Since the mid-2000s, Mishka NYC has been at the vanguard of popular streetwear. A cornerstone of their success has been designing clothing influenced by gonzo horror, Z-grade sci-fi, and the overall dank and stanky underbelly of pop culture. Indeed, their gear is worn with equal aplomb by metalheads and hip-hoppers (Lil Jon and Lady Sovereign have sported Mishka in music videos), and the label's past collaborators have ranged from everyone from Iron Maiden album artist Derek Riggs to erotic photographer Ellen Stagg to electro-reggae supergroup Major Lazer.

Label heads Mikhail "Mike" Bortnik and Greg Rivera were nice enough to sit down with io9 and answer some questions about Mishka's design philosophy, winter line, and how Stan Lee cold lamps it at Comic-Con:

What's the Mishka origin story?

Mikhail Bortnik (left): It started sometime in '03. My job I was working at was going to close, so I decided to take a stab at t-shirt design, which I had wanted to do since college. This was about the same time I met Greg. A few months into it, I realized I was in over my head so I asked Greg to join on-board and sell the line. Greg immediately came on as a full-time partner. The basic idea was we wanted to sell street wear, but we soon realized there were so many fans who were into both street wear and scifi that there was absolutely no reason we couldn't incorporate these two things.

In terms of scifi, what were your earliest influences?

Greg Rivera (right): A lot of our influences have come from B-horror films, straight-up scifi films, and comic books, especially for Mike. I was big into horror comics when I was kid and also things like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, anything with the ironic twist at the end. Both of us are also big toy fans. Being in our early thirties, we grew up with 1980s toys, which ended up being a huge influence in our designs.

MB: One example of this influence was in our Fall 2008 Skyway Trippers collection – we tweaked an Israeli Special Forces design to include the phrase "Spaceknights" in Russian, as a homage to the old Spaceknights comic and toy line.

ROM Spaceknight allusions? That's wild. On a similar note, Mishka has a roster of kaiju-like characters who appears on a lot of your apparel – i.e. the half-serpentine, half-ursine Death Adder and the Cyco Simon skull. What's the story behind them?

MB: Actually the notion of bringing characters into the clothing brand goes back to metal bands. Cyco Simon is a reference to [Megadeth's ] Vic Rattlehead and Eddie from Iron Maiden, and we wanted our own. As for the Death Adder, we use our designs to tell a story with him – he's often seen teaming up with our Soviet super-soldier character.

Are we going to see an Adult Swim series with these guys anytime soon?

MB: I'll be honest, Greg and I would love to be able to a comic book or cartoon series with them.

What was the first sci-fi influenced Mishka piece?

GR: "They Live" was probably one of the first ones. It's hard to remember since we've had so many designs over time.

One of my early favorites was your Judge Death-inspired "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" logo.

MB: That was a mixing of the old Brian Bolland artwork with what people guessed [what the name of German industrial band] KMFDM stood for. KMFDM actually gave us a cease-and-desist for that one.

Really? Not the 2000 AD people?

MB: We figured we'd get something from them or Depeche Mode, but no, it was from the KMFDM people!

On a similar note, when was that moment when you said to yourselves, "Holy crap. We can't believe we just put that on a t-shirt."

MB: The "Tom of Eternia" t-shirt.

GR: Mike had the idea of doing a Tom of Finland-style shirt [featuring He-Man].

MB: If you've never hear of Tom of Finland, he's like the homoerotic artist. There was this impetus [to create this shirt] early on when someone made the comment that all we do is put naked girls and 80s cartoon characters on our shirts. Street wear on a whole seems more macho than we are as a brand, so Greg and I were like, let's do this.

GR: Our friend Robin Nishio – who is this amazing illustrator – met up with us and Mike pitched him the idea. Robin actually went and bought two big books on Tom of Finland and aped the style exactly. That was the coolest because we got so much shit from our customers because it was like, "Here's Skeletor as the master and He-Man down on his knees, gay porn style."

What sort of pieces are in the pipeline at the moment?

GR: We did this series of shirts for [the new heavy metal-themed video game] Brutal Legend and we're working with Dark Horse Comics on a project.

Oh wow, are you at the liberty to talk about that right now?

MB: Not really, but if anyone has followed our brand, you'll know that one particular Dark Horse character particularly sticks out.

As far as the Winter 2009 line goes, you seem to have strong robot theme going. You have the Terminator cyclops, the Decepticon hearse, and my favorite, the Ultron bear. Why robots this season?

MB: We've gone so far doing themes that this season just happened to be robots. This was probably one of our most rigid designs themes. The Ultron shirt's been particularly popular.

You guys hit up the San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was it being a street wear brand at what's been historically a comic and scifi show?

MB: We were selling some things there, but we were mostly there as fans.

GR: It's been a little calculated – and not to reveal all our secrets – but if a lot more other brands saw the potential of that market, you'd see a lot more people doing it. It's hard for us to do business, because Mike and I go and we're just geeking out. Besides going out there to meet Tim and Eric [from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!], we're both really into Japanese kaiju and we had the chance to show off our own kaiju designs.

MB: Comic-Con 2008 was my first one. We wanted to see the Lost panel, but after we saw it spilling into the street, we just said "fuck it" and went to the Battlestar Galactica panel. That crowd was pretty big too, but Dean Koontz was still speaking. So yeah, we killed two hours listening to Dean Koontz.

Any good Mishka Comic-Con party tales?

GR: We crashed an Activision party at the Hard Rock Café and saw Stan Lee. If you're at a Comic-Con party and you see Stan Lee, you know you're at the coolest party.

MB: He was just hanging out with this girl on his arm.

GR: (laughs) She looked like she was twenty years old.

MB: I don't if she was, like, hitting on him or he was hitting on her, but Stan Lee's exactly how you picture him. He really says "true believer."

I wouldn't want him any other way. Do you find yourselves getting calls from influences who've enjoyed your work?

MB: Other than the artists who we're huge fans of and end up working with – like Derek Riggs and L'Amour Supreme – no, not really. A lot of our influences are grumpy old men.

What would you say is the most quintessential Mishka design?

GR: On our first trip to Japan, we stayed in this little town outside of Tokyo and found all these old Japanese horror and sci-fi press kits. These kits would take the coolest part of the movie and turn it into poster art. We found this great Westworld kit and Mike added some comic book stuff, like Ultron and Cyborg from Teen Titans to the design. To this day, it's still one of my favorite ones.

MB: We also found this Motel Hell kit in which we used for our "Electric Funeral" shirt. We electrified the faces and it turned out great.

Alright guys - some final lightning round questions. Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China or Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan?

MB: Kim Cattrall. I'm a Next Generation fan, what can I say.

Zardoz or Troll 2?

GR: Troll 2.

MB: Zardoz.

Would you rather have John Carpenter compose you a personal theme song or direct a movie about your life?

MB: I'd rather have him direct the movie because then he'd have to compose the film's theme song.

Shit! I hadn't thought of that loophole. Any final words to io9 readers?

GR: By all means check Mishka out - you'll definitely find something you like.

Mishka apparel is available at their website and their Brooklyn store at 350 Broadway in Williamsburg, NYC. Store photography courtesy of Dave Digioia.

The English-dubbed version of Indonesia's Lady Terminator contains the only English phrases you'll need to get through your day: "Is there any man who can satisfy me?" "I'll come back in a hundred years and have revenge on your great-grandaughter." Oh also, "I'm not a lady, I'm an anthropologist." And: "Hey listen, Jack and I have seen more dead bodies than you've eaten hot dogs. So just shut up and eat."

"It says here all three of these guys died with their cocks bitten off. Could be a small animal." "An eel?" "I've heard of the ultimate blow job, but this is too much."

Lady Terminator, made in Indonesia in the late 1980s, is that rare rip-off of a U.S. movie that forges off in a new direction, and approaches its own levels of sublimeness. The slogan, "First she mates, then she terminates," pretty much says it all. I love the flickering blue lightning coming out of her eyes and trashing the room — not to mention the "if the car is rocking" scene. Oh, and the guy scratching his head with a submachine gun.

Grad Student Madness explains what the hell this movie is about:

Here's the story: Years ago, the South Seas Queen, a figure from Javanese folklore, was perfectly happy killing men by letting the snake in her vagina bite off their dingly-danglies during intercourse. Unfortunately, some jerk yanks the snake out of her cootch and turns it into a dagger. She's pissed (who wouldn't be?) and vows revenge on his great-grandaughter. His thought, no doubt, at this point is, "Okay, Crazy, good luck with that grandaughter thing!"

Fast-forward to the 80s, when Tania, an anthropologist, is investigating the South Seas Queen. We know she's an anthropologist because of the immortal line: "I'm not a lady! I'm an anthropologist!" Anyway, Tania is scuba diving in the general vicinity of the old South Sea Queen place when her boat is capsized by a tsunami and she is dragged to the bottom of the sea and onto a bed in a perfectly dry room (No, I can't really explain that) where that sea serpent enters her vag (via really bad animation) and possesses her.

Tania emerges from the surf possessed and naked and the film proceeds to blatantly rip off entire sequences from Terminator as she hunts the grandaughter, who is an Indonesian pop singer, and get hunted by a cop with the worst mullet this side of country music. Countless people get shot, numerous scenes get lifted, clothes get shed with abandon. What's amazing to me about Lady Terminator is how it adapts James Cameron's movie for the Indonesian working-class audience by incorporating so much local mythology. It looks like the film we know until it gets into sea serpents and witchy queens who live at the bottom of the ocean. It's all fairly strange.

Big props to YouTube user Slasherfan, who put up 20 minutes of the best moments from this instant classic online. Here's another 10 minutes of Lady Terminator goodness:

Apparently oblivious to the fact that the franchise is up for sale and no-one knows who future owners will be or what they'll want, McG announced that he'll make two more Terminator movies, the first of which will feature Sarah Connor, even though "he's not sure how he's going to pull that off." We'd be more worried about future Terminator rights holders agreeing to him making two sequels to a critically-savaged movie that flopped at the box office (in comparison to expectations, at least; it's still in the top 20 movies of the year) and failed to prevent the bankruptcy of the owners of the property if we were him, but maybe there's a reason we're not successful Hollywood producer/directors and he is.

He was also disappointed that Salvation wasn't the best movie in the series so far, but thinks that it was better than T3 (which he "didn't really pay attention to"; he also only watched one episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Feel free to start your fuming now), and "tried to introduce credibility" back to the franchise. And, maybe most importantly, he showed that he knows movie direction:

7:15: Here's a tip that will go down in history from one of the film greats. "There's two elements that go into filmmaking. There's sound, and there's the picture."

There's more in Jason's epic journey into one director's ego, including how McG feels about the Charlie's Angels movies these days, that Moon Bloodgood topless shot and the downbeat end to the franchise that was possible. Go read, if only because Jason suffered for us, and because he's right about Community.

Terminator Salvation BD-Live Director's Commentary Liveblog [Gizmodo]

We focused on big, awesome, brain-eating box sets for this roundup — so, for example, we didn't include too many sets that were just individual seasons of TV series, if we could recommend the series' complete run in one set instead. And similarly, for movies, we tried to find the sets that would make the most impressive gift. But we also have a ton of suggestions for bargain-basement DVD sets that still make awesome gifts, in these trying economic times.

Movies On DVD: The Best New Box Sets And Gift Sets

(If galleries bother you, then click here for non-gallery version.)

Give Your Friends Enough Television To Ruin Them For Real Life

(If you hate galleries, click here for non-gallery version.)

10 Cheap-Ass DVD Box Sets That Make Good Ironic Stocking Stuffers:

(Non-gallery version is here.)

In a press release to Variety Halycon announced the auction would be closing:

"Over the past few weeks, Halcyon and its professionals have engaged in in-depth discussions and negotiations with numerous serious potential buyers, including several major movie studios," Halcyon said. "In addition, a number of attractive refinancing alternatives have also been presented. In order to maximize the value of a transaction for all of the company's creditors and stakeholders, we are fully analyzing all these options."

Haylcon, which has filed for bankruptcy, explained in November that they would find their "stalking horse" bid, or one bid which they pick as representing a minimum bid price for the assets. But apparently, they have done away with this part of the process. Many people believe that this is a bad sign for the future of Skynet.

Over at Nikki Finke's blog the comments are pretty telling:

From: Fan of the First Three Terminators, Not This One:
Look at it logically. These dopes paid 25 million for the franchise (well, they defaulted on the payments, and got sued by the hedge fund that loaned them the money but why get technical?) They got sued by their producing partner for 160 million bucks for fraud before the film even opened because they were already welching on money they owed people. They filed for bankruptcy before the DVD even came out. This Terminator grossed 60 million less than the last one, despite the rise in ticket prices. And since DVD sales are in the toilet everywhere, and that's where a high-budget tentpole actually goes into profit, whoops, no profit. Oh, and the TV show from the franchise tanked too. Also the video game and the Six Flags ride, because Six Flags went bankrupt.

Maybe the Pizza Hut Terminator Salvation Pizza was good, that I don't know, but if it was like the movie it cost too much to make, came in a flashy package, but was ultimately flat and tasteless. Therefore this franchise is worth:

From Warner Borg:
I'll tell you what the problem is here. They are expecting someone to offer a big money for the rights and no one has. And frankly, no one will.

Why? Because the Terminator brand is played out at this point. It needs to go away for a few years and then reappear with some hot new talent behind the camera. No one is going to pay a premium for a franchise they can't get started ASAP. If someone like Fox or WB does snap up the rights to the franchise then expect them to get it for a bargain and sit on the rights for a few years.

The numbers that were being floated around by Halcyon ($75m+ !!!!!!!) for the rights were absolutely laughable.

It's sad, but we tend to agree. James Cameron should just buy this up on the cheap, and decide who should be in charge of resurrecting this series. But if this goes the way people are predicting, it could be many, many years until we see another Terminator film — and don't hold your breath for a worthy installment.

Hollywood Parts is selling off everything from the Terminator Salvation set — and we mean everything. Even boxes of clean t-shirts. While some of the things in this list could be interesting to own, like the Terminator X-Rays, or half metal skeletons of dead terminators, much of this stuff is the worst, especially this silver platform shoe get-up that Helena must have worn when she was a floating head at the end??? This costume must be from the trashed script many moons ago — sad really, 'cause that outfit could only have spiced up this film.

[via IESB]

We've selected ten types of science fiction fans, offering you great gift ideas for fans of the big franchises, this summer's biggest movies, and even something for the steampunks and zombie lovers. You can also check out our fan gift guide from last year, which also includes gift ideas for fans of Battlestar Galactica, Harry Potter, and Batman.

Gifts for the Star Wars Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Star Trek Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Transformers Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the GI Joe Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Doctor Who Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Joss Whedon Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Terminator Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Vampire Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Steampunk Fan (Gallery-free view)

Gifts for the Zombie Fan (Gallery-free view)

Additional gift ideas by Meredith Woerner.

Speculative fiction is full of stories about people who've lost their identity – AMC just gave us a dreamlike remake of The Prisoner in which Number Six forgets who he really is, and Dollhouse returns Friday with more mind-erasing fun. But it's weird to see the trope of "fighting for selfhood" merged with that action-movie staple, the entertaining killing spree.

Recently, I was re-watching chunks of X-Men: Origins: Wolverine and thinking about that movie's insane body-count — both before and after Logan starts trying to regain his elusive humanity. In Wolverine, the mutant known as Logan is caught between his bestial nature and his dignity as an individual. For a hundred-odd years, he is a slaughter machine for the military, and then he joins a super-secret mutant taskforce. But in mid-atrocity, he suddenly starts questioning orders, and then he goes… rogue. (No, he doesn't bleach part of his hair and start talking in a Southern-girl voice. He just wanders off the reservation.)

The point is, Wolverine is just as much of a killing machine after he starts asserting that he's not just part of the machine, or not just an animal. He never makes the connection between the sacredness of his own personhood, and the sacredness of human life in general. I get that you have to fight for your freedom sometimes, but the movie makes a big point of showing Wolverine killing when he could just as easily disable his opponents — one of the movie's few great fuck-yeah moments involves cold-blooded murder. (Sure, he's killing scumbags. But he was just as much of a scumbag twenty minutes earlier.)

Likewise, Terminator Salvation (newly on DVD) gives us Sam Worthington's tormented cyborg Marcus, who discovers that he's basically a reanimated corpse with metal parts — and he makes the choice to be human, slaughtering several of John Connor's men in the process. (During his heroic escape from the resistance compound.) But it's okay, because Marcus' emergent selfhood is more important than any sense of self all of those dead people might have possessed. (Actually, I might need to — shudder — rewatch this sequence. I know a bunch of the rebels die, but some of them die due to hydrobots that attack afterwards. Does Marcus actually kill anybody directly, or just cause their deaths by tearing apart their security?)

And then, of course, there's District 9, in which Wikus also fights to regain his humanity — by putting on a battlesuit and shredding people with alien weapons. This film at least subverts this trope a bit, by having Wikus use alien weaponry that he's only able to use because he's losing his humanity — and the film doesn't exactly reward Wikus for his mass murder.

This odd combination — the hero who devalues human life in the process of exalting his own — has been around for ages, but seems to be on the rise. RoboCop and the Universal Soldier movies give us cyborg heroes who struggle to re-humanize while killing lots of other humans. Michael Bay (surprise!) gave us The Island, in which a clone grown as an organ donor kills his "original" self, along with a number of other people, on the way to becoming a full-fledged person.

For almost as long as there have been action movies, there's been the high body count: watching a Rambo movie in the 1980s, you don't stop and think that everyone of these bodies flopping to the ground is another person who won't come home to his/her family. It's one of the conventions of action movies that we accept that this carnage isn't really happening – even as the movie expects us to suspend our disbelief about a guy falling out of a helicopter on fire and surviving, it asks us to maintain full disbelief that mass murder is taking place in front of us.

On some level, too, we stop thinking that those people dying in front of us are really people – especially in a movie with tons of bad CG (like Wolverine). We can watch the corpses piling up because we know they're not human.

But the action-movie body count and the "search for identity" plot are great separately — I love a good John Woo bloodbath — but they sit uneasily together. The more people we see your cyborg or mutant kill — and the more casually they're killed — the less we can identify with our hero's quest for selfhood. The whole thing starts to feel more like a first-person shooter, and the main character more like a video-game avatar, rather than an individual who Deserves Human Rights and all that stuff.

If life is so cheap, then who really cares about Logan's quest for self? Not to pick on Wolverine, but these questions keep coming back as you watch the movie, as if they have a mutant healing factor.

How do you square the contrast, between the hero's inalienable uniqueness and everyone else's disposability? Maybe it's because Our Hero is a Nietzschean ubermensh, whose will to power makes his individuality more precious than everyone else's? What do you think?

Zack Whedon announced today that he will be writing a six-issue Terminator series for Dark Horse. Whedon didn't reveal much about the comic itself, but it sounds like we'll be seeing his take on the world after Judgment Day:

I just turned in the first script and I'm very excited about it. I love Terminator. I think that movie is so good. Holy Toledo is it good. Now I get to play in that universe and make up Terminator stories of my own that people will get to read. I am not a big-time, famous dude and yet now I am choreographing action sequences set in a post-apocalyptic future overrun by evil cybernetic organisms hell bent on destroying the human race.

Zack Whedon Reveals New Terminator Series for Dark Horse [Techland via Whedonesque]

1960s and before:

1970s:

1980s:

1990s:

2000s:

Bay, Kurtzman and Orci's Batman
Pros: You'd get a new Batman movie every two years, even if Michael Bay would complain and tell people that he didn't want to make it but the studio offered him so much money he couldn't say no. Plus, with Bay attached, you know that they'd get to Catwoman as soon as humanly possible instead of this whole "I am a nihilist Joker" crap from The Dark Knight.
Cons: Kurtzman and Orci would probably take their Daddy issues (Fringe's Walter/Peter complicated relationship, Star Trek's Kirk trying to live up to his dead father's memory by self-destructing but then coming through as the hero he was destined to be, even Transformers' Optimus as Tough-But-Fair Robot Daddy to Shia's Sam Whitwicky) to pop culture's most parent-obsessed character, leading to the risk of a third act emotional breakthrough where Batman cries. There are enough Batman characters to make Revenge Of The Fallen seem understaffed, and the various personality tics of said Batman characters could lead to more unfunny schtick like the Twins and/or Jazz from the Transformers movies. Michael Bay possibly already sees himself as Bruce Wayne. Also, there's every possibility that the movie would make no sense whatsoever (See: Transformers, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen).

JJ Abrams' Terminator
Pros: Abrams' sense of kinetic, fun filmmaking is just what the franchise needs after Terminator Salvation - He's a sci-fi nerd who knows how to make successful popcorn movies full of tech that are really all about people; in other words, he's a younger James Cameron, before Cameron fell more in love with the tech involved in making movies. A Terminator-ized "Bad Robot" logo would be awesome. There'd probably be a Simon Pegg cameo.
Cons: Abrams' inability to not have a happy ending would mean that Skynet would be completely defeated by the time he was done, whether it was a movie or trilogy. The time travel core concept would allow him to reboot the series whenever he wanted, with Zachary Quinto as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. There'd probably be a Keri Russell cameo. Actually, fuck the cons. I really want to see Abrams do Terminator, the more I think about it.

Christopher Nolan's GI Joe
Pros: If anyone could give GI Joe some critical credibility, it's Christopher Nolan.
Cons: Nolan's attempt would probably be called A Real American Hero and would likely be three hours long, most of which would be spent filled with actors who should know better (Yes, Gary Oldman, we're looking at you) telling the audience how difficult it is to be a real American hero in a morally ambiguous world. There would be at least one subplot about abuse of military power to underscore the moral ambiguity until we move into the third act when the audience needs to get pumped and then Duke would abuse military power to stop the bad guy and then walk away in disgust in order to make a point that will be lost on the majority of an audience who were excited to see shit blow up finally. Cobra Commander would be so compelling that you'll start to wonder if he's wandered on set from a different, better, movie. Purists would complain about Snake Eyes' closing monologue about how difficult it is to be a ninja in the US military. No child would ever want to buy a GI Joe toy ever again.

Bryan Singer's Transformers
Pros: Singer's mix of geek cred and understanding of human drama/cheap angst is exactly what the Robots in Disguise need. His X-Men movies show that he can deal with large casts, and also keep the core of the original concepts and characters without getting weighed down by nostalgia. His Superman Returns shows that he, uh... knows Kevin Spacey, who could probably do a good Megatron voice? Okay, maybe not that last one.
Cons: Tom Cruise would end up playing Optimus Prime, and Ian McKellen would cameo as the Matrix of Leadership/Allspark/Creation Matrix/whatever the hell it's called these days. Singer would leave before the last film in the trilogy to go and make a Go-Bots movie about Leader-1 really being Jesus and stalking his ex-girlfriend.

McG's Dollhouse
Pros: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!
Cons: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!

Whedon's open letter to Halcyon proves just why this man should be given the keys to the cyborg car:

An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners. From a Very Important Hollywood Mogul

Dear Sirs/Ma'ams,

I am Joss Whedon, the mastermind behind Titan A.E., Parenthood (not the movie) (or the new series) (or the one where 'hood' was capitalized 'cause it was a pun), and myriad other legendary tales. I have heard through the 'grapevine' that the Terminator franchise is for sale, and I am prepared to make a pre-emptive bid RIGHT NOW to wrap this dealio up. This is not a joke, this is not a scam, this is not available on TV. I will write a check TODAY for $10,000, and viola! Terminator off your hands.

No, you didn't miscount. That's four — FOUR! — zeroes after that one. That's to show you I mean business. And I mean show business. Nikki Finke says the Terminator concept is played. Well, here's what I have to say to Nikki Finke: you are a fine journalist and please don't ever notice me. The Terminator story is as formative and important in our culture — and my pretend play — as any I can think of. It's far from over. And before you Terminator-Owners (I have trouble remembering names) rush to cash that sweet cheque, let me give you a taste of what I could do with that franchise:

1) Terminator... of the Rings! Yeah, what if he time-travelled TOO far... back to when there was dragons and wizards? (I think it was the Dark Ages.) Hasta La Vista, Boramir! Cool, huh? "Now you gonna be Gandalf the Red!" RRRRIP! But then he totally helps, because he's a cyborg and he doesn't give a s#&% about the ring — it has no power over him! And he can carry it AND Frodo AND Sam AND f@%& up some orcs while he's doing it. This stuff just comes to me. I mean it. (I will also offer $10,000 for the Lord of the Rings franchise).

2) More Glau. Hey. There's a reason they're called "Summer" movies.

3) Can you say... musical? Well don't. Even I know that's an awful idea.

4) Christian Bale's John Connor will get a throat lozenge. This will also help his Batwork (ten grand for that franchise too, btw.)

5) More porn. John Connor never told Kyle Reese this, but his main objective in going to the past was to get some. What if there's a lot of future-babies that have to be made? Cue wah-wah pedal guitar — and dollar signs!

6) The movies will stop getting less cool.

Okay. There's more — this brain don't quit! (though it has occasionally been fired) — but I think you get my drift. I really believe the Terminator franchise has only begun to plumb the depths of questioning the human condition during awesome stunts, and I'd like to shepherd it through the next phase. The money is there, but more importantly, the heart is there. But more importantly, money. Think about it. End this bloody bidding war before it begins, and put the Terminator in the hands of someone who watched the first one more than any other movie in college, including "Song of Norway" (no current franchise offer).

Sincerely, Joss Whedon.

For this, Joss is forgiven all of Dollhouse.

(According to the Financial Times, real parties interested in Terminator include Sony, Twilight studio Summit Entertainment, and Media Rights Captial, the people behind Bruno. The rights will be auctioned later this month.)

An Open Letter to the Terminator Owners [Whedonesque] (Link updated, thanks all.)

So now that you've seen it, what do you think? Worth creating a huge public apocalypse and humiliating poor Moon Bloodgood over? I didn't think so either.

To refresh your memory, back in February, McG made Bloodgood stand up (fully clothed) in front of a crowd of Wondercon fans and shouted, "Who wants to see Moon's boobs?" until the crowd roared. McG explained that the studio wanted to cut Bloodgood's topless scene, to keep the movie PG-13. In the roundtables afterwards, they talked up the scene and how great it was:

Afterwards, at the roundtable, McG told us he saw Moon's breasts as expressing the human softness that's what we're fighting the machines for, and they're like the opposite of the hard machine world, but on the other hand maybe it's just a gratuitous juvenile scene that drags down an otherwise serious movie, and that's what he's debating with the studio right now. And Moon herself told reporters the scene is very tasteful and she felt very comfortable with it. And the scene is about knowing you could die soon and wanting to be close to another person, without any barriers in the way. Including clothing.

Did you get all of that from the above clip? No? Then you're obviously an ingrate, who cannot appreciate the subtleties of McG's film-making process. In any case, I'm probably the last person who would object to a little gratuitious nudity or extra trashiness — especially in an already cheesy apocalyptic film, where it mixes in with the shouting and the ridiculous stunts and the nonsensical dialogue. In fact, if Christian Bale had spent the entire movie nude, it might have been the one thing that would have salvaged his performance. But especially after having seen the rest of the film, the auteur-ish temper tantrums over this brief snippet of "Moon's boobs," and the grandiose boob exegeses seem a bit overplayed. Just a tad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Garret Dillahunt on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

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

Sheryl Lee on Twin Peaks.

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

Ali Larter on Heroes.

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

Doctor Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis

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

Kirk Acevedo on Fringe .

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

Amy Acker on Angel.

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

Terry O'Quinn on Lost.

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

Denise Crosby on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

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

Steve Bacic on Andromeda.

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

Lalla Ward on Doctor Who.

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

Katee Sackhoff on Battlestar Galactica.

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

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