It's a common pet peeve among sci-fi fans: why do aliens always seem so undeniably human? Shouldn't a strange new consciousness from a far-away world seem more alien? And not just in looks - we've written about human-looking aliens before - but in motivations and behavior as well.

For instance, there's no reason to assume that an alien species would look like a human with a weird forehead. But there's also no reason to assume that aliens would have a human-like conception of property or of societal connection or even of self.

While what seems to be a majority of science fiction relies very heavily on making their aliens as behaviorally human as possible, there are a few aliens in the cannon that challenge our perceptions of aliens and what a true other might actually be like. Here are some examples of truly alien aliens (each include some spoilers).

Solaris

In one of the only common features between both film versions of Solaris and the original novel, one of the main objects of the story is to present a truly "other" alien. In Solaris, human scientists have stumbled upon a planet that seems to be covered in a living ocean. So, they attempt to communicate with it.

And the "ocean" communicates back in the only way it knows how: by conjuring up living manifestations of the deeply hidden tragedies and shames of the scientific crew. The films hint at what is the novel's focus: the sentient oceans are so alien from humanity that its attempts to communicate look more like torture. All three versions leave the audience with no clue as to what the sentient oceans actually want. And that's a lot more realistic than clear communication between two wildly different species.

The 456

The motivations of the 456 in Torchwood's Children of Earth miniseries are a lot clearer: they just want Earth's children for what appears to be a very gruesome narcotic-like use. But what makes the 456 so great an example of an alien species is that this use is never clear, and humanity is in no position to investigate the aliens.

It's another common misstep in alien stories: unlocking the biological or scientific secrets of the alien proves the necessary step to defeating them. In this story, the alien remains callously and disturbingly other throughout. It's like "To Serve Man" with a decidedly Lovecraftian twist.

The creature from Midnight

In the Dr. Who episode "Midnight," we see that in science fiction stories, you don't always need a malicious alien to find a villain. The alien in this case is certainly creepy, and its "voice stealing" method of communicating makes the viewer squirm, but in the end, the ones that we fear the most are not aliens, but other humans.

And that is what makes this, along with Children of Earth, such a great alien story: no matter what the extra-planetary life is, the much more frightening thing is the paranoia and fear-induced violence that this alien consciousness causes.

Rama

While Rama in Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series is actually a place, it reveals another misstep in most alien portrayals. When humans land on Rama and begin exploring, they are struck by how strange the place is. The "buildings" don't appear to actually be buildings, the "cities" are apparently uninhabited, and the sheer scope and engineering of the place betray a fundamental flaw in any human-assumption-based analysis of the place.

While this unknowable other concept gets shelved a bit in the sequels to Rendezvous with Rama, the first book ends as it might in reality: the craft moves on, and humanity is no wiser than before. Rama remains a foreign thing, even after all is supposedly "revealed."

(From this short film based on the book Rendezvous with Rama)

The Buggers and the Piggies

Finally, in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, and maybe more so in its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, we see two new alien races that eventually challenge humanity to tolerate and maybe even love something truly other. The buggers start the story as the frightening antagonist, but it's revealed that their acts of aggression were really attempts at communication. The piggies, on the other hand, seem wild and unpredictable at first, but their horrific acts were really ceremonies of great honor.

The reality of these books, though, is that, when all is said and done, the humans in these stories find the humanity in an inscrutable other. They prove to us that something menacing and indifferent and entirely alien can sometimes become almost human. And even if that means humanizing the aliens slightly, it's a feat that's far more impressive than getting us to sympathize with blue versions of ourselves.

As near as I can find out, there's only one horror movie that actually involves Alzheimer's directly: in Renny Harlin's Deep Blue Sea (1999), scientists are trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's. So (as one naturally would) they genetically engineer SUPER SHARKS with amazing brains. What can possibly go wrong? Oh, yes. The shark thing, is what can go wrong.

Here's a good chunk of that movie, which conveniently starts out with the foolhardy scientists explaining their scheme to Samuel L. Jackson, and ends with indications that things are going wrong. (I do not think Jackson, at any point, utters the words, "Get these motherfucking super-sharks out of this motherfucking seabase." More's the pity.)

But that movie just uses Alzheimer's as a plot device. If you're looking for stories that actually play on our fears of Alzheimer's and what it means to our tenuous grasp of personhood, you have to look a bit further afield. And as Sir Michael Caine says, Alzheimer's is scarier than any shark, no matter how big.

But here are the ways in which i think we're starting to see the rise of horror that takes about Alzheimer's, obliquely rather than dead on.

Forgetting:

There's been a rise in stories about people's memories getting siphoned off. I have a vague but vivid memory of reading a comic book (or maybe seeing a TV show) with baddie who exults in erasing people's memories, and says things like, "I just took your memories of your mother," with a smirk. But I can't for the life of me remember where I saw this — almost as if my memory had been erased, fiendishly. And googling has turned up nothing. (Any suggestions?)

(Update: Thanks to everyone who commented. I think Ian Cyr is right, and it's a recent issue of Green Lantern Corps. by Dave Gibbons et al., featuring a baddie with mental powers. Although, someone reminded me The Surgeon General does something quite similar in Give Me Liberty by Frank Miller and, yes, Gibbons again. But it's fascinating how many other examples people came up with.)

In any case, there are lots of other examples of recent stories about mind-erasure. Dollhouse is an obvious example, which asks explicitly what's left of us after our memories have been stolen away. (And comes up with a moderately hopeful answer, over time: There's still something that remains even after our minds are gone, although it's hard to define.)

Heroes has the walking plot device, the Haitian, who mostly just shows up and zaps some of your memories whenever HRG or someone else needs a little memory lapse — then wanders off to do his own thing, until he's needed to henchman up again. But there is that one super-creepy bit where HRG is interrogating his former mentor in Russia, and he gets the Haitian to zap bits of the mentor's memory, piece by piece, gloating the whole time. You get the full scariness of being unable to remember your mother, or your wife, or other bits of your past.

Torchwood season two had Adam, the guy who insinuates himself into your memories. Smallville had Lex getting some super-advanced electro-shock therapy, which erased seven months of his memory, and being shattered as a result. DC Comics grappled with the ethics of the magician Zatanna erasing people's memories in "Identity Crisis." Acheron Hades in the Thursday Next series has shown a propensity for zapping people's memories as well. Various X-Men have gone around zapping memories of late, including Rogue, Professor X and Jean Gray. (And in
one recent X-Men comic, Emma Frost sadistically erases an assassin's only happy memory, vowing to do worse if the assassin comes back. In Mark Millar's Authority issues, the Evil Doctor also gets off on nuking people's memories.

The 2001 movie Time Lapse features someone who's been dosed with a memory-erasing drug, rushing to stop an evil nuclear scheme before his memory goes away completely. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind featured people paying to have memories selectively erased, only to discover how terrifying that is in practice. And Dark City was all about people's memories being rearranged every night.

I feel like this is just scratching the surface — there's a lot of fiction right now talking about how fragile your memories are — and how, if they go, what's left may or may not be recognizeably "you."

The shambling hordes:

And then there's the fact that we're seeing a proliferation of zombie movies, which are all about people who are falling apart physically and have lost all of their personality and sense of identity. As someone who's lost a few close relatives to Alzheimer's, slowly and horribly, it's easy for me to recognize how zombies are a metaphor for this dissolution of the self. People with Alzheimer's are still conscious and aware, they still move around and seem to respond to stimuli, but as disease progresses they get less and less capable of reasoning or having any kind of meaningful interaction with anyone around them. It's heart breaking and horrible — the person you knew is still there, but no longer really him- or herself.

As I pointed out a while ago, the zombie movie which comes closest to depicting the awfulness of losing a parent to Alzheimer's is Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, which is also sometimes called Braindead:

Quasi-zombie movie I Am Legend even makes the link clearer by showing that the "zombies" still have vestiges of humanity and are capable of caring about each other. In the movie's original ending, Robert Neville is able to get through to the zombies and help them remember they used to be people — he comes up with a cure for their condition, and is able to get through to them. Because their real problem isn't that they're feral or mindless — it's that they've forgotten themselves.

The movie Fido also plays with this fairly explictly, by having the main character's dad become a docile, enslaved zombie by the end. He's still recognizeably the same old dad, but the biggest change is that he's lost most of his mind.

Obviously, a huge part of the zombie fad simply comes from the fact that they're a cool way to have an apocalyptic scenario — they're unstoppable and nasty, and if they bite you, you're screwed. They have many of the hallmarks of a good monster: loud, relentless, biting, overwhelming. But at the same time, as the zombie genre continues to expand and diversify, people are using zombies as metaphors for a bunch of different things — and one of those things, clearly, is having a loved one disappear, inexorably into the mists of forgetting.

So if it's true that we're only just seeing the beginning of the onslaught of dementia in our rapidly aging societies, you can expect to see more fantastical and science-fictional stories that attempt to capture the madness of it all. As Caine says, no monster can ever be as scary as Alzheimer's... but some monsters can help us come to terms with it.

Thanks to Kevin Schmidt, Morgan Johnson, Capt. Snowdon, Lynae Straw, Michael Wilson, Martina de la Cruz, Nivair H. Gabriel and anyone else I missed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They Come Back, But Not Quite Alive

Torchwood: When Jack Harkness is understandably upset when Owen Harper is shot and killed. But at least he's got the Resurrection Gauntlet to bring him back to life, right? Well, sort of. Owen still walks and talks, but he's not precisely alive. His heart doesn't beat, his flesh doesn't heal, and his reflexes are gone. And, if that wasn't bad enough, he can't even enjoy food or sex anymore, and Weevils follow him everywhere.

Caprica: Granted, the consequences of bringing Zoe Graystone back from the dead are pretty far-reaching. After all, it results in the creation of the Cylons and the eventual decimation of humanity. But when Joseph Adama encounters a computerized copy of his dead daughter, her concerns with being back from the dead are more immediate. Without a living body, she has no pulse and just generally feels wrong, to the extent that she can't stand being semi-alive this way.

"Playback" Arthur C. Clarke: Caprica's borrowed a page from Clarke here, who wrote a tale of aliens who try to bring a pilot back to life after his ship explodes. They manage to restore all of his memories, but have no idea what kind of body he had, and he's a bit depressed to find that he's just a non-corporeal simulation.

"The River Styx Runs Upstream" by Dan Simmons: When a young boy's mother dies, his father has her body resurrected. Although her body has returned, her mind simply isn't there, and she wanders through life as an automaton. The boy's distraught father and older brother eventually kill themselves in their grief, horror, and shame, but the boy doesn't think resurrection's so terrible. He himself goes to work for the Resurrectionists, spending his free time with his resurrected family.

You Bring Them Back Wrong

Doctor Who "The Empty Child:" Well-meaning nanobots attempt to reconstruct a child killed during the London Blitz. But not knowing what a human child looks like, they bring him back as a mindless abomination, with a gas mask for a face and ever searching for his mother. Even worse, the bots decide that this is what all humans must look like, and proceed to transmute healthy children as well.

"The Monkey's Paw" by WW Jacobs: The mystical monkey's paw grants wishes, but never in the way you hoped. After the first wish Mr. White makes results in the death of his son Herbert, his second wish is for Herbert to return. Mr. White never sees his son, but he knows after a horrible accident and a week on the slab, Herbert probably isn't the same. His third wish takes Herbert away.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Forever:" Following the same vein as "The Monkey's Paw," Dawn tries to resurrect her dead mother via magic. She also never sees her mother, realizing that what comes back won't quite be her, and breaks the spell before her mother reaches their front door.

They'll Try to Kill You Afterward

30 Days of Night: Dark Days: After Eben Olemaun becomes a vampire to save the remaining citizens of Barrow, he turns to ash when the polar sun finally rises. This sets Stella Olemaun on a quest to bring her husband back to life. But when she succeeds, Eben is still a vampire — and a hungry one at that.

"Herbert West — Reanimator" by HP Lovecraft: Medical student Herbert West is fascinated by life and death, and develops a serum he believes will restart the machinery of the human body. The serum works, but turns the corpses into cannibalistic zombies. West is unrepentant , focused on new ways to find dead subjects for his experiments. Of course, eventually his zombie experiments turn on him.

Practical Magic: After Sally Owens' boyfriend Jimmy turns out to be abusive, she drugs him and accidentally kills him. Fearing prison, Sally and her sister Gillian cast a spell to revive him, but Jimmy's immediate reaction isn't exactly gratitude. He tries to kill Gillian, forcing Sally to murder him once again.

Pet Sematary: Any dead creature buried in the ancient Micmac burial ground comes back to life, just not quite the way you put it in. After losing his young son Gage, Louis buries his son in the graveyard. Sure enough, Gage comes back — and promptly murders his mother.

Lexx: You would think that, given the prophecy that the last of the Brunnen-G would kill His Divine Shadow, the last thing His Divine Shadow would do is resurrect a Brunnen-G corpse. But he did exactly that to Kai, making him one of the living dead as a Divine Assassin. It takes over 2000 years, but eventually Kai does get around to killing him.

Supernatural "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things:" College students and necromancy are always a recipe for trouble. When a broken-hearted boy tries to bring his dead crush back, she's of course got to go zombie and start chomping down on her loved ones.

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert: For thousands of years, Leto Atreides has ruled over humanity, and always has a ghola — a copy — of his father's faithful friend Duncan Idaho to serve him. But the Duncan ghola's almost inevitably rebel against Leto and try to kill him, forcing Leto to kill all but 19 gholas. Still, Leto keeps bringing in a fresh Duncan ghola after each attempt on his life.

They Bring Death With Them

Pushing Daisies: When pie maker Ned touches dead bodies, they become reanimated, without regard for mutilation or decay. But if he fails to deanimate them after more than a minute, a random person in close proximity dies, taking their place. And for Ned, bringing the dead back to life is further complicated by not being able to touch them, lest they fall dead once again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "After Life:" Actually, bringing a body-stealing demon into the world of the living was probably the least of the disastrous consequences of resurrecting the Slayer. Still, when a demon gets loose in Sunnydale, the Scoobies have to kill it before it kills Buffy.

Carnivale: Ben Hawkins has the power to bring people back from the dead, but it comes with a price: one person of Hawkins' choosing must die in exchange for the life. And, try though he might, he can't choose himself.

Torchwood "Dead Man Walking:" Another fun consequence of Owen's walking death is that Death himself comes along for the ride. He's looking for 13 souls to consume so he can remain in the world of the living and slake his thirst for destruction.

It Will Come at Great Personal Cost

The Dresden Files: The sorcerer Hrothbert of Bainbridge committed a crime against his order by bringing his beloved Winifred back from the dead, prompting the High Council to hand down a severe and lasting punishment: they imprison his spirit inside his skull for all eternity. Hrothbert, now "Bob," has been around over a thousand years, but he can't interact with the physical world.

Torchwood "They Keep Killing Suzie:" The other Resurrection Gauntlet actually does bring the dead back to full-fledged life. But naturally there's still a catch: the resurrected person draws life energy from the living wearer, and permanent resurrection means the death of the living wearer.

Full Metal Alchemist: After their mother dies, Edward and Alphonse try to revive her through alchemy. Not only do they fail to bring her back from the dead, they lose physical pieces of themselves in the process, with Edward losing his left leg and Alphonse losing his entire body.

Supernatural: The Winchesters thrive on death and resurrection. When Sam is shot and killed, Dean trades his soul for Sam's life, with the bartering demon collecting in just a year. Sure enough, after a year, Dean dies and head off to Hell.

It Will Attract Unwanted Attention

The Outer Limits "Josh:" When reclusive Josh Butler resurrects a young girl through a strange electromagnetic pulse, it attracts the attention of a tabloid TV reporter looking for a scoop. Unfortunately, it also attracts the attention of the US Air Force, who promptly seize Josh and start performing medical tests.

The 4400: Shawn Farrell manages to bring a bird back from the dead, just one example of his amazing healing abilities. But not everyone is thrilled about his strange new powers, and they bring him to the attention of Jordan Collier, which is a bit of a double-edged sword.

It's Only Temporary

AI: Artificial Intelligence: The evolved mechas who find David frozen beneath the water are able to give the robotic boy his greatest wish: time with his long-dead adoptive mother Monica. The resurrection only lasts a day and can never be repeated. David's okay with the arrangement, since that one day is perfect, but it's a clear audience tearjerker.

They Were Actually Okay With Being Dead

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow assumed that Buffy's death by interdimensional portal had sent the Slayer to a hell dimension, and conjured up some ill-advised magic to bring her back. Unfortunately, Willow never considered that Buffy might actually be in Heaven, leaving her in a major season-long depression as she adjusts to inferior life back on Earth.

Supernatural: Okay, so Dean didn't exactly enjoy his stay in Hell, but he's dealing with some very Buffy-like issues on his return to Earth. He clearly remembers his agonizing time in Hell and got a real taste for torture. And God might have pulled him out of Hell, but his plans for Dean on Earth involve more havoc and torture.

Green Lantern: Maura Rayner is infected with a sentient virus sent by Sinestro and her son Kyle failed to get back in time to save her. He uses his powers to revive her, but she won't have any of it. She senses that, once dead, there's something wrong with being alive and begs him to let her be dead once again.

You Never Really Liked Them in the First Place

The Venture Bros.: Dean and Hank Venture are a tad on the death-prone side, so their father always keeps a few clone slugs around to imprint with their memories. But once they're alive again, he generally treats them as nuisances — or ignores them entirely. But he does find it handy to have a spare organ donor (or two) around.

Red Dwarf: Nearly the entire complement of the Red Dwarf is killed off in the first episode, only to be resurrected in the eighth season thanks to a little nanobot magic. Lister is no longer the only human in the universe, but he and his cohorts immediately run afoul of the newly reconstructed crew.

It Makes for Unnecessary Sequels

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer: We said goodbye to several major characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (as well as the entire planet Earth) at the end of Mostly Harmless. Presumably Eoin Colfer's sequel will see Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian ride again, and Arthur's none too pleased about it.

Jennifer Check (Jennifer's Body)
Nature of Her Hunger: Demonic Possession — the result of a "virgin" sacrifice gone wrong.
Preferred Food Group: Boys, although she might make an exception for Amanda Seyfried.

Cal Thompson's ex-girlfriends (Peeps by Scott Westerfeld)
Nature of Their Hunger: Parasitic Infection, passed along through sexual activity.
Preferred Food Group: Whatever crosses their paths.

Lyekka (Lexx)
Nature of Her Hunger: Innate. She may look humanoid, but she's really a carnivorous plant.
Preferred Food Group: Pretty much anything and everything (including whole crews and countries at once), though she keeps her gums off the Lexx crew, out of affection for Stan.

The (Mostly Female) Carnivorous Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park)
Nature of Their Hunger: Innate. If you're going to keep Raptors and Tyrannosauri around, you have to expect a few casualties.
Preferred Food Group: Meat in general.

Heidi Barrie and Rhonda Kelley (Buffy the Vampire Slayer "The Pack")
Nature of Their Hunger: Hyena Possession, though they weren't very nice to begin with.
Preferred Food Group: High school principals.

Jodi Melville (Smallville, "Craving")
Nature of Her Hunger: Meteor-rock radiation, combined with an intense desire to be thin.
Preferred Food Group: Anything with fat on it.

Bilquis, The Queen of Sheba (American Gods by Neil Gaiman)
Nature of Her Hunger: Sacrificial. She devours men during the sex act to maintain her fertility goddess power.
Preferred Food Group: Men, though her preferred orifice for intake is not her mouth.

Zenelle (Madman)
Nature of Her Hunger: Mantis-like. Females of her species devour their mates.
Preferred Food Group: Men she's bedded, with the exception of one of the Mutant Street Beatniks, with whom she's fallen in love.

The Women of Eureka (Eureka, "Maneater")
Nature of Their Hunger: Chemical. An ancient spore turns the dial up on Carter and Dr. Stone's pheromones, and if what happened to the wolf whose lady friend got a whiff of his pheromones is any indication, the women of Eureka literally want to eat them up.
Preferred Food Group: Carter and Stone, though they never actually manage to sink their teeth into them.

Paula Gray, Doris Kearns and the Other Women of Dudley, Arkansas (The X-Files "Our Town")
Nature of Their Hunger: Cannibalism in an attempt to gain immortality.
Preferred Food Group: Anyone not in the cannibalism club. But they don't screen for diseases, and a good bit of the town ends up with Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.

Frau Totenkinder (Fables)
Nature of Her Hunger: Sacrificial. She eats children to increase her magical power.
Preferred Food Group: Children, including her own infants.

Jillian Boone (Fringe, "Midnight")
Nature of Her Hunger: Bacterial. She's been infected with a sort of vampiric syphilis as part of an elaborate blackmail ploy.
Preferred Food Group: Spinal Fluid

The Women of Moodley (Doghouse)
Nature of Their Hunger: Infection by an Airborne Toxin.
Preferred Food Group: Men.

Giganta (DC Comics)
Nature of Her Hunger: Murderous. When you're giant, it's a handy way to dispose of people.
Preferred Food Group: Ryan Choi, The Atom, though just she ends up puking him up later.

Maryann Forrester (True Blood)
Nature of Her Hunger: Epicurean. She happens to know the perfect recipe for human (and shifter) hearts (and makes Tara an unwitting accomplice to her cannibalism), though she also needs a humanoid sacrifice for her god.
Preferred Food Group: She has a particular affinity for supernatural beings, though nothing undead.

Janet Weiss and Columbia (The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Nature of Their Hunger: Unwitting. When you're invited to a dinner party, you generally eat what's placed in front of you.
Preferred Food Group: Meat Loaf — as in the person, not the stuff that's baked with tomato sauce.

Lizzie (My Favorite Martian)
Nature of Her Hunger: Monstrous. Thanks to a gumball that transforms humanoids into other creatures, Lizzie (who is normally shaped like Darryl Hannah) turns into a carnivorous alien beast.
Preferred Food Group: Bad guys.

Giggerota the Wicked (Lexx)
Nature of Her Hunger: Epicurean — in her words, she "likes to eat."
Preferred Food Group: Pretty much anything, although she finds brains too salty.

Audrey II (Little Shop of Horrors)
Nature of Her Hunger: Innate. She's a mean, green mother from outer space.
Preferred Food Group: Anything human.

Helen Sherman (Torchwood, "Countrycide")
Nature of Her Hunger: Epicurean. She and the other villagers happen to enjoy human flesh.
Preferred Food Group: Travelers.

Miss French (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Teacher's Pet")
Nature of Her Hunger: Mantis-Like. Actually, she is a giant praying mantis.
Preferred Food Group: Male virgins, no matter how much they boast about their supposed "experience."

Every Female Zombie Ever
Nature of Their Hunger: Innate. Fish gotta swim, zombies gotta chomp.
Preferred Food Group: Any living human, but there's sometimes a special emphasis on brains.

That's right — it's just like wife swappers, except it's writer swappers! So put the keys to the writers' room in a bowl, and let's get swinging...

Lost and Supernatural

In some ways these shows are opposites, even though they have so much in common — they both have long, pull-your-hair-out plots and complex characters who stray to the dark side regularly.

But Supernatural keeps it lean and mean — you pretty much just have the Winchester brothers, and one to four supporting castmembers at any given time. And Supernatural's big mysteries are relatively few, and relatively straightforward: What did the yellow-eyed demon want with baby Sam? What does Ruby want with grown-up Sam? Why did the angels pull Dean out of Hell? And we get answers to those questions on a regular basis. What's complex on Supernatural is the tangled theology of the Angel/Demon war. And few relationships on television are as barbed and complex as the troubled love between the two brothers.

Lost, meanwhile, thrives on complexity — there are easily two dozen characters you're supposed to be keeping track of at any given moment, and oftentimes, they all seem to be equally important. The show's creators have already told viewers not to expect answers to all the show's mysteries — You have to piece things together on your own, or just accept that some things are not knowable. Meanwhile, the show gives us characters whose family relationships are mostly dismal (except Hurley's, oddly) and whose relationships with each other are frequently defined somewhat straightforwardly by rivalry, love triangles, or unrequited love.

So we'd love to see the writers change places for a bit — the Supernatural writers could bring a bit of immediacy to Lost's slow-boiling storylines, and also show us a bit more of how all these people stuck on an island together have become each other's family, and have grown to love each other even as they piss each other off.

And the Lost writers could give us a world of spirits and monsters that's foggier, and weirder, than Supernatural has ever quite given us. Imagine Supernatural with more weird clues, and more of a sense that there's a massive chess game going on in which the Winchester brothers are just pawns. It could be quite a ride.

Dollhouse and Torchwood

These two shows both unkinked our brains, in different ways, last month. We finally got to see Dollhouse's unaired season finale, in which some brilliant new adaptations to the Dollhouse's business model end up destroying civilizaton itself. And Torchwood served up the shocking, twisted "Children Of Earth" miniseries, in which we find out just how valuable our children really are — and just how dark Captain Jack is prepared to get.

These shows both operate in murky waters, with heroes who have huge dark sides and make difficult (and frequently wrong) choices. They're the dark side of escapism, showing how becoming part of a secret world of amazing tech and cool fantasies can be dreadful as well as wonderful. But Dollhouse is a good deal nastier than Torchwood, giving us a for-profit venture that is bent on making people's dreams come true — but only at the expense of its "employees"' personhood. Torchwood, meanwhile, is about people who actually do try to save the world — but often as not, they make things worse.

So what would happen if Russell T. Davies and his gang started writing Dollhouse, and Joss and friends moved to Cardiff?

Well, for starters, Dollhouse would get a lot sexier. The relationship between Boyd and Whiskey/Claire Saunders would probably heat up quite a bit. (And the already-homoerotic tension between ex-cop Boyd Langton and ex-FBI agent Paul Ballard would become way more intense.) But more than that, the assignments would get a lot freakier — Just imagine what sort of missions Russell T. Davies' gnarled, twisted brain would come up with for the mindwiped "dolls" who can be anyone or anything. And if you think the Dollhouse is morally grey and disturbing now, wait until RTD wrote a few scripts. And what could RTD would do with Adelle DeWitt, the sly, wicked, frosty madam of the Dollhouse's empty-headed bordello?

As for Torchwood — sure, "Children Of Earth" was one of the best pieces of television we've seen in recent years. But just imagine Torchwood done in the style of Angel or Buffy, with more weird humor, more out-and-out struggle against the forces of evil, and more identity crisis for our heroes. Torchwood could use some more memorable villains, like the Mayor of Sunnydale or Glory. And Captain Jack needs to have a few episodes of spouting Whedonesque dialogue as he sluts around Cardiff and hits on every adult sentient being he meets. And even though Torchwood took a major leap into darkness this last time around, the show could always go darker and dirtier — especially now that the Hub and the team have both been wrecked. We can just see the story of Torchwood crawling out of the ashes and trying to figure out their role now, as told by Joss Whedon and co.? Where do they go from here?

House and Fringe

Two shows about unconventional teams who deal with weird science stuff — even as the most brilliant, curmudgeonly member of the team skirts the edge of insanity. Can't you just imagine J.J. Abrams and the rest of the Fringe team getting their claws into House's drug-addled, dysfunctional life, while the House gang goes full-throttle on Walter and the Fringe Division?

Of course, House has been on the air longer and has had more time to delve into the neuroses and relationships of its main characters. But also, one major difference between the shows is that House has romance and sexual intrigue — there's Foreteen, of course, plus the ongoing will-they, won't-they with House and Cuddy.

What the Fringe writers could bring to House: more weird science, and less weird psychology — in the most recent season, we've spent more more time figuring out the mysteries of House's mind than we have tackling medical mysteries, like weird parasites or insect-bites in unlikely spots that cause mysterious paralysis. Sure, House has been on for longer and we've been delving into the character more deeply, but the Fringe writers could pump up the show's weirdness levels satisfyingly.

Meanwhile, Fringe could use the opposite — we could use a lot more speculation about the psychology of its characters. Sure, we get hints about the weird experiments that characters like Olivia underwent as kids. But that's not psychology, it's plot development. Fringe could stand to delve a bit more into what makes its characters tick.

And think about it — this is the right time for the two shows to swap writing staffs, too — House is going into a mental institution (where we first met Walter Bishop) and Walter is going to become a lot more independent and autonomous, letting him become more like House.

True Blood and Heroes

What would happen if these two soap operas traded off writing staffs? Bringing Alan Ball and his gang to the perennially conflicted mutants might do them the world of good — and maybe Heroes' writers would get their groove back if they got to write for Lafayette, Eric and the rest.

It's weird to think that both Heroes and True Blood are soap operas, but they kind of are — the main difference is, True Blood is a lot stickier (both in the sense that people obsess a lot more about True Blood's characters, and in the sense that there are weird fluids everywhere), while Heroes often has much higher stakes and more of a comic-book, action-adventure feel.

So it's easy to think of ways that the True Blood team could revitalize Heroes. As Lauren points out, "Sylar would actually eat brains." The weird murder-flirtation between Sylar and Claire would get a lot deeper, and all of the show's relationships would suddenly be much more gothic and byzantine.

The dark, secret world of the Company, with its endless family drama going back decades, would gain a whole new layer of murkiness and detail, much like all the stuff we're learning about vampire society on True Blood. We'd get a lot more fun, quirky world-building moments on Heroes. And can you picture Alan Ball writing HRG, the tormented-but-suave-but-dorky family man? He would suddenly have a lot more layers. And he'd be naked.

But the much-maligned Heroes team could also bring some fun to True Blood. One of the things Heroes does really well is come up with out-of-left-field superpowers and then imagine how they would really work, and how they'd affect your life, in reality. If the Heroes writers ran True Blood, Jason would probably get powers similar to Sookies — except, of course, he would see the future. You might see a bit more of how the strange mixture of powers in Bon Temps actually messes with people's lives. Plus maybe the Heroes writers could cut loose and write the kind of beyond-dysfunctional, messed-up characters that they don't get to create that often. And it would be fascinating to see Heroes deal with the added theme of religion that crops up a lot in True Blood.

Breaking Bad and Eureka

These are both shows about science, and about the quirky people who make a living off science. In AMC's critically acclaimed Breaking Bad, we follow Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who's got a pregnant wife and a son with cerebral palsy, and then he finds out he's got terminal lung cancer. His insurance won't pay for the treatments, so he decides to start making and selling methamphetamine to secure his family's future. Meanwhile, in Eureka, there's a whole town full of science geniuses who create oddball projects for fun and profit, with often disastrous (but never horrifying) results.

So they're both about people using science to get ahead, but Breaking Bad is about the dark, nasty side of science, while Eureka is happy and easy-going. Everybody's rich, or at least comfortable, in Eureka, while Walter White is barely getting by and needs to resort to drug-dealing to save his family from ruin. (Walter's drug-dealer name is "Heisenberg," and he uses mercury fulminate, an explosive, as a weapon. He also uses his chemistry-teacher knowledge to quadruple his meth production.)

So what would the writers of Eureka bring to Breaking Bad? Probably a lot more science shout-outs. In addition to using Heisenberg as his drug-dealer name, Walt would probably start finding himself experiencing things that are right out of classic science fiction movies. And the science would get a lot odder, with Walt possibly coming up with wild new additives to lace his meth with — meth that makes you start aging backwards? Maybe Walt would come up with some zanier ways of dealing with the drug lords he runs up against, like catching them in zero-gravity fields or something?

As for Eureka, the Breaking Bad writers might delve a little bit more into the underside of the little town of geniuses. Exactly how does their relationship with the Defense Dept. work? And what happens when some of their more potent inventions really do fall into drastically wrong hands?

Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Venture Bros.

These are two of the most vivid and fascinating animated shows on TV right now — so what would happen if you turned the Lucasfilm writers loose on the Venture Bros., and let the Venture staff have a crack at the Clone Wars?

The main difference between these shows, says Graeme, is that the Venture Bros. writers are deeply bitter whereas the Clone Wars' writers are, at their heart, very sincere.

So maybe if the Venture Bros. writers got to take a turn writing the Clone Wars, you'd immediately have more weird pop-culture humor. But you'd also get more investigation into the bitterness that's just under the surface of the Star Wars universe — the fact that Anakin is a jerk who's destined to become the scourge of the galaxy. Plus the fact that the clone army is made up of helpless slaves. All of the characters in Clone Wars would become a lot more neurotic, and the clones would become like the Venture Bros.' henchmen. Inevitably, the show would start pointing to more of the darkness in its premise, but also poking fun at it — and it might become like a better written version of Robot Chicken Star Wars along the way. Plus, it would be fantastic to see what the Venture Bros. scribes would do with Anakin.

Meanwhile, if the Clone Wars staff came over to Venture Bros., that show would become much more of a straightforward action-adventure show — it might become a bit like Johnny Quest, even. But we'd also suddenly see a lot more weird politics, and the show would start showing us different factions scheming and intriguing against each other. There might be less resolution in each episode — which is saying something, considering how little resolution Venture Bros. already gives us. And a revamped Venture Bros. would start giving us morals at the end of each episode, like "Remember, Brock, Sometimes violence ISN'T the answer."

Additional reporting by Graeme McMillan, Lauren Davis, Meredith Woerner and Annalee Newitz.

Talking to Torchwood Magazine, Davies said,

I could write you scene one of series four right now... I know exactly how to pick it up. I've got a shape in mind, and I've got stories. I know where you'd find Gwen and Rhys, and their baby, and Jack, and I know how you'd go forward with a new form of Torchwood.

That "new form," however, doesn't necessarily mean that a format for the next season has been decided upon, according to the creator:

If the BBC asked for another 13 one-part stories, that's what we'd do... I'm ready for anything, but I think it works well as one continuous story. But if the BBC decide they want 13 one-offs, I'll suddenly decide that's the best format in the world!

The full interview can be found in #17 of the magazine, released August 20th in the UK and September 15th in the US.

via The Uniblog

Connor MacLeod from Highlander.

Born in 1518, he is an Immortal, doomed to walk the Earth and watch everyone he loves grow old and die — but eventually, he must battle the few other remaining Immortals for the Prize. And in the end, wait for it... there can be only one.

Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood.

He's just your average run-of-the-mill con man from the 51st century, until he dies, and the temporarily all-powerful Rose Tyler brings him back to life. Only now, he's a "fixed point in time and space," eternally young and invulnerable forever, no matter what. His wife dies of old age, his daughter is the same age as him, and eventually (maybe) he'll be just a head in a giant jar.

Jenny Sparks from Stormwatch and The Authority.

Born in 1900, she stops aging when she reaches her 20th birthday. Maybe its to do with the fact that she's a being of pure electricity. In any case, she befriends Hitler, visits an alternate universe where she marries an alien prince, and finally gets to join two of the Wildstorm Universe's biggest super-teams, until she finally dies at age 100.

Wolverine, from the X-Men.

Logan used to be just a guy with a tremendous healing ability, but recent comics (and his new movie) revealed that he's actually ageless, and fought in the Civil War and every big war since then. He can smoke as many cigars as he wants, and he never gets weird cigar-related wrinkles. Various comics have shown him surviving long past the end of the world, or at least vastly outliving all his compatriots.

Enoch Root in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon.

One of the great mysteries of Cryptonomicon was how Enoch Root managed to show up, hale and hearty, 55 years after he dies in 1945. We eventually do learn that Root has the secret of rejuvenation, which he uses to keep himself (and sometimes others) alive.

John Carter of Mars, from the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Even before he gets whisked off to Mars, aka Barsoom, he's mysteriously gifted with eternal youth. And no matter how many times they try to kill him, he always comes back. (Although sometimes, he comes back on Earth instead of Barsoom.)

Nick Fury and (maybe) his Howling Commandos, from Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick Fury (the comics version, not the movie version played by Samuel L. Jackson) fought in World War II, where he gave his eye for his country. But he's miraculously still young and spry in the present day — and he didn't get frozen in an iceberg, like Captain America. Instead, Nick Fury got exposed to something called the "Infinity Formula," and (at least in some versions) so did his men, including "Dum Dum" Dugan — who's now been going by "Dum Dum" for 70 years.

Lazarus Long, from Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein.

Born in 1912, Lazarus Long is the third generation of a selective breeding experiment by the Ira Howard Foundaiton, so he lives for nearly two thousand years in good condition — with only the occasional rejuvenation treatment required. And he eventually finds out that he actually can't die.

Claire Bennet, from Heroes.

The cheerleader doesn't really seem to need saving — it turns out that even scooping her brains out can't kill her, and it's been hinted she'll stay young and healthy forever. At least, Sylar believes that hundreds of years from now, only he and Claire will still be running around, and eventually they'll fall in love. Or something.

Richard Alpert, from Lost.

Is he a hero? We're still not sure. He's definitely taken part in some questionable decisions, but who hasn't on this show? In any case, he's mysteriously ageless, whether we see him in 1954 or the present day. Here's hoping we find out his secret this coming season.

Runners up: Superman (who ages in some versions but not in others), Kane from the sword-and-sorcery novels by Karl Edward Wagner, Wonder Woman, Samantha from Bewitched, Dorian Grey, The Endless from Sandman, Thor, Takeshi Kovacs from Richard K. Morgan's novels, John Amsterdam in New Amsterdam, Peter Pan, Earthworm Jim, Aes Sedai from the Wheel Of Time, Kai on Lexx, and a host of robot/cyborg characters.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown. Thanks also to Matt Jones, Ron Hogan, Ekaterina Sedia, Jason Shankel, Missy Feigum, Hiya Swanhuyser, Victor Infante, Jefferson Robbins, Jessy Randall, Stephen Tiano, Becka Robbins, Jennifer Brissett, Ashley Edward Miller, Andrew Liptak, Paul McEnery, Ryan Britt, Yoz Grahame, Shannon Rosa, Espana Sheriff, Lisa Heselton, Lane Kneedler, Naomi Alderman, Darren McKeeman, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, Shane O'Brien, Hanne Blank, Lucas Zen Hannon, Mariah Bear, Lun E'Sex, Micky Shirley, Swill Magazine, and anyone else I forgot!

Digital Spy is reporting that Barrowman told Radio 1 listeners in the UK that he's in talks to join the cast of ABC's once-popular soap opera, apparently saying,

I'm off to Los Angeles on Sunday again. I probably shouldn't say this but I've got a meeting with the execs of Desperate Housewives. Can you believe it - I'm going to be a Desperate Housewife!

It's unknown currently what kind of role Barrowman could be meeting about, but should he end up a series regular, that may make his availability for Torchwood much smaller. Would Davies and the BBC make a Torchwood without its core character, or would they delay a fourth season until Barrowman was free? Should we start making up stories about Barrowman's unprofessionalism and forwarding them to ABC bosses, just in case.

Barrowman to meet 'Housewives' bosses [Digital Spy]

This was part of a group interview with Davies and director Euros Lyn, where we were lucky enough to be able to ask some questions. Oh, and if you still haven't watched the most recent Torchwood miniseries, A) You are wasting your life on vain pursuits, and B) There's a spoiler for them below.

Why is Rose the most special?

So we had the impression, watching Davies' era of Doctor Who, that he regarded Rose Tyler as the most important, or most special, of the Doctor's companions. She's come back a couple of times, she was referenced constantly in the season after she left, and she got to keep her own duplicate of David Tennant's Doctor. So we asked Davies why Rose deserves to be so extraordinary. He replied:

I don't think she has been [treated as special]. I don't think I feel any more special when I'm writing Rose than when I'm writing any of the others. I think there's an iconography about Billie Piper. When the programme came back, it was the biggest advertised, most hyped-up programme in the world [and she was at the center of the imagery]. I'd never prefer her to Donna or Martha when writing her. But she was enormously popular and so — let's be blunt — every time I brought her back, the ratings went up. It's my job to make people come back to watch this. Sometimes people roll their eyes and go, "Oh, you've got another returning character." [To which I respond] "Yeah, leave me alone with my millions, thank you very much." So you know, it simply works. Plus we like Billie... So simply by dint of being her, she's come back the most often. I think that was a very special chemistry between her and Chris and between her and David, and it's very fondly remembered.

Adds Euros Lyn: "In that first series, she was the Doctor's equal, and equally as interesting as the Doctor, which was a revelation in the Doctor Who world."

The death of Ianto

And of course, RTD addressed the ongoing controversy about the death of Ianto Jones in the most recent Torchwood miniseries, "Children Of Earth." And Davies' comments will not appease the fans who feel he's been callous and dismissive. He called the backlash "massively exaggerated":

You know the campaign to send [packets of] coffee [to the BBC] to save Ianto's life? There's a campaign, because he was a coffee boy. But do you know how many packets of coffee they've received so far? Nine. So I think people writing online might sound like thousands of people, but they are nine. And they have the proof in the office, they are nine. And so when you say "Lots of people hated it, I challenge you [to prove it.] And that's the way you talk from online reaction, which is why I never follow online reaction. It's just untrue.

Director Euros Lyn added that it was important to show the "moral cost" that Jack has to pay to defeat the 456, as part of a story about "sacrifice and death." Not taking the characters to that place would "sell them short."

Children Of Earth was risky

Davies said he was acutely aware what a risky proposition "Children Of Earth" was — and not just because of its heavy political themes. He's always aware, working for the BBC, that he's spending the public's money (collected thorugh license fees) to make television. And he insisted that this miniseries had to air consecutively over five nights, not spread out over five weeks, because of the way it was structured. The bosses at the BBC kept changing, and the new bosses would try to change Davies' mind and switch it to running every Friday — but Davies stuck to his guns. And he was terrified it would fail, and he'd have "damaged" a whole week of BBC One programming.

"I thought it was good, and I was proud of it," said Davies. If it had flopped and everyone had hated it, "I was willing to wear my martyrdom through Comic Con."

What's next for Torchwood?

Just like everyone else we've talked to, Davies was fairly uncertain about the future of Torchwood, despite its great ratings. But he did say he felt the show had "found its tone," so future outings would definitely be one continuous story - possibly five episodes, possibly longer. But definitely, there'll be no return to "monster of the week" type stories. He liked the way the miniseries had "Torchwood" followed by the subtitle "Children Of Earth," making it part of the show's title. So that'll probably happen again next time.

Added Davies: "Torchwood has become an umbrella for telling a good story. This wasn't anything to do with Cardiff, or the rift," or any other standard elements of the show.

If the show does come back, "everyone who survived" will return as well. But the show will also do what "Children Of Earth" did with John Frobisher and the other new supporting cast — introduce a whole new set of characters. Davies doesn't believe in replacing a character after he/she is killed off, because it seems heartless, like buying a new puppy right after your dog dies. That's why, in "Children Of Earth," he deliberately introduced a "replacement" for Owen — and then shot him.

Fans upset at the death of Ianto Jones in Torchwood: Children Of Earth have created an online campaign to resurrect the character, and they're not above bribing the BBC into making it happen. The website SaveIantoJones is urging supporters to donate money to the Beeb's annual Children In Need appeal in his honor:

Though we, his devoted fans, still hope that he'll come back (it's still sci-fi, and in sci-fi, death can be reversed, can't it?), we mourn him. In the series, he died saving the children of Earth; so it seems fitting to honor [sic] his memory by helping the Children in Need.

Appealing to the corporation's charitable side is likely to work better than their charm offensive, judging by this recent update on the site's front page:

We'd like to encourage people NOT to contact Mr. Russell T Davies about this, and to contact BBC Wales instead, as most of you are already doing.

While the BBC have remained polite and well-mannered, in response to a very peaceful campaign, Mr. Davies has made it clear in recent interviews that he views his fans with contempt, and as disposable, which saddens us. We hope the BBC doesn't adopt this standpoint, because we've been loyal viewers, and are generous, kind hearted, intelligent people who DON'T deserve to be abused. Or patronised. :) Thanks.

Fans wishing to contact the BBC are being urged to send coffee to the corporation's Welsh headquarters.

SaveIantoJones (Via)

(Thanks, Kle!)

So let's get it out there right away: Part five is easily the weakest of the five episodes of "Children Of Earth." The pacing is a bit flatter, the storytelling a bit more random, and the characters a bit less compelling — especially poor Gwen, who was kicking so much ass not long ago.

That said, even if it's weak in comparison to parts one through four, part five of "Children Of Earth" is still a rattlingly strong ending to a brilliant story, and this single episode is still better than the entire first two seasons of Torchwood put together. A lesser writer than Russell T. Davies would have saved some of the story's biggest shocks — Lois standing up, Ianto dying — for this final episode. It's a mark of RTD's confidence that he put that stuff in episode four and devoted so much of episode five to the aftershocks. And then when we get that one last shock, in the way Jack defeats the 456 at last, it's that much more dreadful because we're already pulverized.

So in episode five, all hope seems lost. Jack's attempt to bluff the 456 into surrendering has proved a miserable failure, and cost him the life of his lover and comrade, Ianto. Jack is almost catatonic with grief, but he does arrange for Gwen to take Ianto's body back to Wales. There, Gwen tries to honor Ianto's memory by saving his nephew and niece from the mass handover of children to the child-using 456.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Brian Green crosses another threshold, from oily nastiness to out-and-out repulsiveness. The public is swallowing the cooked-up story that the children are being rounded up for innoculations against the "chanting in unison" bug. Green is beginning to think he might actually come out of this mess with his political career intact — and then he overreaches a bit, arranging for John Frobisher's kids to be rounded up, so Frobisher can make a big public appearance in support of the inoculation program. That way, when the kids all disappear, a semi-high-profile public servant can be seen to have been duped as well. Green is so oily, trying to intimidate Frobisher by ignoring him and scribbling on pages in between telling him the news.

This development felt ever so slightly forced, and intended to give Frobisher some kind of closure — but it did feel believable, especially given how amoral and small Green had already shown himself to be. Frobisher, of course, doesn't hand over his kids — instead, he walks into a room with a loaded gun, and we hear four shots. Just when you thought Frobisher's story couldn't become any more barbed and tragic, it takes one last turn into awfulness.

But hey — at least the 456 are using the children for some important, noble purpose, right? Right? Like they're a kind of natural life support system? Or their little childish neurons make a natural hyperspace navigation aid? Or their youthful optimism keeps the 456 spaceship A.I.s altruistic and brilliant?

Actually, er, no. The children of Earth just secrete chemicals that feel really, really good to the 456. And the aliens have the means to keep the kids young and fresh for decades, perhaps hundreds of years, while they siphon the juices out of them. Oh well.

The biggest letdown, for me, is Gwen, who really was winning me over as a great action hero just a few days earlier. Now she's suddenly a bit weak, and she's back to channeling Rose Tyler — her silly camcorder intro was way too reminiscent of Rose's "this is the day I died" intro in Doctor Who's "Army Of Ghosts" two-parter.

Gwen basically gets written out of the story early on in this episode, but we still have to watch her trying to hide Ianto's nephew and niece, and some other random kids, and then hiding, and running, and hiding, and whining, and running. And mostly whining. It does dramatize the horror of what's going on. But we could have had Rhys, or Ianto's sister, trying to hide the kids, and it would have provided the same level of dramatization. Why does Gwen have to be shunted off to the sidelines like this?

Oh yeah. Because Jack "can't stand to look at her." I'm tempted to take the cheap shot and say neither can we. But really, she was doing so well. She was winning me over, big time. And now, she's suddenly mopey and weak.

Ohai. I'm sending you out of the story now:

Instead, Ms. Brown, the woman who blew up Torchwood on Monday, is left in the Gwen role, dragging the also-mopey Jack back into action and kicking him in the ass until he figures out how to stop the 456. And there's an amazing irony that Jack's daughter Alice is the one who insists they get Jack to solve the problem — and it ends up costing her so very much.

After those scenes of Jack and Dekker working together to come up with a completely unacceptable solution to the 456 crisis, I'm totally dying for season four to feature Dekker as a major member of the Torchwood staff. And every time he steps out of line, they could shoot him in the leg again. I just love his weird sad-sack humor and total lack of morals. He's the guy who's willing to do whatever it takes, or whatever the guy with the gun wants.

So yeah, Jack needs to destroy a random child in order to defeat the 456 — and unlike the politicians, who safeguard their own children while sending millions of others to a fate worse than death, Jack picks the one nearest to hand, his own grandson. Who dies screaming/singing, with blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, while Jack and his daughter watch. Jack manages to become the ultimate tragic hero in the same moment he becomes the ultimate antihero.

And then he leaves Earth, because Jack just plain has nothing tying him to the human race any more. Whatever finally brings Jack back to Earth for another romp with the Torchwoodies, I hope it's truly dreadful and we get to see Jack struggling against the need to return to the scene of his greatest crime.

Oh, and meanwhile Prime Minister Green gets his comeuppance in a scene so full of weird holes that I don't know what to make of it. Bridget Spears was recording Green being callous, using those contact lenses — but who was actually recording? Don't you need a laptop to record that stuff? Okay, so Bridget's bluffing, I can accept that. But how does this lead to that creepy woman getting to be in charge? The woman who was the first one to suggest sending poor kids to the slaughter? And in what way could that possibly be deemed an improvement? I'm sort of baffled, and I think RTD was straining too hard to give Green some kind of comeuppance, without fully thinking it through.

Nitpicks aside, though, this was a brain-shattering ending to one of the best pieces of science fiction television ever to come out of Britain. I've had a few weeks to think it over, and I've watched it twice, and I'm still obsessing about it and trying to tease out all its layers. What did you think?

Not that the 456 weren't utterly horrifying — they were. And they vastly exceeded my expectations, since I was sort of bracing myself for a lame reveal. The more we saw of them, the more terrifying they got. And when we got to glimpse the child they'd taken in 1965 — still young, but completely deformed and messed up — it was absolutely wretched.

But like I said, that wasn't even the nastiest part of the episode. I feel like last year's Who episode "Midnight" was just a foretaste of the ugliness that Russell T. Davies cooked up for us this time. The spectacle of the human politicos trying to figure out exactly which millions of children they should hand over to the slimy aliens was just sickeningly plausible.

One of the best things about "Children Of Earth" has been the way it's managed to be both fast-paced and lingering. That is, there hasn't been a single scene that felt like filler, or a waste of screen time — okay, maybe a few scenes, but not many.

And the fact that we've taken our time over these scenes of human leaders figuring out how to lie to their people about the wholesale handover of the poorest, most vulnerable of all the children, makes the whole thing feel more believable, and each step down the road of inhumanity feels like it comes just moments after the last. Paradoxically, lingering over these dreadful scenes helps make the story's pace feel even faster and more blinding.

And you can just about imagine yourself being in the room with them and making the same decisions — maybe you'd be less smarmy about it (RTD has a weakness for depicting moral compromise as overtly smarmy) but you might come up with the same justifications. As Gilbert & Sullivan might say, "You can put them on the list. They'll none of them be missed." Overpopulation is a huge nightmare. Statistically, these poor kids from bad schools are more likely to grow up and become car thieves (like Captain Jack, I guess.) And the 456 itself points out, infant mortality claims tons of kids, and nobody bats an eye.

The moment where Lois finally stands up and confronts all of those self-justifying, pompous, evil baby-killers — oh my God. I am now president of the Lois fan club. I don't want her to join Torchwood, I want her to run Torchwood. The way she slowly builds up steam, first tenatively raising her hand and trying to get noticed. And then saying "Excuse me," like a kindergartener. "I know I'm only supposed to be here to take notes, I am a voter." And you think... oh no, she's going to make a vain speech and nothing will happen.

And then she drops the bomb on them. Torchwood has been recording it all, and it's all going public. Woo hoo! And meanwhile, the odious thug Johnson starts to get an inkling of just who she's been working for, and what they've been up to all this time. Oh, and I loved the bit where Ianto tells the people who are listening to his phone call to save their children, and screw patriotism and all that.

When Captain Jack's daughter says the thing about how a man who can't die is a man who has nothing to lose, at first I thought she was completely off base. After all, Jack has people in his life — he has Ianto and Gwen, plus his family. Just because Jack can't die, doesn't mean he's got nothing to lose.

But then I realized that she was right, and that's part of why Jack is a monster in his own right — he really doesn't see himself, deep down, as having anything to lose at this point. All of the people around him are going to die at some point, and he'll go on — does it really matter to him if they die today, or twenty years from now? The end result, after all, is the same.

Of course, Jack has his lovely moment of posturing, which is so quintessentially Jack: self-aggrandizing and self-loving, but also totally altruistic and self-sacrificing. If only Jack were physically capable of sacrificing himself instead of others. It's interesting to contrast Jack's line, "An injury to one is an injury to all," with another great philosophical statement preceding a shocking death: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." Spock's philosophy, of course, is the one that got us into this mess in the first place, since it led to those dozen children being sacrificed for the needs of the many. Still and all, it's hard not to see a bit of a contrast between Spock's death scene and Ianto's, with the glass enclosure, the grand philosophy, the touching goodbye, and sense that the whole thing could have been avoided.

And yes, Ianto's death is totally avoidable, which only makes the knife a thousand times twistier. Why was Torchwood's plan so crap? Why? Far from being a case of lazy writing on the part of Russell T. Davies and company, that question is at the heart of this story's meaning. Torchwood has a weak-ass plan because they've been kept off balance for the past few days, instead of being able to stop and think things through. And that, in turn, is because of the British government's CYA mentality, nearly killing them all and turning them into fugitives. If the British government's first instinct hadn't been to try (in vain, as it turns out) to hide the truth, then Torchwood might have spent the past few days doing what it does best. (Well, apart from snogging.)

Poor Ianto.

After two almost completely solid episodes, part three of "Children Of Earth" got off to a bit of a rocky start. The whole "life of crime" montage was honestly a bit embarrassing. Wheee! We're criminals! Breakin the law breakin the law! And then Jack's big dramatic "I'm back" moment, with his trademark great-coat and suspenders restored to their full dapperness, was almost agonizingly twee. For a moment, I thought we'd been zapped back in time to the bad old days of Torchwood.

Luckily, almost everything else about Day Three adhered to the fantastic high standards the show's established so far. And best of all, we dove head-first into the stew of national politics, international intrigue and interplanetary skullduggery that the first two episodes only skimmed the surface of.

The aliens zap down into Thames House, with a huge blazing pillar of fire, and all the children in the world point their fingers at the dead center (ish) of London. And the crazy dance of alien contact and ass-covering begins.

I have a feeling they could have stuck Peter Capaldi in a room with a popsickle stick and some chewing gum, and he would have sold us on the idea that it was a terrifying, unknowable alien presence. He is that good in his early conversations with the 456, his eyes twitching with horror even as he keeps his body ramrod stiff. And he schools the 456 on proper diplomatic procedure:

Well... Perhaps we do things differently here, but we would consider this to be a diplomatic liaison. Does that make sense? We are both in a sense ambassadors, and according to protocol, ambassadorial procedure is not made public. You wouldn't be speaking to the entire population, but to their elected representatives. That's how it works. That's all I can offer. Is that acceptable?

In other words: We need to do this in a way that will allow us to lie to our people and manipulate the free world, however this shakes out.

And then he goes out into the hallway and collapses on the floor, finally letting his full freak-out show. And Dekker sort of skulks out behind him, keeping a healthy distance from the 456 chamber.

Of course, whatever happened the last time the 456 came to town, it was obviously much more on the down low. The 456 wouldn't be making such a big deal out of the need to "speak with the world" if they didn't need to pull something much bigger this time around.

And then we get all of those perfect scenes of the UNIT and U.S. army brass confronting the U.K. prime minister, Brian Green, with their power grab, having an alien ambassador on British soil and taking the lead on negotiations. It's funny that nobody mentions that just a year or two ago, the British prime minister announced the U.K. was making first contact with an alien species and invited the U.S. president to be there — only to gun the president down, live on TV. (That bit happened before the Master's "reset button" kicked in, right?) In any case, there's a giant pissing match over who gets to control the negotiations, all of which plays into Brian Green's scaly little hands, because it lets him designate John Frobisher as his fall guy — I mean, diplomatic representative.

And then the negotiations begin in earnest, with the 456 being slow and recalcitrant, and occasionally spitting weird scary fluids, every step of the way. The politicos and military boffins are watching on video screens from the office downstairs, while the Torchwood crew watches via the contact-lens cameras they talked Lois into wearing.

So yeah — Lois' finest hour is now in its second hour, with no sign of slacking off. She is magnificent this time around. The contact lenses, which were sort of a throwaway plot device in the giant insect romp last year, now provide yet another way for us to view first contact with a scary alien from an obscured, distorted perspective. And Lois' bravery is worth a thousand action heroes, because she's so obviously terrified and out of her depth, but she goes forward and does the right thing anyway. Somehow, reading those files about Torchwood and finding out just how far her superiors were willing to go to kill them, inspires her to risk everything to help them.

And jeez, the Torchwood people are pushy mofos. She's already committing treason and flying in the face of people who have already proved they're willing to blow up Cardiff to silence voices of the past — and now the Torchwoodies are like "go stand in the middle of the room so we can read Frobisher's lips! Come on! Do a little dance while you're at it!" Oh man. And then they want her to start making notes as well. Utter bastards. Why doesn't she just use a semaphore?

And then of course the 456 explain just what they want, that necessitates such a huge song and dance... "We will take your children." I love Frobisher groping for the idea that there's a problem with the translation software.

And meanwhile, we find out just what Captain Jack's big secret is, and Captain Jack has never been so compelling a character as he is here. Really, two seasons of Torchwood had pretty much killed all of my interest in Captain Jack Harkness as a character, after a promising start in Doctor Who season one. Now, suddenly, he's complicated and tormented and awesome.

And it's extra knife-twisty that Jack's sudden revelation comes right after this wonderful slow moment between him and Ianto, when they really talk about their relationship. They almost go have sex, but then they don't because Rhys is there — and thank goodness for forced chastity, because instead they have to talk about what they're doing together, and whether their relationship has any future whatsoever. And then Jack finds out exactly who those other people marked for death were, and goes off to confront Frobisher.

Jack's conversation with Frobisher is great also, as Frobisher has to face up to what he's done — and what he has yet to do. The bit where Frobisher says Jack won't grab his wife and kids because "you're a better man than I am" would seem trite in most television shows, but here the self-loathing totally works. And of course, we're not quite sure if that's really true.

And it all leads up to the revelation that not only did those awful Brits give the aliens a dozen children before, but Jack was the guy who gift-wrapped the little tykes. "1965, I gave them twelve children... as a gift," Jack says simply. You bastard.

Oh, a couple of other random notes: Clem continues to be a bit annoying, but his portrayal of post-traumatic insanity and twitchiness does drive home just how awful whatever these aliens want with the children probably is. I really could have done without the bit where Clem "smells" Ianto's queerness. I have a feeling that Russell T. Davies was going somewhere interesting with that, about Ianto's denial or closetedness or something, but he missed the off-ramp. Also, maybe if Jack's daughter Alice had spent a bit more time with her dad instead of blowing him off, she wouldn't have been quite such an idiot and gotten herself nabbed. Oh well.

But all in all, this was an amazingly intense hour of television, and it's only going to get more intense from here on out.

So what did you think?

Iron Man 2:

A few new pics of Tony Stark on a trashed, flaming race track, plus Pepper Potts and Rhodey, from USA Today's Comic Con preview. [USA Today via Slashfilm]

Tron:

Producer Sean Bailey told MTV News that the new movie is a "stand-alone sequel" and you don't have to have seen the original to appreciate it. But it takes the stance that the original movie happened in 1982, and since then there have been developments with ENCOM and Kevin Flynn and all the other characters. In the film, Flynn disappeared in 1989, and there are tons of theories about what happened to him. But no trace has ever been found. Flynn's son, Sam, grows up never knowing what happened to him.

Says Bailey, "At the beginning of the movie, [Sam is] given a clue or a prompt and starts to investigate, which leads him into the Tron universe. And things have really changed." You'll still see lightcycles and tanks, but they'll be streamlined and improved, plus there are also new vehicles. And it's a "darker universe" with more intensity. It'll push the limits of the PG rating. It'll be, like, PG-12. [MTV]

District 9:

Sony Pictures released a new still showing Wikus (Sharlto Copley) wielding a honkin big alien-looking gun. [Slashfilm]

And here's your first longer TV spot, showing a bit more of this movie's backstory:

New Moon:

OMG new photo of Jacob and Bella. D00d! [Bella And Edward]

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus:

Ahead of this movie's panel at Comic Con, here are a couple new clips, plus a better copy of the one we showed you a while back.

Doctor Who:

Even more set photos of day two of the Matt Smith/Alex Kingston filming. This is rapidly becoming the most photographed TV set in history. More pics at the link. [SpoilerTV]

The final David Tennant specials won't mention the events of Torchwood's big miniseries, as such.[EW]

Torchwood:

This show will most likely be back, and Captain Jack will probably continue to be the main character, says Russell T. Davies. "I would hope so. He's absolutely fundamental to Torchwood." But when the show returns, Davies will also be inventing some new characters and stories. [EW]

Fringe:

Ari Graynor will be back as Rachel in the season opener, but there's no clue about her availability beyond that. [EW]

Heroes:

Here's a new set pic, showing Rick Worthy (aka Simon the Cylon) as Matt Parkman's new partner and mentor. [Heroes Spoilers]

Smallville:

Episode three of the new season will be called "Rabid." [Kryptonsite]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars:

Here's your first look at how evil bounty hunter Aurra Sing (glimpsed in Phantom Menace and featured heavily in the Dark Horse comics) will look in this animated series. Click the link for another pic of a new character in Clone Wars. [EW]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

So yes, Captain Jack has never been quite as exposed as he was in part two of "Children Of Earth," where he was stripped down to just a teeny scrap of flesh, and then slowly rebuilt into a dessicated corpse.

And of course, if your taste in nudity extends beyond people's exposed circulatory systems and bones, you had to be a bit happy that the fully reassembled Jack pops up quite a bit as well. (Although I'm basing this on the screeners I got, which were the British version. No clue if any of that got cut for U.S. audiences.) The glimpse of Jack's full-frontal nudity, as flashed on a surveillance camera, is three of the most popular images right now at the Medusa Cascade.

What was it a wise man once said? "Ladies, your viewing figures just went up."

I especially liked Gwen handing Naked Jack a coat, and him tossing it over his shoulder while he walks, still naked, to the car.

Oh, and there was also Naked Rhys, which also has proved one of the most popular screencaps from the episode.

But honestly, episode two of "Children Of Earth" isn't really Jack's hour, since he's dead or entombed for most of it.

In many ways, the star of this episode was Lois, the new character who we only just met yesterday. Internet chatter claims that Russell T. Davies wrote in Lois because Freema Agyeman wasn't available to reprise her role as Martha Jones. If that's true, then I'm actually sort of glad that Agyeman had to bow out. (Not that it wouldn't have been great to see both of them in action.)

In any case, Lois really shines in the second episode of "Children Of Earth," going beyond the naive ingenue who took a bit of advantage of her boss' password in the first episode and becoming a full-on rebel. We get to see her putting two and two together, and realizing just what that mysterious explosion in Cardiff was, and then slowly coming around to helping Gwen and Rhys, when she talks to Gwen on the phone. And she's immediately super resourceful — almost too resourceful, since she hands Gwen a rescue plan for Captain Jack on a silver plate. But on balance, the whole thing makes me like her immediately.

The other standout last night was Action Gwen, who was the least wet and useless she's ever been. The role of two-gun bad-ass really suits Gwen, baby bump and all, and I liked seeing her ruthless streak in dealing with her would-be kidnappers in the ambulance.

Her relationship with Rhys has never felt so natural as it does here, and watching the two of them team up to escape the Cardiff dragnet is pretty awesome. It brings them together in a way that hours of processing and relationship wrangling never could.

And poor PC Andy, having his faith in Gwen's inherent goodness and purity tested so much.

Meanwhile, Ianto has an even rougher time, since he doesn't have a Rhys to depend on, and the man he loves has been blown up from the inside out. He's all battered and bruised, and doesn't know where to turn. The bit where he thinks the baddies have caught up to him, and it's just a newspaper delivery van, was pretty heart-rending.

But at least Ianto was forced to open up a wee bit to his sister, and tell her a teeny amount about what exactly his fancy civil-service job involves. And yes, it was a bit of an outrageous coincidence that Ianto shows up busts Jack's concrete slab out at the exact same moment that Gwen and Rhys' "fake undertaker" scam has been rumbled, and he saves the day in his little construction vehicle. But it's the sort of coincidence that Doctor Who and Torchwood have been serving up for decades, so we pretty much have to let it slide.

Meanwhile, we learned a bit more about the aliens, the 456, who are getting built up as an ominous mystery in a way that virtually no other Who aliens have been in decades, if ever. They're genuinely alien and incomprehensible to our feeble human brains. But at least we do know what atmosphere they require for their special chamber — although, as Dekker says, it's not clear if they breathe it, eat it or fart it. And is their chamber an ambassadorial suite, a throne room or a slaughter house? Or all three, depending?

Dekker is definitely my other favorite character. I mean, Frobisher is mesmerizing, as you watch him kiss up to the repulsive prime minister, lie to his wife and kids (The "We want a pony!" chanting was priceless) and depend utterly on the devotion of Bridget Spears. But Dekker is a brilliant character study too — his whole philosophy is based around keeping his head down and letting other people stand out front. He's just one of the cockroaches of government — but in that role, he's also a bit of a court jester, like when he tells Spears she's been holding her nose for years now. He seems to think as long as he never actually takes on any prominence, he can jab all he wants at the people above him.

"Exactly," he says at the end. "Why is that, Mr. Frobisher?" A bit of a mocking smile on his lips. And then he walks up and presses his face to the glass, letting his breath further obscure the already inscrutable fog. Awesomely ominous stuff.

So what did you think? (Without any spoilers for parts three through five, please!)