Jericho – (Immediately) Post-Apocalypse Drama.

Frequently, even though I have plenty of games and television series to keep me busy when not looking for work, writing or studying, I get the urge to try something new, and my first destination is Sci-Fi TV on Netflix streaming. Among the many shows that are in that category that I've seen already, there are a few I never watched for one reason or another. Jericho was one of those. My wife decided to start up on Jericho, we'd both heard about it years ago and it sounded vaguely interesting. It was one of those shows, I recall when it was on the air, that got canceled and a lot of people were upset. Normally, I'd be riding that bandwagon years after the fact and decrying the studios for not giving great TV a chance and wagging my finger at the public for preferring more vapid entertainment to allow such a situation to occur. Not this time. After watching the first handful of episodes of Jericho, my main question isn't: "Why did they cancel this?" My main question is: "How did this ever get a 2^nd season?"

Once I'd gotten a hold of the concept, I really wanted to like this.

To be fair to the show, I think that placing this series in the sci-fi category is not particularly accurate, so a portion of my willingness to bail early on the series probably rests with it not being what I expected. Jericho is really a disaster drama set in the early stages of the post-apocalypse immediately after the disaster that ends civilization. In addition to people coping with the uncertainty of an apocalyptic event, trying to survive short-term, and hold a community together to maintain order, the show gets into the mystery of just what happened and why. On its surface, this is the sort of concept that appeals to me. Skeet Ulrich plays Jake Green, an adult who left the small Kansas town of Jericho in disgrace, but after cleaning up his life, he turns up to ask for his inheritance to get a fresh start. While in town for only a few days, the world ends, and he finds himself caught in his hometown and steps up to provide leadership in a crisis.

One of the problems with the series is that far too many events are played over the top with dramatic disaster music and characters explaining how the next action could kill people. Sure, many of the situations are dangerous, and the lives of the characters are frequently threatened in the immediate aftermath of nuclear weapons detonating in major cities around the United States. The problem is that it is impossible to maintain dramatic tension when everything is a crisis. Even if it is realistic that nearly every environment and action taken is risky or life-threatening, for the sake of a watchable narrative a point has to be reached where only the most dramatic crises are portrayed, and there is a little bit more summing up and getting on with the story. The sort of music heard once or twice in a good action movie, in the scenes where you can forget that of course the hero will survive... that music is constantly being played in Jericho. A little more often, and I'd have suspected that it was a sly, subtle disaster film parody because the music would have been unintentionally funny... it stops just short of that, in "tedious" territory.

Large cast, small, petty personalities for all but one of the characters pictured.

The single largest problem with Jericho is the characters, and how difficult it quickly becomes to care whether any of them live or die. The entire town is populated with stock characters, and most of them are jerks. The closer to being a decent person you are in Jericho, the more likely you are to be uninteresting by virtue of not having a shred of originality in your characterization. Maybe this is realistic, most people aren't interesting and in a crisis, they become selfish, petty and altogether unpleasant. This doesn't excuse them not being entertaining. I found myself still curious about the setting, and the mystery of why and how the apocalypse happened, but realized that I could look those details up online without having to suffer through watching the overly dramatic struggle of people who could die at any moment without an ounce of emotional impact for me. There is a single interesting man, but he's clearly not what he seems from the start, and he can't carry the rest of the show on his own, especially since he seems to be in opposition with them early on.

In some ways, Jericho, made in 2006, reminds me of this year's Falling Skies, as the concept of the apocalypse immediately after it happens is still a good one. Jericho, however, shares all of the flaws Falling Skies has without any of the things that makes the Alien Apocalyptic survival series good TV in spite of them. I can really only recommend this show if you are a disaster film junkie, or a fan of Falling Skies who is completely caught up and thirsting for something similar to the point you'd accept a lesser, diluted experience while waiting for more material. I'm certain that fans of the show might complain that I didn't give it enough of a chance, maybe it did get better later. I just couldn't watch anymore of a show that felt like an 80/20 mix of Dawson's Creek and Fallout. In a show with an ensemble cast this size, the characters and their relationships must be interesting to watch, or a great concept is wasted. 

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Two Decades Ago, There Was a Little Town Called Twin Peaks

As a lifelong geek, the unusual, the supernatural, even the disturbing are elements that act as enticements for me in the entertainment I choose to consume. Of course, everyone has their own limits there. I've watched most of director David Lynch's films and projects, and I don't always enjoy them. I kind of hated Eraserhead, liked Mulholland Drive even though it gave me a headache, and have really mixed feelings about Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet. It isn't surprising then, that my favorite Lynch project is the one with the most mainstream appeal, where his weirdness and dark, disturbing imagination is tempered by collaboration with Mark Frost, in the early 1990's mystery/drama Twin Peaks. Frost's stuff, on its own, usually has a strong sense of moving plot along and mainstream appeal, but doesn't have a whole lot of depth (he wrote a few entertaining but unremarkable novels and was a lead writer for the Fantastic Four movie.) Lynch is all depth, his work dripping with visual metaphor and convoluted and cryptic plotting, but he goes so far into his own worlds that the stories are nigh-incomprehensible to the average person. Together, they made something amazing.

Gone too soon.

Twin Peaks rose to popularity by posing a single question: “Who killed Laura Palmer?” The prom queen, volunteer, friend to so many in the little Northwestern town had her life ahead of her, and she was savagely murdered. The ritualized manner of her death brought in the FBI, most particularly the peculiar and unconventional Special Agent Dale Cooper. The atmosphere of the logging town with local eccentrics, long standing traditions... I'd be hard pressed to identify another fictional location that was as well developed. The town itself was a character with more depth than most protagonists in TV before or since. To this day, if someone talks about excellent coffee and pie, I think of Twin Peaks. The combination of mystery, soap opera, cop show and supernatural elements blended together to create something unique and special.

The town itself, and the plot, had three distinct layers. The top layer was the public face of the town, where the local high school kids ride motorcycles around with their girlfriends, the Great Northern Lodge ran its business, the quirky local sheriff's office handled local crime. The small town character on this surface layer was interesting enough, but just below the surface, there was something else. The seedy, secret side of the town dealt with addictions, sex, violence and madness that lurked somewhere below the local festivals and town meetings. Laura Palmer was the darling of the surface world, but just a little digging showed that she lived in the shadowy world of the town's secret shame. Almost every character has a secret that makes them touch on this second layer, and they'll lie, cheat and maybe even kill to keep these secrets.

To date, this man's best role.

The third layer of depth in the series and the town that gave the show its name is perhaps what it is best known for. A touch of the supernatural, where there are secrets that the town eccentric, the log lady knows and discusses with her pet piece of firewood. Something in the woods, connected to an ancient cave that locals know about, but don't speak of in the daylight, something that can send a message through military satellites in the SETI program. A figure with long hair, bestial in nature that insists that HE killed young Laura Palmer. Giants and dwarves who talk backwards, and an unusual room with red curtains for walls, a black and white zig-zag pattern on the floor and sparse furnishings where secrets might be learned in dreams, but not understood. A place real enough to have a name, The Black Lodge.

I loved this show. I was distraught when it was canceled, and more distraught at the ending, since the second season cliffhanger remains to this day unresolved. The demise of this series was, from the beginning, a classic case of studio interference in a great thing. Pressure was put on the series creators to pay off the mystery plot, to answer the big question of who Laura Palmer's murderer was by the end of the first season. David Lynch originally never intended that question to have a solid answer, the pursuit of the mystery and the dark twists and turns Agent Cooper and Sheriff Truman would follow were the story, they pursued an answer that wasn't important to the narrative. It was simply the driving goal that would motivate the characters to plumb the depths of the town's dirty laundry and start reaching that third layer of dark and ancient magic. This is probably why most people were unsatisfied with the answer once they got it, and stopped watching in droves.

This program was about a question. When it was answered, people said,
"All right, then." and they stopped watching.

Predictably, the studio responded with typical further interference. Long breaks between scheduled episodes, night and timeslot change, the full laundry list of what a network can and too often does go through to dismantle a struggling series' remaining fanbase. These actions inevitably result in cancellation, and that is precisely what happened. Incensed by the network's actions, Lynch refused to rewrite the series finale to provide closure, leaving it as originally conceived. Fans drew some hope when several years later, there was the Twin Peaks film, Fire Walk With Me... but many were disappointed to find that this was a prequel of sorts that answered no lingering questions and instead posed several new ones.

I highly recommend checking out the whole series if someone can stand the emotional impact of knowing there isn't a proper ending. The supplementary reading materials, from the Access Guide to Twin Peaks, to the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and Dale Cooper's My Life, My Tapes really round out the setting and background of some of the principal characters. Answers are found in these books, if not resolution to hanging plot elements. Every few years, I go back and watch the two seasons of this 20-year old program again, and I think it has actually gotten better as I've gotten older, rather than tarnishing over time. I think I'd rather have the incomplete but compelling story of something like Twin Peaks over the host of other shows that got their plots wrapped up neatly by the end, but were never all that great to begin with.

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Eureka – More Science Fiction TV Gone Too Soon.

The news in the last week that SyFy has reversed their earlier decision to order a shortened sixth season of Eureka has people up in arms. I want to talk a little about that decision, the controversy and the show itself. Normally, in this kind of article, I could predictably be expected to play Devil's Advocate, tell the nerds raging on the internet that there's another side to the story. I won't be doing that. It isn't that I don't understand the other side. I get it. A show like Eureka is expensive to produce at the standards of quality its audience expects, and business realities sometimes force decisions such as whether to do the show with a budget that means it can't be done right, or to not do it at all. We've been given this bill of goods before, and this time, I'm not buying it. While I appreciate that it is more complicated than “people like it, ratings are good, so keep it on,” the explanation we've been given does not satisfy me. More on that later.

Group shot of the first season cast of Eureka. (Did I mention the show is streaming on Netflix?)

Eureka is a quirky show about a town in the United States (Eureka, Oregon) where the greatest geniuses the government and corporate sector could find live, work and share ideas. The central character is Sheriff Jack Carter who is neither scientist nor genius, but who was recruited from his work as a U.S. Marshal because his common sense, ability to connect with people and dedication to his work allow him to find the simple solutions that great minds think right past, and the town is safe. Many of the episodes concern a device or other dangerous technology or discovery that threatens at least the town, if not the world, and the investigation and research required to stop it before it is too late. Subplots involving Global Dynamics, the corporation that employs most of the citizens, and threats internal and external tell a larger story arc across the seasons.

The cast has counted among its recurring actors many geek favorites, and the leads are sure to be much loved for years to come for their work on this show. The two principal characters, Sheriff Carter and Dr. Allison Blake, who is first introduced as a Department of Defense liason to the town, are played by Colin Ferguson and Salli Richardson-Whitfield. The supporting cast includes Joe Morton, playing Dr. Henry Deacon, Erica Cerra playing Deputy Jo Lupo, and Neil Grayston playing Dr. Douglas Fargo. Over the years, the show has employed the talents of Matt Frewer, James Callis (played Gaius Baltar in BSG,) Wil Wheaton and geek sweetheart Felicia Day. The cast is able to consistently strike an unusual balance, pivoting between light-hearted comedy and the menacing weirdness of horror-tinged science fiction.

Nothing against the leads (pictured again, below) but the supporting cast
really brings the spark of genius to a show like this.

The cancellation announcement was handled in a particularly cowardly and unprofessional manner, with much of the cast finding out about the decision from fans who had seen the press release. The series will be forced to tie up all loose ends after being assured of an abbreviated sixth season to do so in only a single episode. [UPDATE:  Moments after I hit "publish", I saw a tweet indicating that SyFy would be giving the show's creators one more episode to wrap things up. Not satisfied, but credit where it is due.] The actors and producers are attempting to put the best face possible on the whole situation, attempting to demonstrate that they are more professional than the people who just put them all out of work are. Often, some of the blame for sci-fi TV not making it lays with the fanbase, who stop watching, stop talking about it, the ratings just aren't there. This was not the case for Eureka, as it was consistently one of the highest-rated programs on the SyFy Network. In the end, it came down to price.

We've heard this excuse before, and here is why that explanation does not satisfy me. The valuation for how much a television series should cost has been skewed over the last 15 years by the rise of a TV phenomenon that was interesting at first, but has formed the core of the most vapid and pointless “entertainment” on television. I am, of course, talking about the reality show. Network Executives love "reality" TV, as the shows are cheap to make, requiring no scripts, sets or special effects, and on many of them compensation for the principal “actors” isn't anywhere near what actors in scripted TV make. Is this what we want? Losing original, clever programming for more Jersey Shore, Real Housewives and Ghost Hunters? (By the way, I was a ghost hunter, and those guys are full of shit.) Reality TV, supernatural soap opera clones and professional wrestling now dominate a network that was once a great center for geeky TV. Their "rebranding" shows the lack of respect for their traditional fans, decisions like this add insult to injury.

Our principal stars of the show, Sheriff Carter and Dr. Blake. 

There is an intellectual arrogance among many of us geeks. We consider ourselves better than the unwashed masses that don't know how to fine tune settings on their personal electronics or effectively use Google to answer basic questions. We scoff at American Idol and the Bachelorette, but increasingly, we find the things that we enjoy are in the past. Internet “Save the Show” campaigns haven't worked in years, and I find myself thinking, watching and writing about television that has been cancelled way more often than I write about current shows. The things that we, in our arrogance, consider to be worthy, are going away and being replaced by a douchebag who calls himself “The Situation” making millions for being a tool on national TV. Thing is, I'm mad and I don't have any better ideas than any of the rest of us. I'm here preaching to the choir, and complaining on the internet.

The only way out, as far as I can see, is to stop supporting FOX, SyFy and the major TV networks who pretend to offer what we want, and then take it away. Anyone who, like me, is out of work has heard about “tough decisions” and “fiscal realities” before and we aren't satisfied with that being sufficient reason to lose something valuable. It is short-sighted and destructive, both in the job market and in the entertainment industry. We need to support up and coming projects free of the network and studio systems. Stuff like Felicia Day's webseries The Guild and Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and encourage other writers and performers to make more of that. We need to use our command of the internet and social media to make people aware of these projects, make them wildly successful, support advertisers and companies that get behind making something of quality, even if it costs a little more. That is, unless someone has a better idea. We could use the big brains of a town like Eureka right about now.

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Babylon 5: Sci Fi TV with a Plan.

 The other day in the car, my wife idly asked me what I thought the best science fiction TV show of all time was. I thought for a long while, because I knew that my knee-jerk answer to the question was Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I wanted to not just respond with the first thing that popped into my head. Upon further reflection, though Star Trek:TNG will always hold a special spot, it has some serious competition in my mind from the new Battlestar Galactica, but I think they are both edged out by another series. Babylon 5. If you want to see the difference that an incredible amount of long-term planning can have on the quality of a television show, you need look no further than Babylon 5. Most shows on TV don't think past their current season, maybe foreshadowing for the next if they get picked up again. This “fly by the seat of our pants” approach is responsible for certain seasons of long-running shows featuring nonsensical plots, characters whose motivations and personalities shift wildly, and, usually, an overall decline in quality.

The start wasn't bad, but to me... this is where it starts to get really good.

Series creator J. Michael Straczynski had seen the impact of poor planning on other science fiction shows he'd worked on, and endeavored to do it differently, to do it right. With proper planning, there is no reason that a science fiction show couldn't both be consistently high quality, but to stay within an operating budget to avoid cancellation. Drawing on elements of politics, religion, science, psychology and philosophy, the world of Babylon 5 began to take shape. Instead of a future utopia, a more realistic vision of a future where petty ambition, greed and political realities sometimes get in the way of what is best for everyone. A more mature vision of sci-fi TV without precocious children, wisecracking robots or cute animals would set the stage for a story of drama, heroism and betrayal.

Babylon 5 is a space station, neutral territory for all races and a center for diplomatic negotiation, shared knowledge and cross-cultural outreach, even among races that have recently been at war. That was the plan, anyway. The first 4 Babylon stations all met with unhappy “accidents” either during or shortly after construction, and even this 5^th one is not without its problems. It becomes a center of political intrigue, interstellar conflict and eventually becomes involved in war. The station has hate crimes, homelessness, constant tension between alien races forced to live and attempt to work together, and even the people trying desperately to hold it all together are frequently undercut by their own governments.

The Original cast, circa Season One.

Straczynski's planning is apparent in particular in his approach to writing the long-term characters of the series. Knowing that actors sometimes leave shows, pass away, etc... JMS wrote a “trap door” into each and every principal character so that if the time came, any particular character could be written out of the series without damage to the overall plot. One of these “trap doors” was actually used in the first two seasons when an actress left the series to take a role with the legal/military drama JAG. Fans of the show were also surprised when Commander Sinclair, top man at the station is suddenly replaced at the start of the 2^nd season. This decision was made amicably and mutually by the actor and the creative team to strengthen the story in the long run, while still paying off the loose ends created by Sinclair's sudden disappearance from the station.

Each of the primary races on the station is represented by an Ambassador who weighs in on matters of import. Commander Sinclair (and later Sheridan) runs the station and represents the Humans, Ambassador Delenn stands for the mystical and warlike Minbari, Ambassador Londo Mollari represents the decadent and decaying Centauri Republic, Ambassador G'Kar speaks for the savage Narn Regime, and Ambassador Kosh, when he appears at all, represents the mysterious Vorlons. Recent wars between Human and Minbari, and Centauri and Narn set the stage for political tension and saber-rattling, and there is clearly something unusual about the Vorlons, who refuse to discuss their motivations.

Vorlon motivations might have something to do with an ancient evil.
Hint: if you are that mysterious, we know you are bound up in the main plot arc.

The central five-year plot arc is central to everything, and while themes regarding racism, drug use and other social problems are present in the series, they are handled without the allegorical moralizing often found in Star Trek. As of Season Three, Straczynski himself writes every single episode of the show, his final tally as writer coming in at 92 of 110 for the entire series. Plot threads delicately put into place in early seasons come to a head later, setting the stage for war and a whole lot of character development... and we finally find out what those Vorlons are all about. Quite a bit of last-minute maneuvering was required near the end of the Fourth Season, however, as network interference put even the best-laid plans to the ultimate stress test.

Despite solid ratings, the impending doom of network PTEN left the show in a dangerous position with parent company Warner Brothers. Many of the series regulars had contracts that were coming up, and no word on renewal for the final season was forthcoming. Straczynski began wrapping up hanging plot threads under the assumption that the series would not return, and the delay cost the show actress Claudia Christian, who played Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova, the station's 2^nd in command. At the very last second, cable network TNT picked up the series, and plans to split the series resolution between the end of season four and throughout season 5 were quickly made. This resulted in new subplots that almost felt like they belonged to a different show in the final season, but the season finales of both seasons four and five neatly wrap up the main story arc.

Some of the best characters didn't even appear until later seasons.

I loved the show throughout its run, as it had a very low number of mediocre or poor episodes (none at all after Season Two) and I never felt that the series creators were making things up as they went along. I'd have liked to see the version of the show that could have been, without the realities of network television intruding, but was satisfied with what I got. As for whether or not it was the best science fiction show of all time or not... that is up for debate. What do you think? How does it stack up to Battlestar Galactica, the many incarnations of Trek, Stargate... even Doctor Who? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments.

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Sarah Michelle Gellar Returns to TV in “Ringer”... playing twins. Yes, Please.

The title of this post was about all anyone knew about the upcoming thriller/mystery series developed by CBS for sister cable network CW until Comic Con 2011, but even that was exciting news for some of us. It has been eight years since Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air, and fans spent quite a bit of that near-decade wondering when we'd see Sarah Michelle Gellar in anything on TV again. The teaser trailer that premiered at San Diego Comic Con International gives us a whole lot of information, and even if it isn't science fiction, it looks like Ringer could be really pretty good. Some of the setup is familiar territory, a story about two sisters who look alike and lead very different lives, one wealthy and one destitute, but both of them have had hard lives and face real problems that are about to catch up with them.

One of the more popular images, showing both sisters, in a way.

Ringer will premiere on Tuesday, September 13^th, and in addition to Sarah Michelle Gellar playing twin sisters Siobhan and Bridget, the cast will feature Nestor Carbonell (known as Richard Alpert on LOST) playing Victor Machado, an FBI agent assigned to track and protect Bridget. Other supporting cast members are Siobhan's husband Andrew Martin (Ioan Gruffud) and her lover Henry Gallagher (Kristoffer Polaha). From the trailer, we can also see that Mike Colter will be playing Bridget's AA sponsor, but it is difficult to tell at this point how large a role that character will have in the series as a whole.

Bridget is a woman whose life is a mess, she is poor, struggling with addictions and consistently makes poor choices that get her into trouble, on occasion needing to turn to prostitution in order to survive. She's trying to pull her life back together when she witnesses a murder that pulls her into an FBI investigation concerning the Mafia. She reluctantly agrees to testify in order to qualify for witness protection, but she has little faith that the system won't let her down again and the men who want to make sure she never gets to the stand will eventually find and kill her. She is contacted by her wealthy and estranged sister and the offer to visit and mend fences provides her with a potential way out.

So many of the early plot twists seem to have already been
given away, I'm curious to see the specific other mysteries in  the series.

Siobhan and Bridget reconnect as best they can, sorting out their past and the six years they haven't seen each other, and Bridget is at first enamored with the wealth and power her twin's life has brought her. Shortly, however, it becomes apparent that Siobhan's life isn't perfect either and she is struggling under the weight of problems all her own. When the sisters take a boating trip out, Bridget discovers that Siobhan has taken her own life out at sea, leaving behind her wedding ring. Deciding quickly that being at the center of another criminal investigation isn't what she wants in her already complicated life, Bridget makes the snap decision to put the ring on and pretend to be her identical twin sister. She'll let everyone from the FBI to the Mafia believe that it was her who died in a tragic boating accident.

Her choice puts her into a position to learn, one secret at a time, that she may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. People, including her sister's husband and the man she is having an affair with allude to things that they believe she already knows, and she begins to piece together why her sister committed suicide. She pushes deeper and deeper into the secrets around her sister's life and the dangerous events she was involved in, and quickly realizes that if she can't puzzle out exactly what is going on, she is no safer in her sister's life than she was in her own, money or not. While she deals with this, the FBI agent assigned to the witness protection program she “died” before making it into is investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding her “death.”

By the end of the currently available promotional materials, we've been shown a lot of action, modern film noir-style mystery and a show based around the secrets and hidden motivations of the ensemble. It is even suggested that Siobhan may have been the one faking her own death, and each sister traded one set of problems for the others, and it isn't clear at all who got the worse end of the deal. Sarah Michelle Gellar has done a few interviews on these points, and assure long-time fans that the intelligence of the fans that she is used to from her days on Buffy will not be insulted by this show. She further insists that every mystery has an answer and every secret an explanation; the writes and producers won't be making anything up as they go along, or answering questions with more questions.

There's a lot of familiar territory here, but the setup is really interesting to me, and I'll be looking forward to seeing specifically how the story plays out. I'm a sucker for a good mystery and a fan of film noir in general, so if the characters are well-written enough to make me care about them, this one will be a show that I'll be keeping up with. I have a lot of faith in the actors who have been cast in this, and the announcement that the series would be airing on the CW rather than on CBS is good news for the potential of a show that isn't reality TV to survive for more than a season. Sarah Michelle Gellar said that she'd wanted to return to TV for these eight years she was off it, but she was waiting for the right project to come along. This fall, we'll see if it was all worth the wait.

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Game of Thrones Season 2 – Casting Update!

HBO has a hit on its hands, and it doesn't hurt at all that between seasons of Game of Thrones a new book in the series finally released (No, haven't read it yet. Have three things on my list to finish first, including one other that will for sure be reviewed here.) Fans of the show who haven't read the books are likely reeling from the last few episodes of that first season, and wondering with all of the tragic and exciting, erm, things (don't click that if you don't wan't spoilers) that happened, where can the show go next season? Those of us who have been fans of Westeros for years already know that we've got a few new characters turning up, and some of these are incredibly important for the story to be able to move forward.

Casting has been surprisingly amazing for the characters I've grown to know well over the last ten-plus years that I've been a fan of the books. I've heard the usual complaints from the people I expected to hear complaining that this character wasn't cast quite old enough, that one has hair the slightly wrong shade, and the other one isn't actually and actor 8 feet tall capable of shooting lighting from his... well, you get the point. Reasonable folks who have seen casting directors do a hell of a lot worse with beloved characters have, in general, been very pleased with the actors selected so far. These new characters, however, give casting directors all new opportunities to enrage fans, and some of the people showing up in season two are ones you just can't get wrong and do the rest of the show right. So, how'd they do?

The face of Stannis Baratheon. I always kinda pictured him as
Sam the Eagle from The Muppet Show, but I suppose he was busy.

There's been an awful lot of talk about wars, and succession and family, and at the center of those conversations has been Stannis Baratheon. We haven't seen him yet, but we've heard a whole lot about him. He's younger than Robert, but older than Renly, and his personality leaves quite a bit to be desired if the rumors are true. His strict and grim nature make it impossible for a populace to ever love him as a king, and this fact means that people can (and will) go to war to make sure exactly that can never happen. Stephen Dillane, best known for his work on The Hours and his role as Thomas Jefferson in John Adams has been cast as the Lord of Dragonstone and potential heir to the Iron Throne. Dillane is a versatile British actor, capable of pulling of the gravity that personifies Stannis. It is a challenge to play a character with absolutely no sense of humor or warmth, and I look forward to his portrayal.

Stannis' religious beliefs have also remained off-screen for the first season, as we've been introduced to two of the Westerosi religions, the Old Gods of the North and their godswoods and the worship of the Seven as practiced by the Andals and most of the rest of the continent. The Red Priests and Priestesses of R'hllor, Lord of Light hasn't even been mentioned up to this point, but, to be fair, even in the books only minor characters espoused this new faith in the beginning, and it feels more like a cult than a legitimate priesthood. This will all change with the introduction of Melisandre of Asshai, advisor to Stannis Baratheon. The mysterious and reverent (some might say fanatical and seductive) Melisandre is a tricky character to cast, and Carice van Houten, a Dutch actress best known for her part in Valkyrie is a flat-out perfect choice. She looks amazing with flame-red hair, and should nail the piercing gaze and exotic mannerisms of the Red Lady just fine.

Melisandre has that look like she wants to have sex with you
 and set you on fire, maybe not in that order.

Earlier this summer, two other casting announcements were made, and I won't gloss over those. There are two ladies associated with Robert's other brother, Renly, who haven't made an appearance mainly due to his brief time in season one being on the Small Council, rather than at home. We saw in Season One that Renly has already found love, though very few publicly know of his homosexuality, and it wouldn't really do for someone taking a shot at the throne to have his knight-champion and his, um, queen, for lack of a better word, to be the same person. In preparation for “looking the part,” Renly must marry, and who better to assume that role than his lover's sister, Margaery Tyrell? Ser Loras' beautiful younger sister has been cast, with Natalie Dormer, who played Anne Boleyn on The Tudors taking on the role in a spot of inspired casting. They've managed in all cases to get actors who look as though they could be related to their on-screen siblings, and this is no exception.

Cute as a button, and perfect for the younger Tyrell. At least she won't
have to worry about her husband and brother not getting along... and her wardrobe will be fabulous.

The other woman in Renly's life who would desperately like to be both knight and queen if Ser Loras didn't already have the jobs locked up is Brienne of Tarth. Brienne “the Beauty” was tricky casting, as she's described as freakishly tall with a broad and homely face. I personally worried that they'd take one of the pretty actresses known for “tough chick” parts and cast her here. I am glad that my fear was completely unfounded. Gwendoline Christie is 6'3”, and while not bad looking while fully made up, her features are well-suited to the part without modern cosmetics and with just a little bit of grime and makeup to “ugly her up” a bit, I couldn't imagine a better job casting. Her only major screen role was a supporting player in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but she's been working in the UK for years.

I can't imagine that is is much of a compliment to be called "perfect"
for Brienne, but she is such a loved character that the adoration of fans can't hurt.

With summer rapidly giving way to a new fall season, principal shooting will likely have to start fairly soon, which means that there are only a few key characters left uncast. I'm looking forward to hearing who is finally cast as Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight, though insiders say the most likely choice is Irish actor David Wilmot, also an Alumni from The Tudors. If all goes well, the new faces we'll run into next season will help to bolster the cast, as we know the body count rises as the Game is played. You win, or you die. 

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Falling Skies on TNT – Alien Apocalypse by the Numbers

It took me a few weeks to get around to checking out Falling Skies, and I am glad that I made a commitment to blog 5 days per week, as I now go out of my way to read, watch or play virtually anything new that falls into my niche here, and I've gotten some really great entertainment that I'd have otherwise missed. I'm going to start right off by saying that I like Falling Skies a lot. If you are looking for a simple thumbs up or thumbs down from me, it is an enthusiastic up. I say this because I may spend quite a large portion of my review picking at nits or comparing it to the even better show it could be, and I don't want the negative comments I have to be the main thrust of what is remembered from my impressions. It is not a perfect show by any means, but it is a damned fine one.

The opening scene in Falling Skies sets the stage quickly and deftly, as we hear children describe what happened in the months previous as they draw to process the horrors they've had to live through. The audience quickly learns that aliens came to Earth, and we did not fire on them, supposing they might be friendly. We were wrong. They destroyed our armies and weapons and annihilated the majority of Earth's human population right away. They kill adults, but they capture children and put some sort of biotechnological harness on them that turns them into mindless slaves. We are immediately drawn into the post-apocalyptic setting and the sort of new society that has come from it. Most fighters in the new resistance are very old, retired military, very young, or used to do something else, but as able-bodied adults, they fight now.

The setting is immediately familiar to anyone who has watched any movie or series where the apocalypse happened recently and as a result of an external malevolent threat. The typical “monster” in these sorts of things is, of course, the zombie, but we've seen it done with dragons in Reign of Fire, and aliens in other places as well. The world has been taken over, and humanity has to cope with the ever-present threat of the creatures themselves, as well as the very real dangers presented when a society completely collapses. Our protagonist in this particular tale is a former history teacher and father of three boys (Noah Wyle), one of whom was taken by the aliens. He has joined the ranks of the resistance fighters since the death of his wife and is quickly promoted to a leadership position under a grizzled and rather unpleasant retired soldier. The settlement the resistance created became too large to escape the notice of the aliens, so forces of 100 “fighters” and 200 “civilians” split up for a chance at survival.

Caring father who doesn't want to fight leading a group of rebels.
A few years back, this would have been Mel Gibson, before he went nuts.

The characters, with very few exceptions, play to familiar archetypes. We have the eldest son who is cocky and rebellious, frequently challenging his father's authority. There is the sympathetic doctor who speaks up for the rights of the civilians in a society that is de facto controlled by the improvised sort of soldier caste. The grizzled leader who is obstinate for no reason frequently, and while being in charge seems to have no concept of how to manage the morale of those he leads. And, of course, there is the caring father, reluctant fighter and man of peace and learning whose ideas are typically clearly the right ones, but who is shut down so as to not be a threat to the grizzled commander's authority. When we meet other characters, they also tend to neatly fall into established tropes, such as the gang of violent racist rapists who are lead by an extremely intelligent and well-spoken, but entirely amoral man.

These characters all start from familiar and safe ground, and as a consequence, I don't think that many of them are as interesting as, say, the similar team of survivors we met in The Walking Dead. There, we saw things get complicated with the Best Friend and Protector, understanding that people can have multiple roles. “Good guy” and “bad guy” can easily become murky concepts as people make decisions based on what they feel is right at the time. I do like the inclusion of a thirteen year old in the emergent “fighter” caste, who watches children only a few years younger play and exist as something to be protected, while he is out with the adults fighting. I have some hope that the characters will grow and develop out of their stock archetypes as the story continues to be told.

I'm totally not going to give an order so stupid and horrible that it demands to be disobeyed.

The aliens themselves look amazing, and they move in distinctive and creepy ways, with their six-legs and swollen carapace-like heads. They are fast, tough, and extremely heavily armed with a weapon that is reminiscent of the triple-beam laser from Predator. They are supported by bipedal mechanized infantry that have even heavier weapons mounted, and whose armor effectively makes them immune to conventional small arms. The creatures display tactical intelligence, using stores of food and weapons as bait to trap groups of humans, and they seem to be adept at tracking and hunting their prey. We see two types of ships, the light fighters that provide air support and focus in on sources of heat on the ground, and the huge (about the size of a human city) structure in the distance that is presumably the alien mothership.

The stories told about how people cope with loss, deal with the collapse of everything they've ever known, and try to fight to survive without losing the essential elements of themselves that make them human may not be a new story, but it is one well told. The performances of the principal cast is uniformly good and the production of the series itself is of very high quality. I did notice that the sound design seemed to make dialogue way too quiet as compared to explosions and music during fight sequences, as I had to turn the volume frantically up or down to wither hear what was going on or to not wake up my sleeping wife. The visual effects are on par with Hollywood films in terms of quality, falling short only of the standards set by summer blockbusters who rely on such effects to distract the audience from the lack of a coherent script. For TV, the quality of both the scripts and the effects here are impressive.

Overall, I look forward to the rest of the season and hope that with the traditional broadcast networks constantly dropping the ball when it comes to science fiction and the “SyFy” channel preferring to air wrestling, that cable stations like TNT and AMC could be the future of great geek TV. We've certainly had a lot to complain about in the last few years, but shows like Falling Skies give me hope for a brighter future... (as least for us. The future for the survivors of the 2nd Massachusetts militia, not so rosy.) The industry juice that comes with the involvement of Stephen Spielberg doesn't hurt, and the series has already been picked up for a second season.

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Preview - Torchwood: Miracle Day – From the BBC to Starz!

Tonight, we'll see a few things that don't happen very often occur at the same time. With existing science-fiction TV series not pulling the ratings of crimes against nature like The Jersey Shore or Real Housewives of Orange County, many of them are becoming one season wonders, and we see fewer pilots getting greenlit each season. I'm just glad to see a new sci-fi show like Torchwood beginning, as it is more fun to celebrate a new show's birth than it is to mourn one's passing. To be fair, Torchwood isn't really “new,” though. The Doctor Who spinoff has already had three seasons and a built-in fanbase. The second thing you don't see very often is a BBC hit series come over to the states without getting a “remake,” as though we spoke different languages and couldn't understand British TV. The move from the BBC to over here in the States filled my heart with dread when I heard Torchwood was going to Fox. Thankfully, the deal with the butchers at Fox fell through, and Starz! is carrying the, erm... torch.

“Unexpected events,” and “things that don't happen very often” are central to the set-up for Miracle Day. I personally find the whole concept intriguing. One day, not a single person dies. And then the next day, and the next. That is to say, NO ONE DIES, not even those grievously injured, executed by the state, etc. Exploring the initial celebration concerning the sudden abolition of death itself, and then the problems a lack of death creates is a topic worthy of many a late-night conversation. I can see how the problems would mount quickly in a world where no one ever dies could turn it into a nightmare.

Apparently I'm not alone in this forward sort of thinking, because the Torchwood Organization is called up out of the ashes in order to investigate the event, disrupting a few lives in the process. Returning to the show are all three of the previous series regulars, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman,) the immortal omnisexual con-man, Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and her husband Rhys Williams (Kai Owen.) Gwen and Rhys settled down in order to raise their child and enjoy a quiet life in the country and Jack has left Earth after seeing Torchwood and almost everyone he loved destroyed. The three of them called back together makes things complicated, as Jack still has unresolved feelings for Gwen, and despite her love for her husband and child, the feelings are somewhat mutual.

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The shift in focus from the UK to the USA also means different government agencies are involved in Torchwood's operations, and the CIA adds a man of their own to the team, Harvard-educated Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer.) Other supporting cast will include some recurring characters from the first three series, and a new stable of characters based in the US. Guest stars already planned for the current season include Wayne Knight, Dichen Lachman (of Dollhouse fame,) C. Thomas Howell and Ernie Hudson. Another notable name who will play a major role in the series is Bill Pullman, who will play a murderer turned celebrity as the first man executed by the state who didn't die.

The decision to not make the production of Miracle Day a “series reboot,” but rather a continuation of the previous show is a bold one, that I applaud. I fear that fans will turn their noses up at the show, and I can guarantee that whether reasonable or not, we'll hear the criticism “Too American,” whatever that means. I love science fiction, whatever country it is written and produced in, and so long as this series isn't done with mindless and meaningless explosions, I won't care that more of it was shot in Los Angeles than Wales. After all, there's a lot more to US studio productions outside of reality TV and Michael Bay Blockbusters. Russell T. Davies left creative direction of Doctor Who to devote his talents to Miracle Day, and he wisely wrote only the season premiere and finale. I've long felt that he is a better executive producer than writer of individual episodes.

I can only hope what they are looking at offscreen isn't Wayne Knight at
the beach, though in that case, the rocket launcher is appropriate.

What I expect from the new series is something a little more like a science-fiction thriller than what we're used to in the vein of Torchwood, further distinguishing it from Doctor Who. Instead of lots of rubber monsters and spaceships, if the trailers match the reality, I sort of think we'll see something like a higher-energy sort of X-Files. Maybe something like Men In Black, if it had been written by John Grisham. The focus on the emotional impact of weirdness that has affected the entire world, and how it affects individual characters and changes how they live, sort of the way the best episodes of Flash Forward worked (when they worked.) Maybe my expectations won't live up to the reality, but if the series is anything like the one I imagine, I think I'm going to like it.

Luckily, I happen to have Starz! as part of my cable package, so even if I don't watch it when it first premieres tonight, I'll likely be able to catch the series premiere within a day or so. When I've watched an episode or two and have a more informed opinion, I'll put up a review, either as part of an article here, or over at the Tumblr.

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Never Had a Chance: The Lost Room and Persons Unknown.

There are few things that grate on the TV geek's nerves more than a show with potential that gets really good, poses some interesting questions using elements we enjoy, and then tepid ratings and network mismanagement leads to no possibility of a second season. I've talked about one of the ultimate examples of this in our culture before, but I want to shine a spotlight on a couple of lesser-known shows with the same tragic fate. I'm glad that I got to see the one season that aired of both of these, and technically, they are both “miniseries”, but there was clearly more story to tell in sequels that will never come.

The Lost Room

When I saw this one a few years back, I marveled at how much they were able to pack into the miniseries 6-episode run. Originally aired on the Sci-Fi channel (Not SyFy, which airs professional wrestling and terrible original monster movies,) back in 2006. The plot is centered around Detective Joe Miller (Peter Krause), who gets caught up in a world he never knew existed when his daughter disappears in connection with a series of murders he is working on. When I say “disappears,” I mean that she literally walks through a doorway into a room that wasn't there a second ago, it closes and when it is opened again, both the little girl (Elle Fanning) and the room itself are gone.

Detective Miller has only one lead on the mysterious event, a motel room key that was left in the door his child went through. He discovers that the key is one of a series of objects with unique powers that were originally the personal effects left in a motel room until an “incident” removed the room itself from time and space. The key is one of the more powerful objects, allowing it to be inserted into any pin and tumbler lock on any hinged door, and that door will open into the motel room itself. The holder of the key can enter the room and close the door, upon opening the door the holder of the key can exit the lost room through any door of his choosing with a lock and hinges, so long as he has a clear picture of the destination door. Anything (or as it turns out, person) left behind in the room after the holder of the key exits vanishes, as the room resets perfectly to the state it was in when the door opens.

Combination hideout, getaway and ultimate lockpick. I'd use it for ill.

Miller is swiftly accused of a crime he didn't commit, and enters a subculture concerning the objects and their powers. We meet people who hold other objects (including a bus ticket that teleports you to New Mexico, a pen that microwaves flesh and a comb that stops time,) information dealers who track them or sell the collected lore concerning them and how they work, and individuals and organizations that want to possess them. This supporting cast has some standout stars, including Kevin Pollack, Margaret Cho and Julianna Margulies who at turns aid or hinder Joe Miller's quest to do the impossible: to retrive something lost in the room. Within six episodes, the mythos behind the room, objects and the incident that created them is fully explored and to my tastes, adequately explained. I'd love to see more stories in the world, as though there is closure on the story, the possibility of a sequel was left open.

Persons Unknown

At least they didn't kidnap any fat or especially ugly people...

My wife and I just finished watching the 13-episode run of Persons Unknown, and we liked it a lot. It was plagued by exceptionally poor ratings, an episode that never aired, long breaks in the schedule and a timeslot move, so it really never had a chance. It feels like a cross between LOST and the Agatha Christie book And Then There Were None, with elements of the 1960s run of The Prisoner (a show I'm sure I'll profile someday) for good measure. Seven people are kidnapped from their lives, they never see their captors but they know they are being watched by cameras everywhere. They are held in a hotel in a deserted small town that appears to be trapped in the 1950s, and they all have secrets.

The plot moves at an unusual pace, exploring the characters, their struggle to escape and figure how what has happened to them as unseen people torment them with psychological manipulations while watching on cameras like some sort of twisted reality show. The few other inhabitants of the town either do not speak English (in the case of the men who run the chinese food restaurant, the only source of meals in the town,) or who claim to know little more than the victims do, like the hotel's Night Manager. The characters learn about each other, suspect and betray one another, and we see the outside world's reaction to their disappearance and bit by bit learn a little about the people who took them and why.

Oh, yeah. Can't leave the creepy-ass town. Hope you like chinese...

The initial characters in the hotel are:

• Janet (Daisy Betts), a single mom who wants nothing more than to get back to her daughter.
• Joe (Jason Wiles), a man with a mysterious past who is driven to get out and immediately takes charge.
• Moira (Tina Holmes), a woman with medical knowledge and a background in counselling.
• Graham (Chadwick Boseman), a US Marine Sergeant fresh from Iraq.
• Charlie (Alan Ruck), a wealthy businessman with a wife suffering from cancer.
• Tori (Kate Lang Johnson), a party girl and Ambassador's daughter who inists her father put her there.
• Bill (Sean O'Brien), a selfish and opportunistic used car salesman.

As the season progresses, we learn that most of the characters are not what or who they claim to be or initially seem to be, and eventually one of the hotel's guests “checks out” and is replaced by a new 7^th person. The last arrival is Erika, a female death row inmate played by Kandyse McClure (best known as Dualla on Battlestar Galactica) whose natural hard edges create additional tension in the town. We also follow a subplot with a journalist from San Francisco, where Janet was taken, investigating her kidnapping. We learn more and more about what is really going on and the group's attempts to escape and we get a little bit of closure on some of the series' questions, and then we get an open-ended final moment that some might call a cliffhanger.

It is a real shame that NBC dropped the ball at every step of the process with Persons Unknown. No matter what they did, people didn't turn out to watch it, at one point it was beaten in the ratings by gymnastics. The setup for a possible second series was really interesting to me, and I'd love to have seen where the characters would have gone from the final moment. In the US at least, the thirteen episodes of Persons Unknown can be watched on Netflix streaming as of the publication of this article.

Tomorrow will mark the 100th article posted by this blog, and I've got something I've been saving planned. See you then!

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Game of Thrones – Post-Season Recap of HBO's Epic Fantasy Series

Long before the show actually premiered, I wrote about my excitement concerning HBO's Game of Thrones, considering how big a fan of the novels I am. Now that it is all said and done, season one aired and picked up for a second go, how did it all pan out? In a word, fabulous. I was particularly impressed by the delicate balance struck between a wide variety of factors that, if ignored, might well have prepared this series for an entry in a future sequel to my “worst adaptations” article.

The producers of the series had challenges. George R.R. Martin's Westeros is a complex and dark world with a detailed history and subtleties that affect the plot in sometimes unexpected ways. However, a book has the freedom to meander about and plumb the depths of a fantasy world's history that a television show or film cannot. Without some of these details, however, the world loses its unique character, and certain players of the great game act in ways that make no sense, due to lack of proper context. Setting the stage without leaving the important stuff out while not boring the audience with a long history lesson is tricky, and they nailed it. I was amused when I noticed that the appearance of a nude prostitute nearly always signaled a scene featuring a history lesson, a process I've seen referred to as “sexposition.”

Then King Robert proclaimed that all History Lessons must be taught
in the presence of whores. Nude whores. He was probably drunk.

The producers also had to effectively manage the time they were allotted for the first season in order to tell the story contained originally in an 835 page book, and to best use the budget they had for the season as well. Cuts on details in the books were merciful, and the essence of the story and every key scene was retained. I'd have liked to see more of the direwolves, but I understand that shooting with animals costs time and money that adds to a budget very, very quickly. The lack of large battle sequences on-screen was regrettable, but most of the action in terms of large-scale military conflict was told “off camera” in the first book, as well. The decision to be careful how often Rickon Stark was shown was also in the service to logistics, as the youngest child actor is likely to change the most in the filming of a long-term production.

Casting was handled particularly adeptly, given the large number of people in the ensemble, and my early excitement for the casting of Peter Dinklage as Tyrion turned out to be spot-on. Also of particular note is Maisie Williams, the young actress playing Arya Stark. Arya is a great character, a favorite of many who love the books, and they found a shockingly brilliant young actress to fill the role. Arya isn't an easy character to play, fan expectation is high, and the youth of the actress makes her performance incredible. Lord Varys, the Spider, is one of my personal favorite characters, and the more I saw of Conleth Hill, the more I liked the casting. I can't think of a single casting decision that I don't applaud, as most characters looked as I had pictured them, or were so well acted that they changed my mental picture for their roles.

Lord Varys. Fear his gash.

The big moments, the shockers and iconic images were handled adeptly, and one of the great pleasures of a fan of the novels is watching Twitter and reading recaps posted by people experiencing the story for the first time.  I've read each book at least three times now, and have been proud to see a story that has meant so much to me reach a whole new audience in a new way.  Now, a little less than a month to wait for the new book, a Dance With Dragons.

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