Finally, The Secrets Of Firefly’s Shepherd Book Will Be Told!

io9.com: We’ve been waiting years for the comic book that tells the backstory of Firefly’s Shepherd Book, called The Shepherd’s Tale. And now it’s finally coming out, written by Zack Whedon from a detailed scene-by-scene outline by his brother Joss.

We’ve heard little hints about Book, including that he found God in a bowl of soup, he killed a man, and one part of him is artificial. But now, Zack Whedon explains to Comic Book Resources that all will be revealed about Serenity’s most enigmatic crewmember:

You will see Book’s full trajectory… How he became the man he was in the show and who he was previous to that. It takes you deep into his past. You really get to see the entire evolution of this man.

More Here

Thor: A New Age for Asgard

comics.ign.com: Thor fans worried about the fate of the series after the departure of J. Michael Straczynski have been able to rest easy knowing that first Kieron Gillen and then Matt Fraction would be taking over the book. Gillen is currently exploring the events of Siege from Thor’s perspective in his second arc. It’s clear Fraction is going to dealing with quite a bit of chaotic fallout when he takes over with issue #611 in June.

IGN Comics: We’re seeing most Marvel books, and the Avengers books in particular, carrying the Heroic Age banner. What does Heroic Age mean for Thor and the Asgardians?

Matt Fraction: Falling out of Siege. Asgard, as I’m sure you’ve seen in the promotional material, is hit particularly hard by the end of Dark Reign and Siege. It’s the Siege of Asgard. Heroic Age is the reconstruction

IGN Comics: Outside of Broxton, looking at the human world at large, would you say they view Asgard differently these days?

Fraction: I think the clear and present danger of it all is perhaps a little clearer. The essence of people remains the same. Neighbors are neighbors, and you help your neighbors.

For more of this interview Here

What do you think of The Shepherd’s Tale? Are you a fan of Firefly? Will you be buying the comic?

Are you a fan of the Thor comic? What do you think of Matt Fraction taking over it? With the new changes, would you still be following it?

TV Watchtower: When Sci-Fi TV Shows Fall Beneath The Guillotine

By Tiffany Vogt at Airlock Alpha

While shows like “Dollhouse,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Stargate SG-1,” and “Stargate: Atlantis” and even “Lost” are given the opportunity to conclude their series with some semblance of a storyline wrap-up, more frequently networks just unceremoniously yank sci-fi shows off the air without the dignity of a proper send-off or good-bye – “Firefly” being perhaps one of the more glaring examples.

With Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” airing its final episode last month, this is a perfect time to analyze how sci-fi shows are treated by the networks when their time has come. Fortunately, with “Dollhouse,” Joss was given advance notice that Fox was not going to pick up the back nine episodes of the second season, and it allowed him the opportunity to wrap up the series.

That was unlike when Fox abruptly canceled “Firefly” a mere eight years before, which ended with Fox airing “Firefly’s” two-hour pilot as its swan song, a maneuver that still has fans scratching their heads in bewilderment. I mean who airs the two-hour pilot after a show has been canceled? It’s like rubbing it in the fans’ faces that a terrific show was forever gone.

Read More here

Will Steven Spielberg Save Science Fiction Television?

By Meredith Woerner at io9

Spielberg is ready to redeem the struggling genre of science fiction on television. His third genre TV show, Nine Lives, might be airing on NBC, and we think Spielberg could be the TV savior we’ve been hoping for.

Spielberg created Nine Lives for the Syfy Channel but it never saw the light of day. The 12-hour miniseries brings back Spielberg’s collaborator Les Bohem, who was a writer on Taken. The series was supposed to be centered on people who seek out near-death situations in order to reunite with dead loved ones. But the project never happened.

But the trades are now reporting that NBC is interested in bringing back this series, if Bohem updates the script.

Read More here

New trailer for Doctor Who highlights Matt Smith’s Time Lord

by Patrick Lee at Sci Fi Wire

BBC America has posted a teaser trailer for the upcoming new episodes of Doctor Who, featuring Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor and Karen Gillan as his new companion, which you can view below.

It’s not a series of clips from the episodes, but rather a kind of homage to past episodes and, especially, villains, such as the stone angels from the 2007 episode “Blink,” which happens to have been written by Steven Moffat, Doctor Who’s new show runner.

Read More here

From Vicki to Zoe: The Evolution of Robot Daughters on Television

Teresa Jusino at Tor

On Caprica, Zoe Graystone has become infinitely more compelling now that she exists only as an avatar. While we recognize Daniel and Amanda Graystone’s pain having lost their only daughter, we can’t help but be more fascinated by Avatar Zoe, who experiences life for the first time, despite memories that tell her otherwise, in the body of a seven-foot robot. Zoe is a well-written character and benefits from an intelligent performance by Alessandra Torresani. However, both the writers of Caprica and Ms. Torresani owe a great debt to another jewel in the science-fiction television crown.

I refer, of course, to Small Wonder.

Caprica wasn’t the first sci-fi show to center around a family with a robot daughter, and there are several similarities between it and its 1980s predecessor.

Read More here

I think Sci Fi shows are always judged more harshly than normal shows, and less well handled by the network (at least at Fox). Any show will fail if you don’t market it well or to the right audience, or if you change the time slot often, or the day of the week it’s on. I hope that with all of the sci fi movies doing so well lately it will give sci fi shows more opportunity.

What do you think of the Doctor Who trailer? Are you a fan of Caprica?

by Sabrina Rojas Weiss at MTV: ‘Beautiful Creatures’ Puts The Goth In Southern Gothic: The Book Report

So many of us who’ve grown up in small towns can relate to Ethan Wate, the narrator of “Beautiful Creatures.” He’s lived his whole life in Gatlin, South Carolina, as have generations of his family, but he’s been counting the days until he can escape its Civil War-obsessed, small-minded borders. And as much as Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s debut novel, which was optioned by Warner Bros. on the week of its release, is about the new girl with magical powers, it’s also about Ethan’s more common struggle. That’s what sets it apart from the supernatural YA novel of the week.

Ethan is intrigued when he hears there’s a new girl in school — someone from the outside world he longs to join. Lena Duchannes is labeled off-limits by the rest of the kids when they find out she’s the niece of Old Man Ravenwood, who lives shut away in a frightening mansion on the outskirts of town. Still, Ethan is drawn to the beautiful, black-haired girl with sparkling green eyes, and when he comes to her defense against the vicious taunts of the in-crowd, he finds himself an outcast too.

“Beautiful Creatures,” the first in a planned five-part series, is full of deliciously dark, Southern Gothic atmosphere, which Lena matches (or creates?) with her own moody despair. But we readers are saved from doom and gloom by Ethan’s determined pragmatic attitude, and we cling to his hope that that will be enough to save Lena too.

Read the review here

from Patrick Lee at Sci Fi Wire: Firefly to live on in new book of short stories

Joss Whedon’s beloved Firefly/Serenity is long gone, but you can’t stop the signal: Fans can look for more adventures of Capt. Mal Reynolds and the crew of the doughty ship in a series of short stories coming soon from Titan Books.

Writer/producer Jane Espenson—who wrote one episode of the Fox sci-fi series but is a longtime friend and colleague of Whedon’s going back to her days on Buffy the Vampire Slayer—told us that she will be writing one of the stories, centering on the characters of Kaylee and Wash (obviously set in a time period before the events of the movie Serenity).

“I’m writing a short story set in the Firefly universe that someone’s putting together,” Espenson said in an interview on Sunday in Pasadena, Calif., where she was promoting her upcoming Syfy series Caprica. “Titan Books is putting together a collection written by various of the Firefly writers. But [it's a] very short story, … 2,000 words.”

Read More here

I’m very excited about the short stories. I tried to read the comic book, but I just can’t get into that style. Short stories would be better. Better still would be if the show got renewed, but it’s Fox so there’s no chance.

What do you think of Beautiful Creatures? Will you read the Firefly short stories?

thanks to io9.com

Science-fiction fans sometimes focus too much on the negative, in a world where remakes run rampant and Sarah Connor Chronicles dies so that Til Death might live. But here are six things I’m thankful for in science fiction right now.

1. That maybe, just maybe, movie audiences are developing some good taste.

I know, I know. Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen made about $833 million. And New Moon just had the third biggest opening weekend ever. Not exactly strong arguments for the intellect of the filmgoing public. But even so, both of them still came up short when compared to The Dark Knight, which set all manner of non-Titanic box office records. And for all the financial success of Transformers 2 and New Moon, I think there’s a solid argument to be made that neither really compares to the cultural impact of The Dark Knight.

The Twilight franchise has its extremely devoted fanbase, but almost no crossover appeal. To be sure, tons of people saw Revenge of the Fallen, but how many people now remember doing so? The Dark Knight, on the other hand, launched a ton of memes, established the definitive version of the Joker for years to come, and won a ton of awards, assuming you care about that stuff. (I don’t particularly, but evidence is evidence.)

2. That Dollhouse somehow, against all odds, got a second season.

Sure, it’s a shame that Dollhouse is coming to a close, but that show had no business making it past season one. Hell, it probably should have, by rights, been canceled about six episodes in. The show wasted its first five episodes on variations on the personality-of-the-week theme before launching into the master plot — admittedly because of network interference, but still — and then proceeded to unfold its convoluted, off-putting mythology that left the show without a clear central hero and a whole lot of really uneasy questions the audience had to answer. And it did all this while comfortably settling into #132 in the ratings, bringing in a paltry 3.73 million viewers per episode.

And then, thanks to favorable internet numbers, some decent critical buzz, and maybe some lingering Fox guilt about the fate of Firefly (nah), it got a second season, and Joss Whedon went full tilt at making it the craziest, most nerderiffic show ever. I mean, look at all the guest stars. Jamie Bamber! Michael Hogan! Alexis Denisof! Keith Carradine! Summer Glau! Ray Wise! More Alan Tudyk and Felicia Day! Not to mention the fact that the show is, if anything, even better, crazier, and more gleefully off-putting than last season. Dollhouse might be going out, but under the circumstances, you can’t really say it isn’t going out on its own terms.

4. That this happened.

Nothing like a little Nathan Fillion fan service to put a smile on my face. And hey, Castle isn’t exactly bad! (It’s not exactly good either, but that’s besides the point.) I’d still gladly trade every show I’ve loved for the past seven years just for another season of Firefly, though. Yes, that includes you, Battlestar Galactica!

More here

(Sighs) the good old Firefly days. I’m still wonder if I’m the only one watching these canceled tv shows, but then I hear that others watched them too, so why can’t we have a decent non-canceled shows? We might never know.

What are your thoughts on all these?

io9.com: Wednesday’s announcement of Dollhouse’s cancellation came as no surprise to most, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not here to help those for whom the news means emotional turmoil. Let us walk you to happiness, one step at a time.

Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, introduced the concept of the Five Stages of Grief to help those dealing with personal tragedy get through it as easily as possible. We’ve discovered that those Five Stages are almost applicable to less serious emotional issues, such as the cancellation of a favorite television show. As The Aristocats‘ Thomas O’Malley once said, let me elucidate here:

1: Denial
How many times did fans deny Dollhouse’s falling ratings, or tell themselves that miracles could happen despite a tiny audience and uneven quality – A self-delusion not helped by the series getting a second season in the first place, admittedly – and everything could turn out okay (“Look what happens when you add in the time-shifted audience!”)? The writing may have been on the metaphorical cancellation wall for sometime, but that doesn’t mean that plenty of people were pretending that they couldn’t read when they saw it.

2: Anger
As those who’ve survived the loss of Firefly should remember, the cancellation of Dollhouse will have one clear effect on fans: Blaming Fox. Never mind that they gave the show two seasons with a promise to show the complete second season despite reruns of House getting more viewers and making them more money in the same timeslot, Fox will very clearly be the bad guy in the fan version of this story; as Preston Beckman, Fox’s VP of strategic programming told Broadcast & Cable, “I’ll still get hate mail and death threats.” But why stop there?

More here

I must have bad luck with TV shows, the ones I like always get cancelled, grr. I’m going to remember those steps for future cancellations What do you think of these 5 steps? What TV shows that have been cancelled did you like? Are you a Dollhouse fan?

Learn Sign Language from Sanctuary’s Creature from the Black Lagoon

Bigfoot, a werewolf, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon walk into an episode of Sanctuary, and what do they do? Mostly, they trade sign language, perform mundane medical procedures, and wait for the episode’s true villain to emerge.

I’m not sure what I could have hoped for from this classic monster match-up — certainly not a cage match, but maybe abnormals playing poker? Alas, Sanctuary has not time for such frivolities. Our rubber-suited movie monster is Jack, a creature called a Plesky who has been living in captivity with werewolf Henry’s pal Rachel. Rachel has been socializing Jack and teaching him sign language; he’s basically like Koko the gorilla if Koko occasionally shot out deadly spores. Yes, Jack has shot his deadly, deadly spores into Rachel, who will die if Magnus and her team can’t find a cure.

More here

We review the 2009 sci-fi pilots you’ll never see

Just before every fall TV season begins, the excitement of new possibilities swirls through the air as we anticipate what new shows are in our future. That excitement fades once we realize that only a couple of shows are actually worthy and is dashed once we see promising shows like Eastwick and Dollhouse killed off.

So now that the cancellations have begun, let’s take a look at the season that might have been. Here are four pilots the networks passed on, with our take on whether they missed an opportunity to unleash something great (or even just mildly entertaining) on viewers:

Back, CBS
Boldy Going Nowhere, Fox
Captain Cook’s Extraordinary Atlas, ABC
No Heroics, ABC

More here

12 Sci-Fi Shows That Were Canceled Too Soon

Joss Whedon has become something of a tortured artist since ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ ended its highly successful seven-season run in 2003. Since Sunnydale was destroyed and ‘Angel’ got pulled right when it was finding its own identity post-’Buffy,’ Whedon has yet to find another long-running hit. It’s still hard to believe that a show as great as ‘Firefly’ only lasted one season!

Whedon’s bad luck continues with the recent announcement that Fox is pulling the plug on ‘Dollhouse,’ a series that had enough of a following — and potential — to warrant another season. Would ‘Dollhouse’ have really hit its stride further down the road? We’ll never know. Here are some other sci-fi television series that met their makers too soon.

‘Angel’
‘Bionic Woman’
‘Birds of Prey’
‘Brimstone’
‘Firefly’
‘Invasion’
‘Jericho’
‘The Lone Gunmen’
‘Millennium’
‘Star Trek: TOS’
‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’
‘Tru Calling’

MORE HERE

Some of the Sci-Fi Pilots – it’s a shame we won’t ever see them. A few of them don’t sound that bad.

As for the shows that were canceled too soon, I at least agree with Angel, Firefly, Bionic Woman and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Which pilots do you think would have been good shows?

And which of the canceled shows were your faves?