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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great lines:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Senator is filibustering."

Fall is officially in full effect, which means the big bad summer sci-fi season is over! Now, personally, I set my bar so impossibly high that no film could ever come close to pleasing me unless our lord and saviour Michael Bay himself were to direct it. But perhaps some of you plebs are able to enjoy lesser entertainment - though I fail to see how you can watch anything beyond those low brows of yours. So, now that we've had a little while to absorb and reflect the entertainment we've witnessed, what really was a disaster? So, enjoy a mini "clip-show" to refresh your memory and then vote on what was truly a disaster!


WATCHMEN:



DOLLHOUSE:



TERMINATOR SALVATION:



BSG FINALE:



STAR TREK:



X-MEN ORIGINS - WOLVERINE:



TRANSFORMERS-REVENGE OF THE FALLEN:



GI JOE:



SUMMER GLAU:



DISTRICT 9:



OTHER:



Now go vote... and argue!!!

I also want to use this change in format to bring a little news. For a while now, I've been trying to bring you the best Disaster I can with the time that I have when not busy with other ventures. But, in less than two weeks, I will be welcoming a tiny disaster of my own into the world. So between that and other "official" work that I've been involved in, I will be having far less time to put together a weekly "This is a Disaster". So I am going to take a short hiatus.

I will return, I would just rather promise future greatness than deliver regular mediocrity.


I'll still be lurking around here doing the odd 'shop when time and inspiration meet. But if you want to see what work I'm up too check out my blog. I have big plans for ROACH, so continue to check there periodically. And if you are curious what the fuck I'm going to do with a baby, I just started a new blog that I will do my best to keep up with so follow along there.

Thanks for all your interest so far and I will return before you notice I'm gone.

-Garrison Dean

DISTRICT 10:
So I finally saw District 9 and it was better than I had hoped. I'll definitely take a sequel. As for him tackling a video game property? I'll just say I wasn't thinking Halo when I saw D9 that's for sure...

THE CASE OF KIRK V TAM:
I'm sorry, but a walking coma patient who occasionally spazzes out and can be turned off by a phrase can't beat a walking man bomb who at worst can be distracted by the phrases "I have some Romulan Ale" and "Green poon at 4 O'clock, set phasers for fun."

First there was their tête à tête:

Then came the battle of the shows... seriously. Twilight Zone at #12 and Firefly #3?! sigh.



I guess it's a tie after all.
WAIT! Bonus Round!!!
When Summer Glau does something strangely wonderful like THIS, THIS, THIS or THIS and of course THIS then maybe she'd be in the running.
THE SHAT WINS, THE SHAT WINS!!!


V PRODUCTION SHUT DOWN:
The remake of the classic series V was shut down for undefined reasons. Don't these rich Hollywood high rollers realize that while they may be able to glide through some weeks off, the rest of the below the line production staff really takes a hit. They have to think of everyone while they run through their "creative issues".



PITCH US YOUR IDEAS:
I actually did pitch this to SyFy (back when it was Sci-Fi) and this was the mock-up I did for it. They do love their reality shows after all. One line pitch... Take overweight CosPlayers and slim them down until they really look sharp in their costumes and then a final judging by a crowd at ComicCon. I'm still available SyFy, feel free to pick it up, you know how to find me.



SUPER-BABY DNA:
So now we can add a third parent to the classic 2 parent embryo. Wow, we as humans are really taking this science ball and really rolling with it.



IT'S A DISASTER:
Ahhh "Avatar". I guess the all those complaints about the overuse of CG, lack of story and character, super inflated budgets, and too much action that get sent my way when I'm excited for Michael Bay movies must not apply to James Cameron. I'm still definitely seeing it even though...

remember. the guy also made "True Lies" and "Titanic".


Until next time...
This is Garrison Dean, signing off.

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]

Dear Heroes,

What happened? Villains marked an all time low in your ratings, and lost you a significant portion of your core audience (myself included). You broke my heart, Heroes. Fugitives won me back in much the same way your ex does when he or she promises to reform, to be better and try harder. But the make-up sex just wasn't that great; the second half of the third season was just too little too late, with the writers and network executives over-compensating furiously with its Con Air plot line and conspiracy theories pieced together with duct tape and hurried exposition. Heroes, if you really want to win me back, here's what you have to do.

New Talent. With Bryan Fuller off to pursue new projects, there are some pretty big shoes to fill. If Fuller's replacement generates the same buzz you did around Fuller's return to the show, and then deliver on it, you may just win many of us back. Carlton Cuse, who is wrapping up his epic run with Lost, might just be the hero you need. Other people capable of filling the void could be Adam Horowitz (the Lost scribe, not the Beastie Boy) or David Fury, the uber-talented Joss Whedon alum. I'll even put in a plug for Rob Thomas (creator of Veronica Mars), who has an amazing gift for crafting characters we love - and love to hate.

"You know how this works; one of us, one of them." Heroes is at its best when pairing up a hero with a human. For the first two seasons, and well into the third, Hiro and Ando formed the beating heart of the show for just this reason... and then you had to go and give Ando super powers. Why? The show is at its peak when specials and non-specials are grappling to understand one another and find common ground (Yes, I would even use Claire and her relationship with the Bennetts, overplayed as it is, as an example here). Continuing to team up specials and non-specials is a sure fire win.

We need a new geek. Look, I'll be honest; The moment you lost me in Villains was when you gave Mohinder powers. Dr. Suresh was originally conceived as a fifty-something scientist, until hunky hero Sendhil Ramamurthy was cast in the role. You never quite reconciled the fact that the geeky scientist who was there to serve as an anchoring point to the show and deliver much needed exposition was also part of its beefcake buffet. We need a scientist whose theories we believe, and who can deliver lines like "The virus is breaking down her DNA and turning her into something altogether... different" with a straight face. Perhaps a long-lost protege of Mohinder's father, or a government-funded geneticist can turn up to espouse the comic book science we've been missing (Someone like much underrated and underused character actor Ian Hart would be a perfect fit). Heroes, you need to find your Daniel Faraday.

Focus. The cast has gotten wildly out of control. Too many specials, too many superpowers, and an endless supply of shape-shifting characters, twins, and future selves is just mucking up the works. Slim down the cast and find your focus - the core group of characters we care about. Kill off the characters who only annoy us. Ali Larter's character comebacks have gotten ridiculous. Besides, we only tolerated her in the first place so we could have Micah. He, along with his super-mimic cousin, and human GPS Molly almost disappeared entirely from the show, with Micah just making a recent comeback. These kids are now perfectly poised, as they hit their 'tweens, to be the subjects of mutation-as-puberty-metaphor story arcs. You are already mining every good X-Men device ever conceived, why not just steal that one as well?

Everybody loves bad girls. I miss your sexy villains; I loved Elle, and I howled in horror when she got killed off last season. Madeline Zima is joining the show next season, and could very well fill the sexy female villain role, with the storyline in the hands of the right writers. Summer Glau is also looking for work in Tinseltown these days, and playing a full-on femme fatale would be a challenge we'd all love to see her take. Ray Park, the sexiest Sith, also joins the cast next season, reportedly as an evil carny character. I'm keeping my fingers crossed you match him up with some equally amazing female character.

Kill the cheerleader, Save the show. Hayden Panettiere has a film career now, and it's time to let her go. Between her bad acting and on-set temper tantrums, she is completely destroying the show. Besides, killing Claire off would give many of the characters, HRG especially, some great motivation.

One last thing...9th Wonders needs to come back in a big way. Please?

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?

Last Friday's Terminator episode was an odd beast. It was the first half of a two-parter, dealing with flashbacks to Jesse's life in the future, on board a nuclear submarine captained by a reprogrammed Terminator. But it also felt like the second half of the "Riley gets killed" storyline. Neither story quite took flight this week, but they both show a lot of promise. Much, naturally, depends on next week's conclusion to the submarine story.

In a nutshell, the circumstantial evidence is looking bad for Cameron, Summer Glau's Terminator. She's lied about hoarding spare parts from other Terminators, which could help speed up the creation of killer robots in this timeline. She's acted shifty and mysterious about her nocturnal activities. And it's not as if she wouldn't have killed John's girlfriend Riley, in the right circumstances. Her innocence is pretty much accidental.

Meanwhile, and in a probably related development, Jesse - who actually did kill Riley - is picking bar fights with Naval officers and flashing back to her future days on a nuclear sub. Das Boot is one of my favorite movies, and I'm a sucker for claustrophobic underwater epics, so all of those scenes were pretty much pure awesome in my book. Also, the actor who's playing the Terminator sub captain could give Glau and Garret Dillahunt a run for their money. He seemed genuinely emotionless, but smooth and good at handling people.

And speaking of Dillahunt, he got a bit more to do this week. His Terminator body has been hooked up to a baby A.I. that may become Skynet, and this week he decided to play a game of Hide And Seek with Catherine Weaver's daughter, Savannah. The "let's play a game" part wasn't quite as creepy or scary as I was expecting, and the most interesting part was actually the contrasting reactions of Ellison and Catherine Weaver to the dilemma. Ellison was horrified, while Weaver was sort of amused and intrigued, since the child actually means nothing to her except part of her public cover.

I was mulling over what to say about this episode, because a lot of stuff feels like it might pay off terrifically in the coming weeks. But it's hard to evaluate on its own merits.

I guess the most interesting thing is that all three segments of the episode were about people who've become dependent, in different ways, on machines, and they're not sure how much to trust them. It's a theme of the series, in general, but it seemed especially strong in this episode. John Connor can't bear to let go of Cameron - she's his bodyguard, but also in some weird way his security blanket. Even if he did think she killed Riley, he might not be able to blow up her brain. As for John Henry, he temporarily has power because he's the only one who knows where Savannah is. But it's also clear he's becoming more powerful and indispensible in general, and the lives of Ellison and everyone else around him are just toys in his hands. The metaphor of being trapped under the waves, a few centimeters from hull breach, in the hands of a "scrubbed triple eight" is sort of self-explanatory, and brings it all together nicely.

I think the main reason why I didn't love this episode quite as much as I wanted to has to do with Thomas Dekker. I feel like a broken record, but his portrayal of John Connor has never quite clicked for me, in the midst of an amazing ensemble cast. And this time around, he really had to carry the show. We had to believe he was a guy whose girlfriend - whom he at least liked, even if he didn't love her - was brutally murdered. And all the evidence points to the robot he's become friends with. His grief, his anger, and his pain needed to lift this episode up, and I just wasn't seeing it. It's really just a matter of personal taste, I guess.

What did you think?

Does Cameron really love John?

One of the most jarring moments in the show was during the season premiere, where Glau's Terminator, Cameron, said she loves John Connor. Was she just trying to avoid being killed? Or did she mean it, sort of?

Glau surprised me, by saying that "Cameron's deep love for John is because he is her whole reason for existing... I think that is love, and I think she would do anything for him, and in her reality, I think that's what love is for her." She added that she's not sure where Friedman is going with the character, but she always plays it as if she does feel something for John.

The move to Friday nights, and the show's future:

"We were getting our asses kicked on Monday nights," Friedman says. Friday nights have different expectations, ratings-wise, plus it gives Fox an opportunity to promote Terminator and Dollhouse together, creating a science-fiction block that might appeal to the same audience.

Friedman remains optimistic about the show getting a third season, but also addressed the possibility that it might not happen. He says he wrote the season finale "the way I was planning on writing the finale for a long time... You owe the audience a logical conclusion to the things we have been building towards." It's true that fans get upset when a show has an open-ended conclusion and doesn't come back, but "fans also get upset if we write a crappy finale. If I tried to sum up every single thing in 43 minutes, it would be a disaster. It would end up like a clip show."

He also reiterated that the rest of the season is more serialized, with fewer standalone episodes, than the first half was.

Shocking things in the season finale:

Glau says she just read the script for the season finale and she was "shocked." Not to mention excited and "a little sad." It sounds as though something tragic and/or sad happens to Cameron this season. "I think everybody's going to be shocked at what happens at the end of this season." And Cameron has some great scenes in that episode.

Also, she has lots and lots of gun battles and smackdowns in the last nine episodes, way more than in the first half of the season. "People are going to be on a roller-coaster" in the final episodes.

The awesomeness of Summer Glau:

Friedman says he saw Summer audition several years ago, and really wanted to cast her in something. But instead, she went off to do the Serenity movie and The 4400. Friedman carried her audition tape around with him for a few weeks afterwards. And when the time came to do the Terminator show, he wrote the part of Cameron for her. "She's one of those few people who can be completely still, and still hard to take your eyes off."

Glau says that playing a robot is more challenging in some ways than playing a regular human, because she has to plan out everything in advance. She can't just react naturally or convey normal emotions.

In the pilot episode, Friedman says, he and producer James Middleton saw Glau do something incredibly clever during one take. They weren't sure if she was doing it on purpose, but then during the next take, she did it again. That was when Friedman realized how awesome Glau was going to be at playing this character, and how little hand-holding she was going to need.

Also, that scene in a recent episode where Cameron says she feels, because she wouldn't be much good if she didn't? That's part of Cameron's scheme. "I think she has a plan for drawing John closer to her, and so I've been trying to incorporate that all season," says Glau.

Also, someone asked Glau, "Do you ever get tired of playing deceptively strong asskickers?" And this was her whole answer: "No." Then she was pressed to elaborate, and she said something about how she enjoys playing complicated characters. But also, Cameron has gotten to be the damsel in distress on some occasions, and she's gotten to be sort of a princess and do ballet.

Other stuff:

Friedman says he'd like to be able to revisit the "Alison from Palmdale" character at some point — the future human whose appearance, and apparently memories, Cameron borrowed from.

Another character who might be revisited at some point: the engineer who built the time machine in the bank vault in 1963, which we saw in the show's pilot episode. The writers regularly debate whether to bring that engineer character back. Some writers pitch Friedman stories about that characters, but others never want to see him on the show. Friedman is obsessed with "the engineer" and definitely would like to bring him onto the show sometime — but not in the second season.

Cameron has "very few advantages" in a straight-up brawl with Shirley Manson's Catherine Weaver. It would be like a replay of the fight in Terminator 2.

When the new season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles returns this fall, it'll be more than last season's cliffhanger explosion that'll bring about changes for Summer Glau's pouty Terminatrix. According to the cast and crew of the show, one of the things the Terminator will be battling this year will be the ol' green-eyed monster.

Executive producer Josh Friedman explained what kind of action we can expect from this year's model of unstoppable (anti-)killing machine:

"I think sometimes [Cameron does have a sense of her own sexuality] when it suits her. Last year she learned how to paint her nails, and she's learned how to wear miniskirts and exploit her legs for attention... I think if there were somebody else in John's life that could cause strategic problems, I think that's almost like jealousy, and she would work to eliminate that threat. I think we may see some of that this year.

Not that it's going to be all hot girl-on-robot action this season; Cameron herself, Summer Glau, was relatively more restrained when talking about what her character will be going through when the show returns, saying only:

Cameron definitely has some issues after the explosion.

Issues? Jealous? Looking to eliminate someone muscling in on her territory to avoid "strategic problems"? How long before we hear that the show will be changing its name to Single White Female Robot?

Terminator Cast Dishes on New Season [E! Online]

Smoking hot Terminator Summer Glau seems to have survived her possible fiery death, but is a sexy bloody mess. Not that anyone is even remotely surprised that she's back: she's the main sex appeal of the show (apart from Brian Austin Green), plus robots never die. So stay tuned to learn more about robots learning about nail polish and ballet, and the humans that hate them.

In other spoilery details, check out the overturned car. Hooray for more chase scenes and ass-kicking women. [GFR and Futon Critic]

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Just off the top of my head, here are some issues left hanging after Sarah Connor's truncated season:

• What was in that basement room, with the spooky piano music, where Derek and the other future resistance fighter prisoners were being dragged?
• 
  
• Is Summer Glau really on our side? Is her mission really to protect John Connor, or is it something orthogonal?
• 
  
• Are Sarah Connor and Derek going to get together, if she keeps marching in on him in the shower?
• 
  
• Will the FBI believe Agent Ellison's explanation of how his entire squad got slaughtered and he survived?
• 
  
• Will the faux-FBI Terminator have to get another new face, if he becomes the subject of a full-scale manhunt? (I can't quite bring myself to call him "Cromartie" based on him using that name once.)
• 
  
• How exactly does a chess-playing computer get to become a military A.I. that destroys the world anyway? And how many proto-Skynets are there in the world exactly?

There have been so many Pinnochio-bots in science fiction: Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man, Haley Joel Osment in A.I., Chip in Not Quite Human, Annalee in Alien: Resurrection, NDR-113 from The Positronic Man by Asimov and Silverberg, and Roy Batty (sort of) Blade Runner.But most people would automatically say Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation is the purest expression of the Pinnochio-bot mystique. After all, he spent seven TV seasons and four movies exploring humanity over and over again. And his quest took him through comedy lessons with Joe Piscobo (the zen master of comedy), painting, Shakespeare plays and Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas. He probably tried to be a male stripper in between episodes.

But really Data is just a knock-off of the original wannabe human, Questor from The Questor Tapes, Gene Rodenberry's 1974 TV movie. Yet another one of Gene Rodenberry's failed TV series ideas after Star Trek, Questor is about an android who's built by a group of scientists using parts and plans from a mysterious genius Dr. Emil Vaslovik, who's gone missing. The android is a roaring (well, intoning) success, with one problem — his programming is incomplete and he doesn't develop emotions. So Questor goes in search of Vaslovik.

Various people are searching for Questor, and B.J. Honeycutt gets accused of having stolen the android. At one point, B.J. tries to stop Questor, who almost kills him to make his escape. But then Questor realizes that killing is wrong. Yay!

Questor's creator, Vaslovik, who turns out to be a super-advanced android himself, the penultimate model in a long line sent before the dawn of humanity to guide us in the proper course of development, blah blah blah. Vaslovik dies, but not before entrusting Questor to B.J. Honeycutt from M.A.S.H., who promises to teach Questor human feelings: Can you just imagine the weekly episodes, where B.J. teaches Questor another important lesson every week? Actually, you can, because it would have looked a lot like the Data-centric episodes of ST:TNG.

You'll be much less confused by all of that jiggery-floopery about who time traveled when, and which stocky robotic dude is named Chrome Marty, if you follow this drinking game to the letter. You need shots of some kind of liquor, preferably bourbon or vodka. And some beer. Tell all your friends to do this in their own homes, and we can help the show deliver gang-spanking ratings to the suits at Fox.

Take a swig of beer every time:

• Summer Glau tilts her head to one side and stares intently.
• Thomas Dekker looks at the ground like a whipped puppy.
• Brian Austin Green punches a wall or some other surface.
• One of the high school kids looks at Summer Glau funny.
• We see Lena Headey exercising.
• Someone mentions "The Turk."
• Lena Headey has a bad dream. (Three swigs if she decides to take action based on it.)
• Someone tells John Connor that he's not the heroic "Future John" yet.
• Summer Glau repeats something someone has just said to her, in a robotic monotone.

Drink a whole shot every time:

• Sarah Connor has a voice-over where she quotes from literature or history, or talks about wise old sayings.
• Summer Glau says something dorky, like "Thank you for explaining." Or tries to talk like a cool kid and fails.
• FBI Agent Ellison reads, or quotes, from the Bible.
• A Terminator other than Summer Glau is in a scene, and doesn't commit any violence.
• John Connor has a surrogate-dad moment with Brian Austin Green or his ex-step-dad.
• John Connor decides to prove he's a hero by doing something completely half-cocked.

Drink a healthy swig of beer and a whole shot whenever:

• Another Terminator gets its skin ripped off, or actually gets deactivated, but Summer Glau walks away without a scratch.
• There's a discussion of whether Summer Glau has a soul.
• Sarah Connor screams at her son, or cries.
• FBI Agent Ellison starts acting like he believes in the Terminators.

We've got Terminator shirts with silvery writing on the front, military style hats, light-up red glowy bracelets, and Terminator eye window-clings, and Terminator flashlights that throw cool LED logos of the show into dark areas.

Simply submit your caption in the comments below, and you're officially entered. Be as long or as brief as you want, but above all try to be funny. Heck, we'd even take a good Firefly or Buffy joke. Just go nuts, folks. The contest will be open until roughly 10:30pm Pacific Time, right after tonight's finale ends on the West Coast. We'll pick a winner at that time and announce it tomorrow. The contest is open to everyone, unless you're living on the moon, and we'll pick up the shipping charges. However, we are not responsible if actual robots from the future start chasing you.

The window clings are massive and aren't pictured in the top photo, but they'll be included. You'll be the envy of all your friends, or you can just open your own Terminator merchandise store. The future is not yet written.

• It's pure dumb luck that the final two episodes, airing Monday, form a decent season finale for the show. They just happened to be the last two episodes completed before the writers' strike. Episode 10 is awesome, but would have made a much less fitting ending.
• I started to ask Friedman a question, and when he heard I was from io9, he shouted, "Ease up on us! You're killing us!" Apparently he's been reading our recaps of the show, and thinks we're too snarky. (Which made me feel bad, because we love the show, and have been regularly accused of boosting it too much.)
• My actual question had to do with whether Summer Glau's Terminator Cameron is becoming more Cylon-like, with her apparent emotions and her love of ballet in the last episode. Here's what Friedman said:

  With all due respect to Ron Moore, Cylons have wanted to be like terminators for many years. Probably all of them wanted to be like Blade Runner. [Cameron] is a more advanced model, she has more ability to mimic emotion... Whenever you have any form of cyborg or android, [like] Data, there's always temptation by the writers to stat exploring that whole humanity thing. How far it goes and what the limitations are is something that I'm still exploring.

  He added that he wants to explore these themes in a way that makes sense to casual viewers and feels fresh to people who've watched tons of science fiction before. He said there's a lot of debate among the show's makers about whether Cameron is really feeling emotions, or just pretending to. And if she pretends to feel emotions for long enough, will she eventually feel them for real? He also said he can't watch Battlestar, because it does such a good job with these themes that he wants to deal with them on his own.
• The show tries really hard not to violate the rules of time travel, despite the fact that more people and Terminators are coming back through time than you ever saw in the movies. Friedman figures that Skynet would be cautious about sending back too many Terminators or other devices, because Skynet "understands that causality is so complicated that any one thing might change things." Skynet doesn't want to wipe out the human race before its own creation happens.
• Friedman wants to include more comedy in season two.
• We should find out in season two what happens in that spooky basement that FutureBrian Austin Green went into. If we'd gotten our full 13 episodes of season one, there would have been a second episode dealing with future stuff.
• Remember that whole plot about someone painting mean stuff on the doors at the high school? And the girl who committed suicide? And the mean girls? Well, Friedman hasn't forgotten it either. But apparently a lot of the high-school subplot ended up on the cutting-room floor in recent episodes, partly for length reasons and also because it sounds like some people at Fox are skittish about it. "I definitely had this whole huge storyline i was working on," Friedman said. He had planned to resolve that storyline in season one, and hopes to resolve it in the show's second season. I hope those deleted high-school scenes wind up on the DVDs, because the Terminator/Heathers mashup was my favorite part of the show, and I've been missing it.

• The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the story of Sarah Connor trying to protect her future-leader son and avert the end of the world, is "funnier than i thought it would be," Friedman said. "I think it's hysterical." Dekker clowns around, like, all the time on the set, Glau said. (This was easy to believe, judging from Dekker's antics on stage.)
• 
  
• Friedman wanted to bring back Kyle Reese, the time traveler who fathered John Connor and then died in the first Terminator movie. But his fellow producers convinced him this would never fly with the fans. So instead he finally agreed to introduce Reese's brother, Derek, played by 90210's Brian Austin Green.
• 
  
• Austin Green has a sense of humor about the fact that he's an unlikely (and unpopular, in some quarters) action hero. "When I think action, I think Brian Austin Green," he joked. "He DJs, he shoots guns, it'll be awesome." He takes comfort in the fact that even the most hostile fans have started referring to him in online forums by his character's name instead of the actor's, which means they're starting to accept him. "I'm going to come away from this show really honestly feeling like science fiction kicks ass," he added. "It's the first chance I've had to do it, and really, fucking praise the Terminator, it's been a great experience."
• 
  
• The producers of the Terminator TV show haven't given next year's big-screen Terminator 4, starring Christian Bale, a second thought. The existence of multiple contradictory Terminator narratives is fine, because even without the TV show you couldn't make everything hold together as one canon, insisted Executive Producer John Wirth.
• 
  
• The show's first season was shortened due to the writers' strike, but luckily next week's two-hour finale ends with a decent cliffhanger. And Friedman is lumping together his plans for the original end of season one with the planned second season to create a new second season.
• 
  
• Several people asked Glau why she always plays somewhat robotic killing machines, and she didn't really have much of an answer. She said her Terminator was similar to River, her character on Firefly, because both are "isolated in the way they relate to the world." But a key difference is that River uses martial arts, whereas her Terminator just uses brute force. So she's having to un-learn some stuff.
• 
  
• We'll see more of Teresa Dyson, the widow of potential Skynet creator Miles Dyson, again on the show. But not this season.
• 
  
• Glau is still hoping to create a ballet with composer/writer Joss Whedon, but she's not sure when it'll happen. "It was going to work out better when we were on strike. We wanted to do the ballet for years because Joss writes his own music and I do my own dancing, so i thought it was an amazing idea. But now he's been thrown into an amazing project [the Dollhouse TV show] and i have to go back to work. But we're hoping to do it this season. We're nailing down concepts," Glau said.

I resisted the temptation to include people like Katee Sackhoff, who's only done two shows: Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman. Or Scott Bakula. Or half the cast of Firefly, who've gone on to be on other things. I also decided to leave out Bruce Willis and Cilian Murphy, who have been in a lot of scifi but aren't really "scifi actors" in the way that Will Smith is. Who would you have included on this poll?

In any case, you needn't feel guilty about voting for a good actor in this poll. Everyone here is a good actor, but maybe one of these people should work in other genres for a while. (Which, to be fair, Smith did for a bit.)

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

What about Dollhouse will draw in your Buffy and Firefly fans?

Well, Eliza (Dushku). Duh. It's very different than the stuff I've done before, but at the same time it's still a very hardcore examination of the human condition. It really sort of boils it down to who are we, how are we programmed, what do we need, what is okay about us, and what is really not okay. It's the most morally gray thing I've ever done. I think it might actually anger a lot of my fans, but there are questions I still have to ask. Ultimately I think it will intrigue them because that.

We keep hearing that the strike will be over soon. How has it affected Dollhouse? Have you actually written any of it yet?

I had just pitched the seven episodes for the show, I hadn't written anything. I did not even so much as look at them during the strike, and will not until the strike is over. The day the strike is over, I will start working, so whatever we plan to do will certainly be pushed back by exactly as many months as the strike was... or still is.

Tell us a bit more about the dance project with Summer, we know you've been writing the music for that.

I've been working for a long time composing the score for a ballet short that I've wanted to film because of Summer. It's a little piece and we have a choreographer we're about to start working with it. I don't know if she's suddenly going to be shooting again or what, but we hope to shoot this hopefully in the late spring or early summer. It's something I've dreamed about pretty much ever since I met her.

What would you do with it after you finished it?

I don't know ... I guess go to festivals! I've never been to any festivals, so I guess I'd go to those with my short film. (He breaks into an impromptu little "I'm an indie short filmmaker guy" dance).

We heard you comparing Brian K. Vaughan to a Cylon up there. Are you a big Battlestar Galactica fan?

There is no bigger! I beat that "other guy" who thought he was the biggest fan. I've spent a lot of time with Ron on the picket lines, and he's very gracious about my drool for the show.