Writing on the Whedonesque blog, Whedon offers the following sales pitch:

Is it worth fifteen hard-earned dollars? Absolutely. In fact, I can say without reservation that the Dr. Horrible DVD is worth $15.23 EASILY. More, if your dollars weren't the hard-earned kind, just the kind you have lying around in your mom's purse. God knows WE'VE worked hard to earn 'em. "Commentary! The Musical" is the most painstaking and exhausting piece of whimsey I have ever mistaken for a good idea. It has nearly twice as much music as Dr. Horrible itself — since you can't really talk that much during a commentary musical or it sounds like a regular commentary. (Which we also have, with the stars and writers, plus making-of's, ELE applications, and a few items left lying around by a notorious Bunny...) I can say without hesitation that I hesitate to say it's great. And by great I mean ridiculous. It's sophmoric, solopsistic, silly and the most fun I've had being exhausted since the fabled Mushortio itself. And everyone sings beautifullly. Which enrages me. I a little bit hate my friends now.

And, as the saying goes, that's not all:

I just want to say "thank you" to everybody who has supported this venture. We've been able to pay our crew and all our bills, which means a lot. What means more is proving that completely independent ventures can muscle their way through the blizzard of big-budget behemoths. (A blizzard of behemoths? Back to writing school, alliteration-junkie!) All that rhetoric about the future of entertainment that flew about during the Strike is still entirely true. We need to find our own way of producing entertainment. A lot of people are watching Dr. Horrible to see if it's any kind of model — way more people than I expected — and it means everything to me to help pave the way for artists to start working and making a living from the ground up. There are a couple of real pioneers in this that I know personally: Felicia Day, I'm thrilled to say, and choreographer Chris Elam are both looking far ahead in terms of monetization and interactivity. Me, I'm more like Jimmy Stewart in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", but at least I'm out there. Thanks, he finally summed up, to you.

Amazon claims the DVD is due December 19th; Whedon is "hoping Amazon is just playing it safe and we can beat that date."

[Whedonesque]

At first glance, it's pretty hard to watch. It's one of the grimmest things I've ever seen, and I've watched student productions of Samuel Beckett's Endgame. The first couple of three-minute episodes seem to consist of just Schofield acting his heart out in a grim post-apocalyptic, dystopian world. (You can take a drink now.) It's not entirely clear to me what the plot of Kirill is, but it seems as though Schofield's character is trying to communicate with our time, 50 years in his past, and warn us about some future disaster. And (shockingly) the Large Hadron Collider is involved.

MSN UK will post two three-minute episodes per week, for the next five weeks. And there's some kind of vague interactive component, to do with MSN's instant messenger tool "Live Search" and MSN's social network. Maybe you can communicate with a dying blogger in a ravaged world 50 years from now? Your guess is as good as mine. Here's the trailer:

[MSN]

I must admit this webisode looks light years better than the first, but I don't know if I'm going to ever get tired of yelling "sploosh" whenever his lady gets smacked by a car and turns into a wave. I'm sorry is the ability to turn into water that great? Would your nemesis be made out of Sham Wow? Yeach, props for Santiago's super ability but this girlfriend has gotta go. But also thank you NBC for spending a little more on this webisode than in Postie's storyline. But then again, this is only the trailer.

I discovered Hulu's ever-growing archive while I was looking online for an episode of Lost in Space, "The Hungry Sea." I wasn't alive for this show's original run, but the setting and tone are downright crazy today. The Museum of TV & Radio in New York used to let you look back into TV's past, and this was one of the first things I accidentally watched as a kid.

Then there's shows I wasn't even aware existed, like Land of the Giants, a Lost in Space follow-up that set the sterling template for Honey I Shrunk the Kids. Steven Bochco's 1975 version of The Invisible Man is another example of a program I was too young to originally watch, but it's perfect for the internet and the concept is still an entertaining re-imagining of H.G. Wells' original vision. Now they just need to get the British version on there.

Some series just resemble a bad dream. In fact, I really thought I had imagined NBC's The Pretender. For example: Johny Sokko and His Flying Robot formed the template for all the flying robot shows we've come to take for granted.

The biggest surprise (for me) is the Bill Bixby version Incredible Hulk. The show holds up great, at times resembling Lost with its inclusion of technology and savagery in the same frame. They even have "Proof Positive" — the only episode of the show that didn't feature Bill Bixby.

Let Hulu suck up your remaining attention span here.

The casting call is Sept. 24th in Los Angeles, CA.

NBC is looking for actors to play:

Rachel Mills: A 20-something lady who is ex-military, beautiful, athletic build and mysteriously trouble.

David Sulivan: a late 20's to 30-something male. All-American and Rachel's love interest. David is a good guy that suffers from a Dr. Jekyll-Hyde transformation.

Ryan Hanover: another 20-something who is quick tempered and has "plenty of attitude." An asshole jock type, but not super muscular (squeal, please make him gay with an attitude).

[Heroes Spoiler]

Howard Webster, who originally came up with the idea for the show in 1996 before being rejected by studios and deciding to self-finance the project, has been working on the show in his back garden and local Starbucks for the last year... and he wouldn't have it any other way:

I think Jonas Moore is an online trailblazer... It’s allowed us to circumvent, with a franchisable IP, all the traditional routes that you’d have to go through. Apart from Doctor Who in this country, where do you take a sci-fi drama to? For the TV manadarins, sci-fi is a poor relation to drama proper - Jonas Moore would never have seen the light of day if I’d taken that in at the development stage. But now we can demonstrate it has a colossal fan base; it allowed people like me to have a platform.

That platform is one that Webster sees as entirely mobile:

I was looking at an iPod and thought the screen reminded me of a comic book cell. I thought the iPod was going to be the fastest selling device in the world; if you could do a comic book for free you would have something big... In the winter it will be a perfect thing for people on their iPods. It’s a perfect little bus ride thing.

And even though the series is going to be turned into a show for regular TV, it doesn't mean the iPod-friendly webisodes will stop:

I’m keeping the digital online rights separate from the TV series because I wanted to keep it indie and cool and keep the community going. I’ve been working on the TV piots and its going to be a real reboot with a big plot twist in it that isn’t in the graphic novel. The web graphic novel is going to be the original story, fans will get to see the back-story online, just like Dark Knight is informed by all the old Batman comics.

So, the TV show will be overlong, depressingly bleak and incredibly successful compared with the original web-series, then? I can't see too many people complaining about that...

Howard Webster Interview [Paid Content]

The webisodes are structured as sort of mini-documentaries about life at the Buy More, the Best Buy-clone store where Chuck Bartowski works. They feature his friends and coworkers, including Morgan, Lester, Jeff... and Casey, the gruff NSA agent played by Adam "god walks among us" Baldwin. Each segment starts with a little fake instructional film about working at Buy More, and then it segues into a little vignette set at the Buy More.

In one webisode, a weirdly woman who works in the "entertainment" industry comes in for help, because she was uploading "personal" pictures from her laptop, and it froze up. Jeff and Lester fight over who gets to help her, using a modified rock-paper-scissors game on the run called "Roshambo." They succeed in unlocking the porn on her computer and stare, entranced, at the screen. They call over Anna, who's also entranced. They start to tell her they'll need to keep her laptop overnight, but then Morgan busts them for looking at porn, and she grabs her laptop and goes home.

Another porn-related webisode: Morgan sold some underage kids the unrated version of Showgirls for $5, and they're pissed because it's not X-rated enough. They're like, why should I pay $5 to look at this when I can see your mom naked on the internet for free? Morgan is upset, because he was sure those pics of his mom had been taken down. The kids are getting ready to kick Morgan's ass, but then he whispers to the lead kid that he'll tell the others the kid boosted a Hannah Montana disk. The kids back off quick.

And finally, the awesome Adam Baldwin gets interviewed on camera and demonstrates how he has eliminated shoplifting at the Buy More. In a nutshell, Casey has a "three strikes" policy. And you don't want to be the hapless DVD-stealer who incurs the third strike.

After killing off The Constrictor by yelling at him (goodbye, our pale terribly acted friend), the Postman and his unrealistically hot girlfriend must defend themselves from a knock on the door.

Posty knows that no good can come of this new visitor and sends Latina lady away telling her that he'll come after her, "rain or shine." How much would it suck if you dated someone who used mottos from their work in personal situations?

Then Posty watches with burning eyes as sexy GF grabs the cat and heads out the door. Was the cat necessary? Why was this important, is the cat an integral part of the plot? Why doesn't the cat get ear plugs? They should have given the cat a speaking part. It would have been better than everyone from the Company. Think about it, tiny cat suits. I would have totally watched a Heroes LOLcats webisode. I can haz death hugz?

So sexy girlfriend runs out the back and hops in the car, which is clearly parked on an open street next to the house. Zoinks, you didn't see me, Companies! Then she puts in some ear plugs, and clearly neglects the cats ears.

Meanwhile Posty answers the door with a witty, "I was expecting company." Two poorly suited men enter the house. With the subtlety and acting grace of a college improv class, the two gentleman tell Posty they're just here to talk.

To which witty Posty replies, "No, you're here to listen." And then he blasts them all with his sonar call. The sound waves reach all the way to his hot girlfriend, but the impact don't seem to break the glass of her car or home (webisode money).

Cut To Black, then it's revealed that it's 13 weeks later. A woman walks down a dark basement in a lady suit and you see Posty all tied up Pulp Fiction style. She lays down a few puns written by Andy Rooney.

Poor Posty — he's all tied up and has no where to go. But more importantly, what happened to the cat?

[NBC]

Jeph Loeb, whose resume also includes stints on Lost, Smallville and a pretty impressive career as a comic book writer, talked about the special Summer series on the WordBalloon podcast:

There's kind of a historical importance, if I'm not putting too much importance on it, in the sense that, like I said, these are the first [Writers] Guild-sanctioned [web] episodes, which kind of allow for... You know, if you believe that members of the Writers Guild have a higher quality of writing than somebody who isn't, that's an opportunity to see what you can do if you let the big boys come in and play... They do have a historical precedence to them. You're looking at the future. And even if you look at it and go, "Well, you know, it doesn't have the big glory of a television show". Yeah, guess what? It is a baby step towards that, and I think they're terrific. Everyone involved did an amazing, amazing job on very little to make it with... It's like a small independent film when Heroes the show is, like, this $100 million blockbuster.

Not that they don't have any value beyond historic importance to the industry, mind you:

They're very clever pieces that you can watch over and over and over again, and will tie into our mythology, as people will see. Everything does, in the same kind of way that the comics do. But [they] will also give you an opportunity to kind of tool around in the NBC.com area that's designed for Heroes, because that way, you'll get to see the comics, and you'll get to see interviews with people.

They tie into the mythology the same way as the comics do? So, either hardly at all, or else giving you backstory that you didn't really need to know nor care about, then.

[Wordballoon]

The main character of "Going Postal," the online miniseries, has the superpower of making your brain bleed with his super-scream. He runs up against a powdery-looking bad guy who is a "Constrictor" — and that's the point where Marvel dials up their lawyers. But first our poor postal hero gets cornered by a puppy and tries to reason with the mutt about how this whole scenario is cliche, before yelling at the dog and using his powers of loudness to scare the dog off.

Posty is then cornered by nameless man in a suit (obviously the Company) and the suit's bald and pasty companion who writhes and wiggles around like an idiot. Did they let someone's kid direct this? "You're the Constrictor! Wiggle around like a snake!" Of course, the snake-man gets postal guy in a headlock and crazy camera angles ensue. Unfortunately, it never actually looks like pale guy is hurting our mailman hero, merely lovingly hugging him. Hug harder, snake guy!

Mailman escapes by yelling very loudly at the suit, whose ears start to bleed. Then the suit pulls out a gun: why didn't they use that in the first place?

The segment ends with an awesome piece of product placement for Sprint, one of the web series' sponsors. Especially since half the time when you watch the webisodes, it starts with the Sprint ad that makes fun of product placement with a fake movie that's all product placement, it's great how the camera lingers breathlessly over the Constrictor's Sprint phone. The takeaway message: If you're going to murder a man's loved ones to try and turn him into a tool of your evil Company, use a Sprint phone. And then the pale man slinks off, walking in some twisted parody of a snake-person.

[NBC Going Postal]

"Going Postal." is about Echo DeMille, a seemingly ordinary mailman with a secret power. (It looks like some kind of Black Canary-esque sonic scream?) And apparently "secrets can kill." Episodes go up every Monday for the next few weeks. I wonder if the script is left over from the abandoned Heroes: Origins spin-off.

The series - which will run on NBC.com in 50 four-minute webisodes starting next month - doesn't have the most original set-up in the world. Short version: Dawson plays a detective investigating the death of her fiancee, only to discover that it leads to a shadowy conspiracy that involves genetically engineered terrorists called Simulants. What it lacks in newness, it's planning on making up for in cheapness, apparently:

Gemini Division will feature a mix of live action scenes and animation. The animation may be a low budget way of handling some of the action scenes and special effects.

Admit it: you can't wait already. But there's more - NBC is already planning to roll out an online game complete with "bonus scenes" based on the show as a way to further hook fans into sticking with it. I can't work out if that's confidence or desperation at this early point, but let's face it - It couldn't be any worse than Occult Crimes Taskforce.

Have You Heard Of The Gemini Division? [Mania]

Battlestar Galactica: Razor — While you won't see these clips when Razor is televised on November 24th, but they'll be a part of the longer DVD release that you can pick up on December 4th. Verdict: not too shabby, and they show us some sneak peeks at the first Cylon war.

Lost: Missing Pieces — These unique Lost webisodes may be the only thing you have to comfort yourself with if the writer's strike continues and the show gets pushed until 2009. Verdict: hammy, cheesy, and it isn't even a sandwich. It's this sort of over schmaltzy storytelling that killed season three for a lot of the fans. Did we learn anything of substance here? It just seems like a variation on the Pulp Fiction watch scene, except without Christopher Walken. Just because they're new doesn't mean they're going to be good.

Heroes: Video Overload — Heroes is fond of inundating people who visit their website with sensory overload, but there's some good stuff in here. Skip the semi-lame "Zeroes" spoof video, and check out the character profiles, which feature new and unseen footage, and the impressive Takezo Kensei documentary on the Yamagato Fellowship page that is leaps and bounds better than the actual "Hiro in Feudal Japan" storyline. Verdict: some of this stuff is better than season two has been.

The first four "Webisodes" are free on Youtube, but you have to pay for the high-quality versions of all eight. The premise is interesting: it's 2007 and New York City is overrun with monsters who feed off the poor. But a heroic woman scientist (played by Stargate's Amanda Tapping) wants to help the monsters control their powers. Unfortunately, the actual show is a tad cheesy (it starts with Jack the Ripper), and Kindler has the look of a tired pitchman reciting the same talking points for the millionth time.

Video: Sanctuary For All Interview [Web Strategy By Jeremiah]