannigan brought to the role. Incidentally, it wasn't the first time Hannigan replaced an actress after the filming of a show's initial pilot. In 1989, she took over the role of Jessie Harper in the fantasy sitcom Free Spirit.

Unaired Pilot with Stephen Tobolowsky and Riff Regan:

Official Pilot — "Welcome to the Hellmouth:"

Dollhouse (Joss Whedon vs. Fox)

What they changed: The premise and the characters are the same, but the stories unfold in a rather different way. We're initially introduced to Echo through a trio of very different engagements: one philanthropic, one as a revenge date, and one where she talks down gangsters in Espagnol. Boyd is already Echo's handler, and Topher has already caught onto Echo's bison-like grouping with Victor and Sierra. Agent Paul Ballard also comes face-to-face with Echo in the original pilot...when Topher programs Echo to kill him.

How might the series have been different? The original pilot played more as the start of a noir series than as a proof-of-concept for an engagement-of-the-week serial (which is what the official pilot "Ghost" suggests). We probably would have leaped to Dollhouse's underlying plot more quickly, and spent more of the season focusing on Echo's emerging awareness. Plus, it seems the Dollhouse was originally going to be more hands on in addressing Ballard's investigation. We see some of that noir (and slightly more classically Whedonesque dialogue) in the original pilot clip below:

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Bad-Ass Sarah vs. Vulnerable Sarah

What they changed: The most readily obvious difference between the unaired pilot and what aired on Fox is that Tim Guinee, who played Tomin in Stargate SG-1, was originally cast as Sarah's jilted fiance Charley, but was replaced in the official pilot by Dean Winters. But more significant is a key change in the final scene. In official pilot, when Sarah Connor delivers her final voiceover, we see her caress her son's face before walking into her home. In the original pilot, we instead see her pulling a gun out of its hiding place while Cameron and John sit in the same room preparing their weapons, showing that Sarah's focus is on the coming war.

How might the series have been different? It's hard to say to what extent this change represents a shift in tone across the series, but we worried that it signaled a "wimpifying" of Sarah Connor, showing her vulnerability where it could have shown her strength and determination. You can scene the unaired scenes and their official pilot counterparts below:

Life on Mars (US) (Sunny LA vs. Gritty NY)

What they changed: Pretty much whatever they could. The original pilot for the US adaptation of Life on Mars was thoroughly panned, and producers quickly moved the action from Los Angeles to New York (allowing for that Twin Towers shot), and recast several roles. Star Trek vet Colm Meaney was replaced by Harvey Keitel in the role of Gene Hunt and Gretchen Mol took over Rachelle Lefevre's role as Annie Norris (Lefevre might have experienced an unfortunate moment of deja vu when she was recently replaced in yet another role — as the vampire VIctoria in Eclipse). But beyond that, certain scenes from the original pilot were rewritten to more closely match the UK version, and made the scenes visually darker and more textured.

How might the series have been different? It simply wouldn't have been as good. The original US pilot genericized the UK version, washing it of all character. By ultimately sticking closer to the source material, the US version of Life on Mars was able to echo its tone while creating a new mythology to explain Sam Tyler's predicament.

Scene from the Unaired Pilot:

Scene from the Official Pilot:

Star Trek (Christopher Pike vs. James T. Kirk)

What they changed: The original pilot "The Cage" was a completely episode from the official Star Trek pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before," with an almost completely different Enterprise crew. In lieu of William Shatner's syncopated Captain Kirk, Jeffrey Hunter was set to helm the ship as Captain Christopher Pike, and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's future wife, Majel Barrett, played his intellectual and rational second-in-command, known only as "Number One." Spock would be the sole crew member to make the transition from first pilot to official pilot, but even he would undergo some minor changes. The original pilot's Spock was known to smile and use human colloquialisms, while the final Spock inherited Number One's sense of cold, hard logic.

How might the series have been different? The basics of the Enterprise and the Federation would have remained largely the same (in fact, most of the footage from "The Cage" would be cannibalized for a later episode "The Menagerie"). But the dynamics of the crew would have been very different. Pike wasn't the emotive adventurer Kirk would be, and he wasn't cast in as nearly sharp relief against either Spock or Number One. Plus, the original pilot's entirely caucasian cast was hardly the rainbow coalition that made the final version of Star Trek such a progressive piece of television.

Original Pilot — "The Cage:"

Official Pilot — "Where No Man Has Gone Before:"

Doctor Who (The Doctor from the 49th Century vs. The Doctor from Another Time

What they changed: The original episode of the first Doctor Who serial "An Unearthly Child" has the feel of a filmed dress rehearsal, but there were a few changes made beyond tightening the performances and improving production values. The Doctor and Susan both undergo costume changes — Susan into a more casual, less futuristic look and the Doctor from a modern suit to an Edwardian one — and the Doctor is much less gruff than in the original pilot. Also, in the original pilot, the Doctor and Susan talk specifically about being from the 49th Century, rather than the being from "another time, another world."

How might the series have been different? Aside from making the First Doctor outright hostile to his new companions instead of largely indifferent to them, the original pilot is a bit less mysterious about the Doctor and Susan's origins. If it had gone to air, it might have set the stage for a Doctor who is less coy and more forthcoming.

Segment from the Original Version:

Segment from the Official Version:

We were talking about a book he'd written, and I asked him if he'd tell me the answer to a Big Unanswered Question in the book. (I won't say who this novelist is because I don't have time to call him and ask him if I can quote him.)

NOVELIST: I can't tell you, Josh. I don't know the answer.
ME: Really? It's like, a big unanswered question for the characters and for the reader.
NOVELIST: For me, as well. I don't know.

Which lead us to this: there will always be a point in your world-building when the world you've built outgrows the scope of the story you're telling. The edges are fuzzy; the next town over is mysterious. Perhaps you've hinted at something which suggests something else, which would really turn things on its fucking head IF you were to go down that path BUT YOU ARE NOT.

Not now. Not yet. And possibly, never. If you're world-building well, your world should feel full and alive and bustling in the corners, even if you've never actually made it over to the corner to see what the fuck is going on there. The world is true to your vision, but there is ambiguity and mystery and things undiscovered. I can know a thousand things about my the world I've created, but if there aren't a thousand others just outside of my creative periphery, then I start getting a little sketchy and bored.

This is the type of thing that drives studio and network executives crazy.

In the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles season 2 finale "Born to Run," Cameron invites John Connor to get up on top of her and cut her open in order to check and see if her nuclear power source is leaking. This is what she says (although she never actually says it) but we can wonder whether this is what her plan actually is. Certainly she knows whether it's sound or not, so perhaps she's doing it for John's benefit. On the other hand, she's not exactly clinical about the way she makes him straddle her. Here's the conversation I had with one of my executives:

EXECUTIVE: I don't get that scene.
ME: How so?
EXECUTIVE: I just don't get it. Why does she do that? Why does he do it? Was he going to kiss her? Does she want him to? What does she really want from him here?
ME: Well, we've got a lot of different possibilities. I'm sure she has her reasons. We don't really know Cameron's mind, do we?
EXECUTIVE: Shouldn't we know it?
ME: We, who? The royal we, you and me? Or the audience?
EXECUTIVE: Well. Any of the above.
ME: Like I said. You could read that scene many different ways.
EXECUTIVE: Do you have a favorite?
ME: They're all God's children.

Which is why they usually hated me.

Now whether you want to believe it or not, this was not me just being lazy. This is the way that I like my drama, both written and watched-organic, ambiguous, a little messy and inclusive of multiple interpretations.

Which, I grant you, on a bad day is barely distinguishable from lazy.

I can think of at least four reasons Sarah let John go by himself with Weaver into the future at the end of season 2. I can think of any number of reasons why he chose to do so. I also welcome the idea that both of these decisions were horrible decisions, and you might think that the Sarah Connor and John Connor that exist in your head would never do what they did. Because while I may lead you down a particular path, it is your god-given right as a participant in this television show to veer off the path at any time and start hacking your own way through the jungle.

Which is not to say I abdicate responsibility. Bad writing is a demon that takes all forms and often finds a warm and inviting host with writers who confuse the arbitrary with the mysterious.

So in that spirit, let me now contradict everything I've said previously by also saying that in Sci Fi TV there is NOTHING more important than the proper, specific detail. To wit:

In Episode 102 of the Sarah Connor Chronicles ("The Turk," written by John Wirth), the Terminator Cromartie kidnaps a scientist to assist it in growing cyborg skin. Cromartie has brought the skin recipe back from the future, and writes it on the scientist's wall so the scientist can follow it.

When writing the script, John had actually spent time on the phone with a cell biologist trying to get a formula which would best approximate something you might use to grow skin for a cyborg. John had given that formula to our production designer and he, in turn, had given it to the on-set painter so it could be written on the wall. These are the types of things we do all day.

The night before we were scheduled to shoot that scene, John Wirth and I went down to the set to see how it looked. It's late and I know the crew wants to get on their work. But here's the conversation we have:

ME: There's something…not right.
JOHN: I agree. It's just…what is it?
ME: It's not…I dunno…right.
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Could you be a little more specific? We'll fix it. But, you know, maybe a direction to go in? Font size? Pen color? Anything?
ME: It's just…I can't think of any other way to say it…but it doesn't look like a Terminator wrote it.
JOHN: Exactly.
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Huh.

What followed was a lengthy conversation where we ran through a number of issues:

Had we ever seen Terminator handwriting? Do they write in a particular style? Would they be as precise as a computer or would they be in some way affected by their biped-ness, their height relative to surface…Would they disguise their writing as more human-like? And seriously - where was the fucking manual for this?

Eventually we took the entire wall down and did it all over again. This time…more…Terminator-y.

Now this type of conversation occurs on every set on every television show in the world every day. I'd be willing to bet that as I write this at ten o'clock at night, somewhere in Hollywood a showrunner is staring at a set of drapes, a pair of shoes, a bloody handprint, or a gunshot wound and trying to find the perfect balance between story, character and filmic verisimilitude. That's the job. (Frankly, that's everyone's job.)

But in Sci Fi you also get this:

ME: We need to re-do that urinal morph, Jim.
JIM: What's the problem?
ME: She looks like she's coming out of the urinal.
JIM: Isn't she?
ME: No. She's supposed to be morphing from a urinal into a woman. Right now it looks like the urinal is birthing her. That's gross.
JIM: I getcha.
ME: Think "the prow of a ship."
JIM: Awesome. Great note. I'll make it so.
(Because they do love to make it so.)

TV fiction is a depictive media, while written fiction is a suggestive one. A novel's language casts different shadow plays off the back part of each reader's skull while a tv show casts one vision for everyone. We all have our own idea of what China Mieville means when Detective Borlu "unsees" someone in the neighboring city, but God help the poor schmuck who has to decide what that idea means for everyone.

So we (or I, since it's my blog post) try to balance the concrete specificity of what can be seen (Terminator handwriting, urinals) with the novelistic "suggestiveness" of what we don't see but feel (why does she do what she does?). This is not exclusive to science fiction, but especially true of it; speculative fiction is just that - speculative. Creating a beautiful unanswered question can be a complete work of art - just ask Schrödinger and his cat.

Just know that some day somebody will open that box and, dead or alive, there better be a fucking awesome kitty in there.

Josh Friedman was the showrunner on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

She'll be playing Bennett, an employee at the Dollhouse who shares a mysterious past with Echo. And there are more details about the reason the character played by Michael Hogan (Saul Tigh from BSG) comes to the Dollhouse to stop — his psychotic family member is on a killing spree, and Hogan needs the Dollhouse's help to stop it. Also, Alexis Denisof (Angel) will be playing a U.S. Senator who's on a witch hunt against the Dollhouse. And Keith Carradine's business executive character is Adelle DeWitt's nemesis. It all sounds like a rich stew of nastiness. [THR]

Yes, we couldn't resist the Summer Glau-on-Summer Glau ultimate smackdown. (Don't worry, the winner won't face that psychic girl from The 4400 or anything.)

Who will win? River has the moves, and the mental powers. Plus River has marginally better social skills, which might come in handy if the fight takes place in a crowded location. But Cameron has Terminator strength, and a metal endoskeleton that's pretty darn hard to destroy. Who you got?

My therapist is Swiss German and a Freudian as well as a psychooncologist and an art therapist. When she watches Sarah Connor she doesn't see robots and Skynet and John Connor, she sees cancer dreams and death fetishes and the psychological damage done by the absent and perfect father (not that my father is either of those things). My therapist quotes freely from Einstein's biography and has attended the latest Marlene Dumas exhibit but has never seen an episode of Firefly and only nods and smiles when I tell her one of my greatest fears is somebody spoiling the last two seasons of Battlestar for me. (Seriously. Don't even think about it.) But she is one of the only people who cares that the Sarah Connor pilot episode originally had a completely different voice over to open the series and that the first lines we ever hear Sarah speak were supposed to be:

"I will die. I will die and so will you. Death gives no man a pass."

Which some people in the focus groups found a little bit of a bummer.

I used to feel slightly slippery talking to my therapist about television, like it's really just a way to avoid digging deep and having a breakthrough and all that other bullshit that we've been taught (mostly by television) is what happens when you go to therapy. There are few Perry Mason moments in court and there are few Eureka moments in therapy (did Tony Soprano have any? I can't remember right now) but I'll be goddamned if I don't walk out of my shrink's office every Monday and Wednesday feeling a little let down that I couldn't think of a great button for that fifty-minute scene. I want each session to be a close-ended episode of CSI and in truth it's much closer to a badly written soap that's been stripped of the sex and the betrayals and the evil twins and replaced with a meandering, repetitive monologue about why the main character eats too much Chinese food and won't go to the gym.

Recently a sober accounting of my feelings about my son starting kindergarten quickly morphed into me summarizing the entire five hours of Torchwood: Children of Earth and how the finale had my wife curled up in a ball sobbing and cursing Russell T. Davies. In a valiant attempt to earn her fee, my therapist pointed out that all parents are addicted to the warm fuzzy feelings they get from their children and it's not just the 456 who would mainline a youngster if they could get away with it.

Ever since my show was cancelled I tell her new stories; we talk about demon possession and alien abduction and different theories of time and space travel. She now knows the plot to China Mieville's The City&The City and we both wonder what it is that makes me obsessed with being in two places at once, and things hidden inside other things, and worlds where death cannot reach us so easily. We talk about whether science fiction can reach larger audiences and why I only like serialized storytelling and whether or not Deadwood is as good as Shakespeare and if The Wire is the Crime and Punishment of my generation. We talk about fanboys and chatrooms and being loved and hated and cancelled and what that dream episode was really about and whether it's appropriate for a five year old to have a huge poster of a gun-toting Summer Glau in skin-tight leather pinned over his bed.

We wonder if my life writing Sci Fi TV isn't just a blatant land-grab for the undeclared territory that is my subconscious.

At least we would wonder that. But the bitch is out of town this week. So I guess it's just you and me.

Josh Friedman was the showrunner on Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Seriously, does Miles O'Keeffe look remarkably like Garret Dillahunt in that scene or what? Maybe it's just that they share the same wig. Possibly, the exact same wig. [IMDB]

Past Life, airing spring 2010 on Fox, seems to be trying to piggyback on the success of Medium, a show I haven't actually seen. You have a kind of procedural crime-solving aspect to each episode, but there's also a spooky supernatural aspect. And it's all sprinkled with a dash of personal growth. It's very loosely based on an M.J. Rose novel called The Reincarnationist, but I don't think much beyond the idea of reincarnation got carried over.

Fox kindly sent us a DVD of this pilot, and it's got the same rough edges as a lot of other pilots. It's also saddled with the task of selling you on one of the oddest premises I've seen in quite some time. In a nutshell, Dr. Kate McGinn is a psychologist who works at New York City's Talmadge Center For Behavior Health, which is dedicated to studying "the human soul." McGinn specializes in "regression therapy," helping people to confront the stuff that happened in their previous lives which may be affecting them today. McGinn is almost paranormally sunny and cheery, except when she's comforting someone who's grappling with having been murdered.

And because (I guess) these cases often involve ferreting out the details of exactly what happened the last time around, the Talmadge Center hires a detective, Price Whatley, to help McGinn out. Whatley is the Scully to her Mulder — he doesn't believe in all this past life nonsense, but he needs the money since he lost his job at the NYPD. But Whatley harbors a secret pain having to do with his dead wife — and you won't be too shocked to hear that he's secretly hoping all this reincarnation nonsense will lead to some sort of reunion. (I'm picturing Whatley eventually having a very serious relationship processing conversation with a one-year-old, which is how old his reincarnated wife would be now.)

The Talmadge Center, incidentally, is quite swanky, and seems to be able to afford to keep Kate McGinn in classy therapist outfits. The clients we meet in the pilot, whose 14-year-old son is having weird murder-esque flashbacks, seem extremely well heeled. So I'm guessing we're mostly going to be concerning ourselves with the previous lives of the wealthy and troubled here. Besides Kate and Whatley, the Talmadge Center is also home to Dr. Malachi Talmadge, who stands around looking worried and occasionally butts heads with Whatley. And then there's Rishi Karna, the hard-working research assistant who barely pops up in the pilot.

I'm just going to pause here and wonder whose idea it was to call our tough-guy detective character "Price Whatley."

So I'm guessing that not every episode of this show will involve murder, per se. You could have a character who got mugged during the 1920s, and never got over it, and now is still pissed about it thirty years into a new incarnation. Presumably, there has to be some kind of crime every week, though, or Price Whatley won't have much to do.

Judging from the pilot, there'll be two tracks to every episode: the therapeutic track, in which the reincarnated person works through all of their issues under the sympathetic, tight-lipped smile of Kate McGinn. And then the mystery track, where Price Whatley searches through old case files and says things like, "I know it sounds crazy, but I really think we're on to something here." (That's not a quote from the pilot. That's just the sort of thing I can imagine Price Whatley saying.) Price Whatley, of course, is on the outs with his former superiors, but there are still some cops who owe favors to him and will let him research old unsolved crimes on the sly.

And then, at the end of every episode, the two tracks will converge somehow, as the tormented reincarnatee finally discovers the truth of what happened and gets some closure. And Whatley gets his man, or woman, or whatever. A crime is solved, a soul is healed, and the cycle of suffering turns a bit slower. Or something.

If you're thinking "This doesn't sound like my cup of tea," then it's probably not. I went into the pilot feeling somewhat apprehensive, and nothing about it was quite able to change my mind — although there was nothing wrong with any of it. The main thing that jumped out at me, honestly, was that Price Whatley should be a laughing stock. He's a former cop who now runs around chasing leads that come out of vague past-life visions from people who seem a bit mental. Nobody should be taking Whatley seriously at all, and yet somehow he manages to fulfill the same role as every detective on every procedural show ever. And the show invests a lot of energy in showing how professional and serious Kate McGinn and the rest of the Talmadge team are, with their jargon about regression therapy and their great resources.

So why do I feel as though this is some kind of watershed for genre television? Maybe because it feels like an uneasy fusion of a few different genres, into something that I'm not sure is ever going to be as thought-provoking as other Fox shows like Fringe or Dollhouse (or the late lamented Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) Rather than boldly venturing into speculative territory, this show reflects the gathering consensus that any speculative themes must be subtle, vague, and swaddled in formula.

So you have the "team of experts" model of detective show, not unlike Bones or CSI. (Except that instead of having a laboratory, these people have a therapist's office.) You have the therapeutic, personal-growth type show, where every week someone is going to get past his/her trauma. And then you have the one strand of actual speculative fiction, the past life regression, which doesn't look like it's ever going to evolve into a mythos or ask deeper questions. It's just going to be the McGuffin — and it's going to allow us to have spooky J-horror-esque blurry flashbacks to something vague and terrifying happening in the 1960s or 1970s, which get slightly more detailed every time we see them throughout the episode.

It's a perfectly solid show, and a nice enough cast, but the genre element feels like weak tea. And I'm really not sure how the reincarnation-of-the-week format will pan out week in, week out. It seems like it could suffer from the same problems as Tru Calling, only worse. Still, I have a feeling this show could be a humongous mega-hit, and further drive genre television in the direction of being somewhat apologetic, and vaguely detective-oriented.

Eureka and Degree Antiperspirant

What is it? In almost every episode of this Syfy Channel show, Degree Antiperspirant makes its presence known. In most, it's just someone using the product in the line of duty. But in one case, Degree sponsors a consumer products lab, which features prominently in this mock commercial for a new type of Degree antiperspirant.

Does it fit the story? Sure. In this case, it's a story about products, so it makes sense to showcase these products. And a commercial products lab sponsored by a company also fits reality.

Would people buy it? Not sure. It's a fictional product, but watchers of Eureka are probably also antiperspirant buyers. So audience members probably will buy Degree products.

Does it still exist? Well, the fictional product never existed. But the company still exists.

Knight Rider and Ford

What is it? In the revived 2008 Knight Rider series, the semi-sentient car, KITT, is a Ford Mustang. But it is also equipped with the ability to transform into other forms, coincidentally a variety of Ford models. In this clip, which prominently features the Ford logo, KITT transforms from a Mustang into a Ford F-150.

Does it fit the story? Sometimes. It makes sense that a sophisticated future-car would have some transformation abilities. But it's hard to believe that the optimum form for KITT would happen to be another Ford model in every single case.

Would people buy it? Maybe the F-150, but only a precious few are likely to buy the Mustang featured in the show.

Does it still exist? Yes. Most of the models shown are currently available, including KITT's normal form, the Ford Shelby GT500KR Mustang. But the show also acts as a general ad for the Ford motor company, which still exists.

Star Trek and Nokia / Budweiser

What is it? In the latest Star Trek movie, at one point, a stolen car is equipped with a car phone that plays the classic Nokia ring tone. Later, in a bar, a Starfleet cadet orders a "Bud Classic," a future Budweiser product.

Does it fit the story? No. This kind of product placement is supposed to reinforce the connection between the world we are seeing and the real world. But in these cases, I found myself pulled out of the movie, distracted by these products. In an otherwise entirely immersive film, these examples did more to hinder than help.

Would people buy it? Maybe. People will still buy Bud. And Nokia did more Star Trek tie-ins off screen as well, so that might boost sales. That is, if there's no backlash against sloppy product integration.

Does it still exist? Certainly, no one is buying car phones anymore, but integrated dashboard phone interfaces aren't entirely gone. And "Bud Classic" doesn't exist. But both companies are still doing all right.

Transformers and Chevy

What is it? In the first Transformers movie, Michael Bay showed off a variety of GM cars. In the new movie, he's apparently teamed up with Chevy to showcase their newest cars. This commercial is actually edited by Bay to tie in with the movie, since the movie will be the first look at some of Chevy's upcoming offerings.

Does it fit the story? Yes and no. Sure, there have to be cars. It's a Transformers movie. But I suppose the logos don't have to be so prominently displayed.

Would people buy it? Sure. There's some excitement over these models, which might indicate some future sales. Time will tell if the Transformers stigma hurts this at all.

Does it still exist? Yes. The Chevy Volt is an electric car supposed to be essentially getting its debut in this movie. Some of these models come out next year.

Smallville and Stride Gum

What is it? Smallville resident Pete Ross gains super powers from chewing kryptonite infused Stride gum. It's true. He gains stretchy powers from the altered gum, found at a One Republic concert in an abandoned Stride factory.

Does it fit the story? Yes. It's goofy, but not because of the Stride gum. Though apparently the writers of Smallville developed the plot point about gum in conjunction with Stride. Maybe not a perfect fit...

Would people buy it? Sure. Stride gum is a popular gum, and I don't think there's gonna be any real fear of actual Kryptonite-infused gum leaking into the market.

Does it still exist? Yes. Stride gum not only still exists, but it's branching out in its product placement, even sponsoring internet videos.

Wall-E and Mac

What is it? While it might just be an inside joke and not a product placement, Wall-e is filled with little Mac nods, including a post-apocalyptic theater constructed from an iPod and Wall-e making the Mac start up sound when he recharges, as in this clip.

Does it fit the story? Sure. The iPod theater certainly does, since it wouldn't surprise me if a cleanup robot stumbled on a few still-operable iPod video screens. But the Mac sound for Wall-E's start-up makes less sense... We can chalk that one up to inside joke.

Will people buy it? No. This model of iPod video doesn't exist anymore. And people don't buy Macs for the start up sound. It's certainly a nice shout-out, but it's probably not an effective ad.

Does it still exist? Not the iPod video. And Wall-e never really existed as a product. Mac as a company certainly still exists.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dodge

What is it? Parts of this episode of the Sarah Connor Chronicles felt more like a commercial for the Dodge Ram than an episode of a science fiction television show. Montages showcased all of the features of the new Dodge Ram model, and the car helps our heroes on their fight against robot oppression.

Does it fit the story? Not exactly. The car does, but the sequences featuring the car really draw the viewer out of the story.

Will people buy it? Sure. The car does its part in the resistance, and it seems to run well and be well featured in the show. Anyone on the run from robot assassins will be convinced that this is the car for them.

Does it still exist? Yes. But not The Sarah Connor Chronicles. That show's run is over, sadly.

BAG will be playing the role of Metallo, the cyborg villain with the heart of Kryptonite — and yes, people have already noted the irony that he's gone from fighting cyborgs to becoming one himself. He'll appear in at least the first two episodes of the season. The show still hasn't cast the long-awaited General Zod, which may mean Metallo has a bigger role than Zod, or just that Metallo shows up first, as a sort of evil appetizer.

(Insert all-purpose rant about the unfairness of this show being on the air, in its 500th season, when T:SCC was cut off in its prime.)

In any case, with Derek Reese on board, Smallville is starting to sound a little intriguing for the first time in ages. Here's hoping BAG gets to bring half the tortured intensity to Metallo that he put into Derek.

In other news, EW is reporting that this next season really may be Smallville's last, and the CW is talking about creating a spin-off for the show, as a way of extending it. (The same reasoning, I guess, which gave us that abortive "Dick Grayson before he was Robin" show.) Who do you think could support a spin-off? The show's version of the Justice League? Green Arrow/Oliver Queen? Or maybe Kara? Or some new character?

[TV Guide and EW]

Whedon tells EW that he pounced on Glau even before Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was officially canceled:

If anybody thinks [bringing Summer onto Dollhouse] hasn't occurred to me already then they have not met me. I mentioned it to her before [SCC] was canceled. I was like, 'You know, we should get you in the 'house.' But first we have to come up with something that works.

But Whedon cautions that Glau won't be playing a mind-wiped Doll, because she's already played that type of role too often in the past. (Including in his own Firefly.) Instead, Whedon would rather cast Glau as something totally different — like "somebody who talks too much." Whedon likes to take people who are "good and comfortable" at playing one thing, and then he makes them play something totally different. And Glau has told Whedon she'd like to play a normal person before she dies of old age.

So who could Glau be playing in Dollhouse? It's not a show that has too many parts for normal people — unless she plays a client who hires Echo or one of the other Dolls for some reason. (Possibly a wealthy lady with a scar fetish, who has a torrid weekend with Victor?)

But honestly, I can think of a couple other roles it would be fun to see Glau play: Maybe she could be the FBI agent assigned to take over Paul Ballard's stillborn investigation of the Dollhouse? (Or an NSA agent picking up where Mr. Dominick left off?) But even better, maybe Glau could play a steely corporate shark from the Rossum Corp., the shadowy corporation whose research the Dollhouse funds? You just know we're going to be meeting some more Rossum Corp. people in season two, and I can't imagine anyone I'd rather see doing corporate evil than Ms. Glau.

What do you think?

Friedman has already said he won't talk about what would have happened in a possible third season of T:SCC, because he wants audiences to imagine their own continuations, based on what they saw. But I did want to ask him a bit about that ending. Here's our conversation.

There's been a lot of talk about moving Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to Syfy, or putting out direct-to-DVD movies. How realistic is that talk, and is there anything fans can do to make it more realistic?

I know there's been a lot of talk online about moving the show elsewhere but I've said before and I still believe that the show is over. I don't own it, control it, or have any pull with those who do. James Middleton and I had conversations a while back to do our homework in the case of cancellation and didn't find anyone receptive to moving it. There has to be a motivated buyer or seller to make it work and currently we don't have either one.

I felt like it was pretty clear the end of season two was a cliffhanger, with John in the future, but a lot of people seem to feel like it was an ending — that this is how John becomes the Resistance leader he's meant to be. Did you intend for it to feel that final, or were you definitely thinking of it as a cliffhanger?

I think the finale can be looked at both as an end and also as a springboard to a new part of the story—that's what I intended, at least. I wanted to bring an end to many of the questions that I'd raised in the episodes previous but it's dramatically unsound to try and create a rogue's gallery of scenes just to check off every narrative box. I knew there was a chance we were being cancelled but I also needed to let the network see where we could take the story if given the chance. So I tried to close one door while opening another. There's obviously different opinions as to how successful I was hitting that target. But I'm very proud of the episode.

Do you think there's any truth to the idea that in the middle of an economic collapse, people are more interested in upbeat, optimistic stories, and post-apocalyptic tales of destruction and despair are a harder sell?

Do people want more upbeat stories during trying times? I don't know. I think people want more upbeat stories all the time. Sarah Connor's a difficult woman to have in your living room on a weekly basis. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't be there or we shouldn't be trying to tell challenging stories. Episodic television conditions the viewer to expect resolution. You become addicted to knowing the end without paying the price for knowing it. It's death without the pain of dying, dramatic immortality, really. And that's very comforting to people.

I prefer to watch characters try and fail and try again and sort of succeed a little and maybe fuck up again. That's what I want to see. Flawed people trying to figure their shit out. Because that's me. We're not perfect parents or lovers or friends. We're not heroes. But we can do heroic things once in a while, sometimes even on purpose. So TSCC is a sloppy mix of hope and despair and that suits some people just fine and others don't have a taste for it. I've made peace with that. I'm not particularly interested in giving the world a xanax and telling them it's gonna be all right. It's usually not all right. And I don't want someone showing me what it's like to be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm probably not gonna be awesome in the face of hard times. I'm gonna be scared and mediocre and I don't need to feel worse that I'm not awesome. I want to know that scared and mediocre is a reasonable response to hard times and not something to be ashamed of.

But my show got cancelled. So what do I know.

Oh, and this rant has spoilers, although I'll try to keep the Terminator Salvation spoilers as vague as possible. If you haven't watched all of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and want to stay unspoiled, now's a good time to stop reading.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles had an admittedly uneven run over one and a half seasons, but its last six episodes were among the strongest hours of television I've ever watched. The show ended so strongly, it elevated everything that had come before. Most of all, T:SCC made a powerful argument that after 25 years, Terminator still had plenty of compelling stories to tell, and fascinating places to go. It might have been based on a couple of chase movies about time traveling killer robots, but T:SCC crafted a narrative that's stuck in my head since the show ended.

By contrast, Terminator Salvation was making a strong statement that the Terminator franchise is played out, and there are no new stories to tell about it. You can have more killer robots, and bigger killer robots — much, much bigger killer robots, in fact — but you can't really tell a different story, or reveal more about why John Connor is the chosen leader of the Resistance and what those killer robots are really about.

But I'm not going to spend a lot of time trashing T4 — I've already done that plenty, and it only makes me feel depressed. Instead, here are some reasons why I miss Sarah Connor Chronicles more than ever, after watching Terminator Salvation.

First of all, I missed Sarah Connor Chronicles' smart portrayal of artificial intelligence, and whether a machine that passes the Turing Test is actually human, or something different. The basic premise of Terminator, after all, is that Skynet has to create robots that can pass for human, so that they can infiltrate the Resistance and kill targets like Sarah and John Connor. But because the robots are sophisticated enough to pass for human, they're also capable of learning and taking on some human characteristics — and Terminator 2 delves into this, as John Connor changes the T-800's chip from read-only to writeable, so the T-800 can start learning to be "less of a dork."

In Sarah Connor Chronicles, we drill down into this idea a lot more deeply, as Summer Glau's Terminator, Cameron, tries to learn to imitate a human as John Connor's bodyguard — and becomes a bit of a seductress, experimenting with nail polish and kicky leopard-print tops... and even trying to seduce John Connor on a couple occasions. The scene in the final episode, where she gets John Connor to lay on top of her, so he can help her open up her insides and do a self-test, is incredibly creepy and sexual and mindblowing. And then there's John Henry, the baby A.I. that's learning by leaps and bounds, becoming obsessed with Bionicles action figures and then learning to play Dungeons and Dragons. In the season finale, John Henry escapes to the future, after Skynet apparently tries to destroy him. I would have loved to see the childlike John Henry wandering around the post-apocalyptic landscape, surveying his "brother's" handiwork and taking in all the scope of human suffering for the first time.

Even more than asking if a robot could be human, or if a person with metal parts could still be human, Sarah Connor Chronicles had the guts to ask other questions, like whether machines that could pass for human might still have their own type of intelligence. Their own kinds of emotions, and even their own kinds of secrets.

I also miss Sarah Connor's take on the future apocalypse. It's a war, but it's also an organized atrocity and a descent into hell. The show didn't have the budget to show us endless scenes of people blowing up machines, so instead it creeped us out with tons of images of torture and weirdness, including the house where everyone was dragged, one by one, into the basement with the weird piano music. Or the weird tortures Charlie Fischer imposed on Derek Reese, or the torments that Cameron committed against the human she was based on, Alison from Palmdale.

Whenever we meet someone from the future, they always seem haunted — almost literally — by horrendous spectres. I just rewatched "Ourselves Alone," the final episode featuring Riley, the girl from the future, and there's a great bit where she picks up a tube of floor-bleach and stares at its warning label: "Deadly To Humans And Animals," and you can just tell she's thinking about mass-produced horrors and things that we've built but which then turn out to kill us. Most of all, Brian Austin Green is just haunting to watch as Derek Reese, John Connor's uncle from the future. He puts so much into every line of dialog, and every random facial expression, that he's like a big-budget splodefest by himself.

Which brings me to the third thing I really miss about Sarah Connor Chronicles: the performances. I came away from Terminator Salvation with a renewed appreciation for the deep characterization that T:SCC served up every week. Besides Green, Summer Glau and Garret Dillahunt managed to bring an amazing range of expression to their robotic characters, without ever becoming too human or leaving behind the original Schwarzenegger impassiveness. Lena Headey was utterly compulsive as the "is she really crazy," hard-assed, sarcastic Sarah Connor — rewatch her scenes when she's in jail and the FBI agent is baiting her, from the season finale: she's just totally in control of herself, and yet at the same time not at all in control of herself. She doesn't give the predatory FBI agent the slightest opening, even as she's revealing all sorts of flashes of vulnerability and humor and doubt to us, the viewers. Even Thomas Dekker's John Connor, who took a long time to grow on me, was selling me on his future-resistance-leader persona by the end.

These were real, complicated, messed up people, making mistakes but also being brave and generous, in the face of the probably inevitable end of the world. You couldn't help but root for them.

And then the last thing I find myself missing a lot about Sarah Connor Chronicles is the complexity. The show kept the basic Skynet=evil premise, but added a million grey areas and crazy twists on top of that. You had the other faction of A.I.s, represented by Shirley Manson's Catherine Weaver, who seemed to be at odds with Skynet, or at least to have their own agenda. You had the whole quesion of whether the future version of John Connor has become too dependent on machines to do his fighting for him, and whether he's been compromised as a result. (Or whether Connor is really even Connor any more.) You also had the constant question of how far our heroes will go to win — will they kill other humans? Will they betray people? How machine-like will the resistance against the machines become?

Terminator Salvation was never going to be as deep as the television series: that's just the nature of a movie. Movies get two hours, give or take, to pose a single scenario and play it out, with a definite ending. At the same time, Terminator 2 managed to take the premise of the first movie and expand it outwards, like an aerial camera panning back, to show us the bigger picture. It took us inside the head of the Terminator and also explained more about how Skynet came about and why it ends everything. And it got a lot deeper into the character of Sarah Connor and her relationship with her son. So it's definitely possible for a two-hour-ish movie to go to some interesting places.

Of the Terminator iterations that have come about since T2, only Sarah Connor Chronicles picked up the metal robotic gauntlet that T2 threw down, and ran with it. Only the television show justified its existence as a followup to that classic sequel, by taking its ideas further and delving deeper into its world. If, as seems pretty likely, the Terminator franchise goes back into deep freeze for a long time until we get some new remake or reboot a dozen years from now, the only thing I'll miss is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

So in case you've been living in a bunker, waiting for the nuclear bombardment to begin, the Terminator franchise is about a super-computer named Skynet, which decides to eliminate the threat of humanity with yummy, cleansing nuclear fire. But a few humans survive, and they fight back against Skynet's robotic rule over the planet. The humans' leader is John Connor, a badass resistance fighter. Skynet discovers time travel and sends robots back in time to kill John Connor's mother, Sarah, before he can be born, and later to kill the young John Connor. But Skynet's time-traveling robots always fail, and John Connor lives to fight the robots in the future. Okay? Okay. Also, the person who gets sent back in time to protect the young Sarah Connor is Kyle Reese, who becomes John Connor's father.

To get ramped up for Terminator Salvation, you can read all about the making of the film. You can look at some fantastic concept art here and here and here. And you can read about the construction of the Hydrobots, the underwater Terminators. You can watch some clips. You can even read a synopsis.

But if you really want to go deeper into the whys — and more importantly, the whens — of the Terminator universe, you can read our obsessive-compulsive effort to catalog every timeline in the movies and the television show. Every time someone travels through time, you get a different version of reality. (And the future in Terminator Salvation is the product of many, many trips through time, as John Connor says in the trailers: "This isn't the future my mother warned me about." Too bad that scene doesn't appear in the movie.) If our own timeline catalog wasn't OCD enough, you can also admire one fan's all-consuming whiteboard.

You can also read my essay about why this is the best year to be a Terminator fanatic, back when Terminator: The Sarah connor Chronicles was still on the air and I was still pumped for Terminator Salvation. Ah, those giddy, innocent days back in April.

And then you can read our review of Terminator Salvation, which talks about how it all goes south.

So after you see Terminator Salvation, you may wonder what the heck happened to make this movie such a mess. Our past coverage provides some clues: for one thing, Christian Bale explains that John Connor only had a small role in the film, until he put his foot down — and you can see in the film how Connor's storyline doesn't really warrant quite so much screen time. Moon Bloodgood talks about a key scene between herself and star Sam Worthington, which had to be hacked up because she showed her breasts in it. (You can tell — it's raining, and then suddenly, it's not.) The whole film leads up to a dark, super-weird ending, which McG explains here — and which had to be scrapped after it was leaked online.

And then, once you're fully briefed on Terminator Salvation, you can look back and read up on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the show that brought a level of psychological intensity and thought-provoking storytelling to the franchise that we'll probably never see again. Here's our complete primer on the show, written before the final episode but still pretty helpful. Want to know more about the philosophy behind the show? We interviewed creator Josh Friedman twice, here and here. And here's our chat with Shirley Manson and Summer Glau about playing killer robots, from Wondercon.

As Graeme predicted on Saturday, Dollhouse will be returning in the 9 PM Friday timeslot. But this time around, it'll have two half-hour sitcoms leading into it: Brothers and 'Til Death. So if Dollhouse did badly when paired with another science fiction show, how well is it going to do with two sitcoms before it?

There is one patch of good news, however: fansite Dollverse says that Fox will air the fabled thirteenth episode of the show's first season sometime this summer. The network realized that the post-apocalyptic episode "Epitaph One" was going to start airing in other countries (including the U.K. and Sweden), so it would quickly wind up being pirated. So we may actually get to see it before it appears on the DVD box set at the end of July.

And meanwhile, Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly had this to say about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles at a press conference:

[Sarah Connor] has completed its run. I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show. It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]. We did see it tailing off a bit [in the ratings]. It had a nice creative core, but, ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that's it for [Sarah Connor]... We make no apologies. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried and thought it was time to move on.

As late as last night, people connected with the show were still insisting its cancellation was a rumor, and nothing official had been announced. Sadly, now it really does seem to be official. We're going to miss that show's robot-fueled existential dilemmas a lot.

End Of Show suggests that, even though TSCC has been cancelled by Fox, the show may have a future as a straight-to-DVD movie series. Admit it, you didn't see that coming... but their thinking is sound:

Warner Bros have been trying to move into the area of DVD first features for many years. DVD features have always been a tricky area - Hollywood has an atmosphere where nobody likes to feel they are slipping down the spectum, and DVD premieres still have a stigma in the industry ("Direct to video"). However, many companies believe significant revenue exists in this area, with companies such as Fox and Disney moving in.

Warner Bros itself has established an arm called "Warner Premiere", who look purely at DVD projects. If Warners fail to find a network to continue the show into a third season, it seems fans should look towards Warner Premiere... Warner's tried to resurrect oldtime geek series Babylon 5 in DVD format and failed. End Of Show believes there's another more deserving franchise around waiting to be tapped. That franchise has killer robots in it.

Pointing out that the Terminator brand alone - never mind cliffhanger ending to season 2 - should guarantee an audience for any potential DVD continuation, we have to admit to being on board with this alternative, in case Fox passes. We'd still rather have season 3, though.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles resurrection possible on DVD [End of Show]

In on ongoing efforts to remind FOX that the world loves Sarah Connor Chronicles, and doesn't want to see it terminated, we're joined by E! Online (whose readers voted it the show they most wanted to see renewed next year), CNN, Wired, and of course you, the human resistance.


It scares me a little that this fan is from renowned mega-physics research facility Fermilab (check out his lanyard), and also seems very serious about his Terminator makeover. Is he the guy who is actually building the Terminators?


This fan loves Sarah so much that she even willingly chose to buy a Verizon product. See how much we care about this show? Are you listening, FOX?


And not only did this fan choose show sponsor AT&T as his provider, but he actually got a Brian Austin Green haircut. Looks really good!

Make those FOX execs pay attention, and show them that you'll do anything - even buy products from their show sponsors (here's a list) - to keep this kickass show going. Sources tell us that Verizon was one of the biggest sponsors, so be sure to throw them a bone if you can.

Sarah Connor Made Me Do It via Flickr

We've started a Flickr group called "Sarah Connor Made Me Do It." Post pictures of yourself with products that sponsored Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles there, and we'll make sure the folks at Fox and Warner Bros. see it. (A semi-complete list of products that sponsored the show is here.) Update: Sources tell io9 the show's biggest sponsors were Chrysler Dodge Ram and Verizon Wireless.

Bonus points if you manage to look like a Terminator or a future Resistance fighter holding a Mountain Dew bottle or Dove Bar.

You can also buy some of these products and send them to Fox or Warners at the addresses here, with a note saying "Sarah Connor made me do it." And as always, if you do write to either studio, please make sure your post is respectful and non-psychotic. Do it for Sarah Connor!

Reuters reports that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is "all but gone" (although at this point, insiders are still insisting no decision has been made). Joss Whedon's Dollhouse apparently has a fifty-fifty chance of coming back. And Eleventh Hour, the bland weird-science procedural, is probably toast. Chuck, meanwhile, had a ratings uptick this past week, but is still in deep trouble — especially since NBC's police drama, Southland, is doing well. (And NBC won't have as many prime time slots next fall, when Jay Leno takes over the 10 PM slot every weekday.) The 2008-2009 season may stand out as the last time prime time television included a significant number of strong science fiction shows.

So it's great news that the Hollywood Reporter is reporting Flash Forward, based on Robert J. Sawyer's novel, is "a lock for a series order." In Flash Forward, an experiment involving the Large Hadron Collider gives everyone on Earth a two-minute glimpse of the future. But unlike the novel, in which everyone sees twenty years into the future, the show, produced by David S. Goyer and Brannon Braga, gives everyone a glimpse five months into the future. And at the end of each season, the show resets and people get another future-glimpse. The show stars Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, Sonya Walger and Jack Davenport.

Other pilots that are looking good for next fall, according to THR: the John Updike magic-fest Eastwick, the alien-invasion remake V, and Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas, in which a girl uses a magical atlas to discover an alternate world beneath our own. A show called Vampire Diaries is one of four pilots competing for six slots on the CW. To be honest, none of those shows sound as interesting as Flash Forward, or any number of recently canceled or "bubble" shows. They're also a lot more fantasy than science fiction.

And there's no mention whatsoever of Day One, the post-apocalyptic NBC show from Heroes' Jesse Alexander which supposedly filmed a pilot a while back. Also no mention of Boldly Going Nowhere, the science fiction comedy from the makers of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia which filmed a pilot last year — but since Fox already ordered five more episodes, that may be in the bag already. And, as you probably already knew, Ron D. Moore's big Fox pilot, Virtuality, is looking dead in the water.

One reason we might be seeing less science fiction on television for a while? Apparently the networks are tightening their belts in the wake of the econom-ick and the losses from the writers' strike. Shows have to be cheaply made, and filmed in Vancouver.

Whedon did a group interview last night as part of his Paley Fest appearance, and sounded as though he hasn't given up on a second season of his mind-wiped slaves-of-the-rich show:

The chances are] not very good but in limbo. Obviously our numbers are pretty soft, and there it is, but we live in hope. I'm really proud of the episodes that are coming out. More than that, I can't really ask.

He still holds out hope for renewal. Fingers crossed! (Although the ratings numbers, for both Dollhouse and Sarah Connor, do remain pretty discouraging.)

And Whedon explained how the show's post-apocalyptic thirteenth episode, which stars Felicia Day and won't air on Fox, came out. Apparently, both Whedon and Fox agreed that he had fulfilled their order for 13 episodes, counting the unaired pilot and 12 regular episodes. But Fox insisted that they needed a thirteenth episode for overseas distribution, or the season would seem too short. So Whedon said:

I'll tell you what. I'll shoot a post-apocalyptic thriller that's all on our sets in six days with a cast of four other people, then we'll pepper it with different bits from our regular cast, and we can do it all during the schedule. It'll cost you half. I can do this.' And I was so in love with the idea that I just came up with off the top of my head, and that's what it turned into. It's one of the best episodes we've ever made

And Day told Sci Fi Wire she plays "a post-apocalyptic fighter girl" and hinted the episode takes place on the Dollhouse's regular sets.

Meanwhile, Sarah Connor Chronicles writer Ashley Edward Miller Twittered that we shouldn't take Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello too seriously when he claims the show is already canceled, since he said the same thing before season two, and midway through season two:

Time for Ausiello's semi-annual SCC termination report. False again. (Remember "sets were destroyed" report? Now you know context, people).

(For the record, Sarah Connor Chronicles has no standing sets, as anybody who's watched the show can attest.) For his part, showrunner Josh Friedman settled for Twittering:

Waiting for Michael Ausiello to tell me what I'm supposed to do now with my career.

So what would happen if Sarah Connor Chronicles gets a third season? Actor Brian Austin Green spilled a few details to Comic Book Resources, and it sounds fantastic:

The third season is going to be incredible, if it happens. There were no intentions of this being a series finale. It was absolutely a season finale. There's a plan where this can go and it's so good....

You have this episode where John Connor travels to a future where John Connor never existed. I don't know if people completely get it because we work on a string theory, which we've dealt with during the season. We dealt with that with Jessie, in the future that she came from there was Charles Fisher, who tortured everyone. In the future I came from, he never existed. I don't remember him. We were still together within these parallel futures but they were still different and they still had their own paths. This is the same concept. For John Connor to travel to a future where he never existed, where Kyle Reese never left, where Derek and Kyle are still fighting side by side, where Allison (the human Cameron was based on) is still very much present, what becomes of John? What better situation for somebody to grow up in and become the future leader than that? Than to be fighting in what he's been trying to prevent? Not just being the top dog, being listened to for everything, but having to actually listen and follow.

And he clarified that, despite that crackle of lightning at the end, Sarah Connor did stay behind in the present. And John Connor himself may have sent Catherine Weaver back in time to create an alternative to Skynet. He also talks about Derek's undramatic death scene, and how the producers always planned to bring him back in the alternate future. It sounds like if we get a third Sarah Connor season, Derek will be back full time.

Last night, Sarah Connor was in jail, and an FBI agent tried various tactics to get her to collaborate in the search for John. And meanwhile, our sense that Cameron was hiding something spiked up massively. And John Henry, Catherine Weaver's baby A.I., started to act a lot weirder. It all culminated when Cameron bust Sarah Connor out of prison, and took her and John to Zeira Corp. There, a confrontation about Catherine Weaver's A.I. project got cut short when Skynet attacked. Then John Henry absconded with Cameron's chip, with John and Catherine Weaver in hot pursuit.

So I really liked the scenes between Sarah Connor and the FBI agent played by Josh Malina, where he's trying to get her to cooperate. I assume the stuff where he says "I believe you" is a ruse, but I'll never be sure - and that's really intriguing. I can only hope that his character recurs in season three, and we get to see whether he really believes her, and whether Cameron's unstoppable jail-break affected his opinion.

(And a few commenters pointed out that I forgot to mention the dangling plot line that Danny Dyson, son of Miles, has been missing for a few months. Working for Skynet?)

We got to see Sarah at her absolute best: stoic, resolute and yet compassionate. She was great, talking to the priest from the season opener, about how something wants to see the world burn. Her interplay with the FBI guy and Ellison is also really sharp, and she doesn't even flinch when Catherine Weaver tries to cut her down to size with that "I wasn't talking to you" thing.

I was also really glad that John tells her he loves her. I don't think we've heard him say that before, and it made me like John a lot better. Too bad he couldn't hear her say she loved him too.

Most of last night's mysteries involved Cameron, in one way or another. Most of all, she definitely seemed to know what Ellison was talking about when he delivered the message, "Will you join us?" But she didn't want John to know. (Did Future John even know about that submarine mission?) In any case, that message changes Cameron's priorities massively, from protecting John Connor to getting to ZeiraCorp. Rescuing Sarah Connor from the prison is just a means to convince John Connor to go to ZeiraCorp. with her, since Connor can get her inside.

(That sequence where Cameron cuts herself open and gets John to inspect her insides seems like she was testing her readiness for the jail and ZeiraCorp. missions. But maybe it was something else?)

And yes, it seems almost certain that Catherine Weaver was the liquid metal Terminator on board the submarine. Was she letting Cameron know she'd changed her mind? It seemed like it.

In any case, Cameron quickly defaulted to Plan B after hearing Ellison's message. And something to do with Plan B involved cutting her own head and letting John Henry take her chip. I've rewatched the last few minutes several times, and it seems like John Henry somehow "ports" himself to Cameron's chip and installs it in his "Beastwizard" body. And leaves Cameron either erased or inside his old hardware.

But this leaves me with several questions:

• You'd need a third pair of hands to complete that operation. John Henry can't place Cameron's chip inside Beastwizard's body without disconnecting himself from it first, right? So a third person would have needed to disconnect John Henry and install the chip, and then effect the transfer. Who was this? Murch?
• Murch's song and dance, earlier in the episode, about how changing just one little fan wire "tweaked" John Henry, seems significant. If he's so tied to that collection of hardware, then what's left of John Henry now that he's been ported? Is he even still John Henry any more? Can one Terminator chip really hold that sophisticated an A.I. anyway?
• On a related note, Cameron's speech about how her body and her software are designed for only one purpose - killing humans - seems eerily significant. Now that John Henry is fully installed in a body with such deep-rooted programming, who's to say some of it won't rub off?

Also, of course, John Henry's behavior in this episode definitely seemed "tweaked." What was up with him repeating everything Catherine Weaver says, and even speaking at the same time as her one time. "We'll see." It seems spooky, and not the same old childlike John Henry. On the other hand, I loved John Henry killing the Umber Hulk and learning to cheat at Dungeons And Dragons.

Another reason why John Henry might seem a bit tweaked: in this interview a couple months ago, Garret Dillhaunt talks about how John Henry eventually meets an A.I. as strong as himself (i.e., Skynet), and he gets attacked - and how that forces him to change the way he operates and reconsider his place in the world:

So why does John Henry feel the need to run to the future anyway? Isn't he a lot safer in that basement? True, a Skynet hunter/killer did attack, but it seemed to be under control. (Maybe.)

Meanwhile, Catherine Weaver is either very sincere about joining forces with John Connor at last, or pulling a very elaborate scam.

That ending all happened very suddenly, but it seemed like John Connor is determined to get Cameron's chip back because he has feelings for her after all. (Or because she's a vital strategic asset.) Weaver wants to go chasing after John Henry because he's her baby. So with hardly any discussion, they go whizzing off to the future together, leaving a dazed Sarah Connor and Ellison behind.

It's a future where Derek Reese hasn't traveled back in time, and is therefore alive. So is Kyle Reese, who also hasn't traveled back in time. And to complete the trifecta, Alison from Palmdale, the human whose body and memories were used to create Cameron, is there as well. None of them knows who John Connor is. It seems like, by jumping forward in time, John skipped over all the stuff where he grows up, goes through Judgment Day, steps up to lead the resistance, and helps them hold their own against Skynet. None of that has happened in this timeline, because John jumped forward.

So in a way, both John Connor and John Henry are stripped of their messianic trappings by being jumped forward. John Connor is just another punk kid in a resistance bunker, surrounded by people who are important to him but who suddenly don't want to live and die for him any more. As for John Henry? Wherever he is, he's just another Terminator now, in a future landscape full of Terminators.

It's a pretty poetic ending to the season, and leaves me dying to know what happens next. As the end to the series itself, though - it's almost unthinkable. Let's hope we get another year (or five) of this show. What did you guys think?

Oh, and meanwhile, they showed this preview of Terminator Salvation, which was almost entirely old footage. But there are a few new snippets here and there:

Star Trek:

Here are seven new pics, and a new Imax poster, for next month's space-operatic epic. [DVDForum via Slashfilm]

Terminator Salvation:

Here's a new poster, featuring the smushy heads of doom, plus another actiony poster. [Spike and Icon Vs. Icon]

Iron Man 2:

A new set video reveals that all the stars of this movie will be bipedal. Also, there's a glimpse of the movie's logo. [IESB]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine:

A few new TV spots give you the lowdown on the 10,000 mutants in the movie:

Dragonball Evolution:

The race Goku comes from, the Saiyans are evil - they come to a nice planet, kill all the intelligent life, and then sell it to the highest bidder, says James Marsters. And once again, Piccolo doesn't die in this film. Marsters is signed on for two more. [Sci Fi Wire]

Bulma's car is a yellow speedster with a black racing stripe, a Can-Am Spider, which appears in the early high-school sequences. Yamcha, the film's "Han Solo," drives a camouflaged big-wheeler based on the Hummer. Yamcha is a "hustler and a swindler," says actor Joon Park. Also, Goku and his love interest Chi Chi have a fight in the temple courtyard. And Piccolo travels to Earth using an alien Genesis Chamber, including a metal throne that Piccolo uses to control the Dragonballs.

In a crucial scene, Goku stands over the fallen body of one of his companions, and Piccolo gloats that he's won. Goku summons his last remaining strength and says, "My grandfather taught me the first rule is, there are no rules." Then he attacks Piccolo. [Comic Book Resources]

They Came From Upstairs:

A couple of stills from the Ashley Tisdale alien invasion movie. [Rope Of Silicon]

Doctor Who:

David Tennant explains what to expect from Saturday's new episode, "Planet Of The Dead." Michelle Ryan "in a catsuit" steals something important. She jumps on a double-decker London bus to escape, and winds up falling through a wormhole in time and space to another planet. There, she and the Doctor are attacked by the red, flying Swarm, plus the alien Tritovores. Plus something sinister is happening back on Earth. The Doctor can't get back home, because he's trapped like everyone else. But "luckily we manage to communicate through the worm hole because we doctor a mobile phone." The episode is mostly light but with some dark moments, and at the end there's a hint that things are about to get much darker. This is the last time the Tenth Doctor gets to have fun. [BBC]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

Here are two clips from tonight's season finale - which we still hope won't be a series finale. No fate but what we make! [Fox]

Dollhouse:

Here are some photos from episode 11, "Briar Rose." And do you notice a familiar face? Apparently Alan Tudyk plays "Stephen Kepler, the agoraphobic designer of the Dollhouse," who helps Paul Ballard with his investigation. (Remember, we were told we'd meet Alpha before we knew it was Alpha.) Meanwhile, Echo helps a young girl come to terms with her traumatic past. And Boyd protects the Dollhouse from an intruder. [SpoilerTV]

V:

ABC released a synopsis for its new reboot of the stealth alien invasion show:

Today, the world woke up to find spaceships over every major city. The Visitors claim to have come in peace, bringing gifts of medical miracles and technological breakthroughs. They promise to do no harm. They're lying. Most people believe the aliens have arrived just when we needed them most. We're eager to embrace their generous offers of help, but while tracking a terrorist cell, Homeland Security agent Erica Evans stumbles upon something far more sinister. When her partner tries to kill her, Erica discovers that the aliens have plans to infiltrate our governments and businesses, planting seeds for their plot to control mankind. Convincing anyone of the truth will be impossible because the Visitors have two powerful weapons. First, they've given the people faith with their reassuring presence and gifts. Second, they've rallied our youth. Thousands of teens, including Erica's son, have been recruited as 'Peace Ambassadors' but they're actually serving as unwitting spies. Erica's violent introduction to the truth thrusts her into the resistance movement, where she joins forces with Ryan, a rogue alien driven to save humanity. She'll have to balance her covert activities with her job, and her role as a mother, fighting to protect her son Tyler even as he joins forces with the enemy.

[Visitorsite]

Lost:

The producers answer some questions in their official podcast. Desmond's wound really is serious, and his life may be in danger. We'll learn more about the ramifications of John Locke's shocking resurrection. Next week's outing, "Some Like It Hoth," gives a sense of comedy to the show. And after that, it's a non-stop rollercoaster of events. [SpoilersLost]

Will Kate and Sawyer really get back together in season six? Here's an utterly baffling response from E! Online:

Ummm...not to spoil everybody for everything ever, but based on reading Harry Potter up through Half-Blood Prince, I can reliably tell you that Ron and Hermione get together in Deathly Hallows. Either that or everybody dies, but Hermione-Draco? Not ever gonna be canon.

(Who's Draco in this example? Juliet?) Meanwhile, next week we'll learn why Miles was on the freighter, and also whether he's been on the island before. [E! Online]

Also in next week's episode, Naomi makes a return appearance, despite being dead. Apparently, it's a flashback, and she hangs out with Miles in it. [TV Guide]

Fringe:

Here's what happens in the last few episodes of the season. In "Midnight," someone is mutilating tons of bodies and draining all their spinal cord fluid out. Their investigation leads them to a scientist with possible ties to the ZFT bioterrorist cell, and then they're shocked to discover the identity and motive of the killer. The kills get more and more frequent, until our heroes take desperate measures to stop them.

In "The Road Not Taken," Olivia starts dreaming while wide awake, seeing stuff that's not there. Investigating the case of a woman who spontaneously combusted, Olivia decides to use her visions for clues. Meanwhile, Walter admits prior knowledge of the ZFT manifesto. And Peter's secret project is revealed, and turns out to be useful in solving the case.

And in the finale, "There's More Than One Of Everything," someone with close ties to Fringe Division is attacked, and David Robert Jones comes back. And then Walter disappears with no explanation. [SF Universe]

Supernatural:

An upcoming episode called "The Rapture" features a whole lot of Castiel, judging from these pics. [SF Universe]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles started out as a continuation of the first two Terminator movies, but it's developed into a complex story about divided loyalties and compromised humanity. Season one picked up after Terminator 2, with Sarah and John Connor on the run after destroying Cyberdyne Systems and (they thought) averting the robot apocalypse.

And then in season two, things got seriously twisted.

Here's everything you need to know about what's happened to our heroes, with some amazing BTS pics. If you want to see any of the recent episodes for yourself, they're all online at Fox On Demand. (Oh, and there are spoilers, up to and including last week's episode, "Adam Raised A Cain.")

Cameron, the teenage-girl Terminator:

Summer Glau (from Firefly) plays Cameron, a Terminator who comes back and saves John Connor from another Terminator. She whisks the Connors forward in time to 2007, and (apparently) helps them find Skynet.

But at the end of season one, she got caught in a car-bomb explosion, and the chip damage made her revert to her original programming: to kill John Connor. The Connors almost killed her - and when she was begging for her life, she told John she loved him. (Was she lying? We still don't know.)

John managed to repair her chip, but she's still shown signs of glitches since then. She's worried that she might go bad again, so she's planted a bomb in her own head, and given John the detonator on a chain around his neck. Meanwhile, Cameron has followed up her declaration of love by acting seductive around John, laying on a bed next to him at one point in a come-hither pose. When John had a girlfriend, Riley, Cameron saw her as a threat - and not just to John's safety.

At the same time, Cameron sometimes lies to John about what she gets up to when he's not around. In general, Cameron seems to have an agenda to make John more dependent on her. Which brings us to...

The U.S.S. Jimmy Carter:

The show recently had a two-part episode featuring a lot of scenes set on a nuclear submarine in the year 2029, or thereabouts. The doomed mission of the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter was like a microcosm of everything that may have gone wrong with John Connor in the future, thanks to his dependence on Cameron.

Instead of human resistance fighters being in charge of this mission, they were placed under the command of a Terminator, who'd been reprogrammed to fight on their side. According to Jesse Flores, who was "Captain Queeg's" second-in-command, that wasn't an unusual circumstance: John Connor has reprogrammed Terminators serving in every base, and sometimes they revert to their original programming with no warning. (Just like Cameron.)

None of the humans on the Jimmy Carter was privy to the nature of their mission, which was to collect a liquid metal Terminator from a seabase. The sub's Terminator captain's secrecy drove a wedge between the captain and the crew, and then their lethal cargo got loose and started killing people. In the end, Jesse had to dispose of her captain, and scuttle the submarine.

But before Jesse abandoned the sub, the liquid metal Terminator delivered a message for John Connor: The answer was no. What was the question? Apparently, Connor was seeking an alliance. Jesse tried to deliver this message, but she couldn't see John Connor face to face: she had to deliver it via his aide... Cameron, the same Terminator who follows Young John around.

So in a nutshell, in those episodes, we learned that the future version of John Connor is so dependent on machines that he's cut off from his human comrades. (We don't even know if Future John is still alive, or if the machines are just pretending he's the leader.) He's considering making an alliance with what appears to be a rogue faction of Terminators, against Skynet. So in a sense, the future Resistance is close to becoming a war between machines, not humans against machines. And it's all because John Connor spent his whole life depending on Terminators to protect him against Terminators. (First Arnie in T2, then Cameron.)

So Jesse decided to try and drive the young version of John Connor away from Cameron. She brought a cute blonde, Riley, back from the future, and sent Riley to seduce John. She became John's girlfriend, and then Jesse found ways to make Cameron see Riley as a security risk. Cameron was supposed to kill Riley, showing John that he couldn't trust his Terminator bodyguard. It didn't work - but even Cameron had killed his girlfriend, John admitted that he wouldn't have gotten rid of Cameron anyway. John's already resigned himself to the need to use machines to fight machines, however risky it may be.

Sarah Connor's Crazy Quest:

Sarah Connor agreed to jump forward from 1999 to 2007 because it was her best chance of stopping Skynet. But stopping Skynet has turned out to be a lot more complicated than it first appeared. The 1990s version of Skynet was a single project, developed by one company. The new iteration has many pieces, and at times it seems like artificial intelligence and super-weapons are being developed everywhere you look.

This target-rich, intel-poor environment has driven Sarah to paranoia and conspiracy-mindedness. Her best clues to Skynet's genesis came from a Resistance fighter from the future, who died in her garage - but first, he managed to scrawl a bunch of clues in his own blood. She chased down several of them, but the most mysterious remain three dots, in a triangle pattern. A dying attempt at pointilism, in the style of early Seurat? Or a symbol of Skynet's future?

The three dots led Sarah to a UFO conspiracy fair, where she met someone who used to work at a hidden factory - which turned out to be building prototype aerial Hunter-Killers, the VTOL assault vehicles Skynet uses to kill people in the future. That factory got destroyed, but at least two people escaped. One of them, George McCarthy, escaped with one of the prototype Hunter-Killers. The other, Ed Winston, kidnapped Sarah and drugged her, then implanted a GPS tracker into her breast.

Following that GPS tracker, some people (who are strongly hinted to be working for Skynet) attacked John Connor. Whoever sent those people then sent a Terminator to kill Savannah Weaver, the daughter of ZeiraCorp CEO Catherine Weaver. (It failed, but it did manage to kill Derek Reese, John Connor's uncle.)

The Toys In The Basement:

So who exactly is Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson)? She's a liquid metal Terminator, which killed the real Catherine Weaver and her husband a year ago, and took Catherine's place. (We don't know if she's the same liquid metal Terminator who wreaked havoc aboard that submarine.) Since then, she's been steering her company, ZeiraCorp., in a brave new direction... involving artificial intelligence.

Catherine Weaver paid someone to steal a super-advanced A.I., which the Connors had been tracking. This A.I. was special: it didn't always follow the rules laid out for it, and it sometimes told riddles. She gave it everything it needed to accelerate its development. And she recruited James Ellison (Richard T. Jones), a former FBI agent who'd been investigating Sarah Connor, to teach the A.I. right and wrong. Eventually, they hooked it up to the body of a defunct Terminator, so it could speak to people, and even play with action figures.

The A.I., now known as John Henry, formed a sort of friendship with Ellison, and also became close friends with Catherine Weaver's daughter Savannah. But even as he's been learning the value of human life, he's also been learning that sometimes you have to lie. And that sometimes people are expendable, for the greater good.

And then John Henry came under attack from another A.I., one with the same code base as his own. This "brother" A.I. launched a highly sophisticated worm that took over 75 percent of the world's computer systems, seeking John Henry. (It's implied, but not definite, that the other A.I. is the nascent version of Skynet.)

In the most recent episode, John Henry wonders if he and the other A.I. are acting out the story of Cain and Abel. Catherine Weaver replies that perhaps, in this version of the Cain/Abel story, John Henry is God.

There's A Showdown Coming:

I know exactly as much as you do about the season finale, but it's clear that a showdown is coming. Sarah and John Connor have just found out that ZeiraCorp's basement harbors a super-advanced artificial intelligence, hooked up to the body of a Terminator that they killed. (And Ellison lied to them about this, repeatedly.)

And now Sarah has just gotten arrested by the cops, on the suspicion that she was involved in the kidnapping of young Savannah. (And she's a wanted terrorist, from her days of destroying Cyberdyne Systems.) So John and Cameron are on their own, with the knowledge that one of their allies has been secretly working to develop an A.I. that sounds like Skynet.

Meanwhile, a confrontation between John Henry and his "brother" A.I. seems almost certain - although who knows if it'll happen tomorrow night?

Unanswered Questions:

Here are some of the questions that we hope tomorrow night's episode will answer, or at least provide some hints on:

• Why has Catherine Weaver been mothering a Skynet-esque A.I. anyway?
• And is she actually the liquid metal Terminator that Jesse met on that submarine?
• What is the meaning of those three dots?
• Is John Henry's "brother" really Skynet? If so, what part does John Henry play in the future?
• Did John really send Cameron back in time to protect himself? What's her real mission?
• How much does Ellison really know about what he's gotten himself into?
• Just how far will John Henry take this "human life is expendable" lesson he's learned?
• Who was behind the factory making those Hunter-Killers? And what happened to the prototype that George McCarthy took?
• Just how crazy is Sarah Connor anyway?

Many thanks to Fox/Warner Bros. for these behind-the-scenes pictures from the series.

Star Trek:

It really is true that Leonard Nimoy's role in this film is bigger than just a cameo. He's not like Brando in Superman either, he plays an active part in the storyline, according to Roberto Orci. [E! Online]

Meanwhile, a guy who saw the movie basically posted a synopsis on a forum. In a nutshell, the USS Kelvin is zooming along, around the time Kirk is born, and then Nero's ship appears from a singularity and blasts it. Kirk's dad takes command and saves the escaping crew, including his unborn son. Then Kirk's a young adult who gets in a fight in a bar. Pike tells him to join Starfleet, so he does. Three years later, Old Spock appears out of another singularity, and the Narada picks him up. Kirk is graduating, and cheats on the Kobayashi Maru. Suddenly, Vulcan is under attack.

A fleet assembles to defend Vulcan, and they all get wiped out, except for the USS Enterprise. Pike gets captured, Spock takes command, and the Enterprise flies at low warp. Nero's black hole weapon destroys Vulcan. Kirk is upset and wants to fight Nero, so he gets into a brawl with Spock. So Spock ditches him on a Vulcan moon. There, Kirk meets Old Spock, along with Scotty, and Old Spock tells him the future. They beam back aboard the Enterprise, and Kirk forces Young Spock out of command.

So Kirk rushes to confront Nero, who is trying to destroy Earth with his black hole weapon. Young Spock disables the weapon while Kirk fights Nero. Spock is on a collision course and about to be killed... but the Enterprise saves him at the last moment. Everyone cheers and the Enterprise goes to warp, as we hear the familiar "Space, the final frontier" bit. The end. Oh, and the guy felt it was too fast-paced and didn't have enough space battles, but he also admits he nitpicks every movie he sees. [Scifi Meshes]

Everybody gets a bit of a backstory in the new film: Bones is a fast friend of Kirk's who gets panicked when he comes on board the Enterprise. Uhura is a steadfast cadet. Spock chooses to serve in Starfleet after the Vulcan elders ridicule his human mother. Scotty is a genius who gets marooned on that Vulcan moon after he slights a superior officer. [News In Film]

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Here's a pretty nice promo pic of Ravage in action. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine:

IGN got to see 20 minutes of finished footage from the X-Men prequel (as opposed to the leaked, unfinished version.) There's a scene in the beginning where Young Logan is sick. Victor's dad, a mean drunk, shows up to beat on Logan's dad. A shot is heard, and Logan's dad lies dead on the floor. Logan's bone claws come out for the first time, and he stabs Victor's dad in the gut. Then Logan and Victor run away into the forest, where they decide to stick together no matter what. This leads into a war montage, followed by the two mutants facing a firing squad. Until Stryker offers them an alternative.

Then there's a sequence where the crack mutant squad goes through city slums to a fortified compound. Agent Zero takes out all the armed guards, and the Blob stops a tank by putting his arm into its cannon barrel. In the elevator going up to the bad guy's office, Deadpool jokes about the green light bringing out Stryker's eyes. And then Deadpool kills everyone except the bad guy, with a display of sword-fu.

Then there's a romantic cabin scene, where Silver Fox tells Wolverine a myth about "the spirit world, love and loss." (Wolverine gets his name from this scene.)

Then we see Wolverine getting his adamantium, as Stryker encourages him to "embrace the other side." Wolverine dies during the process, and Stryker waits anxiously for him to come back. "Come on, old friend," he whispers. Then Logan goes ballistic, jumping out of his tank and tearing the place apart. A bullet to his head reveals his new adamantium skull. He slices an "X" in the door, escapes, and jumps naked into a waterfall.

Then there's an old couple who bring Wolverine sandwiches and a nice jacket. Suddenly, tragedy strikes, meaning Wolverine has to do some totally awesome motorcycle stunts with a helicopter. [IGN]

Doctor Who:

The official BBC website posted a smidgen of script from Saturday's episode:

CHRISTINA: Then we need to apply ourselves to the problem with discipline! Which starts with appointing a leader.

THE DOCTOR: Yes, at last, thank you, so...

CHRISTINA: Well, thank goodness you've got me!
(calls out)
Everyone! Do exactly as I say! Inside the bus immediately!

[Planet Gallifrey]

And apparently November's special episode will be called "The Waters Of Mars." [Den Of Geek]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

The show's official blog spilled some deets about tomorrow night's episode. There are not one, but two cyborg-on-cyborg smackdowns. Mr. Murch is back, with some fun interaction with John Henry. Also, there's a special guest star, the West Wing's Josh Malina, who holds his own against Sarah Connor. Some other old favorites that we haven't seen in a while are back. There's a "shocking connection" to Kaliba, the company that was running that Hunter-Killer factory. And we see a new side to Cameron. And these words are uttered: "Something opposes God. Something tempts man into sin." [Fox]

Lost:

Here's how they're describing next week's episode to the British viewers:

After young Ben is reported missing from the infirmary, suspicion mounts among the Dharma Initiative that there are traitors in their midst and Sawyer's lies about the castaways look set to come undone.

Meanwhile, Miles is asked to deliver a package to a senior Dharma operative as flashbacks reveal how he came to be part of Widmore's operation to retrieve Ben from the island. But what is his connection to one of the most important figures in the Dharma Initiative?

What could it be? I can't guess. [SpoilersLost]

Fringe:

William Bell and Walter Bishop were like brothers, going through their Ivy League education together. And then life took them in different directions, either complimentary or not. And they have different approaches to the Pattern, and different ideas of what the Pattern is. The Pattern is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and what you think it is can become the reality. And Roberto Orci hints that one of these men sees the Pattern as saving the world, the other sees the Pattern destroying it. [E! Online]

Warehouse 13:

We've got our first hint at an antagonist for this Syfy summer series about two Secret Service agents who get assigned to work at a warehouse where every mystical or other-worldly item gets stored. Alison Scagliotti (the "smart and sassy girlfriend" from the Nickelodeon show Josh & Drake) will play

Claudia Donovan, a young, hip, brilliant techno-wiz, who manages to successfully breach the Warehouse's complex security system in order to track down [the caretaker] Artie (Rubinek). With a natural aptitude for science and technology, Donovan's talents enable her to manipulate and activate many of the objects contained in the Warehouse to help the Team.

The reference to "helping the Team" makes me think she'll wind up joining our heroes. [The Futon Critic]

Heroes:

All ten original Heroes from season three will be back for the finale, says actor James Kyson Lee. Ando and Hiro are determined to take down the people behind Building 26, and they're going to combine their powers to do that. And we'll get a glimpse at volume five, tentatively called "Redemption." [E! Online]

And here are some pics from episode 3x24, "I Am Sylar". [The ODI]

And here's a sneak peek from Monday's new episode, "1961":

Reaper:

Tyler Labine talks:

A lot of sites have praised last Friday's episode as the best of the series, and proof that T:SCC is up there with the best genre TV shows. How much does that kind of critical buzz count with the network?

Obviously the critical praise doesn't hurt in our fight to get renewed - I do think there's a pride of ownership for networks as there would be for anyone - but ultimately it's almost always a numbers game. How those numbers are calculated these days is anyone's guess. When you're on the bubble (if I can be optimistic enough to say that) any little bit helps. The writers room voted "Adam Raised a Cain" as their second favorite episode of the year (the finale was voted #1 but that could have a lot to do with the fact that their boss had written it).

A lot of our readers have pointed out that the Zeira Corp. family are a mirror of the Connors: a son named John, a mother, an uncle and a sister. Was that something you guys planned consciously? If so, did a lot of thought go into it?

The Zeira Corp family was always intended as a mirror to the Connors and was constructed specifically as such. I think "Tower is Tall..." was where I first realized how much material there was to play with. Some of that was simply understanding that Mackenzie Smith was pretty awesome as Savannah and knowing that we could write to her and not away from her. Catherine Weaver was always supposed to mirror Sarah and before I knew who I was casting in the role I had imagined casting an actress who looked a lot like Lena. Obviously I went a different direction there. Ultimately Season Two is a story of these two families.

In "To The Lighthouse," Derek gets captured and nearly killed, and his death would have been Sarah's fault. He dies, not long afterwards, but it's entirely random. Did you guys ever consider having Derek die in "To The Lighthouse" as a result of Sarah's paranoia?

Asking whether I considered killing Derek in another manner or in another episode is somewhat unfair because at some time during the year everything is discussed. I was always determined Derek die in the manner in which we killed him. That was the biggest concern. How it related to Sarah's paranoia wasn't my first consideration.

Is it possible Derek had a bit of a death wish after finding out about his unborn child, on top of Jesse's betrayal?

I don't think Derek had a death wish. I think when you fight Terminators you eventually get killed.

Will we find out on Friday whether Catherine Weaver was the liquid metal Terminator who met Jesse on board the Jimmy Carter?

You'll find out a lot about Weaver in the finale but I won't say what. Ask me afterwards.

I'm fascinated by the irony that Catherine Weaver couldn't bond with Savannah because Catherine was a machine. But then Savannah found that kind of closeness with John Henry, who's also artificial. Is this because John Henry is more childlike and playful? Or because he's more a sophisticated A.I. and can pass the Turing test better?

I think John Henry isn't afraid to ask silly questions - which I consider the highest indication of sophisticated intelligence and is usually only found in children.

Is it really true that all the show's relgious themes come from actor Richard T. Jones talking to you about his own beliefs? Do you think it would have been possible to do an apocalyptic show without some religious talk?

The religious ideas in the show are not from RT. I got the idea to make his character religious because of who he was. I wanted to do a religious character who believed he was moral and a good man but also got twisted around in different ways. RT's personal beliefs dovetailed nicely with the religious nature of the Terminator mythos. We've probably hit it a little hard but I like it.

You've said a few times that this show isn't about robots trying to be human, but robots trying to be the best robots they can be. But lately we've seen all of the show's artificial characters struggling to emulate humanity. (John Henry with his ethics lessons, Catherine Weaver trying to be more of a mother, Cameron becoming a bit of a seductress.) Do you still believe it's about robots trying to be better robots? Is emulating humanity just one step on the path of robot self-improvement?

I don't think any of these AIs believe that becoming human is their ultimate goal. It's sort of like when I get asked all the time if I want to direct, as if that's how writers evolve, when really most of them direct because it makes their writing job more successful/satisfying. Emulating humanity is sort of the same thing for our AIs, especially Cameron and Weaver. It just helps them do their job better. I put John Henry in his own category because a) he doesn't know what he's there for so he wouldn't know how to accomplish it and b) he has to be more than human to achieve what he's designed for.

I think it's also important to look at the mirror to the AIs - our human characters - and ask whether or not it's important for them to become less human to accomplish their goals. An argument can be made that it is both necessary and also completely antithetical to their entire mission. I know a lot of people didn't like "Some Must Sleep..." but I really wanted to explore an idea specific to Sarah's struggle but also applicable to many in war - do you have to become a nightmare in order to survive a nightmare? The first VO is written from the victim's POV—the one suffering the nightmare of the old hag. The closing VO is written from the POV of the powerful being sitting astride the victim—"the bad bitch". Sarah has become animal—chewing herself out of her trap. It's one of the central concerns of the series: how does a mother (or anyone for that matter) hold onto her humanity when forced by circumstance to do inhuman things to survive?

On the one hand, television's Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has finally hit its stride, and it's asking similar questions about artificial intelligence and apocalypses as Battlestar Galactica or Twelve Monkeys. On the other, Terminator Salvation is looking like one of the summer's most interesting movies, with a plot about a man who discovers he's a cyborg.

These two versions of Terminator are utterly different from each other. They don't just contradict each other, they approach the basic premise of "killer cyborgs from the future" in wildly different ways. (Obviously, I haven't seen Terminator Salvation yet, so I'm going by the clips I've seen and my conversation with McG and some of the actors.) I can't remember a situation like this ever happening before: the Star Trek movies were on at the same time as TNG, DS9 and Voyager, but they were part of the same universe. Maybe the closest thing is The Dark Knight being in theaters the same year as Batman: The Brave And The Bold hit our television screens.

The difference is — apologies to Brave and Bold fans here — that both versions of Terminator seem ambitious. They're both trying to make a grander statement and create something better than disposable pop fluff.

If you've been watching Sarah Connor, you won't need to be told how ambitious that show is. It's like a sweeping novel, which delves intensely into the psyches of a half dozen or so characters. Every episode is full of introspection, but also little metaphors and artistic touches that reinforce the show's psychological investigation. Sarah Connor has grown into a fractured, paranoid, asskicking, reflective, complex character. Derek Reese's story arc, with his lost love from the future and all of his regrets, feels operatic. And then there's the great interplay between Ellison and John Henry. If the show has a weakness, it's that it's sometimes too ambitious and falls short of its aims. But even its harshest critics wouldn't accuse it of lacking ambition.

Meanwhile, I have no idea whether Terminator Salvation will be a great movie. But I do know that McG, and everyone else involved in making it, has been saying the right stuff about trying to create something more meaningful than just a summer splodebuster. McG's attempts to bring a new look to the series, with that "distressed" filmstock and a reliance, where possible, on practical effects by Stan Winston and company, seem like brave steps forward. Bringing on Jonathan Nolan to replace the Terminator 3 screenwriters also seems like a blessed relief. At the very least, it'll be miles better than T3 — the other day, someone asked McG about the humor in his film, and he said there isn't any. "There's not a great deal of humor and warmth in this world," he said. So no funny sunglasses, or "Talk to the hand."

But both continuations of James Cameron's vision are also asking very different questions: at its root, Sarah Connor Chronicles is about what it means to be human (in a similar way than BSG was), while Terminator Salvation will reportedly be all about how we view technology.

In T: SCC, our human characters struggle with the issue of fighting machines without losing their own humanity in the process. It's a constant question in the show: how far can you go before you lose what you're fighting to save? And at the same time, all of the show's artificial intelligences are probing the nature of humanity, and trying it on for size. Trying to understand what makes us humans tick (or stop ticking, if you apply enough pressure in the right spot.) You've got Cameron (Summer Glau) who's done ballet for no apparent reason other than enjoyment, who's tried to figure out how to become a better manipulator, and who's seemed to be practicing seduction on some occasions. You've got Catherine Weaver (Shirley Manson) who's struggling to pretend to be a good mother for the cameras. And then there's John Henry, who's literally getting schooled, not just in ethics, but in the nature and value of human life, by former FBI agent Ellison. Every week, the show opens up the question of human frailties, and human greatness, a little more.

Meanwhile, in every interview, McG hits the same notes about Terminator Salvation: it's about our relationship with high tech. We can now give people replacement hearts, replacement joints, replacement limbs, brain pacemakers, and so on. What does all this technology mean for our future, and can we trust it? (It seems like a good theme for a huge-budget movie that can afford to show lots and lots of shiny toys.) In the film, Marcus (Sam Worthington) thinks he's a human, until he realizes his own body is mostly made of metal. And then, in the movie's third act, John Connor has to decide whether to trust this apparently sympathetic cyborg, Marcus, with his life — and everything hinges on that question. Can we trust technology?

So in a sense, you could say Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Terminator Salvation are going in opposite directions with the same ideas. The good news is, they're both pretty exciting. And hey, did I mention there's a new T:SCC episode on tonight at 8? There is.

Oh, and as with last year, we decided not to stick any April Fools stuff in today's spoilers... and we did our best not to get taken in by any April Fools posts from other sites. Fingers crossed that we succeeded...

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

The two main characters of this sequel are Sam and Optimus Prime, who both go through similar character arcs about being away from home and learning to live on your own. And the "giantic" first bot we see is Wheelbot. Other Transformers in the movie include Jetfire, Arcee, Mudflap, Volt (the electric car), plus the Decepticons (Starscream, Soundwave and the Fallen) and the Constructicons (Demolishor, Hightower, Long Haul, MixMaster, Rampage and Scrapper.) There may or may not be an explanation in the film for why Arcee is a girl. [Sci Fi Wire]

Terminator Salvation:

A new extended trailer shown at Showest included a shot of either John Connor or Kyle Reese holding the iconic photo of Sarah Connor, from the first movie. [Slashfilm]

And here are four new photos, which look pretty fantastic. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles:

The first look at the penultimate episode of the season, airing Friday. Finally, the strands start to converge! [Fox and Sarah Connor Society]

Lost:

The scene where Sayid shoots Ben will have huge repercussions for the rest of the series, and will be one of the most talked about scenes, says actor Sterling Beaumon. He also claims that now the castaways can change history, because they're stuck in the past. So maybe the massacre will never happen. And "that big older mean Ben that we know very well may not even exist." But the other Ben, Michael Emerson, says it would be wrong to count Ben out, because Ben has a destiny. [TV Guide and TV Guide]

Also, Beaumon had two theories: that Ben and Locke are brothers, and that Miles is Marvin Candle's son. Producer Damon Lindelof told him one of those was true. (I'm pretty sure it's the one about Miles.) [Zap2It]

Ooh, and here are some clips from tonight's episode. Hurley's BTTF riff is amazing. But man, Jack is cold!

Whoever dies at the end of the season, we'll have a Charlie-level freak-out over it, and it'll cause tons of grief and remorse. [E! Online]

According to the spoiler-fiends at SpoilersLost, the "Watch With Kristin" Q&A also included a bit where they said the person who dies in the finale is the polar opposite of Charlie Pace in "at least one physical attribute." But for some reason, the E! Online folks deleted that question and answer after a while. (I never saw it, so I can't verify this.) [SpoilersLost]

Life On Mars:

We weren't the only ones to interview producers Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg. They dropped a few spoilers. In tonight's episode,

The jumping off point is that his mother and father come back into this episode in a big, big way. His mother comes to the station house and says that his father has reappeared and kidnapped a little boy. So, basically, Sam has to save himself, as it were. And it goes from there.

The episode involves a "major climax" to Sam and Annie's shared journey. Perhaps significantly, they say Lisa Bonet, who plays Sam's 2008 girlfriend, will not reappear. And they promise, once again, that tonight's episode will wrap everything up, with no ambiguity whatsoever. Everything's explained, even the "tiny robot." Oh, and once again, they say the ending will be nothing like the BBC version. [TV Guide and EW and Sci Fi Wire]

Fringe:

Speaking of answers, by the end of the first season, "various players' interests and allegiances, like William Bell-like his potential connections to our characters from before-all that will be more fleshed out and their place in the world more defined," says producer Roberto Orci. We'll get a "deeper context" on the Observer. We'll learn why Broyles requested Olivia be part of this unit. Weird science to watch out for in upcoming episodes includes subcutaneous tracking chips, chemtrails, invisibility cloaks, cloning, etc. [Sci Fi Wire]

Supernatural:

You'll be shocked — shocked! — to hear that those imdb spoilers were false. John Winchester does not appear this season, in the flesh or in the spirit. We will see a photo of him at some point though. Meanwhile, Castiel is definitely a season regular in season five, but we can't say the same for Ruby or Anna. And with a couple of deaths coming up in the season finale, neither of them is guaranteed to be safe. [E! Online]

Chuck:

The second season finale is "Chuck Vs. The Ring." [Chuck TV]

Heroes:

The producers answered more fan questions. Hiro's only power is freezing time. In episode 3x24, we'll learn more about how Janice really feels about Matt Parkman, and why she named her baby "Matt." Speaking of which, Baby Matt will get some great screen time, continuing into season four. He's the same Matthew as we saw in the episode "Five Years Gone." And in season four, we'll see Matt Sr. struggling to protect his "very powerful son."

And in next week's episode, 3x22, we'll see a huge Big Matt/Danko showdown that's cathartic for Big Matt. Also, there are hints that Sylar and Nathan will have some quality time together. We won't see Micah and Claire meet up this season, but Micah will meet up with someone in 3x24. [Comic Book Resources]

Star Trek: The New Frontier:

So the real synopsis for Peter David's next New Frontier book, Treason, finally came out. Unlike the weird leaked version we ran back in December, this time there's no mention of Captain Calhoun being stuck in Andromeda. Here's the official version:

It is a time of political upheaval and uncertainty in the New Thallonian Protectorate. Following the brutal assassination of her husband, Si Cwan, former Starfleet officer-turned-newly-appointed-Prime Minister Robin Lefler must now face the growing danger and intrigue surrounding her newborn son and heir to the noble line of Cwan. Following a harrowing assassination attempt, Robin has no choice but to flee New Thallon with her child...seeking refuge with Captain Mackenzie Calhoun and the crew of the U.S.S. Excalibur and creating a major diplomatic crisis in Sector 221-G.

The political fallout between the Federation and the New Thallonian Protectorate pales, however, in comparison to the threat of an enigmatic alien race determined to seize the infant Cwan for its own mysterious purposes. But nothing could possibly prepare Calhoun for the shocking betrayal from within — an act of treachery to aid and abet this alien race — forever altering the lives of the Excalibur crew....

I've read every single one of these books up to now, but I'm not sure I'm up for any more Thallonian intrigue. [Simon and Schuster via TrekWeb]

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

1) The original (?) timeline: Sarah Connor conceives John Connor with some random guy. (All we hear about him is that "He dies, even before the war." Presumably it's not Kyle Reese, since time-travel always seems to create an alternate timeline.) John Connor's resistance is on the verge of defeating Skynet in 2029. (Reese says, "The defensive grid was smashed. We'd taken the mainframes. We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence." Date of Judgment Day: August 29, 1997.

2) A T-800 and Kyle Reese both travel back in time from 2029. Kyle Reese fathers John Connor. Date of Judgment Day: still August 29, 1997.

3) A "scrubbed" T-800 and an "experimental prototype" T-1000 travel back from 2029 to 1995. Sarah Connor destroys Cyberdyne systems and apparently stops Skynet. (In a deleted scene from Terminator 2, we see that Sarah lived to an old age and John became a Senator.) But we learn in Terminator 3 that Judgment Day was only delayed, until July 24, 2004. According to T3, Sarah Connor dies of cancer in 1997. John Connor dies in 2032, at the hands of another T-800.

4) The T-800 which killed John Connor is "scrubbed" and sent back in time to protect him, and a T-X is sent back to kill him and his future lieutenants. What changes as a result of this time travel is unclear: the T-800 ensures John Connor and Kate Brewster survive Judgment Day, but they were presumably going to survive it anyway. John Connor now knows that this T-800 will kill him in 2032, meaning it probably won't. And the younger John Connor has now encountered a T-X. This timeline leads into Terminator Salvation.

5) Sarah Connor doesn't die of cancer in 1997. Instead, she's still alive in 1999, when a T-888 (Cromartie) comes back to kill John, and another one (Cameron) comes back to protect him. The Terminator known as Cameron jumps the Connors forward in time to 2007, and Cameron informs Sarah she would have died of cancer in 2005. Judgment Day: unknown, but later than 2010, because the Terminator known as Myron Stark is sent to kill the governor of California in 2010.

6) Derek Reese, brother of Kyle, travels back in time with a whole squad of resistance fighters. They seem to make a number of changes in the timeline, but most notably Derek kills Andy Goode, creator of an A.I. that might become Skynet. From the glimpses of Derek's version of 2029, Skynet may no longer be on the "verge of defeat" as it was in the original timeline. Judgment Day is now April 21, 2011.

7) Various other Terminators travel back in time, including Carter, who guards a warehouse full of coltan, Vick, who marries an L.A. city planner, and Myron Stark, who travels back to the 1920s by mistake. There's no telling what changes to the timeline these Terminators, in particular, make.

8) A T-1001 travels back in time to around 2005, and kills Catherine Weaver, the CEO of Zeira Corp, and her husband. It then impersonates Catherine Weaver. What changes does she make to the timeline? It's not entirely clear yet. She buys Andy Goode's A.I., "The Turk," preventing it from falling into the hands of the Connors. She saves a nuclear power plant that's crucial to Skynet's future operations, and later she destroys an entire factory that's creating prototype Hunter-Killers. She seems to be nurturing the "Turk" into becoming a more compassionate version of Skynet, but her real agenda remains unclear. Judgment Day: unknown.

9) Jesse Flores and Riley Dawson travel back from the future (possibly later than 2029.) The future Jesse comes from is much darker than the one Derek comes from, perhaps as a result of either Derek's actions, or Cameron's. We know that Jesse's future is - at least partly - one Derek helped to create, because Jesse doesn't know "Billy Wisher," aka Andy Goode, the guy whom Derek killed in 2007. In Jesse's timeline, John Connor's resistance is heavily dependent on scrubbed Terminators, to the point where there's "metal everywhere these days. Connor's got one in every major base." Sometimes the scrubbed Terminators go wrong and kill people. And the Terminators seem to be running Connor's war effort to a large extent, keeping secrets from Connor's human lieutenants. Skynet's human agents (like Charles Fisher) commonly torture humans, like Derek Reese. And there seems to be another "faction" of Terminators, which aren't on Skynet's side but also aren't on the humans'. Jesse won't say when her Judgment Day happens, but it's implied to be sooner than April 2011, because Jesse is certain it can't be prevented.

10) In Terminator Salvation, it's 2018, and somehow Skynet is already developing the T-800, which isn't supposed to exist until 2029. And in the trailer, John Connor says "This is not the future my mother warned me about. Something has changed") According to John Connor, Skynet's defeat is even less certain than ever in this new altered timeline: "I don't know if we can win this war." It's not clear what's changed the timeline from the T2 version, but hopefully the film will explain a bit. We meet Marcus Wright, an advanced model of Terminator who has a great degree of self-awareness and believes he's human until he sees his own metal body. Marcus has the memories (and appearance, presumably) of a man who was executed in 2003, and that's his last memory before he turns up in 2018. (Rumor has it Marcus' body is donated, after his death, to something called "Project Angel," which turns him into a quasi-Terminator.) It's implied that Marcus' arrival has something to do with changing the timeline. Judgment Day: still July 24, 2004, since this movie follows on from Terminator 3.

So we showed this list to Josh Friedman, producer and creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and here's what he had to say:

Jesus Christ. I want to drink whatever you're drinking. Obviously (or maybe not obviously but it should be said) TSCC never attempted to mesh with the movies, maybe in the spirit of T/1/2 but certainly not T/3/4. We've gone off the temporal reservation lately but to some degree that IS canon: almost all expressions of the franchise have massaged dates/ages to their convenience, some more than others. The most controversial idea you have in here is the first one: the "pre-Kyle" Johnfather. I believe the Terminator mythology supports that concept but many die hards just embrace the loop-ness of John sending back his dad to impregnate his mom. Of course, a pre-Kyle Johnfather calls into question genetic differences in the two Johns and whether or not Sarah's influence is the key to John v.2. If you go with the pre-Kyle Johnfather theory, the first John managed to become John Connor without her help.

Or did he?

I've mulled it over some more, and I still believe there has to be a timeline where someone other than Kyle Reese is John Connor's father. When The Terminator was a standalone movie, you could read it either way. Either there's a circular causality, where Kyle is "always" John Connor's father, or Kyle's time travel creates a new branch. But Terminator 2 pretty much establishes that time travel always creates new branches, because there's no fate but what we make. And the Connors, with their friendly T-800, are able to stop or at least delay Skynet. But of course, your mileage, even backwards and forwards through time, may vary.