Although previously annouced by DC, it appears Chloe’s rise to legitimacy in the DC world has been thwarted. ComicBookMovie.com is reporting:

“Chloe is an exciting character on the television show, and we had hoped to work her into DC continuity,” DiDio told Newsarama last week, “but unfortunately, the stars did not align properly, and even though we had announced it, she will not be appearing in any of the issues of Superman or Action Comics.”

It is a shame that they’ve decided to cancel the plans. As the article speculates, I assume it had something to do with creative control between Smallville producers and DC Comics. Hopefully they revisit it in the future.

Looks like NYPD Blue is showing crimes of a different kind. It is ABC that is being charged by the FCC for showing nudity during an episode of NYPD Blue. A heavy $1.4 Million fine was slapped on the network.

TVGuide.com says:

The episode in question showed Charlotte Ross’ Det. Connie McDowell startled by a young boy as she was about to take a shower, and in doing so showed “multiple, close-up views” of Ross’ “nude buttocks,” the FCC says.

I have seen the shot and I can say that many TV Movies that warn of “adult situations” may show more than this clip does, however the camera work comes into question.

The exact same scene could have been presented with suggestive nudity without actually showing the beautiful Charlotte Ross’ bare bottom. In most of the scene you see her naked with her arms conveniently blocking her breasts and the camera showing from the hips up. It’s pretty clear that she is nude, which is the context of the scene. But then there is a moment we see her drop her robe and they deliberately show her bottom, and then again when she is starting the shower, there is a deliberate dip in the camera giving Ross a full overview.

Completely unneccessary. I think they crossed the line and deserve it. I have seen suggestive nudity on TV many times and its done appropriately, but this was blatantly saying “Look at her ass… see… ass!!!”

Click here to see the “offending” shot yourself.

With the Season 4 premiere of Lost just around the corner, and no end in sight for the WGA strike, speculation has begun if the eight fully produced episodes will be enough to satisfy viewers.

The cast of Lost seems to think it’s a good move for ABC to air the completed episodes rather than none at all. Yunjin Kim, otherwise known as Sun, had this to say in an ABCNews.com article:

We’re all going to be disappointed that there are only eight instead of 16, but the eight episodes are amazing, and I think fans will be very satisfied … I feel like this season all the episodes are self-contained. The speed of the story is faster. Each episode contains a question and an answer, finally. So there’s a lot of satisfaction.

The article also goes on to mention that if the strike ends by mid-February, five or six more episodes could be ready to air by the end of May. I’m thrilled that ABC decided to air the completed episodes. How about you? Are you content with eight episodes rather than none at all? Or will this just be a tease?

Toon Zone! reports.

Sony Animation has recently announced that the first episode of the upcoming The Spectacular Spider-Man will premiere in it’s entireity at Wonder Con. The convention takes place between February 22nd - 24th.”  

I do believe this is the third animated series based on the Spiderman lore to be made in my lifetime of 22 years. While I passionately watched Fox Kids’ series in 90’s, I was never a fan of the series MTV ran for a while.

From what I can gather from the character designs, this new series ,which will air on Kids WB in March, seems to be made in a style similar to the more recent animated Batman series.

Like it or not, Arthur Fonzerelli is a cultural icon. Just about everyone in the US knows “the Fonz.” He became the “hero” of a show that really wasn’t about him to begin with. Just about anywhere, if you said his name, people would commence to lift up both their thumbs and give off a not-to-subtle “Eeeeeeh!” And now, people can do that in front of his statue in Milwaukee.TV Squad reports.

It looks like the “Bronze the Fonz” campaign worked. The archetypical Happy Days character will be getting his own bronze statue in the city where the T.V. show was set.

Fonzie isn’t the first TV celebrity to grace us with a statue. He joins the likes of Andy Griffith, Bob Newhart, Ralph Kramden, and Samantha from Bewitched! All hail Arthur Fonzerelli!

Sci-Fi Channel is airing two Battlestar Galactica specials in March, throwing us a little bone while we wait for April. One is the standard recap episode, and the other is a look at fandom. BuddyTV has:

The two specials are entitled “Battlestar Galactica: Revisited” and “Battlestar Galactica: The Phenomenon.” The first will give a helpful recap of the first three seasons of the series, as well as “Razor,” while the second special will take a look at the positive response that fans and critics have had to the show. “Revisited” and “The Phenomenon” will air back to back on Friday, March 28 at 10pm.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but I want my Galactica. Razor was good, but is has been a long time since Starbuck returned. I want to know how the new Cylons are going to handle themselves.

Speaking of Razor, we haven’t had that discussion on this site yet. I enjoyed it, but haven’t seen the extended DVD yet. Any thoughts?

No one would argue that Captain Jack wasn’t the core of BBCs Torchwood. Like Doctor Who, his companions could come and go, but Torchwood could continue. Therefore it’s good to hear that John Barrowman likes his job. In an interview with Sci Fi Wire he states:

“If I was asked to do Jack for the next five or six years I would do it with a big smile on my face, because I absolutely love playing him,” Barrowman said in an interview. “When the time comes for us to close the page on Torchwood and Jack Harkness, I’m also then happy to do that when that decision is made. But I think it’s got a bit of a life out there. Let’s hope we get [season] three, [season] four and, hopefully, [season] five.”

It’s great to hear that Barrowman has so much enthusiasm for the character. As long as there are new stories to tell, seeing more and more seasons of Torchwood is a welcome thing. Maybe we’ll find out if he is really “The Face of Bo”.

What appears to be a large effort to gain an international audience, the BBC has made a deal with MySpaceTV to allow a variety of show clips to be hosted there. The Guardian reports:

The partnership will initially see around 150 clips of BBC programming made available online via a dedicated BBC Worldwide channel on the social networking website’s video service, MySpaceTV.

Under the strapline “the best of British TV”, the channel will be divided into seven genres: comedy, drama, sci-fi, weird and wonderful, love earth, famous faces and Top Gear.

Below is a link to a few of the categories:

• Comedy
• Sci-Fi
• Love Earth

I wondered why BBC would be trying to gain such an international audience when much of its programming is not available to non-British viewers. Even the BBC YouTube channel is for UK users only. Then, I noticed this in the article:

A commercial version of the BBC iPlayer will serve programming to international audiences.

This is great news! I’ll line up to pay to watch BBC programming, even over the low-bandwidth internet. As it is now, most of my BBC viewing is done via YouTube.

In what can only be compared to VH-1 pop-up video, ABC is airing an “enhanced” version of last seasons finale. The information from Sci-Fi Wire is:

ABC will air an “enhanced” rerun of the third-season finale of its SF series Lost at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Jan. 30, a day before the fourth-season premiere airs; the finale will feature on-screen facts and backstory in the form of text on the lower third of the screen.

ABC has really gone out of there way this season to try to bring new viewers into the show, as well as hold on to old casual viewers who may think it’s been too long. I hadn’t planned on watching the re-run, but now I actually may. This makes for a more interesting start to the new season.

Science fiction has never been hotter. In case you weren’t aware of, or in doubt of the sex appeal factor in sci-fi, a list of the sexiest extraterrestrials has been released.

In an EWeekly.com list entitled “Sexy Aliens: 17 Heavenly Bodies from Sci-Fi”, the Cylon ladies of Battlestar Galactica made the cut. EW writer Mark Bernardin had this to say about Sharon, D’anna, and Caprica Six:

Cerebral villainy just doesn’t get any hotter than this robotic trio, who have been vexing humanity since their fellow Cylons wiped out mankind in an all-out war.

The list also includes Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine, and classics like Jane Fonda’s Barbarella. If we widened the criteria slightly to include all non-human sci-fi & fantasy TV characters, who would top your list?

I admit. I didn’t make it more than 10 minutes watching this show. This quote from Variety is the reason why.

At the heart of “Truth,” after all, is the fact that the contestants knew precisely what they were getting into — and, indeed, were asked the questions that are supposed to flummox them in advance when the lie-detector test was administered. In other words, the subjects raised aren’t entirely out of left field.

Once I realized that this contestant had already given the answers, it seemed so incredibly stupid. All the contestant had to do is repeat the same answers that he/she repeated backstage to win. Now granted, it may be more difficult to say those things in front of others, but they know what the questions will be…they know what answers they have to give. Not to mention the standard dramatic pause present in all “reality” game shows, which was more unnecessary in this show than ever. This is proof that the writers strike is causing them to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Did anyone enjoy this show? Am I missing something?

Looking for a new show for those re-run filled nights? About a year ago, in an interview on the Slice Of Sci-Fi Podcast, Amanda Tapping and Damian Kindler (of Stargate) mentioned their upcoming Internet High-Def mini-series, Sanctuary. Involved in the show are writers, directors and actors from Sci-Fi shows such as Stargate, Battlestar Gallactica, The Dead Zone, The 4400, Jake 2.0, and others. The official site describes it:

Moving from Victorian England to present day, Sanctuary’s story takes place in a world that is different from our own, yet feels familiar – like the X-Files meets Van Helsing. In Sanctuary, monsters move secretly throughout the world, both threatening and threatened, while one woman and her team search them out.

Sanctuary tracks the adventures of Dr. Helen Magnus [Tapping], a 157-year old physician who studies monsters. She is aided in her work by her reluctant protégé, psychiatrist Will Zimmerman, and her fearless daughter Ashley. Together they seek to find and help the strange and often frightening creatures that populate their world.

I purchased the entire series in HD. Although it has a familiar Underworld feel to it, and the special effects are not extraordinary, it is an excellent mini-series. I was very happy with my purchase. Even my wife, who doesn’t normally like the genre, was pleased. I highly recommended the show, but a warning…it will leave you wanting more.

Season 2 is currently in pre-production.

If you missed Jericho before it went off the air and fans went “nuts” to bring it back, you’ll have a chance to catch up. TV Crunch reports:

“Jericho” fans can catch a four-episode marathon on SciFi Channel on February 11th. The second season of “Jericho” begins on February 12 on CBS.

I heard a lot of good things about this show, but missed it the first time around. Though it does bring up an interesting thought. I can remember back in the day, pre-internet, a show would get canceled and people would mourn but would just move along. Now it seems no show goes off the air without a campaign by rabid fans. At first it was just letters and phone calls, but then the bottles of hot sauce started (that was the first “themed” campaign I remember).

Now several tons of nuts have brought back Jericho for a limited run. But most of these fan campaigns fizzle. What do studio heads really think of these? Are they quietly amused, or is it possible for it to swing the other way and annoy them? Just because a lot of people can send Mars bars doesn’t mean that Veronica Mars was still making the network money, or that enough fans are really tuning in week to week.

So, do you think Jericho deserves it’s second chance? If a network canceled your favorite show, would you join in a campaign to bring it back?

Chuck star Zachary Levi assures his fans that the show isn’t down for the count, in an exclusive interview with British magazine SFX:

““It will definitely come back, yeah,” said Levi. “For no other reason than the fact that Warner Brothers has put so much money into it I can’t imagine that they would be like, ‘Ah, alright, we’re just gonna scrap it.’

He rightly points out that the show has performed well, and gotten good reviews. While he acknowledges that they aren’t on the top of the heap, he’s right that Chuck is a good solid property for NBC.

But he does say that the real question now is when the strike ends. Do they finish up a few episodes for this season, or do they scrap it and move on to season two?

Levi also drops his two cents on the strike, and upcoming SAG negotiations:

The Directors’ Guild is getting their negotiations pretty much settled. So if that happens then I think the WGA pretty much has to follow suit. And if it has anything to do with me I’ll make sure the actors don’t strike. There’s no reason to. We don’t deserve anything better than the directors and the writers.”

Every interview I read with Levi makes me like him more. He seems to be a very intelligent, but fun kind of guy who hasn’t really been bitten by the celebrity bug. I certainly hope that he’s right on this count, the strike can’t end fast enough for me.

Don’t forget: the last two new episodes of Chuck air tonight!

More details are out about J.J. Abrams’ newest project, a television show called Fringe. But io9 thinks it resembles something else:

The more we hear about it, the more Fringe sounds like a slightly tweaked X-Files clone…Broyles heads up the special Fringe division, set up to investigate a series of terrorist/paranormal events.

It is true that everything old is new again, and that there are no new ideas. Now, I’m normally the first person to say that just because a log line or a plot summary sounds similar, doesn’t mean the show is a rip-off. But the article brings up a good point: Abrams just got done producing an update of Godzilla. Not to mention that the X-Files movie is currently filming, bringing the classic show back into the forefront.

Time will tell, but I for one am greatly intrigued now. I loved early X-Files, and if the show is remotely like it, then it’s worth some of my time. But it’ll be a fine line, because nothing makes me angrier than a blatant rip-off.

The death of TV great Suzanne Pleshette has gone largely overshadowed. She died one week ago. Pleshette was scheduled to get a long overdue star on the Walk of Fame next week, on her birthday. A new post at Variety has some words:

Pleshette found her greatest fame on TV, as Bob Newhart’s wife on the long-running, classic series. She was the mistress of the sexy, deadpan retort, her voice was a foghorn of innuendo and amused tolerance. (She was to receive a star of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Jan. 31.) But she began in films, and had she not functioned during the period in which the studio system withered away, she might have had a better screen career.

Plishette not only has worked with some of the greatest talent in Hollywood, she out shined many of them. I grew up with her as Bob’s wife on The Bob Newhart Show. It was one of the first “adult” shows I watched as a child, and the teaming of her and Newhart was gold. This great actress will be missed.

Recently, Sarah Michelle Gellar indicated that she would most likely never return to the Buffy character. We may never get a new movie, but fans of the show are being given a treat with a reunion of the cast. From Variety:

At the upcoming Paley Fest (March 14-27), the cast and producers will gather for a “Buffy” reunion to talk about the good times, the network-changing times and what it’s like to be stalked by fans who can’t let it go.

These sessions are almost always fun. I’m not familiar with the Paley Festival but I hope that the session is shown on television or the internet.

More information.

One of the longest running game shows, The Price Is Right, will be coming back to prime time. This wont be Drew Carey’s first primetime game show, but his first time in the primetime Price. Variety reports:

In a bid to cut down on strike repeats, CBS is bringing back the primetime edition of “The Price is Right.” Net has greenlit six hourlong episodes of “Price” that will air Fridays at 8 p.m., starting Feb. 22. Eye has used “Price” in primetime a few times over the past few years, but this will be the first time the show has aired at night since Drew Carey replaced Bob Barker as host.

The Price Is Right is a classic game show and I’d rather have it as a replacement than some of the dreck game/reality shows we’ve gotten lately. It’s a good move for CBS to put such a well recognized name prime time.

Michael Ausiello published his column today on TVGuide.com. If you want NO spoilers, please skip this post (move along… nothing to see here…). Included in the column is this nice ambiguous bit about the Lost premiere next Thursday:

 I have it on good authority that someone we thought was killed in the season finale will turn up very much alive in the Jan. 31 premiere.

He goes on to tease us with a couple of photos of those characters that may or may not be the one described above. As is his usual want he answers several more reader questions regarding other series (and another Lost question). It’s a good- not too spoilery read- check it out! And though I’m a consistent Lost viewer, I have never really considered myself a fanatic. This season, however, I’m eager to follow along with the post island jumping and, hopefully, see Sam Thomas’s viral marketing character somewhere in airing eps. Are y’all excited?!? I’m excited!

So the Writer’s Strike continues. Argh!! Sure I want them to get a fair $, but I really want new entertainment too!!

I mean I was all pumped when I heard that Joss was going into pre and prep on a new TV series, and now that the PTB have put the kibosh on pilot season, I’m jonesing not only for new Joss, but for new telly in general. So thank goodness for TV on DVD and the wonders of the interweb!!

I’m getting my Joss dose from Buffy, Angel, and Firefly (why oh why was it canceled?.. stupid Fox and stupid old reality television). But thanks to the interweb, I can watch fresh and new TV from all over the globe, and you know who does good TV? The Brits and the good ole BBC!!!

As posted earlier Season 2 of Torchwood is underway, and James Marsters guested on it (did anyone else get a laugh from the whole accent thing… John Barrowman as Captain Jack uses a Yank accent, and Marsters uses an English accent instead of his natural voice, oh and the Help Me Obi-wan gag was priceless as well). But there is so much more that the BBC and SkyOne and the other UK Channels have to offer as well. Sure the flagship that everyone knows about is Doctor Who, but series 4 is still a ways off yet.

So what else is there? Well Torchwood, is the obvious step. Too dark? Too, well, adult?

There’s the Sarah Jane Adventures! Good fun, and has certainly reinvigorated the career of Elizabeth Sladen. What else to watch?

Well, admitting I have a naughty streak… Have you seen The Secret Diary of a Call Girl with former Who alumni Billie Piper? Sexy and funny. Did I mention the sexy part?

The very successful reimagining of Robin Hood has just finished it’s second series. I love the fun of this series. It isn’t filled with gravitas, and is suitable for the entire family. Still not something you wanna watch?

How about browsing some of the other titles the BBC has offered, and are currently on DVD for your viewing pleasure…

Little Britain… quite possibly the funniest British sketch show since Monty Python!
The Monarch Of The Glenn, a brilliant drama set in Scotland with a great cast, and stories that are in turn, funny, romantic, and dramatic. My Sweetie swears by it, and I do admit to enjoying it as well.
Red Dwarf!! Comedy and Sci-fi!! What a combo!
Black Adder! I know there are some people that swear Mr. Bean is Atkinson’s finest achievement, but I’m willing to bet they never saw Series 3 of Black Adder!
Both of Peter Davison’s series All Creatures Great and Small, and At Home With The Braithwaites.

The UK make good television, and they are very much sustaining me in this dark time for North American television.

What are you folks watching?