Mark's Sci-Fi / Fantasy Blog

Joseph Mallozzi, one of the show-runners for Stargate Atlantis, has confirmed in his blog that the show's currently airing fifth season will be its last.

"We came into this year knowing that renewal would be a longshot," Mallozzi said. "With 100 episodes under our belts, rising production costs, and the US dollar's steep decline, the odds were stacked against us." (Factored into the economic picture is the particular problem of rising cast salaries once a show passes the syndication-minimum hundred episodes.) Still, it was not until this month that the Sci Fi network let them know the series would not be picked up for a season.

Mallozzi noted that the hundredth episode, "Enemy at the Gate," which will turn out to be the final episode of the series, does not involve a cliffhanger. A "clean" ending to the season was always the plan. He also essentially promises a Stargate Atlantis movie, not surprising considering the success of the SG-1 DVD films Ark of Truth and Continuum.

Which Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper, co-creators of SG-1 and Atlantis, affirmed recently in so many words. "The successes of the two original Stargate movies The Ark of Truth and Continuum have shown us the opportunities that the movie format offers. We have plans for both SG-1 and Atlantis to remain vital as we expand the franchise."

"To remain vital": Well, that's ... vague. Still, obviously we can expect more DVD films in the Stargate universe, which is good news if they stay at least on par with what's been offered.

Am I sad Atlantis is on its way out? Yes and no. Atlantis has a lot of potential, but its overall execution has been hit or miss. I continue to be a big fan of the show, and I'm enjoying season 5 so far – "The Shrine," for example, offered some fantastic acting moments for David Hewlett and a good reminder of the measurable, if not extreme, evolution that the key characters have undergone since their introduction.

The LA Times gives Atlantis the backhanded compliment that "simply put, Stargate Atlantis is the best comic book television we have." The show isn't self-important like Battlestar Galactica (which, given its awesomeness, has a right to be) or cutesy like Eureka is in its lesser moments: Atlantis, like SG-1, has retained the wry humor that took the series beyond the origins of its somber source material.

And of course the Stargate itself is not going away. Cooper and Wright are busy developing the third season in the franchise, Stargate Universe. "In Universe, we plan to keep those elements that have made the franchise a success, such as adventure and humor," they said, "while breaking new ground in the relationships between mostly young and desperate explorers, thrust together and far from home." ETA for Universe is still up in the air, but knowing the new series and the movies will keep things going makes the demise of Atlantis more of a transition than an ending.

No sooner do we get the luscious trailer for Watchmen, Zack Snyder's big-screen adaptation of the seminal graphic novel, than the actual release of the film itself next March gets called into question, much to the dismay of its potential audience.

20th Century Fox, which says it owns the rights to Watchmen, is seeking an injunction to stop Warner Brothers from distributing the film – even though Fox apparently passed on the project and stood by while it first allowed the producer, Lawrence Gordon, to shop it to other studios, and then watched Warners actually sink $100 million into the picture.

The wrangling is mired in Hollywood contract-ese, but the upshot is Watchmen's release, after 20 years of development hell, could be further delayed while the two studios fight over points and profits on a very hot commodity that both studios are no doubt hoping will be the next Dark Knight.

Variety aired speculation that Fox preferred to see Watchmen canned rather than not get a percentage, promoting threats of boycotts against upcoming Fox projects like The Day the Earth Stood Still and X-Men: Wolverine. Read more...

Filming for the third season of Torchwood, set to air here in the States on BBC America next spring, has started up in Wales. The new season will take the form of a five-part miniseries called "Torchwood: Children of Earth," and it's being talked up by its creators as an especially high-adrenaline adventure with the customary Torchwood "edge."

The returning cast for the miniseries, which will air over a single week on BBC1 and then some time afterward on BBC America, includes John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), and Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), alongside Kai Owen as Gwen's husband Rhys and Tom Price (PC Andy).

Guest stars will include Peter Capaldi (who played Caecillius in Doctor Who's "The Fires of Pompeii"), Paul Copely (Coronation Street), and Liz May Brice (Bad Girls).

This would seem to confirm that Freema Agyeman, who has reportedly been signed to ITV's ambitious UK adaptation of the Law & Order franchise (together with Battlestar Galactica alumnus Jamie Bamber), will not be involved in Torchwood's third season – despite previous speculation, not to mention the job offer her character, Martha Jones, got at the end of Doctor Who's season finale, "Journey's End," from Captain Jack.
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More good news for Hobbit fans. The executive producer and director of the two forthcoming films based on The Hobbit, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro, have announced they're keeping the writing duties at home, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

After an unsuccessful eight-month search for the right screenwriter to adapt the novel and conjure up a sequel, Jackson and del Toro have decided to write the pictures themselves alongside Jackson's writing collaborators from The Lord of the Rings, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

Jackson had said he'd be unable to help write the screenplays because of prior commitments, but his schedule has freed up; besides, Jackson, who was deeply immersed in the development and writing of Lord of the Rings, really wanted to get involved himself. The intimate familiarity of the team with the intricacies of Middle Earth will also help the production meet release dates more easily and free up more time for getting visual magic onscreen.

The films will be shot simultaneously starting in late 2009. Co-distributors New Line and MGM hope to release The Hobbit in 2011, with the second film, covering events between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, slated for the following year.

In the final moments of Eureka's fourth episode this season, "I Do Over," Nathan Stark (Ed Quinn) seems to vanish into time, and the characters think he's dead. Fans reeled: Why kill off Nathan, a character that has grown in interesting ways since his introduction early in season 1, and who worked so effectively as a counterpoint to Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson) and Henry (Joe Morton)?

Is he dead? Does this leave the way clear for Carter and Allison (Salli Richardson) to get together? Is this a good thing for the show? Is it another case of killing off the third wheel, a phenomenon I discussed earlier in the year?

Check out the preliminary thinking here.

Young wizard Harry Potter is the latest victim of last winter's writers' strike: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, originally slated for Thanksgiving release, has been pushed back to next July to fill the void in the Warner Brothers' summer blockbuster schedule left by a hundred days without writers.

The irony is that the special effects-heavy film was apparently on schedule for its Nov. 21 release – in fact production is reportedly already complete. It's being moved to July 17 not because director David Yates needs more time to finish the movie, but because the studio needs a summer cash machine and expects the climactic Half-Blood Prince, the sixth film in the Harry Potter series, to deliver in spades.

"We are still feeling the repercussions of the writers strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films – changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of," said Warners president Alan Horn. "We agreed the best strategy was to move Half-Blood Prince to July, where it perfectly fills the gap for a major tentpole release for midsummer."

In other words, Half-Blood Prince is going to sit in a can for eight months just so that Warners won't have a weak summer. This despite the fact that its screenwriter, Steve Kloves, fretted to Entertainment Weekly that the Potter movies might start to tank without regular book releases to support them.
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The spate of Star Wars parodies that started turning up last year wasn't just about the original film turning 30. After all, stuff turns 30 all the time. Operation Petticoat turned 30 last year as well, but you don't see very many splashy claymation specials featuring the likenesses of John Astin and Jamie Lee Curtis. Which is a shame, really.

Star Wars, more than any other science fiction phenomenon, inspires a creative desire in those who love it most, which is why parodies like Star Wars: Robot Chicken and Family Guy: Blue Harvest, both now out on DVD, wear their devotion on their sleeves even as they send up the best and worst bits of the six-film franchise.

And the Star Wars franchise is, despite George Lucas's best (or worst) efforts, very much alive (there's a new movie out now, in case you haven't heard, setting up a CGI series coming in the fall), which means amateur Star Wars satire-tributes are still cropping up. YouTube is already littered with folks cutting their desktop special-effects teeth on videos in which AfterEffects clones try to kill each other with light sabers and finger-lightning, and the video snarks have jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon, creating clips that range from awful to hilarious to gasp-inducing (perennial parodists the Fine Brothers have discovered a use for a light saber so very, very wrong I can't even link to it).

The best of the lot is still Robot Chicken: Star Wars, if only because its rapid-fire blackouts are a perfect way to jar you into looking at Boba Fett, Emperor Palpatine, and all those minor characters only the true geeks know the names of, in a whole new way. And there's more geek-fest comedy to come: Cartoon Network has announced a sequel to the Robot Chicken special is in the works, slated to premiere Nov. 16. That's news good enough to make even Ponda Baba smile.

• Review: Robot Chicken: Star Wars
• Image gallery
• Watch trailer
• Compare prices on the DVD
• More about Robot Chicken

When Torchwood returns for a brief, five-episode third season in 2009, it's also set to air on BBC America, where Torchwood has gained the highest ratings in the cable network's history.

"We've decided to do a five-part mini-series, one big story that will run during one week," Torchwood executive producer Julie Gardner told TV Guide in June. "I wanted to make a really big noise about the show."

At Comic-Con in San Diego, it was officially announced that Torchwood season 3 will air on BBC America shortly after originally airing on BBC1 in the U.K. The five-episode mini-series may air in Britain as a week-long event, but BBC America is less likely to do so here. The first two seasons were both 13 episodes.

The only casting we can be sure of is John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) and Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper). Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), featured alongside Myles in the Doctor Who finale two-parter "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", is to return, but may be marginalized if the show is streamlined and, if rumor holds true, the show's racier content is reduced in deference to younger fans.

The denouement of "Journey's End," which saw Jack walking off with Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) seemingly trying to woo her away from UNIT, with Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) catching up to both of them after having expressed a need to carve out a new future for himself, was also very suggestive to those wondering about who would be in Torchwood's third season. Some rumors have stated that Agyeman will definitely be a regular for season 3, and I think it's likely to turn out to be true. (Rumors also suggest Barrowman will be reducing his involvement, with the show's focus presumably shifting to Gwen and Martha.)

(Update: as noted by a commenter below, The Sun has reported that the BBC dropped Agyeman from Torchwood season 3 after she signed on to do the ITV version of Law & Order. As The Sun's record of accuracy regarding dramatic TV show casting is quite spotty, we'll need more info, especially as no announcements regarding casting have been made for the ITV show; but word is spreading that both Agyeman and Battlestar Galactica's Jamie Bamber will be in Law & Order: London.)
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Season 3 of one of my favorite shows, Eureka, has debuted with a few changes, and I'm still at the stage where I'm not sure that they amount to advancing the show or tampering with it.

The first big change is the introduction of Eva Thorne (Frances Fisher), an all-purpose nemesis who takes over Global Dynamics (and so effectively the town) with a mandate to make the enterprise more profitable and business-efficient; her reputation has been one of bloodletting and ruthless realignment at Fortune 100 companies, and the Department of Defense, apparently seeing no difference between a genius factory and General Motors, has engaged her to do the same in Eureka.

From the show's structural standpoint, this means that a superfluity of Global Dynamics heads: the first season chief, Nathan Stark (Ed Quinn), and the season 2 head, Allison Blake (Salli Richardson), are both still on scene reporting to new boss Thorne. But the real problem is that Thorne is starting out solely as a device designed to create conflict within the cast – it all seems so artificial, especially the way she is choosing the favor some and glare at others.

Hints shown already make it clear that more is planned for Thorne, as she digs deeper into what's going on in Eureka, and before long she'll find a project to give her some continuity and purpose other than arbitrarily screwing around with what the other characters want. I'll reserve judgment for now, but I'm a little concerned that the introduction of such a character as a device signals a loss of subtlety for this very intelligent and wryly written show.
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Tired of superheroes? There's nary a one on the docket for August, though there are plenty of red-blooded, two-fisted "hero" heroes, from Rick O'Connell to Obi-Wan Kenobi.

This month's releases include the third Mummy film, the Star Wars animated feature, the Death Race remake with Jason Statham, and a Vin Diesel apocalyptic thriller. And you thought there'd be nothing left to watch after you saw Dark Knight ten or twelve times!

• Future Films: August 2008
• Video, trailers, and clips for The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
• Video, trailers, and clips for Star Wars: The Clone Wars
• Video, trailers, and clips for Death Race
• Video, trailers, and clips for Babylon A.D.