Absence

I suppose I should comment on the fact that I haven't posted here in ages. Truth to tell, the writers' strike, the lack of new programming that comes with it, and the general draw of other writing projects has taken the fun out of it, at least for now. I hesitate to shut the blog down completely, because I just have a hard time doing that in general, but for now my energies are focused elsewhere. I ran this pretty regularly for a year, and I'm happy about that. Thanks to everyone who's dropped by, especially regular visitors who put up with me. :-) Maybe I'll see you all again somewhere down the road.

Dr. Who Wins Hugo!

The Doctor Who episode "Girl in the Fireplace," from Season Two, has won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation--Short Form.

Congrats! This was a wonderful episode.

NBC=Kinda Dumb

In a debatably really dumb move, NBC has decided to stop selling its shows on iTunes. Apparently $1.99 a pop wasn't enough for them. Plus they claim to have concerns about piracy, yadda yadda yadda.

Seems to me having your shows up at iTunes for $1.99 is more likely to hedge against piracy than to cause it. Rumor has it they wanted an amount that would have driven the price up to $4.99/episode. Which is outrageous when you can get an entire season on DVD for $19.99 in some cases.

I hope they see their dumbness and change their minds, but we shall see. In the meantime, anything from NBC or SciFi won't be available for purchase anymore.

Some News— Drive and Farscape

After scheduling and de-scheduling them twice, Fox has decided not to broadcast the last two episodes of Drive at all. Instead, they are available at www.myspace.com/driveonfox for online viewing.

Sci Fi has announced they will be doing a 10-part Farscape web series, live action. This has me kind of excited. I loved Farscape, and still haven't forgiven Sci Fi for cancelling it the way they did. With Ben Browder and Claudia Black both having been recently active with the Stargate series, I wonder if they'll be making appearances in this new incarnation of their previous (and, imo, far superior) show.

Summertime

It must be something about the weather turning warm (finally), but I have all these new TV shows to catch up on and all I want to do it rewatch old things I've seen over and over and, as for instance, over. Maybe it's hardwired into me to watch reruns over the summer, I don't know... In any case, I'll get it out of my system and get back to reviewing things. I hope to finish Season Two of Weeds, and catch up on The Tudors and Rome, at the very least.

Wish me luck!

Jericho Rumors

This isn't exactly News news yet, but SyFy Portal and TV Squad have both reported that TV Guide's Mike Ausiello has reported (yes, I'm like fourth-hand at this point, but that's okay) that CBS is in talks to produce another eight episodes of Jericho, possibly to air mid-season next year. This would be nice--it'd at least give them a chance to wrap up the story, or possibly to bring in some good ratings to give us more shows. Hey, a girl can hope.

Christian Kane's New Blog

Found via Whedonesque.

Christian Kane (Angel, Close to Home) and his band Kane have set up a new blog with news about what they're up to. It's called Smoke Signals. Check it out. And if you haven't taken a listen to their music, check that out, too. Unfortunately, they're not available at iTunes, but there are links to Kane's main site on the blog. They're a fun band, and very much worth a listen.

Good News and Bad News

This week, the networks are having their upfronts, where the schedules for next season are announced. Some good news on the NBC front--Journeyman and The Bionic Woman have been picked up. I'm not particularly excited about either of these, but it's a major network putting out genre TV, so I'm in favor. Plus Bionic Woman has Battlestar Galactica producers in its favor, and I was totally addicted to it as a kid. And Journeyman has Kevin McKidd (Rome) who's totally hot, so I'll check that out. I doubt they'll let him be Scottish, though. I wish they would, because I loves me a Scottish accent.

At Fox, Sarah Connor Chronicles has apparently also been picked up for next season. And although NBC and the CW haven't made any official announcements yet, it appears that Supernatural will be picked up for a third season (yay!), but that Jericho has been canceled (boo).

News

Some news this morning.

Rumor has it Jericho has been picked up for a second season. Please note--rumor. SyFy Portal is reporting this here, again with disclaimers that CBS has still not made an official announcement.

A similar rumor is floating around that Supernatural has earned a season three. While this would not surprise me, and the Magic 8 Ball says, "All signs point to yes," it's still unofficial.

If you'd like to make your voice heard regarding renewal of your favorite shows, drop by USA Today and participate in their SOS survey. It's much more comprehensive than other similar efforts being presented on the net, and also gives voters a chance to talk about why they've voted for their favorite shows, and a chance to be interviewed in a follow-up.

In other news, the new episode of Bones that was supposed to air this Wednesday has been pulled from the schedule because of the horrible shootings yesterday at Virginia Tech. The storyline involved a murder on a college campus, so it was probably the right thing to do. No word yet on when the episode will re-air.

News: Dresden Files/Robin Hood

The Dresden Files moves to a new timeslot tonight, an hour later than previously. That's 10 pm Eastern Time, and you can do the math from there. Also, the April 15th episode, Second City, is the season finale.




Also on April 15th, BBC America will be showing a Robin Hood marathon, starting at 8 am Eastern and running through 7 pm, showing every episode they've aired straight through in order.

News From Fox TV

In their infinite wisdom, Fox has decided to air the first six episodes of Drive in a block, then the next 7 at some undetermined later date. Wow. That's a really good way to build a show's audience and get it lots of good ratings. Tim Minear must be thrilled!!

In another odd move, they're moving Bones to Fridays for the summer reruns. It's beign paired with Standoff, which has struggled in the ratings when it's been on, so I'm hoping this is a vote of confidence for Bones, with the idea that its strong audience will pull in viewers for Standoff. But if they leave it on Fridays for Season 3, I can't see how that'll help Bones much. It's been pulling great ratings in the Wednesday night slot. A word to Fox--if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

Veronica Mars

Last night, Kristin Veitch from E!Online posted that Veronica Mars had been canceled. This morning, she's backpedaling. Read about it here.

It's because of this kind of thing that I have a very hard time taking Kristin seriously. Except when she says David Boreanaz is hot, cause, dude, we all know that's true. Anyway, this is the same Kristin who assured us all in no uncertain terms that Angel would most certainly return for a sixth season on the WB. Okay, so maybe I'm still holding a grudge.

In any case, if you're a Veronica Mars fan, I'd keep my fingers crossed and hope that the network and Rob Thomas manage to pull something together and, most importantly, that if they come to a compromise it's still Veronica Mars. Fans may disagree, but I'd rather see a show come to a dignified end than be retooled by network suits into something that it was never meant to be. (And no, that's not a grudge talking. I liked season 5 of Angel.)

Golden Globes

I'm not going to address these at all--lots of other people are doing it far better than I could. For great coverage, check out TV Squad and Cinematical.

Lost Finds a Conclusion?

Some interesting news on the Lost front today. According to the Ausiello Report, the show’s creators are negotiating with ABC to choose a time to end the show. The purpose here being to fix an end date so they can work toward giving closure to the storylines, rather than stringing the show out season after season without really answering anything.

Is this a good idea? I think it probably is. More than one show has gone on and on and on and, well, on, becoming by its series finale a mere shadow of its former self. In its third season, Lost is already starting to fray around the edges. Its complicated arcs are far from being resolved, and in this case that seems to be to the show’s detriment. You can only string the viewers along for so long without giving up the goods about the damn polar bears, after all.

It seems to me that a show like this, with serialized, complex storylines, actually could benefit from having a finite, predetermined end date. Lost might have developed differently if from episode one the creators and the network had known they had 100 episodes in which to tell their story. Of course, it’s not exactly easy to get that kind of commitment out of a network. Babylon 5 started out with a very clear idea of its five season story arc, only to get shafted right after Season Four. Season Five eventually was produced, but the show suffered from the turbulence. Farscape had been promised a fourth and fifth season, so the creators planned a story arc to cross those two seasons, complete with Horribly Devastating Cliffhanger for the end of Season Four. After all that was filmed, Sci Fi pulled the plug on Season Five, leaving fans hanging. Fan outcry finally led to the production of The Peacekeeper Wars, but the complex conclusion had to be compressed into a four-hour miniseries instead of the full season arc originally planned.

Would ABC be less willing to negotiate an end date for Lost if its ratings hadn’t dropped significantly this season? It’s hard to say. In any case, all the maneuvering and politicking make for a tough balancing act, and nothing about it is conducive to good storytelling. So when the good stories come out in spite of that, it’s just that much more impressive.

Bones News

Hart Hanson, the creator of Bones, has an interview at TV Guide.com. He discussions some items regarding upcoming shows (spoilers ho!), including some tasty tidbits about Booth. But most importantly, he states that Bones will be retaining its Wednesday night timeslot in January. Since early news had the show being shuffled off to Friday nights, the Timeslot Where Good Shows Go to Die, I was very glad to hear this confirmed.