If you managed to miss out on ABC Family's amazing series The Middleman last year, now is your chance to finally get the full dose. You'll meet the mysterious, upstanding Middleman, who "solves exotic problems," as well as his assistant Wendy Watson, an aspiring artist who is also really good at fighting enormous genetically-mutated monsters with ballpoint pens. Find out why you shouldn't allow boy bands to create transdimensional doorways using the energy of thousands of fangirls, and why the man who made millions off the solar-powered uMaster cube has taken over the world in an alternate dimension where people eat aerosolized soup provided by the government. Oh, and watch Wendy and the Middleman trade quips as they fight evil ventriloquist dummies and flying Peruvian pikes that cause people to turn into trout-eating zombies. See why we love this show?

It's hard to find well-written SF on TV, let alone well-written comic SF. That's why this show is such a damn treasure.

This video on the Wilhelm Scream classic sound effect, hosted by zany showrunner Javier Grillo-Marxuach, is but one taste of the madness served up in the DVD extras on this set of twelve episodes. I liked this video in particular because it gives you a little taste of the non-linear wordplay and general madness that made this show so wonderful. And, of course, you get to experience the joy of hearing that scream, used in many horror and scifi movies throughout the twentieth century (most famously in Star Wars and Indiana Jones).

There are also loads of other extras, including a commentary tracks, a blooper reel (with extended interrodroid dance and teddy bear dance), Grillo-Marxuach riffing goofily as he answers email, deleted scenes, and (yes) much more. But really, the best part is have all the episodes together, to watch again and again. The dialogue is so fast and packed with references that you'll want to rewatch just to get that one moment where robot secretary Ida makes an obscure reference to the 3 laws of robotics, or the Middleman yells "eyes without a face"!

Pick up a copy for you and your pals!

Middleman DVD set via Amazon

The Comic Con video of the "Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" table read is a poor substitute for getting the actual episode, but at least now you get to hear some of that fantastic dialogue coming out of the mouths of the actors, the way it was meant to. Our favorite moment: Manservant Neville (Mark Sheppard) growls, "My plan is sheer elegance in its draconian complexity!" (Take that, Guy Goddard!). And of course, if the video's not enough for you, the whole thing has been released as a graphic novel as well.

The whole thing is on YouTube, and the playlist of all the segments is here.

Oh man, it is so great to see the Middleman cast all together talking glibly and to hear Matt Keeslar spouting incomprehensible dialogue and crazy plot stuff like:

Prophecies of Orac! A Polyditetrahexamono-Trioctalon?

Or Wendy's line: "Look at all those pineal glands. It's like a gland-nado." To which Tyler says: "A tornado made of glands?" And then Manservant Neville says "You must admit, my plan is sheer elegance in its draconian complexity."

So in the unfilmed season finale, the Middleman finally kisses Lacey. Later she says she wasn't sure if it really happened. The Middleman says "It happened, and it will happen again." The Middleman even tells Lacey he loves her! And Tyler learns the truth about what Wendy does for a living — and we learn it's not just coincidence that Tyler and Wendy got together, it was all part of the fiendish plot by Tyler's boss, Manservant Neville. And the fiendish plot really really is fiendish. And over the top. You probably couldn't have filmed of all of this in any case, but

Oh my god, the fantastic fearsomeness of Romo Lampkin himself, Mark Sheppard, as Manservant Neville, the story's villain. The snarling! The raging! The ranting! Especially after he gets the power to reshape reality itself. "I shall turn all the beans of this world... into peas!"

We'll have a review of the graphic novel up on the site soon enough, but I really really hope the video of the table read goes up on Youtube. If you ever loved The Middleman — Hell, if you ever loved goodness, virtue or crazy science fiction gadgets and surreal humor. If you ever loved anything, you must see this for yourself. It is the culmination of all Western society.

"You will be made to walk the streets in suits made of cactuses and be flagellated by talking fish!"

Oh, and you should have heard the crowd go wild when narrator/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach read the stage description that Wendy is chained up in a Princess Leia slave girl costume. Says Wendy: "You want to make me the star in your hentai fan vid, go ahead." Manservant Neville says "Animated Japanese Erotica is the last thing in my vast and god-like cranium, Wendy Watson...from this sacrificial altar, you will bear witness to my master stroke." To which Wendy says "Eww," and her reading of that line was side-splitting.

And we learn the Middleman's true name, and we delve into his history, and the heartbreaking loss that turned him into the great upright hero we know and worship.

It is totally demented and incredible stuff, and it deserves to be seen for itself. Let's hope someone was filming it, and you all get to see it!

For those of you coming to this late, The Middleman was a graphic novel that spawned a television show on ABC Family last year. It followed the adventures of art student Wendy Watson, who takes a temp job that turns out to be an apprenticeship with the Middleman, a mysterious superhero who fights monsters and mad scientists. And the Middleman strikes up an awkward but really sweet flirtation with Wendy's roommate Lacey.

The Forbidden Romance Contingency: Show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach says he balked at having any kind of romance between MM and Lacey. "I was only willing to make it a joke in the pilot," but insisted that would be the end of it. The pilot, incidentally, was 90 percent the same as the first issue of his graphic novel, laying out the characters as broad archetypes: the stoic, quirky hero, the snarky art student and her idealistic roommate.

But this is what happens when you develop a TV show, Grillo-Marxuach says. You bring that story that you created sitting in a room by yourself into a room full of other writers, and they start putting in their own ideas and influences. And you bring in actors like Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson), Matt Keeslar (The Middleman) and Brit Morgan (Lacey Thornfield) and they have bring their own stuff to the characters. One of the things that really jumps out at you, if you read the graphic novel (which you should) and then watch the TV series (which you most definitely should) is how much more complex and nuanced the characters become. Grillo-Marxuach says that's a result of working on the characters in a collaborative setting.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And Grillo-Marxuach says he has "boundaries" in his own writing ability, stuff he can't or doesn't do. So when the other writers on the show started pushing for Lacey and MM to go on a date, Grillo-Marxuach pushed back. "But the writers in the writer's room kept insisiting... It's weird to be a showrunner at loggerheads with the writing room." He objected for several reasons: "He's older than she is, he's Wendy's boss and an authority figure." But in the end, he gave in, and that led to some of the more poignant moments in the show, and deepened the characters immensely. "If it was just me writing this in my room by miself doing every episode you'd never have seen that," says Grillo-Marxuach. "I'm not a megalmanical show runner, and I like it when people make my work better."

The Superhero Comedy Initiative: We just sat down and watched most of the show's run once again on DVD — the DVD box set comes out July 28, incidentally — and it's striking how much the show feels like a straight-up comedy when you watch a bunch of episodes in a row. Grillo-Marxuach is happy for people to view The Middleman as a comedy. "It was always a comedy, in that it always riffs on popular culture, and it always had this very specific pattery way of talking."

"If you want to send a message to the world — and I don't know that the show was a big message show — it's better to do it by making people laugh than by being preachy," Grillo-Marxuach says. The Middleman "was always a very sweet-souled show, and it had a lot of heart. It has a lot of pity towards villains. It says that evil is little people doing a lot of work not to be good, even though being good is probably easier."

And as we talked about last summer at Comic Con, a big part of the show's lightness is in response to the fetishization of darkness in genre entertainment of the past 20 years, shows and movies which insist that life is hard and full of struggle, and heroism will destroy your life. In response, "an affirmation of the possibility of joy and accomplishment is very much what the show is all about. Of course, my show got canceled after 12 episodes, and The Dark Knight made $600 billion," notes Grillo-Marxuach.

The Unlikely Terry Nation In-Joke Alert:The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The fact that The Middleman is such an upbeat show makes it even funnier that — SPOILER ALERT — the unfilmed final episode is full of tiny references to Blake's 7, the famously depressing British science fiction series. I would list them, but we'd be here all day. "I was trying to find the show that has the most depressing series finale ever" to reference in The Middleman's finale, says Grillo-Marxuach. That unfilmed final episode, of course, is coming out as a graphic novel in time for Comic Con, and there'll be a reading of the episode's script, featuring the original cast, on Thursday at Comic Con. And for those who missed it, here's the official description:

Who is The Middleman's long-lost love? Can Lacey Thornfield ever forget her requited but never-acted-upon attraction to The Middleman? Is Manservant Neville a beneficent plutocrat or an evil madman with a nefarious plan for world domination? Will Wendy Watson and Tyler Ford ever find time for one another? Will Wendy Watson ever wear a slave girl costume? All your burning questions will be answered - and all your burning answers will be questioned - in this season-ending, series-concluding installment of The Middleman.

And at the right is a sneak peek at the graphic novel's final image of MM, from original artist Les McClain.

Anyway, all of those Blake's 7 references are there to set up a downer ending, but the graphic novel's actual ending is not that bleak, says Grillo-Marxuach. In fact, the graphic novel version of the series finale has a more upbeat ending than the actual episode would have had if it had been filmed as planned. By the time the show's creators were working on the 13th episode, they were exhausted from doing the first 12 and struggling with "big budget obstacles," and their beloved colleague Neil Levin had just died. (The show's 12th and final episode is dedicated to Levin.) But since Grillo-Marxuach had some time to rework the script slightly between the show's cancellation and the graphic novel coming out, "I found a way to end it on a more optimistic note... Had we shot it, it would have had more weariness."

So as Grillo-Marxuach puts it, "In our world, Blake is not evil, and the Federation is destroyed." (This led to us having a huge debate over whether Blake is evil in the Blake's 7 series finale.)

The "Never Say Never Again" Potential: So if the DVD box set sells a billion copies, could The Middleman still return in some form? Absolutely, says Grillo-Marxuach. "The nice thing is, this happened with Firefly, it happened with Futurama, it happened with Family Guy. There's a history of cult shows being found and further exploited by the corporations, in a good way."

So this seems like a great moment to plug the DVDs, which are coming out July 28 on Shout Factory. We'll post a review of the box set later, but they're already available for preorder at Amazon.com. And it's never too early to do your Christmas shopping. You never know when your local shopping mall will be overrun with gun-toting gorillas, after all.

Yesterday, we posted a leaked trailer for Day One, which starts airing in March on NBC. Grillo-Marxuach is joining the show as a co-executive producer, and he says that trailer is a "great teaser for what's happening in the show." It's actually the trailer that series creator Jesse Alexander made, to convince the network to pick the show up. Grillo-Marxuach says even though he's sad The Middleman was canceled, he's excited to move on with his career and get to work with another group of talented people and learn from them.

One of the things we loved about The Middleman was its light-heartedness and the way it reveled in its fantastical stories. So we were wondering if Day One was going to be darker than The Middleman. Grillo-Marxuach replies, "Touched By An Angel would be darker than The Middleman." At the same time, though, he says that some of The Middleman's optimism will show up in Day One, and Alexander and his son are both huge fans of The Middleman.

You can see that optimism in the trailer, which showcases "the idea of a community coming together in the face of great adversity," says Grillo-Marxuach. For example, in that trailer, there's a moment where a police officer is holding a gun on a group of people on the freeway. And the other guy disarms the cop, but also reassures him that he's a good cop, and everything's going to be okay. It ends on a hopeful note of working together, says Grillo-Marxuach. And Alexander has been influenced by our new spread of global communication, and seeing how the internet has brought new communities together. So if you're expecting Day One to be The Road: The Series, you might be surprised.

The Middleman comes out on DVD July 28. We'll have the rest of our interview with Grillo-Marxuach about the DVDs coming up soon.

Sheppard's Facebook page broke the news yesterday:

Comicon July 23rd, 11:15 - ...a LIVE READING OF THE LOST MIDDLEMAN THIRTEENTH EPISODE SCRIPT - THE DOOMSDAY ARMAGEDDON APOCALYPSE!

The full cast line-up for the panel is still unannounced, but Shout! Factory, who're organizing it, have said that

[W]e do have several cast members already lined up. There will be multiple people doing voices.

Series creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach also Twittered encouragingly:

comic-con: live reading of "the doomsday armageddon apocalypse" with the entire middleman cast reunited...sound good to anyone?

As for what happens in that final episode, the new Middleman website posted a blurb about the graphic novel based on it, also coming out at Comic Con:

Who is The Middleman's long-lost love? Can Lacey Thornfield ever forget her requited but never-acted-upon attraction The Middleman? Is Manservant Neville a beneficent plutocrat or an evil madman with a nefarious plan for world domination? Will Wendy Watson and Tyler Ford ever find time for one another? Will Wendy Watson ever wear a slave girl costume?

All your burning questions will be answered - and all your burning answers will be questioned - in this season-ending, series-concluding installment of The Middleman.

Now you know where we're going to be on Thursday morning at the con.http://publish.io9.com/ged/5302916

(Thanks, MissMercy!)

There's already precedent for science fiction shows living on past cancellation on Saturday mornings - Lost in Space, and more famously, Star Trek both had stints as cartoons, after all, and Happy Days even became a science fiction show when it became a cartoon:


It wasn't just television shows, of course; why could forget The Real Ghostbusters or Robocop keeping the flame alive for the failed movie franchises?



With all that in mind, can you blame us for thinking of these five dearly beloved - well, and Knight Rider - shows that could perfectly translate into the animated format so that they could stick around for a few more years (and hopefully get the Futurama treatment, coming back to life with a complete season order)?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Why it'd work: Man versus machine, including time-traveling and ridiculous stunts? The biggest surprise is that the Terminator franchise hasn't made it to Saturday mornings already.
Why it may not be the best idea: Could the show's larger questions about the nature of identity and predestination thrive in an animated series? And, even if they could, would the audience be even smaller without Summer Glau, Brian Austen Green and Lena Hedley to make it look pretty (admittedly, in bruised and bloody way) each week?
Verdict: There could definitely be a Terminator cartoon... But a Sarah Connor Chronicles cartoon...? We're not convinced.

Pushing Daisies
Why it'd work: Quirky, filled with color and with four detectives solving weird mysteries on a weekly basis, it's a less-annoying Scooby Doo with Ned's magic finger replacing the comedic titular dog.
Why it may not be the best idea: Would network standards and practices have a problem with a cartoon with such a high body count every episode? Would the show's tendency towards the saccharine seem even more pronounced with animated actors?
Verdict: If it could keep the level of writing as the original - and Chi McBride and Kirsten Chenowith as voice actors - we'd happily tune into an animated Daisies every week.

Knight Rider
Why it'd work: It's a man fighting crime with the help of his talking car. Let's face it; this should've been a cartoon to begin with. Maybe the scripts would've been better than this recent go-around, if it had.
Why it may not be the best idea: Without the real-life car porn, is there any point to Knight Rider at all? Also, could the show's creators resist the lure of turning KITT into a Transformer now that CGI budget constraints would be gone?
Verdict: Thanks to the thoroughly generic nature of the original, there's nothing worth tuning up for a Knight Rider cartoon model.

Firefly
Why it'd work: High adventure on the space waves with a band of colorful characters risking life and limb as they try to survive? It's like Dungeons and Dragons grown up and transplanted into orbit.
Why it may not be the best idea: Would it hurt too much? Perhaps - or maybe we just wouldn't be interested if we couldn't see Jewel Staite on a regular basis. But Whedon's series work in large part because of the actors as much as the writing, and it just wouldn't be the same without them.
Verdict: Sadly, we're saying that the Serenity should stay grounded.

The Middleman
Why it'd work: From its origins as a comic book to its broad cartoony comedy as a television show, this is another series that has always felt like a cartoon despite its flesh and blood stars. Plus, as a cartoon, imagine everything it could get away with but couldn't afford on an ABC Family budget!
Why it may not be the best idea: We have no reasons why. Seriously, this is a no-brainer.
Verdict: Did you miss the part where we called it a no-brainer above?

So, did we forget a show that would be perfect for the animated treatment? Do you think that we're insane for arguing that a cartoon Firefly wouldn't work? And, most importantly, who do we have to beg for a Middleman animated series?

Honestly, the only thing that's wrong with any of these covers is their heinous inclusion of the words "The Complete Series" instead of "Season One." But that's not the cover designer's fault.

The new DVDs contain all the episodes, including commentary tracks on the "The Pilot Episode Sanction," "The Cursed Tuba Contingency," "The Clotharian Contamination Protocol" and "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome." And there's a disc of special features:

1 Deleted/Extended Scenes
2 Weekly Javicasts
3 The Middleman-ager
4 Gag Reel
5 Casting Sessions
6 The Wilhelm Scream
7 Original Opening Title Sequence Animatics
8 Original Opening Title Sequence
9 "The Palindrome Reversal Palindrome" Table Read
10 "Scream Ur Luv 4 Me" Music Video
11 Scripts
12 A Gallery of Photography by Ralph King

The Middleman, The Complete Series DVD set will be released July 28, but you can pre-order it now. Why risk forgetting?

[Shout! Factory]

Show creator Jesse Alexander twittered the other day:

Just hired Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Erik Oleson, and Angela Kang as writers on DAY ONE! More announcements soon!

And Grillo-Marxuach just confirmed on his Facebook page that he's joining the show as co-executive producer.

Day One, from former Heroes producer Jesse Alexander, will be premiering in 2010 on NBC. Day One set photos by Deergus, more at the link.

LexCorp (DC Comics)
Hailed as one of the largest, most diversified multinational corporations in the world, it also happens to be founded by Lex Luthor, who runs it with his characteristic ruthlessness. The list of cities and countries where the corporation has holdings is basically as long as the list of cities and countries on Earth, and the number of companies controlled by LexCorp is almost as long and just as varied. Unfortunately, as of One Year Later, with Lana Lang acting as CEO, the corporation seems to be heading towards bankruptcy. The "No Helping Superman" rule still applies to all employees, however.

Primatech (Heroes)
The Primatech Paper Company of Odessa, Texas is the first Primatech facility the show introduces us to. Of course, they do a lot more than just make paper—They capture and "study" folks with enhanced abilities, but, really, what they do best is operate in a moral gray area. A very dark gray area.

Blue Sun (Firefly and Serenity)
While it's still unclear exactly what the corporation does, it seems pretty implicit that it isn't good. Although most of the Blue Sun products seen on the show seem as innocuous as coffee cans and crackers, River's actions, such as ripping off their labels on food and slashing Jayne with a knife when he wears their logo, suggest that there's something more going on. Some suggest that there's something in the food, but the stronger hypothesis seems to be that Blue Sun is somehow connected to the experiments done on River and is perhaps working with the Alliance.

Merrick Biotech (The Island)
Merrick Biotech's business is keeping clones of their customers around, just in case said customers should need a transplant of some kind. Basically like the ultimate life insurance, right? Except for the fact that it's illegal to allow the clones to be conscious and sentient, which, of course, Merrick Biotech lets happen and lies to their clients about. Therefore, the corporation has an entire population of fully-conscious human beings living totally unaware of the fact that they're basically just an organ farm. And that's just not cool.

Fatboy Industries (The Middleman, TV series)
In the final episode of the series, Wendy Watson is transported into a classic example of a Mirrorverse, where the megacorp of Fatboy Industries is a totalitarian presence, having taken the place of the government. Unfortunately, the morality of Fatboy in Wendy's real world is still unconfirmed, as there's a hint of "more than meets the eye" to both the corporation and its ambiguous founder, Manservant Neville. (This is underscored by the fact that the rest of Mirrorverse turns out to be not so very different from the real world.)

Buy n Large Corporation (WALL•E)
While maybe not inherently evil, the Buy n Large Corporation did govern Earth (perhaps much like the Mirrorverse Fatboy Industries) and did a very poor job of it. Even if rendering the planet uninhabitable wasn't exactly the gameplan, Buy n Large's role in that happening probably makes it a worse corporation than most of the others on this list.

Tyrell Corporation (Blade Runner)
The Tyrell Corporation produces the replicants, lifelike androids designed to the work deemed to dangerous and demeaning for humans, and is named for Dr. Eldon Tyrell, the founder and genius inventor of the replicants. While it's debatable how truly "evil" the Tyrell Corporation is, there is a definite sinister quality to their dealings and it's nigh impossible to deny that they definitely smack of "evil corporation."

Veidt Industries (Watchmen)
A lot of what was said about LexCorp could be repeated here. Once again, the ruthless ambition of the corporation paired with the questionable morality of its founder leaves us wondering how much to trust this (powerful, financially successful) corporation. Meanwhile, the impending release of the film was paired with a Veidt Industries commercial contest, leading to all sorts of fake '80's advertising:

Weyland-Yutani (Alien franchise)
Perhaps the gold standard of evil megacorporations, Weyland-Yutani's main gig is merciless profiteering, no matter what (or who) needs to be sacrificed in the process. (Fun fact: Their logo can be seen on some of the weapons in Firefly and they're said to be a client of Wolfram and Hart in Angel. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Joss Whedon wrote Alien Resurrection.)

Cyberdyne Systems Corporation (Terminator films)
While the corporation is said to be benign in the first two films, manufacturing parts for bigger companies, they then make the mistake of creating Skynet, a system of artificially intelligent supercomputers that control (among other things) nuclear missiles. This was not a smart move. In fact, it's just un-smart enough to warrant Cyberdyne's inclusion on this list.

Yoyodyne (The Crying of Lot 49 and V. by Thomas Pynchon)
Yoyodyne is a defense contractor that's described in The Crying of Lot 49 as "a giant of the aerospace industry," and a few characters in the novel work for the company. While the morality of Yoyodyne isn't firmly sealed either way, the thread of conspiracy woven throughout the work suggests that it isn't all it seems. (The name "Yoyodyne" is mentioned, as you might remember, in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.)

Earth Protectors (Up, Up, and Away, 2000 TV movie)
Ostensibly a group designed to teach middle schoolers the importance of environmentalism, Earth Protectors' favorite method of persuasion is brainwashing. And while handing out CD's brainwashing kids into recycling isn't a completely bad thing, brainwashing the parents to rob banks is another thing entirely. (Actually, brainwashing in general? Not recommended.)

Omni Consumer Products (Robocop)
Described as dystopian and inhumane, Omni Consumer Products (OCP) is an example of military capitalism taken to the extreme, until the corporation no longer cares who gets hurt or killed as long as the PR stays good. OCP is depicted as having its fingers in almost every branch of life, as long as there's money to be made from it. One of their strokes of genius comes from running both criminal organizations and a private police force, thereby ensuring a continued demand for both crime and justice.

Soylent Corporation (Soylent Green)
It's 2022 and the world is overpopulated and hungry. Who better to step in than the Soylent Corporation with their rations of tasty wafers known as Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow? Well, okay, they aren't that tasty, but thankfully, Soylent's come out with a new flavor: Soylent Green. Much more delicious. So what's the catch? Well, we all know what Soylent Green is.

GeneCo (Repo! The Genetic Opera)
After an epidemic of organ failures, GeneCo steps in to give transplants to those in need. Benevolent, right? Well, sure, until the boss, Rotti Largo, gets permission to repossess the organs of people who renege on their payments. And once a corporation is taking out your insides, the benevolence is kind of gone.

On April 14th, 1912, the RMS Titanic, the most technologically advanced ship of its time, struck an iceberg, and sank beneath the Atlantic ocean during the early hours of the 15th. Radio calls went unheeded, and over fifteen hundred people perished, with only seven hundred and six of the passengers surviving the wreck.

The wreck of our high-tech ocean-conquering liner has captured our imaginations ever since, especially after explorer Robert Ballard rediscovered the ship in 1985. Here are the classic science-fiction stories that feature the good ship Titanic:

Starship Titanic, Terry Jones & Douglas Adams
First a game, then a book based on the game, this story follows a main character whose home has been destroyed by a crashing space ship, the Titanic. Players solve puzzles, and the book, co-written by former Monty Python member Terry Jones (who also provided voicework for the game) collects a number of the story's subplots together. If you're interested, you can read the entire book online, although the words have been reordered to be in alphabetical order. Read it here

A Flight to Remember, Futurama Episode
Futurama also tackled the Titanic storyline, with Episode 10 of Season 2, "A Flight to Remember." The crew takes a vacation on the newly built Titanic, the most advanced ship in the universe, piloted by Zapp Branigan, and chrisined with the head of Leonardo DeCaprio. Predictably, things go south when Zapp pilots the ship between black holes, which he describes as Icebergs in the sky, and much of the plot spoofs the film Titanic.

Raise the Titanic!, Clive Cussler
Raise the Titanic! is the third book in Cussler's popular Dirk Pitt series, published in 1976. While mainly an action novel, there are some science fictional elements to it, as the protagonist seeks out the RMS Titanic to recover a shipment of minerals that would be used to power a top secret weapon, the Sicilian Project, being built by the US Defense Department. Pitt is tasked with raising the ship while intelligence and governmental agents clash, at the height of the Cold War.

Voyage of the Damned, Doctor Who episode
"What? What?!" So ended the third series of the current Doctor Who, as the Titanic crashes into the side of the Tardis. The third Christmas special, Voyage of the Dammed, finds the good Doctor on board the Titanic, a ship modeled after the real one, from the planet Sto. Along the way, he partners up with Kylie Minogue, goes down to modern-day earth, comes across some aliens and when the ship starts to crash into the planet, the Doctor saves the day. Business as usual.

The Ghost from the Grand Banks and the Deep Range, Arthur C. Clarke
This novel takes place in 2012, where two groups are attempting to raise the Titanic from the bottom of the ocean for the centennial event, where technological rivalries and egos ensure, while Astronaut Walter Franklin has been tasked as a submarine warden, and uncovers dangers under the sea while doing so.

Distant Waves: A Novel Of The Titanic, by Suzanne Weyn
This urban fantasy, released today by Suzanne Weyn on Scholastic Press, follows four daughters and their mother, as well as journalist W. T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor. One of Tesla's inventions dooms them, while another could save them.

Ghostbusters 2
The Titanic makes an appearance in the 1988 movie Ghostbusters 2, where a ghost Titanic lands in New York City, piloted by a number of ghosts.

The Cursed Tuba Contingency, The Middleman Episode
Last year's short-lived but amazing superhero show, The Middleman, featured the Titanic as well, with a cursed Tuba - when played, anyone who heard it would be fated to drown in the Atlantic. In the episode, the Middleman and Wendy attent a yacht party to attempt to prevent the instrument from being played.

Titanic: Adventure Out of Time
Adventure Out of Time was a 1996 computer game developed by Cyberflix. In the story, starting in 1942 during the London Blitz, players are sent back in time to 1912 as a secret agent, who is tasked with retrieving the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The story features a number of subplots, and by completing the missions, the player changes history, and prevents the Second World War from happening, as well as several other outcomes based on the player's performance.

Ghost Hunters
Tonight, SciFi will air a Ghost Hunters special on the Titanic, where the team will be investigating ghosts from the Titanic, at an exhibit of Titanic artifacts. This will be airing on the SciFi channel at 9 and 11 pm.

Everything in Ghostbusters. This is the movie that perfected the magic-handling gadgets motif, from the "ghost sniffer" to the ghost detector, to the ecto-goggles, to the giga-meter... pretty much any kind of gizmo you might need to figure out the location of an evil spirit, Egon whips up at one point or another. And they all look awesome, as a bonus.

The BTRS detector in The Middleman. Our studly science hero uses a BTRS (Beyond The Realm Of Science) detector to scan for things that are, well... beyond the realm of science. As Wendy says: "Handy."

The Dragon Detector from Questors by Joan Lennon. In Lennon's fantasy novel, our hero Bryn has a gadget called a "dragon detector" which gives off an awful noise when the dragon Dagrod comes near it. As Bryn explains to Dagrod, "Apparently you give off a sort of radiation, and if I wanted to know if you were around, or coming closer, or something, this would tell me..."

The EMF detector, from Supernatural. Turns out that ghosts and other nasties give off electromagnetic fields, which you can detect with a handy gizmo. So in almost every episode of Supernatural, Dean Winchester whips out his flashing whizbang at some point. Which is very DIY, as Sam discovers in "Phantom Traveler":

Sam: What is that?
Dean: It's an EMF meter. It reads electromagnetic frequencies.
Sam: Yeah, I know what an EMF Meter is, but why does that one look like a busted up walkman?
Dean: Cause that's what I made it out of. It's homemade.
Sam: Yeah, I can see that.

People actually use these things in real life, and the guys on Ghost Hunters also use a similar rig to look for ghost signatures. And I love these gizmos.

Fairy detector in The Fairly Odd Parents. Mr. Crocker, the only adult who believes fairies exist, builds a fairy detector. And before his memories of his own godparents were taken away, he scrawled "Fairy Godparents Exist" on the back of a fairy detector.

Tricorder from Star Trek. The crew of the Enterprise frequently visits worlds where magic, of some sort, appears to work, including in the episode "Catspaw" and the animated episode "The Magicks Of Megas-Tu." Frequently, even if these magical mind-energies are not susceptible to human technology, they can be tracked to their source using Spock's tricorder, and some good old human ingenuity.

The "Ectoplex" Paranormal Energy Detector, from Sabrina The Teenage Witch. It zeroes in on paranormal energy fields and supernatural phenomena, as you can see in this clip (around the four-minute mark):


Dragon Radar from Dragonball. It's used to find the mystical dragon balls which summon the wish-granting dragon Shenron when you gather all seven of them together.

The Spook Detector in Caballistics, Inc., a comic that's been running in British anthology series 2000 A.D. since 2002. One of the paranormal investigators in the newly privatized Department Q is Hannah Chapter, who comes equipped with her own "spook detector."

Vampire Detector in Tales From The Crypt, "Fare Tonight." Two young girls, Mildred and Camille, decide to become amateur vampire hunters, and so they build their own homemade "vampire detector" gun, in this 1993 episode. And here's a picture of a cool Steampunk vampire detector that someone built as part of a costume.

The Emergency Detector in Ultraman. The Science Patrol all wear special tie-pins which blink and react when a monster gets too close. This is their "emergency detector."

So what did we miss?

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

If you missed The Middleman, you should definitely check it out when the first season comes out on DVD this July, in time for San Diego Comic Con. It was a fun, snarky show about an upstanding 1950s-style hero with no name, who fights monsters, super-smart gorillas, supervillains and even his own predecessor. He's helped by Wendy, an art student who learns the crucial art of world-saving at his side.

But sadly, the show's first season was only 12 episodes, instead of the planned 13. Creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach, and ABC Family, decided to cut the final episode and invest its budget in the other 12, but Grillo-Marxuach teased us by posting one page from the lostl episode's script a while back.

Now we're going to get the lost episode as a graphic novel, according to this new press release from ABC Family:

Fans of the ABC Family cult hit series can revisit the weird world of "The Middleman" and his trusty side-kick Wendy Watson when the "lost" series finale episode appears in comic book form this summer. The series will also be released on DVD in summer 2009.

In a deal with Viper Comics, "The Middleman – The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" graphic novel is to be written by creator/executive producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Hans Beimler, with illustrations done by Armando M. Zanker and layouts by Les McClaine. "The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse" special collector's comic book edition will be released in July 2009 to coincide with the annual Comic Con Convention in San Diego.

"The Middleman" season one DVD will include all 12 one-hour episodes that aired on ABC Family in summer 2008. The DVD will also contain extensive bonus material that will allow fans of the series to get an insider look at the mad capped world of their favorite heroes. ABC Family has partnered up with Shout Factory! to produce and distribute the DVD. The DVD will be available in July 2009.

So yay, because I've been dying for half a year to see how this all turns out. But boo, if the graphic novel is instead of more actual TV episodes featuring the brilliance of Matt Keeslar and Natalie Morales. (I suspect that massive, runaway DVD sales would help a lot in rescuing the Middleman.) Update: the New York Post is saying this means the show is actually, officially, canceled. For good. Bah.

Keeslar plays Richard Connell, an outdoorsman who hires Echo (Dushku) to be his companion on a little wilderness getaway. Unfortuantely, he's not just looking for a little nookie in the woods, and someone to hold his ammo while he shoots animals. Rather, he wants a more stimulating target to hunt. It's like Hard Target, only with a mindwiped babe. We reviewed some pages from the script for this episode a while back, and it sounds like Keeslar and Dushku have mindblowing sex, and we get to see them being all afterglowy in bed together. And then Keeslar suddenly kicks her out of bed and gives her a slight head start before he comes after her, guns blazing. The cad! I can just imagine what the Middleman would say about such behavior.

Here's the official description for the episode:

Echo is imprinted to be the female counterpart to an avid outdoorsman and quickly learns how the hunter becomes the hunted during her wilderness adventure. Agent Ballard receives a clue to Echo’s real identity, encouraging him to continue his investigation, while flashbacks reveal the tragic events at the Dollhouse that led to Boyd’s arrival and Dr. Saunders’ scars.

[Whedon.Info and SpoilerTV]

The complete first season will hit your shelves this summer. Writes show creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach:

produced by the good folk of shout! factory (the incredible episode-box artisans who created amazing sets for "freaks and geeks," "my so-called life" and MST3K) - the DVDs will be out in time for the san diego comic-con and will be chock-full of the kind of extra goodness you have come to expect from the middleteam...

Hopefully those extras will include more details about the show's abortive thirteenth episode, plus tons of extra clips and stuff. (More Lacey mascot dancing?) But you know that this is only the start of your obligation, right? Once the DVDs are out there, you'll have to convert all your friends and try to ensure Firefly-esque DVD sales, which are the only way we'll ever see MM and WW in action again. [Thanks Hannah!]

Q: Will you be making another appearance on Middleman?

Kevin Sorbo: I really had fun doing that show and loved my character. There was talk of a spin off, but I have too many things on my plate that I want to do. I have no idea what is going to happen to that show, but I am hearing rumors it will be canceled.

Not being able to contain ourselves for fear of our Middlemania reaching its end (the thought of no more Dub Dub and Lacey is terrifying) we went straight to Javier Grillo-Marxuach and asked him to if Middleman is indeed getting canceled and what about this Guy Goddard spin off show staring the awesome-haired Sorbo?

Javier Grillo-Marxuach's reply was a little noncommittal — but comparing it to shows such as Family Guy and Firefly is doing nothing to calm my fears of cancellation.

I don't think ABC Family is ready to throw in the towel just yet. They love, and — more importantly — own The Middleman. But I think it's fair to say that they aren't going to order any new episodes in the immediate future. Right now, we are all focused on closing a deal for a DVD set that will please the fans with a lot of bonus material, bring new viewers to the show, and secure the show's legacy and longevity. As was the case with shows like Firefly, and Family Guy, the sales of the DVD will truly be the barometer for the future of The Middleman.

Ok but what about the zany 1969 Sorbo spin off, any truth to that because Guy was a great character?

Kevin Sorbo is one of the most gracious, professional and charismatic people with whom I've had the pleasure to work - and he embodied one of the most memorable characters in the Middleman pantheon; so I absolutely ran by him the idea of either bringing back, spinning off - or better yet, doing some kind of a movie set in the time of - Middleman '69. We had a great time discussing it, and, frankly, I'm grateful that he liked the show enough to think it was a nifty idea. With greater success or a longer run of episodes, it is something I would have pursued.

So while it sounds like this may be the end of Wendy and MM, sigh, at least we may have an awesome DVD collection to watch through tears and laughs each weekend. You'll regret this day, America — the Middleman was a classic gentleman among crappy TV superheroes. Seriously, the world commissions more episodes of Knight Rider, meaning that clever dialog and snappy comebacks have to take a back seat to Mike Tracer's less-than-thrilling abs? There is no God.

There are three components to the "Bechdel Rule," which Eisner-winning cartoonist Bechdel first articulated 25 years ago in an installment of her comic strip, Dykes To Watch Out For, particularly relating to movies:

1. Does it have at least two women in it,
2. Who [at some point] talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

So we asked Bechdel if she's happy the "Bechdel Rule" is getting so much play, and whether she thinks it should be applied to science fiction stories, as much as other genres. Here's what she said:

Yeah, I'm very glad people are talking about the "Bechdel Rule," even though I'm a little ambivalent about that name. When I talked to the NPR reporter, I suggested changing it to "Ripley's Rule," after the Sigourney Weaver character in "Alien." Since at the time of the rule's inception, that was the only movie that fit its criteria. But she didn't use that part of the interview.

It's funny to me that it's getting so much play all of a sudden. For me, the Rule is kind of like feminism in a bottle—applied theory, quick and easy. I think whatever name one gives it, the rule should be applied to everything everywhere, including real life.

The NPR story singles out ABC Family's The Middleman for praise, because Wendy Watson and her roommate Lacey talk about art, music, work and a ton of other topics that have nothing to do with Sexy Boss Man aka Pillow Lips. (Well, I guess work relates tangentially to Sexy Boss Man.) It's actually quite revealing to hear a snippet of smart dialog from The Middleman after we've just heard samplings of drivel from Sex And The City and Grey's Anatomy.

Middleman star Natalie Morales proposes her own corollary to the Bechdel Rule: the Morales Rule, which calls for Latino characters on TV to be well-rounded humans, who don't suddenly jump up and dance to Salsa music, sprinkle inaccurate Spanish into their conversation, or say "ay Papi" every few minutes.

What's The Middleman's real name? I was promised we'd learn this, at Comic-Con. Matt Keeslar promised me to my face! Did we learn it and I just missed it somehow? Was this an example of the actor not having the same degree of steadfast honesty as the character he plays? Or was it in the 13th episode of the season, sacrificed to bolster the budget for this one?

What happened to Wendy's dad? We get an answer to this in the graphic novel, but it's not one I was very happy with. I was hoping for a way better answer in the TV show, which has improved in many ways on volume three of the graphic novel. (But you should still pick up the omnibus graphic novel anyway, because it rules and has lots of extra stuff you didn't see on TV.)

What is Barbara Thornfield M.D. PhD's superpower? We know she has one. It's just going to be nagging mystery.

When will Wendy figure out that Manservant Neville is evil? It was strongly hinted last night, since the mirror-universe Neville is a would-be liberator who wants to save everyone and go green. It just makes sense that his counterpart in our universe is evil to the core. (Plus, he acts evil. Plus, he's evil in the graphic novel.) Why don't we get to see the final confrontation between them?

How long will it take Manservant Neville to turn Tyler the glib boyfriend evil? I'm guessing that would have happened next week, if there was a next week. That tennis bracelet thing was so setting up the inevitable turn to evil. In fact, the bracelet itself probably has mind-controlling properties. And evil lasers. (I loved that line about dating Matt Damon from the Bourne Identity, and suddenly having him turn into Matt Damon in The Good Shepherd.)

How did the Middleman become such a straight-edger? This is definitely something we were promised for next week's episode, if it still existed. Maybe the staff could act out that episode with finger puppets?

When will Lacey find out what Wendy really does? It seems really unfair and maybe a bit unrealistic that Lacey hasn't already learned the truth. Especially after all the speeches in the latest episode. And if Lacey's fit to be the Middleman's alternate-universe sidekick, then she's definitely fit to be part of the Middle-team in this universe.

Who is the other woman the Middleman loves? Is she still in the picture somewhere?

Actually, forget the other woman. When will the Middleman and Lacey get together? They're legally married. It's the law. By not being together, they're actually being lawbreakers.

When will the two Idas team up and fight pan-dimensional crime? I know that alternate-universe tanning-booth Ida transformed herself into a duplicate of our universe's at the end of this episode. (And did that make sense to anybody? I didn't quite get it.) But the two versions could still team up and travel the multiverse, stopping anti-robot crimes and stuff.

There are other things, but those are the main ones that come to mind right this moment. I'm not particularly eager to learn the backstory of O2STK or anything, since a little mystery is a good thing. But last night's episode definitely did leave me wanting more. I'm not sure any of the shows starting up in the next few weeks are going to compensate for not seeing any more insanely funny and awesome stuff like last night's virtuous alternate Pip and competent alternate Joe90.

I watched last night's episode with a friend who'd never seen The Middleman before, and I'm pretty sure the mix of clever Star Trek and Escape From New York jokes got him hooked, or maybe it was the razor-sharp dialogue like, "I am the Palindrome, feel my power my feel Palindrome the am I!" Anyway, let's hope ABC Family (or someone else) sees reason and gives us a second season of this show. And a third. And a fourth.