Warp Section

Networks are announcing their new fall TV seasons, meaning we get to find out which shows are staying, which are cancelled, and what’s new in the pipeline.

Heroes: Renewed. Duh.
Medium: Renewed. Yay!
Jericho: Done, it’s outta here. Oh wait, no it’s not. It’s sort of half canceled. Enjoy your last seven episodes, guys. The word from CBS: you can stop sending them nuts, now. Please.

Lost: Still here.
Dresden Files: still waiting to hear.
Doctor Who: on Sci Fi starting in July.
Supernatural: Renewed!
Smallville: Renewed!
Battlestar Galactica: Gets one more season. And as a fan, I’m actually okay with that. I’d rather see a show like this go out on top than suffer an X-Files style death spiral.

Stargate SG-1: Ending a 10-year run. Stick a fork in this one.
Stargate Atlantis: Renewed!
The 4400: Renewed!
Torchwood: Looks like it’ll be back.

New:
A remake of the Bionic Woman.
Flash Gordon miniseries
The Sarah Conner Chronicles
Various shows with SF and fantastic elements trying to cash in on the success of all the above shows

Stay Tuned…

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As you might have noticed, the site’s been experiencing some technical difficulties. I’ve been trying to get in touch with David, who runs the infrastructure, to find out why after a week of being down we lost, you know. 6 weeks worth of posts… Until I hear from him, I’m going to hold off on anything new until I’m sure it’s not going to get ate.

Thanks for your patience.

Editor Note: That looks like it was my fault. I have been so busy moving from an apartment to my first house, as well as finalizing some wedding preparations, that I didn’t even notice that all the great readers had killed the site. Ooops… I will get everything going 100% over the next few days, including some new material, and some more fun things here and there.

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Just when I was thinking we were about due for a remake (or “reimagining,” as the current trend has it) of this classic, along comes this. That’s right. Apparently there is a new Flash on the way from the Sci Fi Channel. (which means it could be good. . .or not.)

I already have three Flash Gordons in my collection. For some reason, this dashing space hero has always appealed to me. It’s space opera, but through the eyes of the folks next door. He may be a square-jawed icon, and Dale Arden may be beautiful and spunky, but they’re our surrogates in these space-faring adventures.

The 1930s serials starring Buster Crabbe are credited with being one the inspirations for Star Wars — and really, just about every space opera that came after it. It’s all about the rockets with fins. These are so much fun to watch, because each episode is only about ten minutes long — and each one ends on a hideous cliffhanger, so we’ll be sure to come back and pay our nickel at the theater next week to see what happens. So every ten minutes, Flash falls down a chasm, gets blasted by an exploding robot, crashes his space ship, nearly freezes to death on an ice planet. . . you get the idea. Many of these episodes are online at the Internet Archive.

I discovered the 1950s TV version starring Steve Holland in, of all places, the Target dollar bins. This version is fascinating because for one thing, it was filmed in postwar West Berlin. All the extras have German accents. Also, it’s a very 1950s version of the character, with less swashbuckle, and more science. They actually try to explain things from a scientific standpoint as they go along. It’s like the writers were devouring issues of Astounding magazine, which was busy publishing authors like Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov at the time.

Then there’s the 1980 feature film starring Sam J. Jones as Flash. All camp, all the time. Timothy Dalton in green leather as Prince Barin. Songs by Queen. As embarrassing as it might be to say it, I love this one. It’s just so happy. Come on, you can sing it now… “Flash! Ah-aaaaahhhh! He’ll save everyone of us!”

Will Sci Fi be able to say the same? Stay tuned…

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Shameless self promotion time. This is just to announce, commemorate, and squee over the release of my third novel, Kitty Takes a Holiday.

This is part of a series about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio show about the supernatural. As the title suggests, she’s taking a break in this one. But she should have known that going to an isolated cabin in the woods, all alone, was just asking for trouble. (Insert Psycho theme music.)

A little note about how publishing works: the lead time for getting a book into stores is about a year. That means I finished the manuscript for this one about a year ago. Which means I’ve been trying very hard to not talk about it at all, in order to keep secret a couple of rather large spoilers. I’m so happy I can finally talk about it!

But now I have to keep mum about the fourth book which is, of course, finished except for revisions, but won’t be released until next year. Grrrr.

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Why, at the local post office! It seems that to help celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, the US Postal Service has developed mail boxes that look like R2-D2. Check out the photos on TheForce.net.

Just remember, if you plan on acquiring one of these beauties for your very own, it’s a federal offense to tamper with the mail. And you wouldn’t want to be starring in the next episode of Troops, would you?

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Someone flies, someone dies…

That was the promise, and Monday night they delivered. The invisible man finally forced Peter to develop his powers, but at what cost? Peter told us that his powers come not from shutting humanity out, but from embracing it. So perhaps it is not such a surprise that the materialization of Sylar’s powers should be accompanied by a bit of Sylar’s dark side. Still, how cool was it to see Peter go all Superman-style through the New York sky?

Meanwhile, “Zane” is accompanying Mohinder on the search for new heroes. I can’t help but think that Mohinder is going to figure it out if the people they go to visit keep getting eaten by Sylar. For now, however, chalk up super-hearing on Sylar’s ever-growing list of powers.

Hiro appeared to get his powers back tonight, at least a little. His confidence is still lacking, however. The exchange between Hiro and Ando after they narrowly avoided getting shot was pretty amusing.
Ando: Did you powers work? My eyes were closed.
Hiro: I don’t know; mine were, too.

You were all no doubt shocked and saddened by seeing Hiro push Ando away–who takes advice from a rogue gaming commissioner, anyway?–but the moment was lightened a little by a cameo from none other than STAN LEE (as the bus driver at the end)! Stan has a habit of showing up in any show or movie about heroes, since he created half of the most well-known heroes of our day.

While Hiro and Ando narrowly avoided getting shot, Simone Duveaux was not so lucky. Peter’s rage and Isaac’s misguided attempts to save the world ended in her death, the one promised by the advertising. Parallelling her death is the collapse of Claire’s mother, fallen in a pool of spilt milk. Too many brain-wipes by the Haitian have bruised her dura, or some such thing. Claire is through putting up with the lies and lets her father know it.

And Claire isn’t the only one. Matt Parkman, Ted Sprague, and Hana “Wireless” Gitelman show up in the Bennet home at the end of the episode! Whatever happens next, some serious stuff has hit the fan.

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The whispery voice on the Heroes commercials promised us “Someone flies, someone dies.” It seems they are holding that promise in abeyance for another week.

This week we saw Matt Parkman fly through a window… but it was a tease. He landed on a scaffolding just outside and managed to crawl back in. That’s just as well, because I really like that character.

And while he may have been saved a physical descent, he did fall a notch on the moral scale. After overhearing the crime scene detective think of him as a loser, Matt decides to pocket the diamonds he found rather than turn them in as evidence. Go you, Matt!

Speaking of moral descent, “Jessica” has gone waaay evil. Assassin for hire? Hired by Linderman of all people? I guess she’s always been amoral, but this is just another frightening log on the scary fire.

And Ando becomes a thief as Hiro looks impotently.

As far as death, we saw two this week. The first was Jessica’s target, and the second was an unknown hero. Sylar absorbs yet another power. He can now apparently make metal melt or dissociate or something. And while he wasn’t successful with Mohinder’s father, it appears that Mohinder is being convinced to let Sylar help him with The List. Oh noes!

Claire sees her father this week and overhears his disappointing conversation with her birth mother. The audience knows that Nathan is struggling internally and we watch as he ends up taking his mother’s advice to leave the whole matter. This is the first time that we’ve seen this practically evil side of the mother, and I think it’s an attempt by the writers to make Nathan a little more palatable. Oh, he’s just doing what his mean old mommy wants him to…

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Curiously, having been promised a new hero by the online graphic novel, we saw TWO new individuals this week, NEITHER of whom were Hana Gitelman.
First, we saw The Invisible Man, whom Peter seems to believe can teach him to control his “empathic” powers. The invisible man has implied that he’s met people like Peter before.
Then, at the end of the episode, we saw Claire’s mother! Apparently the apple didn’t fall far from the tree because Claire isn’t the only one with powers. And after seeing her mother light her cigarette, we can guess why there was an explosion 14 years ago.

As the season goes on, both the pace of the show and the rate of extra material is increasing. Now, in addition to the online graphic novel, there’s the whole Primatech Paper website and the associated code. This week the user name (bennet) and password (claire) let you into see all about Hana Gitelman.
Her codename is “Wireless” and she can detect and send wireless signals with her mind. We learn that she was betrayed by the Primatech Paper people and she was in contact with the “exploding man” for awhile.

I’ll keep digging if you keep reading.

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So, a ton of stuff happened in the first episode back, but it felt a little forced to me. It’s as if the acceleration of the plot squeezed out time for the good acting we’ve seen up until this point.

Jessica/Nikki ended up in prison, and now the evil twin is playing the crazy card to try to get them out. Hiro tried to steal his sword of the future from the museum, only to find out it was a replica, and the real one is owned by…wait for it…Linderman! Hiro hooks up with Nathan “flying man!” Petrelli at the end of this episode, and of course Nathan and Linderman are closely tied. Peter Petrelli wakes up after several disturbing dreams about blowing up, and disappears from his hospital room. Claire–who did NOT get mind-wiped by the Haitian–is re-befriending Zach, just so she doesn’t have to be all alone.
Matt Parker and the FBI agent raid Primatech paper , only to find it completely innocent. Sure it is. Pay no attention to the eerie psychic standing in the corner.

And that’s just what’s happening on screen! In the online graphic novel, there’s more turmoil brewing. They’ve built up Hana Gitelman (to be played by Stana Katic, pictured above), who will never go by that name again after using her abilities to escape a government compound of some sort. She went on a mission for “the man in the horn-rimmed glasses” (you know him better as Claire’s father) after being trained into a superweapon. She is physically at the peak of human potential, and she can access wireless signals–internet, email, cell phones–with her mind.

And there’s plenty more to come. They’ve still promised us Hiro with the sword, Hiro vs. the dinosaur, and Hiro’s father (played by George Takei!). Keep watching, and keep reading WarpSection!

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Couple of items released recently:

HBO has picked up George R. R. Martin’s epic Song of Fire and Ice series. The plan is to do each book as a full season of a TV series. See the press release in Variety for more info.

The SciFi Channel is developing a mini-series adaptation of Neal Stephenson’s award-winning novel The Diamond Age, with George Clooney attached as an executive producer. I love Clooney’s work, and this is my favorite of Stephenson’s novels, so if this works out, I’ll be a happy camper.

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