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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original image by Neil Crosby.

Writing for the British Daily Telegraph, Davies says,

It shouldn't have worked. The things we once loved are gone. We've changed and grown and moved on, and the memory only cheats. Except for this time. Doctor Who broke all the rules – everyone said it would never work (yes, even me) but everyone was wrong. When it blazed back into life on March 26 2005, an entire generation remembered. "Oh yes, we love this," they said, as though coming out of a fog. And a whole new generation said: "Wow!", as though accusing us: why have you kept this secret all this time?

Of course, we couldn't have been confident, before transmission. We worked on that first series, in the depths of BBC Wales, worrying that children's heads were now full of Harry Potter and Star Wars, so they'd have neither the time nor the inclination for an old, Sixties Time Lord. But I think fear helped me. I was so convinced we'd never reach a second series that I poured my heart and soul into the first 13 episodes, in case they were the only ones ever to exist. The one-off 1996 television movie with Paul McGann had single-handedly fuelled a fan-industry of novels and comics for a decade, so I had to pack enough into my 13 stories to keep the fans busy until… well, forever. Because I honestly thought that if 2005 failed, the BBC would never bring the show back again. It was all or nothing.

He also teases an unexpected end for his and David Tennant's two-part finale:

The Master, played by John Simm, is back – dying and deadly, and harbouring his most outrageous scheme yet; Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins) is being plagued by strange dreams and mysterious visitations; his granddaughter Donna (Catherine Tate) dares not remember her travels with the Doctor, or she'll die on the spot; and a mysterious Woman in White, played by the legendary Claire Bloom, brings ominous warnings of death and destruction to come. What a Christmas! Though whether there's a regeneration on its way, or whether we've got some final tricks up our sleeves, you'll just have to wait and see.

No regeneration? Whaaaaat? That's the entire reason we're tuning in*!

(* This is not true. But we'll still be disappointed if we don't get one.)

Doctor Who airs 6pm on BBC One in the UK today, and 9pm on BBC America tomorrow.

'Doctor Who's given me the time of my life' - Russell T Davies on leaving Doctor Who [Telegraph.co.uk]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Graph by Steph Fox.

Here's a bonus chart, with more data:

1. Experience a horrific trauma or terrible setback that fills you with power lust and an unhealthy desire for revenge. Really, it could be anything. Did somebody tell you that mega-knights weren't supposed to have sex with princesses even though princesses are totally hot? Did somebody unfairly lock you in a burning, underground chamber or two-dimensional space square just because you tried to rule the Earth? Do you just want a special companion who will understand your urge to convert animals into humans, but THEY keep thwarting your every move? All of these are legitimate sources of trauma and anger, and will be perfect emotional springboards from which to launch your reign of terror.

2. Try to do something sort of good, but discover that goodness is weakness. Give some frozen yogurt to your object of affection while explaining your plans to subjugate the continent. Oops - that drove her into the arms of your arch nemesis. Attempt to improve the planet by unleashing everyone's "true selves" via drugs in the water. Why are people so ungrateful? You are just giving them what they want! Save a cat who bites you. Yet another ungrateful creature on this planet! You'll show them!

3. Pick an outfit that says "master." Obviously black is a good way to go, especially if it's shiny, has a lot of laces and buckles, and is topped off with a flowy cape. Latex is a must, at least somewhere. Masks are also good, especially if they distort your voice, but helmets cannot be underestimated. Bonus points if your outfit conceals, but also calls attention to, some disfiguring injury that you suffered while doing evil or being traumatized into your life of evil.

4. If you would like to be a mistress, make sure your outfit is dangerously sexy. Men can be mistresses who want to build the ultimate man and control time itself, but they still have to wear corsets and high heels. In general, a mistress outfit should be skintight, possibly garnished with feathers, sequins, spikes, or inexplicable epaulets. A high collar attached to a short, kicky cape is also a good idea. Headgear should be at least as large as your head.

5. Get a submissive sidekick to call you master. Mind-controlled beefcake, robots, and deformed creatures with horns make great sidekicks. You should always have one chief sidekick who rules the minions (for more on minions, see below). Do not despair if you can't find a sidekick right away, because often sidekicks are made in giant vats rather than found on the street or in an insane asylum. A really good sidekick only has to be able to say "yes master" and carry out your orders. The rest of the time he or she or it can growl or hiss wordlessly. Also, don't forget that your sidekick can be a cat or monkey to whom you constantly whisper your plans maniacally.

6. Gather or make your minions. Like sidekicks, minions are often made not born. You can either build them out of scrap (the old robot army trick) or convert regular humans into brainwashed followers via drugs, brain implants, magical spells, or just plain terror. When crafting your minions, remember that they are your responsibility! If you make yourself a clone army, be sure you have somewhere safe to keep them and enough food to prevent them from dying before you take over the galactic rim. Masters these days often opt for solar-powered robot minions because they're easy to maintain and don't destroy the environment. It's the master's job to destroy the environment, not the minions'!

7. Set some goals. A master always has one purpose in life which he or she works on obsessively. Maybe you want to destroy the world, rule the solar system, control the spice, or simply unleash chaos because it's fun. No matter what your goals are, start small and work your way toward the bigger prize. If you want to destroy an interstellar conspiracy, start by destroying just one planet. If your goal is to spread anarchy to the world, start by blowing up a few hospitals. And if you want to remake the world in your image, filled with worshipers who understand your specialness, why not begin by taking over one city? Get a toehold before you start sprinting.

8. Know your nemesis. Whenever a master steps up to the plate, somebody (usually a pansy-ass leader) will try to stop the mastery. Keep your tentacles tuned to sounds of resistance. Is there an underground group of humans living in the sewers trying to undermine your regime? Is there somebody who is also from your race of superbeings or is possibly an old colleague who has pledged to stop you? What about an alien or mutant who hides among humans and thwarts your every move? Once you've located your nemesis, you must crush them instantly.

9. Consolidate your power. You've turned your nemesis into Dobby the Elf and sung disco to him. The entire city is in chaos. The meteor is heading for Earth, and your assassination plot is working according to plan. At last your shining cities will rise on the horizon! Everyone will shout your name! Genetically-engineered dinosaurs will rule the seas!

10. Dominate! Rule cruelly but serenely from a throne on a spaceship, a hidden island, or possibly the burned-out remains of City Hall. Send your minions out to march in the street, and explain to your sidekick once again how everything is within your grasp. Your minion will either purr happily or drool out the words, "Yesssss, master." Possibly, if you've designed the sidekick to have intellect, he or she will remind you nervously that there is still that pesky little nemesis you didn't manage to track down. SILENCE! WE WILL CRUSH OUR ENEMIES!

10.5. Go back to 1. Curses! Foiled again!

This is not a list of io9's "favorites," or a compendium of people we think should have power. With this list, we've tried to reflect as accurately as possible who the movers and shakers are in the worlds of science fiction - the people who can command a big budget, or get a creative project produced just by signing their name to it. These are people whose tastes are setting pop culture fashion, and inspiring imitators across the globe. They're wheeling and dealing, controlling the kinds of stories you'll be reading, watching, and playing for years to come.

In addition, the list is not in order of power. All of these people are powerful in different ways, often in different industries.

JJ Abrams
Lost. Star Trek. Fringe. At this point, media polymath JJ Abrams can do no wrong on television or at the movies. He's rebooted Star Trek with a flourish, and even though FOX show Fringe may be flagging in the ratings this year, it's still garnering critical praise. Next up for Abrams: Two linked sequels to Star Trek and an untitled scifi/spy comedy series.

James Cameron
Whether you love or hate Avatar, there's no denying Cameron knows how to make science fiction into a rich, technically sophisticated storytelling genre. And he can command a budget of nearly $400 million, which is what many estimate Avatar cost. Next up for Cameron: More Avatar, and more technical innovations.

Lady Gaga
Like Cameron, Lady Gaga is another polarizer: You hate her or you love her, but either way she's unavoidable. With videos supporting her two latest releases, The Fame and The Fame Monster, she crafted an image of herself as a pop creation whose alienness rivals that of 1970s-era David Bowie. Dressed in outfits that belong on another planet, playing piano from inside whirling silver rings, Lady Gaga made sci fashion into just plain fashion. Next up for Gaga: Touring, mostly without pants on.

David Howe
Though he got a lot of razzing for the Syfy rebranding campaign, Howe has brought the once-marginal SciFi Channel into the mainstream with Syfy's blend of paranormal reality shows like Ghost Hunters, top-rated miniseries (Tin Man), and attention-grabbing series like Stargate Universe and Warehouse 13. Under Howe's watch, Syfy's ratings have gone through the roof, and the channel is now among the top ten most-watched channels among men ages 18–54, and women ages 25–54. Next for Howe: Several new series, including the much-anticipated Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica in spring.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Senior Editor and the Manager of Science Fiction at Tor Books, Nielsen Hayden is a kingmaker among American science fiction novelists. Under his watch, Tor has helped turn writers like Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, and Jo Walton into award-winning superstars of the genre world. Plus it doesn't hurt that Tor is re-releasing the mega-selling Wheel Of Time series. Next for Nielsen Hayden: More award-winning books.

Diane Nelson
A longtime executive at Warner Bros, Nelson was recently named DC Entertainment President, where she's going to take on the task of shuttling promising comic book properties into Time Warner's other media divisions - mostly movies. With properties like Batman, Justice League, and Wonder Woman under her watchful eye, Nelson is poised to set the tone for next decade's most anticipated (and, for some, dreaded) comic book movies. Our favorite Nelson quote: "I prefer to be known as an executive rather than a girl." Next for Nelson: Superman and Wonder Woman movies.

Warren Ellis
Ellis has long been a favorite among discerning comic book fans who have made his books Transmetropolitan and Planetary into cult hits. And his work on countless Marvel titles, as well as his novel Crooked Little Vein, have made him a critical darling as well. But Ellis' power extends far beyond the comic book world, and into the realms of subterranean fashion, philosophy, and trendsetting. He runs a very popular blog that routinely breaks news on the pop trends and weird news that feed the creative imaginations of writers, artists, filmmakers and fans. Ellis is one of the science fiction world's most influential tastemakers and opinion shapers. Next for Ellis: The movie version of his comic book Red starts filming in January, starring Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Charlaine Harris
With her Sookie Stackhouse novels constantly on bestseller lists, and HBO's Sookie series True Blood a critical and audience hit, Harris is the queen of vampire fiction for adults. She's also a pioneer of the supernatural romance genre, which has propelled science fiction and urban fantasy stories into the hands of women - and helped turn fantastical genre fiction into a mainstream obsession. Next for Harris: Dead in the Family, a new Sookie Stackhouse novel, in May 2010.


Felicia Day
Day, creator of the cult hit web show The Guild, was the star of scifi's biggest web sensation to date: Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog. Now she's crossing over into the mainstream, with roles on House, Dollhouse, and Lie To Me. Day proves that web celebrities can be just as powerful as TV celebrities. Next for Day: Appearing in some of the final episodes of Dollhouse next year; The Guild season 4.

Audrey Niffenegger
With her mega-selling novel The Time Traveler's Wife now a Hollywood movie, it's no wonder that Audrey Niffenegger got almost $5 million for her latest novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, which came out earlier this year. Next for Niffenegger: An art exhibit at Printworks Gallery in September, 2010, and a third novel, The Chinchilla Girl in Exile.

Alastair Reynolds
Joining the millionaire science fiction author club along with Niffenegger is Reynolds, a British author whose space operas have netted him prestigious awards and fans the world over. Last year, he signed an unprecedented 10-book deal with leading UK SF publisher Gollancz, for £1 million. Next for Reynolds: A three-book cycle that the UK Guardian described as "an African-inflected trilogy charting how humanity might go on to conquer the solar system and the galaxy."


Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
Jackson and Walsh have been writing and production partners on some of the biggest science fiction and fantasy epics of the last decade, including the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now Jackson is putting some of his muscle behind young directors like District 9's Niell Blomkamp, and it's paying off nicely; Jackson and Walsh have also been working with Guillermo Del Toro on developing two forthcoming movies based on The Hobbit. Next for Jackson and Walsh: Producing The Hobbit movies; a possible miniseries based on Naomi Novik's dragon warfare series called Temeraire.

Michael Bay
Bay exploded his way into some of the biggest box office cash in history with the incomprehensible yet lucrative Transformers 2. Call him a mindless detonation-whore if you want, but Bay's a money-making golden boy in Hollywood right now. Next for Bay: Transformers 3, set for 2011 release.

Ridley Scott
After blowing everybody's minds with his original visions in 1970s and 80s science fiction classics Alien and Bladerunner, Scott turned his attention to other genres, making incredible flicks like Thelma and Louise and American Gangster. But last year, to our delight, he set his sights on science fiction again. Next for Scott: He's got a prequel to Alien in the works, as well as plans to adapt Joe Haldeman's The Forever War and early SF classic Brave New World to the big screen.

Kevin Feige
As President of Production at Marvel Studios, Feige will control the vertical, horizontal, and asskickital on your movie screens for quite some time. Having worked as a producer on hits like Iron Man and Fantastic Four, Feige will continue his reign at Marvel with more films based on Marvel's characters. Now that Disney is putting its considerable weight behind Marvel Studios, we can only hope that the asskicking will get awesomer, not cutesier. Next for Feige: Producing movie versions of Thor, The Avengers, Captain America, Ant-Man, Deathlok, and more.

Image Metrics
When it comes to making science fiction look awesome, it's important to credit the power of a great tool and the people who make it. Image Metrics is an FX software package used for creating facial animation (often with motion-capture technology) and effects mavens love it. It was used to create effects for Benjamin Button last year, and this year was used for Avatar and the videogame Assassin's Creed II. Next for Image Metrix: You'll be seeing effects created with the software in the film Splice.

Neville Page
The creature designer whose monsters are sometimes more memorable than the actors who fight them, Page created the Cloverfield creature, as well as working on character and creature design in Star Trek (yes, that was his weird red monster on the ice planet), Watchmen and Avatar. Not only are his monsters cool; they actually help advance the stories we see them in. Next for Page: He designed the suits in the forthcoming sequel to Tron.

Patrice Desilets and Jade Raymond
As Ubisoft videogame Assassin's Creed veers into science fictional territory, game designer Desilets finds himself heading up the creative team behind one of the most interesting, complex, and fun SF/F games of the past few years. As producer on Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed 2, Raymond helped popularize the games and made them accessible to a broader audience. Next for Desilets and Raymond: Desilets is at work on the next installment of Assassin's Creed; Raymond is heading up a brand-new Toronto Ubisoft office, where she says she'll work on AAA games.

Sam Worthington
Aussie actor Worthington came out of nowhere to helm two of the year's most anticipated science fiction epics: Terminator 4 (where many argued he was the only interesting character), and Avatar (where he proved he can act even when he's turned into a motion-captured animation). He's poised to be Hollywood's next big SF action star. Next for Worthington: Clash of the Titans; producing and starring in comic book flick Last Days of American Crime; possible Avatar sequel.

Zoe Saldana
After stealing the show in JJ Abrams' Star Trek and kicking major ass in Avatar, Saldana is on track to be the next Sigorney Weaver: Able to play smart believably, and able to throw down in highly physical, action-adventure roles. She leaves everyone wanting to see more of her brains and brawn. Next for Saldana: comic book flick The Losers; Star Trek sequels.

Thanks to: Michael Goldfarb, Stephen Totilo, Charlie Jane Anders, Meredith Woerner, Graeme McMillan, and Lauren Davis, who all helped compile this list.

Over a million viewers tuned into the American premiere of "The Waters of Mars," giving BBC America its highest ever primetime rating. Richard De Croce, Senior Vice President Programming for the network, said:

The final specials starring David Tennant have opened the door for new audiences to this iconic series while taking longtime fans on an incredible journey. Tennant's remaining two specials, The End of Time, Part One and Part Two, are the most anticipated episodes in the history of the series – which is why we're airing them just a day after their UK premiere.

They're also releasing new behind the scenes videos to tease even more viewers into tuning in:


"The End of Time, Part 1" airs Saturday at 9pm.

Gaters everywhere are expressing their dismay upon learning that Syfy will not be airing a SGU marathon this Christmas. This year Syfy has decided to ditch its pre-planned Stargate Universe marathon, in lieu of old movies.

Not that we don't love Serenity, but we were hoping that the SGU marathon would build up some new fans. Sure, we've been pretty harsh on this new series, but now our theory that this show just needs to be watched in a giant lump to attract new fans can't be tested out, with a giant day of eating, drinking and catching up on Stargate.

So why did this happen? We haven't found the official answer just yet, but we're hoping that it doesn't mean a lack of faith in the show's marathon potential. It's been a bumpy road, but we hope many of our concerns about the shows pace and female characters has been heard and are being acted upon in the second season. SGU really just needs a few nips, tucks, cuts and a pretty bow to be a series worth of it's gritty realism label. But does canceling the marathon mean the higher ups at Syfy don't think they can depend on it to bring in the viewers Christmas day, more than old films will?

But do not fret fans, Hulu is currently hosting ALL of the episodes from Stargate SG-1. So that's a little something to tide you over the holiday season.

[via Gateworld picture via Joseph Mallozzi's Blog]

It's not just that most of your regular shows are on holiday break this week; the rest of programming is also affected by marathons and special programming that you'd probably be better off avoiding.

Monday, for example? There's really not much to be looked for at all. Fasten your grump-belts: You're going to run into a lot of that this week.

Tuesday

It's not SF, but Dirty Jobs is at least weird enough to occasionally seem like urban fantasy, right? For those who don't believe me, Discovery is running a marathon of the show from 12pm through 12am to convince you otherwise. For fans of Robin Williams' later work, AMC has Jumanji at 1:45pm.

(Edit: There's also a new episode of Better Off Ted on ABC at 9pm, which I highly recommend and would've earlier if I hadn't accidentally thought it was a rerun. Sorry!)

Wednesday

We're still a couple of days before the holiday itself, but that doesn't mean anything to a time lord, which explains why BBC America has two Doctor Who Christmas Specials already: "The Christmas Invasion" (David Tennant's first episode) at 12pm, and "The Runaway Bride" (Catherine Tate's first episode!) an hour later.

Thursday

Dear Syfy, I know it gets a lot of viewers, but a Ghost Hunters marathon for Christmas Eve? Unless they're looking for the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, I'm not a big fan (8am through 5am the following morning). Just watch BBC America's rerun of Doctor Who's "The Next Doctor" (5pm) instead.

Friday

Dear Syfy, Twilight Zone from 8am, then some trashy movies (Monster Ark at 9:30am, Copperhead at 11:30, Ghost Town at 1:30pm and Stephen King's Desperation - sadly, not a film about the desperation of a horror writer with a face like a shaved lion - at 3:30) before Serenity at 6:30, Total Recall at 9pm and Star Trek: The Next Generation from 11:30 through until 4:30am on Saturday? You're forgiven for that Ghost Hunters thing.

And for those who'd rather watch something with a little more (admittedly dubious) educational value, Discovery has a Mythbusters marathon from 12pm until 6am the next day.

Maybe you shouldn't watch the whole thing.

Saturday

Awake post-festive revelry and wondering if there are old SF B-movies to stave off sleep? AMC has you covered, with a triple-bill of The War Of The Worlds (3:30am), The Day The World Ended (5:30am) and Earth Vs. The Spider (7:15am).

Alternately, Syfy has a horrorfest happening, starting with Stay Alive at 9am, Rest Stop at 10:30, The Descent at 12:30, Autopsy at 2:30, then the first three Saw movies (4:30, 6pm and 9pm, respectively) to scare you out of any post-Christmas Day bluster.

Of course, anyone who isn't watching Doctor Who: The End Of Time part one on BBC America at 9pm should consider themselves (a) not in America, (b) someone who may have watced it online the night before, but we won't talk about that or (c) not our friends. Sorry, it's just the way it is (For those concerned: It's an unedited version, at 1hr and 15mins, including commercials).

Sunday

Catch up with the first four episodes of weird, quasi-animation Outer Space Astronauts on Syfy at 9:30am and then just throw away the remote; the same channel has In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale at 11:30am, followed by Beyond Sherwood Forest (Monsters! Robin Hood! Together!) at 2pm and Dragon Wars at 4, before Men In Black II (at 6pm) and Nic Cage's "What if Indiana Jones was happening today and shit?" National Treasure at 8. What better way to end the week than with Cage, after all?

Here's the official synopsis from the BBC, which will be airing the two-day special December 28th and 29th:

The world is struck blind by a solar storm, and millions of man-eating mobile plants are released to roam Britain.

As an expert on the Triffids, Bill Masen knows that salvation rests in the hands of the father he hates, who mutated the Triffids in the first place to produce a green source of oil that the world craves.

The Observer's Johnny Davis offered up a profile of the actor this weekend, ahead of Friday/Saturday's "The End of Time, Part 1," and gave a glimpse into Tennant's mindset as he approaches the end of his tenure as Time Lord:

For four years I've always been going back to Cardiff at some point in the near future, so when I leave it will be like leaving campus. I don't mean to get things out of proportion, but I was keenly watching George Bush leaving the White House, and the thought of how his life is going to change… I'm not saying his life is like mine. I'm not the leader of the Free World, I'm really not… Oh, that's not really worked out very well for me, has it? It's just the thought that you hand over… and it stops. Maybe I'll be whisked up into something equally all-consuming.

As far as how the fans will take it, he's a lot more self-depreciating:

You know what will happen? Everyone will go: 'Oh, it'll never be the same.' And then two weeks in [to the new series] they'll go: 'Matt Smith: he's brilliant.' That's what happened when I was a kid, when Tom Baker left... That's just how it works.

"The End of Time" begins on BBC One in the UK on December 25th, and on BBC America on December 26th.
It just feels scary… all the time [Guardian.co.uk]

Syfy should really spin-off the Nikola Tesla character, or else hire him on as part of Sanctuary's core team. Someone obviously has a great deal of fun writing his dialogue, and Jonathon Young delivers it with such douchebag relish. Tesla wants to revive the long-extinct vampire race, and to that end, has posed as the head of a private addiction clinic so he can infuse his patients with a latent vampire gene. Apparently rich meth heads are perfect candidates for the undead master race.

The plan was to start killing off these latent vamps in a couple of decades when they were older and wiser, so they could become true vampires. But ex-drug users aren't exactly the most cautious characters, and they start dying all on their lonesome being reborn as vampires. The kids catch wise to what's going on, and are soon killing and reviving their fellow former addicts. As a bonus, they kidnap Tesla in hopes of making him their vampire mentor.

Tesla finds them insufferable, and the Sanctuary team has to find the failsafe they know Tesla must have hidden somewhere (in a rather clever callback to Tesla's vino habit, it's stowed in Magnus' wine cellar) so he can de-vampify the undead trust funders. Sadly, it de-vamps Tesla, too, making him mortal and, in his estimation, decidedly less cool. But hey, he's still brilliant, still obnoxious, and now he can actually get drunk off of all that wine.

Seriously, forget Sanctuary Season Three. Give me thirteen episodes of Nikola Tesla on a quest to turn himself back into a vampire and try to take over the world.

ABC is promoting the sixth season of their island drama with six special weekly episodes airing on DirecTV's 101 channel. The episodes will be a mix of recap episodes already broadcast on ABC and unseen extra material such as deleted scenes, behind the scenes footage and extras from the already-released DVD boxsets of each season, all with the aim of driving more of DirecTV's 18.3 million subscribers towards Lost's new season premiere on February 2nd.

The first special premieres next Saturday, December 26th on Channel 101.

'Lost' specials to DirecTV [Variety]

Starstuff, produced in 1980 by WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, was thought to be gone forever. But thanks to some found footage and an active fanbase online, we can remember Starstuff fondly with another io9 video:

Find out more about the show here, including a complete episode to download for your viewing pleasure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's a dicey proposition, calling something overrated, not least of all because it can seem like more of an insult than it's intended to be. For example, Battlestar Galactica was, at best, an amazing piece of television that managed to be thought-provoking, entertaining and addictive on a regular basis... but, by the time it closed out its run earlier this year with appearances at the UN and declarations of it being the greatest show on television ever, things were getting pretty close to overrating it. Personal taste comes into play a lot, as well; we're guilty of that as much as anyone (The strength of my Pushing Daisies love may have been somewhat out of proportion with the show itself, for example).

What we're looking for, then, isn't just the name of something (Movie, TV show, comic, book, creator, whatever) you consider overrated, but why. And, feel free to defend slighted favorites if you feel the need. We're just curious what you all think isn't as good as everyone thinks it is... Just make sure that The Venture Bros. isn't on the list, or there'll be trouble.

The British Court of Appeals upheld the original British verdict that the familiar white-and-black costume couldn't be considered copyrighted because it wasn't art. Instead, the costume has been considered "industrial design," and therefore only allowed to keep copyright for 15 years after creation. British Lord Justices Rix, Jacob and Patten considered the look of the Empire's cloned warriors to have a "utilitarian," rather than artistic, purpose, and denied Lucasfilm the right to enforce their US copyright in the United Kingdom.

It'll be interesting to see how this ruling could affect future British copyright cases. Can British companies now produce merchandise based on any movie or television designs, as long as they're older than 15 years, and use this as a defense? The Cybermen have been around for almost three times that long, let's see if someone's brave enough to test the BBC's legal wrath.

George Lucas loses court appeal over Star Wars costume copyright [Times Online]

Cleopatra 2525 (2000)

Some of you called this a guilty pleasure, I still don't understand how. Maybe it straddles the "so bad it's good" ratio, but still, come on — this is awful. This came from Sam Raimi's production team. Cleopatra, the stripper not the historical figure mind you, gets frozen and wakes up in 2525. Cue machine CG and colorful outfit armor.

All Souls (2001)

Think of it as Grey's Anatomy meets Disney's Haunted Mansion Yep, that's about it.

Black Scorpion (2001)

Female police officer by day, hooker crime fighter by night. And a Power Ranger too apparently. This dismal SciFi Channel series was based on the Roger Corman movies, which is a questionable judgment right from the get go.

Alien Hunter (2001)

"The Crocodile Hunter" in space. The only thing this show had going for it was Doug Jones' "sick of this shit" alien crew member. He was actually funny, unlike everything else on this show.

Birds of Prey (2002)

Birds of Prey's failure stung the most because it was a great idea, but executed so poorly. They didn't care about the characters, story or mythology at all. I really wanted Batman and Catwoman's baby to be a bad ass crime fighter, but her personality never took off. Still, it did generate decent ratings for the WB for a while.

Special Unit 2 (2001-2002)

Yet another TV show that has a cult following for no understandable reason. This series followed Chicago's top secret paranormal police division that chased down odd happenings or "links," as they unfortunately called them. How many paranormal police shows are there now? Plus one of the characters always freaked me out.

Mutant X (2001)

It's like X-Men for idiots, and those people already have X-Men cartoons. This actual Marvel creation focused so much on making sure the team of new mutants was sexy, that there was very little time left to develop personality or interesting character traits.

Baby Bob (2002)

This CBS sitcom was such a disaster I can no longer find any clips of it anywhere! New parents find out their baby can talk, and instead of throwing this demon in a well decide to keep it around. This was one of those genius "inspired by a commercial" TV shows. Truly terrible.

Bionic Woman (2007)

We were all so excited for this dark Bionic Woman reboot from David Eick — then it started and just went totally off the rails plot-wise and accent wise. Eventually the main character's attitude, the side character's one-dimensional insanity and waste of Katee Sackhoff, all compounded into one giant "meh."

Caveman (2007)
Even though comedian Nick Kroll, who played one of the cave people is hilarious, we all make missteps along the way. The saddest thing about this show was that there were decent jokes in there, they were just totally thrown away on a series no one in their right mind would watch.

Knight Rider (2008)

The new Knight Rider gets the crown as the worst TV Show of the decade. Forget the fact that all the plots centered around finding a way for the main character to take off his shirt. Billy from BSG actually LEFT BSG to do this show. And couldn't do a repeat cameo later on when President Roz was having acid dreams. Yes, this show truly is a work of pure evil. And it didn't even have turbo boost.

Flash Gordon (2007 - 2008)

Terrible acting, ideas and concepts. Every week we died a terrible cheesy death with this SciFi series.

Heroes (2007-2009)

Every season of Heroes except the first belongs on this list. From the tattoo super powers to making the cheerleader a sometimes lesbian. Not even a carnival or killing a character twice can save this series.

Eastwick (2009)

Midlife-crisis witches and Paul Gross' penis were the entire cast of this series. Too PG to ever be anything than a "cute" series that told dick jokes. Sigh, the threeways that could have been.

It's the Master! It looks like he's pretty helpless, but wait...

Appearances can be deceiving. Meanwhile, DigitalSpy saw the first episode of "End Of Time," and has a handful of fairly major spoilers. The first line of the episode is the one you've heard in the trailers: "It is said that in the final days of planet Earth, everyone had bad dreams." There's that scene you've already watched, where the Doctor lands with his Hawaiian lei and meets Ood Sigma. And it continues with him having visions of the Master, Joshua Naismith, and Wilf. The Master's resurrection is "preposterous," and his (ex?) wife Lucy Saxon plays a major role.

That other scene you've seen, where the Doctor and the Master have their "force lightning" battle, happens fairly early on. Besides Star Wars, the episode also references Jaws (with the iconic music) and The Matrix. So why does Joshua Naismith bring the Master back to life? He wants the Master to do something for him — and it turns out just as well as you'd expect using the Master to.

We see a lot of Wilf, but not much of Donna, at first. But we do find out what she's been doing with her life, and she's still very "special." And we meet (or see) the President of the United States. Also, Wilf says the word "cactus," the Master says "so hungry," and the Doctor says the word "shimmer," as well as "...new man goes sauntering away." A reference to regeneration? We can't wait to find out.

[FilmShaft and DigitalSpy]