io9: Feature

10 Movies That Should Never Become Video Games

Nisha Gopalan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

Times are tough, but word on the street is that video games could be recession proof. That’s why we predict purveyors of the medium will sign off on even more dubious game adaptations of movies. After scratching our heads over the troubling Watchmen: The End Is Nigh game, a bald effort to cash in on the March movie, we decided to do the Hollywood gaming industry a solid by providing this handy guide to key flicks best left unmolested. Read up, little pimps!

The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman)
Amid a stark, doomsday landscape, a Scandinavian knight barters for his life with an attendant Grim Reaper by instigating the slowest chess match ever. Game gurus, if you must adapt this, at least have mercy on our souls by imagining the late, kerrazy Bobby Fisher squaring off against Death from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey in a heated bout of Battleship.

Groundhog Day (dir. Harold Ramis)
Imagine a game that never really advances, no matter how many levels you pass. Even Bill Murray’s delightfully smug mug can’t get you through that existential crisis.

Apocalypse Now (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
The director already adapted his Godfather to the medium, so why milk one of his other great masterpieces? Because hearing lines about napalm and horrors and Disneyland isn’t nearly as fun as deploying pretend napalm, instigating imaginary horrors, and braving a fake Disneyland—in what would essentially be a hide-and-go-seek search for a kooky, melodramatic chubby dude with a God complex.

The Incredible Shrinking Woman (dir. Joel Schumacher)
An ennui-afflicted housewife begins to physically downsize after huffing a strange brew of chemicals. While looking for a cure, she assumes an infinitesimal size. As novel as it’d be to helm a game starring Lily Tomlin circa 1980, we’d rather tango with The Atom.

Zapped! (dir. Robert J. Rosenthal)
Show of hands: Who wants to recreate the pubescent shenanigans of the sexed-starved, telekinetic Chachi and/or Buddy Lembeck?

Cocoon (dir. Ron Howard)
Old folks carouse in a fountain of youth/swimming pool that’s fuelled by alien pods. Cute! That is, until your inept controller skills cause a geriatric to take a laser beam to the brain (hey, peaceful aliens don’t make for a compelling game). And that’s only one step worse than killing a defenseless baby, you bastard.

Zardoz (dir. John Boorman)
Now, don’t mistake us: battling foes whilst wearing a crimson linen bondage/sumo get-up totally sounds like a good time. The fact that most of those foes are complacent? Sort of a bummer. (Props to io9 compadre Graeme McMillan for this suggestion.)

Naked Lunch (dir. David Cronenberg)
I was going to single out Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on this list, but apparently the Powers That Be adapted the David Lynch TV show into a game a while back. (Truth be told, the riddling Log Lady as narrator or interstitial jigs from that midget dude could be nothing short of awesome.) So I instead turn to Naked Lunch, William Burroughs’ junkie musing about folks who get high off insecticide and start seeing giant bugs and stuff. How to play a mind-numbing game that revels in sensory overload but doesn’t make a lick of sense?

Plan 9 From Outer Space (dir. Ed Wood)
Yes, Konami made a Plan 9 game in ’92. But since hi-fi technology clearly has no place in the Ed Wood oeuvre, let’s learn from foolishness past.

Encino Man (dir. Les Mayfield)
Pauly Shore and Sean Astin find and defrost a frozen caveman! Then he gets a makeover. Aaaaaaand that’s pretty much it.

Twilight Should Shed Its Vampire Drag And Embrace Its Sappy Self

Graeme McMillan — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:20:00 PST

Let's get this out of the way first: Twilight isn't as bad as you think it is. I know, I know; you all want me to tell you that it's the worst thing ever made, two hours of extreme embarrassment that I will never be able to get back, and by the way, Robert Pattinson sucks, and not in the vampire sense. Thing is, that's not exactly true (well, apart from the Robert Pattinson thing). I went in expecting the worst, and came out convinced that I'd seen The Dark Knight for tween girls.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that Twilight will break box office records and be remembered as some kind of groundbreaking movie that sets a new bar for vampire movies - although it might do the former. But, like The Dark Knight, Twilight is a mainstream blockbuster that wants to look like an indie film, is embarrassed by its genre roots, and leaves you feeling somewhat schizophrenic about it as you leave the theater.

The real star of the movie - again, like Dark Knight- is the direction. After a dizzying mess of an opening, the more grounded parts of the movie - which is to say, the bits without the vampires, the good bits - show director Catherine Hardwicke bringing a nice understated look to the film that recalls her earlier work onThirteen, with something approaching natural light and handheld cameras giving everything a virisimilitude that neatly gives Bella's entry to the overly supernatural town of Forks some gravity and reality... Something that's backed up by the performance of Kristen Stewart as Bella, who manages to make her character come alive and seem sympathetic despite writing that leaves her both frustratingly passive and annoyingly stupid. The other "normal" characters gain from similarly successful performances (Kudos especially to Billy Burke, whose take on Bella's father is wonderfully understated yet oddly noble in an emotionally stunted way), which would normally be a good thing... if the movie didn't fail so incredibly when it came to that whole "vampire" thing.

By now, you've probably seen enough trailers to have guessed that Robert Pattinson isn't the greatest actor in the world. And that's true, but once you see the film, you'll understand just how incredibly bad he is - Like a black hole of talent, optimism and... well, everything aside from good looks, his every appearance on screen as the movie's hero Edward manages to suck in everything that you might have enjoyed about the movie. It's not just that his performance is flat, emotionless and entirely unconvincing (Although it is); his pale make-up, the special effects when he uses his abilities and pretty much everything else about him just kills whatever momentum and credibility the movie had each and every time he appears. It's fitting, in a way, because if there's one thing that the movie manages to convince you by the end of it, it's that this movie really isn't about vampires.

What was the clue that gave that away? It wasn't that the vampires in the movie are more X-Men than vampires (One of them is a telepath! Another can see the future! Oh, and they can so hang out in the sunlight; they just shine like diamonds when they do. Ain't it poetic? They even have a baseball game where they use their powers, just like the X-Men of my youth), or that - Edward's occasional, melodramatic protestation aside - vampirism is portrayed more as a weird different faith than being undead bloodsucking monsters. No, what drove the point that this movie is most definitely not about vampires home was the fact that the audience I saw the movie with (which was, a handful of reviewers aside, made up entirely of teenage girls who loved the book so much that they'd dressed as prom versions of their favorite characters, and who screamed when the movie's title appeared on screen) laughed at the vampire-centric parts of the movie. Edward shows off his abilities? They laughed. Edward shows that he glows in sunlight? They laughed. Any place in the movie where vampires were suggested as something different or unusual or supernatural was met with derisive, nervous laughter - and, given the shoddy sub-Smallville "Oh look, he's running fast" special effects, derisive laughter may be the appropriate response.

No, what this movie is all about is the strange, twisted fantasy love story that promises young girls that, yes! You too could seduce and tame a mysterious, dangerous man who loves you - and must struggle with his overwhelming animal lust for you - despite your humdrum normal life, and all without doing anything other than just being you. It's a curious mix of female empowerment - You can achieve your goals! - with just the opposite - Don't take control of the situation or want anything more than a grand romance.There's an earlier scene in the movie where Bella tells one of her friends that she is a strong, independent woman. Why is she telling her that? To make sure that she asks out a boy. Being in a relationship is its own reward in this movie, and also the bestest thing in the world ever; all of Bella's high school friends exist to either crush on Bella or crush on those crushing on Bella - They literally have no other reason to be there. Again, the reaction of the preview audience, the movie's fanbase underlines this: while Edward's awkward pronouncements of the horrors of being a vampire got laughed at, the equally-awkward pronouncements of love were greeted with screams and sighs and other noises made by mid-20th century women when Elvis swiveled his hips.

That Twilight the movie makes such little effort to convince with the quasi-vamp mythology shows that it understands its target audience - but also that, ultimately, it doesn't care enough about those who haven't read the books to offer up anything more than a Harlequin Romance bodice-ripper dressed up for a superhero audience. It does what it wants to very well, and very interestingly - but that's not enough to make it a good movie for everyone.

iGEM, or How to Build a Biological Organism in a Single Summer

Terry Johnson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition brings undergraduates from around the world to MIT's campus to share the results of a summer's worth of synthetic biology research. Each team tries to create the best synthetic organism. Here you can see the iGEM participants (photo courtesy of David Appleyard and iGEM). I'm one of the folks in black up in front. (No, the other one.) Find out what these students cooked up over the summer, and who won.

Congratulations to Slovenia , who took the grand prize BioBrick trophy home with them with their project, which was designed to create a vaccine for H. pylori, infection with which is associated with ulcers and gastric cancer. H. pylori possesses "stealth flagella", which manage to avoid an important immune receptor. Slovenia attempted to combine bits of other bacterial proteins (that aren't capable of avoiding that receptor) with bits of H. pylori proteins in an attempt to hand-feed H. pylori antigen targets to the immune system, with promising results.

Frieburg took second place by combining DNA origami (the animation is borrowed from their wiki) with a clever receptor scheme in order to attempt nanoscale control of cellular signaling.

This DNA origami basically takes a long piece of DNA and, by adding many short carefully chosen DNA tethers designed to bind to the longer DNA in specific places, fold it into a particular shape.

Third place went to Caltech's multifunctional probiotic bacteria by adding functions to a commercially available, non-pathogenic probiotic strain of E. coli - functions including pathogen defense, vitamin production, and a treatment for lactose intolerance. (Bioengineered bacteria - digesting lactose so you don't have to.) Probiotics were big at iGEM this year, with MIT taking a probiotic approach to dental care and finalist NYMU-Taipei's BactoKidney - a bacteria that attaches to the wall of your small intestine, then munches on waste products before abandoning ship before it overstays its welcome.

The image is from NYMU-Taipei's wiki, where you can see its full-resolution glory. Trust me, dialysis isn't nearly so adorable.

UC Berkeley didn't do so bad either - we had two teams, one devoted to a wet lab project to combine engineered bacteria with robots, making large-scale synthetic biology projects possible, and the other working on computational tools to keep better track and make better use of collections of genetic parts. Our wet team, CloneBots, made it to the finals, and our comp team, Clotho, won for best software tool.

This year was my first jamboree, and I was gobsmacked at the collective hard work and ingenuity on display. Anyone who does research knows how difficult it is to accomplish a significant amount of work in a single semester, but these teams went at their projects with energy and intensity, and it shows.

Congratulations, everyone! We hope to see you in 2009. If iGEM or our mad science contest sound like your idea of a good time, see if your university has an iGEM team. If not, it's time to start one.

On a more somber note, this is going to be my last Ask a Biogeek - professional obligations abound. If I didn't have a chance to get to your question yet, apologies. A few of those obligations may be of interest to y'all, so keep an ear to the ground and you may be hearing from me again soon. Take care!

Heroes And Strangely Shaped Space Commanders Rule This Week's Comics

Graeme McMillan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

In a week that sees the comic book shelves swamped with familiar names from TV, movies and, yes, even comic books themselves, the most interesting release is possibly something that you've never heard of before. It's almost as if science fiction is all about the future again with this week's New Comics We Crave!

If it's comics based on film and television, then this week definitely spoils you for choice; IDW alone is putting out the first issue of Star Trek: The Last Generation (An dystopian alternate-timeline version of TNG), the collection of Transformers Movie Sequel: The Reign Of Starscream, and a 3D Transformers Spotlight on Optimus Prime. DC Comics aren't far behind; they've got both the second hardcover collection of Heroes' webcomics (which is better than the first, but I'll say more about that tomorrow) and the first issue of a new X-Files series being released, alongside Batman: Gotham Underground (a collection of the recent series of the same name about Batman's villains) and The Spirit Special, which brings together some of Will Eisner's original stories that inspired Frank Miller's movie.

Marvel, meanwhile, are having a relatively quiet week, but Marc Guggenheim's Young X-Men gets its first collection, while Garth Ennis's non-mature readers take on The Punisher gets a weighty hardcover omnibus all to itself. Less weighty - but no less ridiculous - is Image's Youngblood Hardcover, in which one of the worst comics of the 1990s (by Rob Liefeld, a man who never met a face he couldn't cross-hatch into oblivion) is remixed and rewritten by comics iconoclast (and Ben10 co-creator) Joe Casey.
But even that accomplishment is overshadowed by a book from San Jose-based indie publisher SLG/Amaze Ink: Space Raoul brings together cartoonist Jamie Smart's weird and wonderful tales of somewhat misshapen and inept hero from Space Command. It's childish, doesn't take itself too seriously and is bizarrely awesome; go look for it and you won't regret it.

If you don't know where to look for it - and all of the other books from the complete list of this week's new comic releases, then I would suggest you hit up the Comic Shop Locator Service). Go on; embrace your inner child one more time.

Smallville's Big Wedding Day, Plus A Must-See Stargate Atlantis

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

It's the most nerdtastic week ever, as Pushing Daisies finally returns, we get a Walter-filled Fringe, Chloe marries her little Jimmy, and scientists fill the sets of Stargate Atlantis, including Dave Foley who plays McKays arch nemesis. Seriously if there was a better yin to McKay's yang, I can't think of one. Also Jar Jar Binks is pratfalling all the way to rescuing Padme in this weeks Clone Wars — hey, you never know — this could be the episode he gets mercilessly tortured in.

Monday:

This week we may finally get some answers in Sarah Connor Chronicles. After last week's Mexican fiasco, it seems the team is hungry for some answers, and Sarah has to spill the beans on what she's done to change the course of fate. Plus it looks like we'll be getting some crazy dream sequences with all the bots and Sarah. SCC is on Fox at 8 PM.

Sarah Connor Chronicles Preview:

Sarah Connor Chronicles Clip:

It's blondes versus brunettes on Chuck this week as the old flopsy haired Nerd Herder has to chose between his fake girlfriend Sarah and his ex-girlfriend Jordana Brewster. "Chuck Versus the Fat Lady" is on NBC at 8 PM.

Chuck Preview:

Everybody is gunning for Peter and Claire this week (pretty much just like every other week on Heroes). Sylar gets in Elle's face at Pinehearst, and oh yeah — that eclipse that gave everybody superpowers, well, apparently "It's Coming" again. Heroes is on NBC at 9 PM.

Heroes Preview:

Heroes Clip:

Heroes Behind The Scenes:

Enjoy the last few episodes of My Own Worst Enemy while you still can. This week Edward kicks it with the KGB while Henry tries to uncover Angie's secret backstory (is she a spy too?). "The Night Train To Moscow" episode is on NBC at 10 PM.

Tuesday:

Get your fill of Elisha Dushku with a Tru Calling marathon from 8 AM until 3 PM on the Sci Fi Channel.

Walter goes back to the loony bin to uncover some time traveling ghost hunting craziness. Finally a more Walter-centric Fringe, which is exactly how I like my mad scientist, full of fruit-cup brilliance. Fringe is on 9 PM on Fox.

Wednesday:

Hooray, Pushing Daisies is back and this time with double the cheeky magic. Fred Willard is on as the top hatted magician who has been a surrogate father to Ned's half brothers. Fred's magical animal assistants are all dying off and the magician needs some help figuring out who's the culprit on NBC at 8 PM. Here are a collection of pics from the new episode.

No Knight Rider this week.

Movies:

Don your terrible wigs and even worse Eastern European accents: Van Helsing is on TNT at 11 PM.

Thursday:

Wedding bells are ringing for the secondary characters on Smallville. Will Chloe's wedding go off without a hitch? Probably not if Doomsday has something to say about it, plus Lana comes back and totally ruins the chances of Lois and Clark having an embarrassing open-bar wedding hookup. I bet she walks in right as they are about to kiss. Smallville is on the CW at 8 PM.

Smallville Clip:

Smallville Preview:

Supernatural's Dean and Sam, have to make battle with yet more demons and angels, and Anna still isn't dead yet this week, but if the boys don't figure out how to kill a pack of angels, Dean's going straight back to hell — do not pass go, do not collect $200. "Heaven and Hell" is on the CW at 9 PM.

Supernatural Preview:

Supernatural Clip:

Sam Tyler gets to meet his Papa this week (who just so happens to be a crook) and holy cow — it's Dennis Duffy the beeper king, otherwise known as Charley Dixon from SCC. This guy is in everything! Life On Mars is on 10 PM at ABC.

Hood gets to meet some super secret super soldiers this week on Eleventh Hour at 10 PM on CBS.

Movies:

The ultimate reality TV show of the future follows baby Jim Carrey as Truman from conception to escape, in The Truman Show at 10 PM on TBS.

Friday:

Jar Jar is all over this week's Star Wars: The Clone Wars, so Binks-haters beware. He's actually mistaken for a Jedi and gets into wacky hijinks with C-3PO. "Bombad Jedi" is on Cartoon Network at 9 PM.

Clone Wars Preview:

The nerdgasm we've all been waiting for is about to air this week, in Stargate Atlantis' special "Brainstorm" episode. Not only is Bill Nye the Science Guy making a cameo, but so are Dave Foley and Neil deGrasse Tyson. This week McKay and Dr. Keller descend to Earth to watch McKay's rival Foley demonstrate his latest project. Atlantis is on 9 PM on the Sci Fi Channel.

Sanctuary's Will digs deeper into his father's past on 10 PM on the Sci Fi Channel.

Sanctuary Preview

Ben 10: Alien Force's Ship has to be saved from the Forever Knights on the Cartoon Network at 9:30 PM.

Batman gets face to face with some dinosaurs this week in Batman: The Brave and the Bold on the Cartoon Network at 8 PM.

Saturday:

Movies:

The Return Of The Joker is on 9 PM on the Cartoon Network.

Sunday:

Everything is going to Hell in a hand-basket on True Blood. Sookie starts to piece together the missing pieces of the local murders, and Sam gets a visit from an old buddy. Hopefully they meet in the shapes of animals. True Blood is on HBO at 9 PM.

True Blood Preview:

Movies:

Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt chase mother nature, but stay sexy in Twister at 6 PM on TNT.

Leave Buck Rogers In The Past, Please

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:00:52 PST

This year sees the 80th birthday of time-traveling American hero Buck Rogers, the comic strip and movie serial hero who also made the 25th century both a weekly destination and strangely sexy for a generation of children in the early 1980s (Okay, that last part may have had a lot to do with Erin Gray's Wilma Deering for a lot of viewers, I admit). Unlike most octogenarians, Buck's future is looking bright (There's a new comic and new movie both on the way), but we have to admit - we'd rather he stayed in the Old Folks Home and let someone new take his place.

The problem isn't that I have no faith in Frank Miller to be the man who updates Buck for a 21st century audience (Although, now that you come to mention it, I'm not sure that I do), but that I don't think that you can successfully update him. Even moreso than his brother in awesome/stupid name space herodom, Flash Gordon, everything special about Buck Rogers seems such a 20th century idea that I'm not sure what, beyond name recognition, would make people want to update the series as is.

To start with, there's his name: "Buck"? Who's seriously called Buck in this day and age? The era of heroes with ridiculous names has, much to my sadness, passed; now we prefer our heroes to have more realistic, common names like "Nathan Petrelli," "John Connor" or "Buffy Summers" (Okay, maybe that last one's a throwback). Gone are the days when Buck, Flash or even Adam Strange could wander around our subconsciousness without ridicule, or at least writers trying to explain away the name in an awkward and unconvincing manner.

And, if anything, the name of his love interest has dated so much more: "Wilma Deering" was something that sounded like the set-up for a punchline that never came even when I was seven years old, and I was a naive and easy to dupe seven year old. Would any actress really want to play a character with that name today? And if not, will we see some lame updated version take its place? "My name's Wilma - but you can call me Willow." Or maybe she'll be an alien: W'Ilma De'ering, perhaps?

(In general, many of the names from Buck Rogers have dated appallingly. Could anyone really get away with calling an alien race "Mongols" now, for example? Or a space pirate "Black Barney"? Even later additions to the series, like the 1980s TV show's C3-P0/R2-D2 hybrid "Twiki" sounds like it came from the end of a writer's coke binge at Studio 54. What is it about this particular character that brought out the worst in writers?)

More importantly, the idea of Buck waking up in the 25th century seems curiously quaint now. It seemed more of a milestone when he was created - It's 500 years away! Half a millennium! - and there's something just... well, less impressive for him to find himself "only" 400 years later, for some reason. You could, of course, keep the 500 year mark, but then he becomes "Buck Rogers In The 26th Century" which doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

And yet, I can't deny that there's something irresistible about the basic, original, Buck concept - which is why I'd like to see someone try to do something that didn't just reboot a franchise, but start from scratch altogether, with all new characters. Give someone who isn't stuck in the past (Hi, Frank) the basic pitch of "a fighter pilot falls into a coma and wakes up five hundred years later in a world at war with aliens" and let them go wild. No Wilma, no brainy scientist Dr. Huer and definitely no Twiki, but something new, a world that's as alien and unfamiliar to us as it is to not-Buck (Seriously, that name has to go. Even ironically).

There's so much potential in the idea at the root of Buck Rogers that's completely buried under all of the Buck that we know. It'd be nice if someone who's taking on one of the revamps could just throw away everything that doesn't work - up to and including the name of the title character - and make it shine for a new audience.

5 Ways That Sandman Changed The World

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:00:43 PST

This week saw the 20th anniversary of the release of the first issue of The Sandman, Neil Gaiman's now-classic fantasy series that rewrote the rules of mainstream comics more than once in its' 75-issue run. Without Sandman, we may never have seen comics like Fables, Y: The Last Man or The Invisibles... but on the other hand, we probably wouldn't have had to suffer through the CGI Beowulf movie, either. To celebrate Morpheus' 20th birthday, we look at five ways in which entertainment is different because of comics' favorite dream god.

It may sound like hyperbole to say that The Sandman changed the face of entertainment, and it is, to an extent - but there's no denying that Sandman changed the face of the comic book industry, and that comics are one of the more dominant forces in pop culture these days (Don't believe me? My friends Iron Man and The Dark Knight may be able to convince you). The series also made a star out of writer Neil Gaiman, allowing him to step into the roles of screenwriter and New York Times-bestselling novelist, and also inspired careers for people as disparate as Tori Amos and writer G. Willow Wilson. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here're the five ways in which I think that Sandman changed the worlds we watch, read about and imagine today:

It Brought Mainstream Comics Into The Mainstream Culture. By 1988, American comics were gaining a measure of critical acceptance thanks to the now-near-mythical trifecta of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen and Art Spiegelman's Maus - but it took Gaiman and Sandman to bring together the populism of the former two and the gravity of the latter to create a series that Norman Mailer called "comic strip for intellectuals." Gaiman's creation of a comic that had the pop-cultural cache of coming from the same publishers as Superman and Batman, yet relied more on highbrow myth than knowledge of the history of Krypton, and asked more of its readers than just the ability to tell men in tights apart, unknowingly capitalized on a trend for baby-boomers to look for more depth in the medium of their youth. By following his own interests and obsessions, Gaiman accidentally created a comic that was familiar in format (32 pages, color, monthly), but unfamiliar in the most thrilling way to readers who wanted something more.

It Wasn't About Superheroes. Primarily amongst the ways in which the series was unfamiliar was its lack of superheroes as we'd come to know them. Yes, superheroes appeared in the series on occasion, but the series abandoned the tropes and cliches of what most people considered mainstream comics to be (while, in turn, bringing in and building on a lot of influences from long-forgotten or indie comics), proving to publisher DC Comics that a comic aimed at an adult audience, without a superhero lead, could not only sell, but gain critical acceptance akin to Watchmen or Dark Knight. Without Sandman, there would have been no Vertigo imprint at DC, and series like We3, The Invisibles, 100 Bullets, Y The Last Man, Preacher, Transmetropolitan, User and many, many more would never have seen print.

(There's a side argument to made for the success of Sandman being responsible for American publishers continuing to bring British writers like Mark Millar and Warren Ellis into the industry, and those writers' influence on superheroes being directly responsible for the success of movies like Iron Man and X-Men, but I'm not sure that's one I'm willing to make here. However, it's definitely there if you want it...)
It Took Urban Fantasy Out Of The Genre Ghetto. With his liberal use of sources, Gaiman may not have been breaking all-new ground with his mix of magical realism and myth and the world we know (I am still surprised that Jonathan Carroll never pointed out that the fifth "book" of Sandman, "A Game Of You," is pretty much his own novel Bones Of The Moon with some minor additions), but the high profile nature of the series - especially as it continued, and started garnering praise from Mailer, Stephen King and many others - exposed people to a use of fantasy tropes that avoided elves and goblins - Well, except when it didn't - and integrated it into their lives before television shows like Buffy and The X Files did so on an ever larger scale.

It Reintroduced The Auteur Comicbook Theory. For the first time in mainstream history, when the series creator left a successful ongoing regular book, the book left with him; even Alan Moore's groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing had been followed, the next month, by a new writer. This was, in part, because DC had learned from the mistakes that had driven Moore from the company, and was eager to keep Gaiman around for future projects - and, to that end, had actually granted him a certain amount of say over where and when the characters could be used again in future projects. The lack of a second writer to ruin the series' good name - or, possibly, outshine Gaiman's run on the character - has given the series two particular qualities: Firstly, a definitive ending, and secondly, the knowledge that this story was firmly and distinctively Gaiman's.

(To that end, the new Sandman: The Dream Hunters miniseries that commemorates the series' birthday feels "wrong," in a way, because it's only adapted from a Gaiman story, as opposed to being 100% written by him.)

It Looked Nothing Like Other Comics. Outside of its groundbreaking qualities in terms of stories, it's impossible to ignore what cover artist and designer Dave McKean brought to the series. His covers, whether they were paintings, constructions, early experiments in the use of Photoshop or whatever were as important to the series as Gaiman's writing - and each one changed the perception of what a comic cover could look like even more. Taking influence from fine art and contemporary design, McKean threw out the conventions of what makes a comic book cover (The title character must always be on the cover, the logo must always be in the same place) to create beautiful pieces on a regular basis... and confuse people who thought they knew what comics were supposed to look like.

Adam Tredowski's Organic Rust--SF That's Falling Apart

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:20:00 PST

An ethereal metal steampunk fish and a rusting steamboat-influenced factory structure suspended above an alien world are just two examples of Polish artist Adam Tredowski's texture-rich approaches to science fiction. The somewhat mysterious 33-year-old currently lives in England and has won many online awards for his work. There’s a satisfyingly organic feel to Tredowski’s work, but you can also see the nuts and bolts, the wear and tear. Metal fatigue welded to something beautiful, often awe-inspiring. But we’ll let Tredowski’s gallery and his answers to our interview questions speak for themselves, below.

Gallery: The Art Of Adam Tredowski

What science fiction and science fiction artists have influenced your work?
Ages ago I came across this fantasy magazine Fantastyka, in which they put continuously works of such artists as Jim Burns, Rodney Mathews, Zdzislaw Beksinski and Wojciech Siudmak. They made a huge impression. Even today I find them as the sort of example or pattern to follow, and one which I have not yet reached when it comes to the traditional painting technique. As far as the masters of digital painting are concerned, I’d have to mention Daniel Dociu, Sparth, Dusso, Craig Mulins, and James Paick.

Do you see a divide between SF and F in your own work or is it all mixed together?
I mix it all together. It is the composition that matters to me most as a whole and I try to stick to that.

What’s your relationship to technology and the modern world? Are there elements you try to put into your work?
I have to admit I’m not really a big enthusiast of all the new tech gizmos and news. I don’t really obsessively follow the progress as I don’t feel I have to have or be in the line with the newest technology. My PC, which got old a long time ago, would be the best example of that. It’s only the progress within the graphic design software that is of great interest to me, as I would really like to continuously develop my workshop.

Describe your workspace. How has it changed over the years?
I started with a pencil, oil paints, pastels, etc. It varied with the effects. I was missing the basics, as I learned as I went, and unfortunately I didn’t have anybody I could learn from. Additionally, when I started the Internet was only the means for the “chosen ones.” Then I got hold of a Commodore 64 and the Art Studio software. I got sucked in completely! Then there was the Amiga computer and the mind blowing “Deluxe Paint,” and then a very long break during which I didn’t have a PC. And so I came back to graphic design about three years ago. Today, my main tools are modelling software 3D and Photoshop CS2.

What projects have been most personal to you, and what are you most proud of?
I won’t be original saying this but I must say that all my works are very personal to me. The ones I like most are the ones which I did quite quickly—the ones about which I knew straight from the beginning what they were gonna look like. One of those is the project “Far from the city,” for example.

And, finally, what are you currently working on?
Currently, I [work with] the ZBrush 3.1software. In the future I’d like to put more “life” into my works, and ZBrush as a tool for adding character to modelling seems to be the perfect choice. What comes out of it? We’ll have to wait and see!

In closing, we'd like to give a big thank you to Annalee and to Charlie in this last column for io9. They’ve been great to us, and we appreciate the opportunity. io9 is one of our favorite internet destinations.

Quantum Of So What?

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:30:00 PST

Call it truth in advertising. The new James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace has a title that's vaguely science fiction-y and obscure. And the movie itself is sorta science fiction-y and really confusing. The science, in this case, being geo-engineering, the practice of making massive changes to the planet to affect our environment. The movie has something grand to say about natural resources and the obsolescence of the New World Order, but it swallows its tongue. Spoiler alert!

So it's really hard to talk about Quantum Of Solace as having any kind of a story, because it's so choppily edited that stuff just sort of happens most of the time. Someone obviously told director Mark Forster that a good action movie should be so choppy that adrenaline trumps logic or even being able to tell what's happening. But you can sort of glean that there's a story buried in all the jump cuts.

The giant irony in Quantum Of Solace is that all of the governments, and their spooks, are still thinking of oil as the world's most valuable resource. They're still in their 1990s mindset, going to war over oil and trying to control countries that have untapped petroleum deposits. There are a bunch of conversations about who controls Russia's oil, what's happening in the Middle East, etc. So when James Bond overhears our new villain Dominic Greene (who's sort of a smarmy Al Gore-type environmentalist) talking about pipelines and controlling the most precious resource in Bolivia, he assumes Greene means oil. So do his bosses.

This is what Greene and his shadowy organization Quantum are counting on. He makes a deal with the CIA: Greene will organize a coup in Bolivia, and the U.S. gets all of the country's oil deposits. But the natural resource that Greene really means to control is water, which is going to be much more valuable than oil soon. He's been damming all of the underground water flows and creating a massive underground reservoir underneath an apparently barren patch of land that he'll own after the coup.

The giant reveal of Greene's underground damming system could not be less dramatic. Bond and his sidekick Camille crash in the desert and stumble underground, then they find some kind of underground lake and mumble about damming. Meanwhile, we see shots of poor Bolivian people lining up to get water from a well or cistern and finding no water there. The poor Bolivian babies must go thirsty because of Greene, that shady pseudo-environmentalist.

This is our new new world order, apparently. Instead of fighting brutal wars over oil, we'll fight them over water. And instead of blowing the poor up, we'll parch them.

The movie makes a stab at driving this home in various ways, by having Greene give a speech about the world's aerable land that's being irreversibly destroyed every year, and by having the CIA agents debate over whether it's safe to drink the bottled water in Bolivia. But it's way too abstract an idea for an action movie.

Actually, here's how old-school Bond would have done it. You would have had a bombastic villain in a crazy tunic, and he would have built a massive facility stocked with tons of armed guards and maybe some robots. And a big guy with weird teeth. The facility would have been some kind of huge pumping station that siphons off the world's water and stores it in massive tanks, so Bomberg can blackmail the world. And Bond would have discovered this base and then led a crack assault team there, blowing shit up good in a giant fight scene.

Instead, the movie ends with Greene's pet dictator becoming the new leader of Bolivia, and Greene then demands to become the new water utility for the country, at an exorbitant rate. Then Bond shows up and blows up the hotel where they're meeting, which is conveniently built on top of a huge stash of super-flammable fuel cells.

That's the thing about Quantum — it's not afraid to be cartoony. It includes one CIA guy who's literally a cartoon of the callous American imperialist, with our old pal Felix Leiter playing the role of the good CIA guy by contrast. The Latin American general dictator guy is a total cartoon character. The scenes of everybody saying Bond has gone rogue for no particular reason are super cheesy.

But when it comes to having a larger than life main villain, the movie just sort of craps out. At the end, when Bond is having his final battle with Greene, it felt like it should be the end of the second act, before Bond goes on to fight the real bad guy. (Which actually is probably the third movie in the Daniel Craig Bond trilogy.)

Bottom line: At some point during the screenwriting and editing process, Quantum Of Solace had something to say about geopolitics and the mad science of the new environmental dystopia. But you're hard-pressed to get that out of the actual movie as it stands. Meanwhile, this is nowhere near as ground-breaking a film as Casino Royale, which really felt like a massive reinvention of the Bond franchise. Quantum is more like a standard-issue action movie — with a few really great set pieces — which you'll forget the details of five minutes after you leave the theater.

New Beginnings And Pretty Pictures Dominate This Week's Comics

Graeme McMillan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

After the cathartic experience of last week's election, the comic industry is obviously looking to move onto new beginnings this week, if the raft of new series is anything to go by. We have supernatural forensic teams, superheroine envy, a beautiful art book and even a comic version of a novel that will make many of you happy amongst this week's New Comics We Crave.

For once, let's get the superhero stuff out've the way first: Marvel have two hardcover collections out this week that are worth a look. First up, Hulk Vol. 1: Red Hulk collects the first six issues of former Heroes writer/producer Jeph Loeb's weirdly enjoyable comedy about a brand new, psychopathic Hulk running around shooting bad guys and punching good guys, while Mythos Vol. 1 brings together some dully-written, but beautifully-painted retellings of the origins of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America, the Hulk and Ghost Rider. Image Comics launches I Hate Gallant Girl, a new series about what happens to the girl who lost the superhero version of the Miss America contest (Clue: Bitterness). Little beats DC's superhero haul for the week, though; besides the paperback edition of the wonderful Darwyn Cooke anthology Batman: Ego And Other Tails, there's also the first issue of Kevin Smith's new Batman mini-series, Cacophony and, only five years later than you'd expected, a paperback edition of the more-enjoyable-than-it-has-any-right-to-be JLA/Avengers crossover series.

However, there's more to life than capes, you know, as the song almost goes. Dark Horse are leading the non-superhero charge this week with the first issue of The Cleaners, about a forensic clean-up team in LA that has to deal with deaths caused by somewhat supernatural sources... something that Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden would know about; sadly, he's busy in his own first issue of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files: Storm Front, a four issue adaptation of the novel that makes its debut this week (Somewhere, everyone who told me to read the novels is cheering). Urban fantasy of a particularly weird kind can be found in two collections from Image Comics: Bill Sienkiewicz's psycho-serial killer drama Stray Toasters and Ted McKeever's Ted McKeever Library Vol. 1: Transit both return some classic 1980s weirdie comics to print that are well worth your time and money.

Book of the week, however, isn't actually a comic. But don't let that put you off Fables: Covers By James Jean, a new hardcover that collects more than seventy-five of the the most gorgeous creations ever to grace the front cover of anything, never mind just comic books. Jean, who's worked for Prada, the New York Times, Knopf, Target and many, many others, has been creating some of the most beautiful images on a monthly basis for the (very enjoyable in its own right) Fables series for years, and this collection pulls them all together, along with sketches, commentary from the artist and others, and yet another brand new, beautiful cover image. It's the holiday gift that you should get for yourself and others, in case you were wondering.

(All of the images in this week's column are Jean Fables covers, by the way.)

In case you need any other reason to hit your local comic store (found, of course, via the Comic Shop Locator Service), then the complete list of this week's new comic releases should be able to provide many. But, seriously; how can you resist that James Jean book? Have you no eyes?

First Look At Robot Chicken's Star Wars Extravaganza

Meredith Woerner — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

This week marks the debut of Seth Green's latest Robot Chicken Star Wars special, and we've got the first laugh-out-loud clip from it. Also, there's a sweeps-month shock on Terminator, Woolsey's up for his performance evaluation and it's up to the Stargate Atlantis crew to save his job, True Blood's Lafayette gets political and Fringe is back.

Monday:

Riley and John take a not-so-joyful ride to Mexico, — and Sarah gets some much needed face time with James Ellison. Will we finally get from Ellison answers? Plus the promos are promising that tonight will be one character's "last stand." Who will it be? SCC is on Fox at 8 PM.

Sarah Connor Chronicles Promo:

And here's a clip with commentary:

Find out why everyone hates Arthur Petrelli, and what's the deal with the whole Pinehearst nonsense. Hiro travels back in time hopefully to tie some of our lose over at NBC's Heroes at 9 PM.

Heroes Promos:

Heroes Clips:

What happens when you've got split personalities due to a government implanted brain chip that switches you from murderous secret agent to suburban dad right in the middle of gunfire? Sounds like just another silly, yet predictable, predicament for My Own Worst Enemy's Christian Slater on NBC at 10 PM.

My Own Worst Enemy Promo:

NBC's mop headed hero, Chuck, has to fight off his old demons aka, the ex. Watch as hot spy lady gets all sorts of pissed this week at 8 PM.

Chuck Promo:

Preview clips:

Get your end of the world hottie anime lady fix over at the Sci Fi Channel with three back-to-back episodes of Gurren Lagann starting at 11PM.

Movies:

Who you gonna call...again? Ghostbusters 2 on Bravo and 10 and later at 12:30 PM tonight.

Tuesday:

Hooray, Fringe is back on Fox at 9 PM. This week, a parasite is taking over the bodies of FBI agents, Olivia has to go to Germany (hopefully she'll pick up a little personality while overseas) and Walter Bishop and his boy Peter try to jump start a dead guy's brain.

Fringe Promo:

Tonight is the premiere of the Sci Fi Channel "science fiction reality TV show," Cha$e where the contestants travel across a giant board game ad are constantly hunted down by hunters. The new game show airs at 10 PM.

Movies:

Enjoy our favorite web slinger's adventures, before they were ruined with bad hair and equally bad dancing techniques. Spider-Man 2 is on over at FX at 4 PM.

Wednesday:

Still no new Pushing Daisies this week.

No Knight Rider this week, either.

Thursday:

Poor Chloe — Brainiac erased all her memories, and now the only person she remembers is dreamy Sam Witwer who is also Doomsday. Why does everyone pick on Chloe? Is it because it's fun to torture her? Smallville's "The Abyss" is on the CW at 8 PM

Smallville Promo:

Smallville Clip:

This week, our favorite hot brothers who follow scary stuff, Dean and Sam, find a girl who talks to angels and they have to protect her from a demon. Catch Supernatural over at the CW at 9 PM.

Supernatural Clips:

A hostage situation pins time-traveling cop Sam Tyler against a crazed gunman. Plus, Sam's starting to get phone calls from 2008, but he's still stuck in the past. Life On Mars is on 10 PM at ABC.

Life On Mars Promo:

Hood finds a frozen body on a warm beach and it won't thaw, no matter what. Will wonders never cease on the Eleventh Hour? The science-investigation series is on CBS at 10 PM.

Friday:

Over at Cartoon Network, the conclusion of the two part droid-centric Clone Wars storyline comes to a close. Will Anakin and Ahsoka rescue R2 from the clutches of General Grievous? The Clone Wars is on at 9 PM.

Clone Wars Promo:

The Stargate Atlantis crew has to rally around Woolsey, or lose their "play by the rules" boss forever. It's performance evaluation time, people — look busy. The latest SGA airs on the Sci Fi Channel at 9 PM.

Stargate Atlantis Promo:

Genius kiddies are being kidnapped on Ben 10: Alien Force. It's up to Ben to stop them from building their mystery arch. The new episode airs on Cartoon Network at 9:30 PM.

Sanctuary field trip! Mangus goes to Rome to attend a top secret abnormals meeting. The monster goodness starts at 10 PM on the Sci Fi Channel.

Movies:

Hum along with your favorite aliens, and watch Close Encounters Of The Third Kind on AMC at 5 PM.

Don't like aliens? Fine, right afterwards is the badass demon-killer Constantine and his super awesome tattoo powers at 8 PM on AMC.

Saturday:

Movies:

It's a long Andromeda Strain fest over at A&E at 8 and 10 PM then later at 12 AM.

But if the strain doesn't tickle your fancy, Cartoon Network has the direct-to-DVD movie Superman/Doomsday at 9 PM.

Sunday:

Vampire justice is dealt on this weeks True Blood. Now that Bill is in big trouble for his Sookie obsession (and killing another vamp) it's his turn for a beating. Oh, and of course Sookie is being all sorts of ridiculous because she just can't handle not being the center of attention for more than five seconds.

Tonight is the night! We've been waiting for the Robot Chicken Star Wars spoof forever, and finally tonight we'll get our fix of ridiculous stop animation humor loaded with geek-only humor. Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II is on the Cartoon Network at 11:30 PM, here's a clip that aired on Joel McHale's equally as funny show The Soup, (oh and yes that's Seth MacFarlane as Emperor Palpatine).

Movies:

Get double the dose of Christopher Lloyd — first, as a zany alien with Jeff Daniels on WGN at 3 PM in My Favorite Martian, and later, as the mad scientist who builds a time traveling DeLorean in Back To The Future on Encore at 8 PM.

5 Things You Need To Know About Twilight

Graeme McMillan — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 12:00:32 PST

Love it or hate it - and judging by your comments, most of you are in the latter camp - there's no escaping the fact that Twilight is already one of the most anticipated movies of the year, and may become one of the most successful, as well. Because we know that you're all about keeping up with the zeitgeist, we're giving you five things you need to know about the emo vampire series that's already taken over bookstores, MySpace, and the heart of your little sister.

1: The Books Are Popular. Very Popular.
Sure, we're not talking Harry Potter levels yet - despite the many comparisons that Twilight has drawn to the wizarding series, mostly because it's a popular young adult series of novels that's transcended its target audience - but 17 million book sales in the three years since the release of the first book is still nothing to be sneezed at, and the books have collectively topped the New York Times bestseller list for close to a year. Face it; more people have read this than anything that inspired Iron Man.

Not to put to much pressure on the movie, but people are already writing about the way in which Twilight The Movie unites women of all ages in their lust for the franchise:

Let me introduce you to one of the most powerful new groups in Hollywood. It's not a group of actors, producers or directors. It's the rather interesting hybrid demographic who are getting their knickers in a twist over Twilight, due to be released in the UK next month... Teenage girls, young female adults and their mums converged at the Twilight conference at Comic-Con back in July, filling Hall H to capacity and rupturing tonsils at the appearance of their hunkalicious hero.

Believe me, this demographic is out there. They just don't have a name yet.

They're naming themselves, however; there are fansites called Twilight Moms (and its related site, Twilight Teens - and also Twilight20Somethings, just in case you don't fit into either of the previous two) as well as Team Jacob, Team Edward, Team Switzerland and even Team Twilightist amongst many others out there, each one a demonstration of obsession with the novels' familiar tale of a boy, a girl and the unspoken love that dare not speak its name.

2: The Books Aren't Very Good.
Critical reception to Twilight, the first book in the series was marginally positive (Booklist's "There are some flaws here—a plot that could have been tightened, an overreliance on adjectives and adverbs to bolster dialogue—but this dark romance seeps into the soul" being essentially the tenor of most mainstream reviews), but each successive book received poorer reviews, with Breaking Dawn, the final book getting drubbings from the LA Times ("The problem is Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling... We would have much preferred the whole thing to end in book three, "Eclipse," with yes, some happiness for Bella, but also some angst, some heartbreak, and a dark, ominous future looming"), Publisher's Weekly ("[G]randeur is out. This isn't about happy endings; it's about gratification") and Entertainment Weekly ("[You'll] abruptly lose all patience when... Meyer takes her supernatural love story several bizarre steps too far"). We may be biased, but sister site Jezebel came up with our favorite review:

It's 754 pages long, its heroine's dominant personality trait is low self-esteem, and, as Amazon reviewer Eventide points out, nobody really has to give up anything. Even the tedium of immortality is glossed over — these vampires just keep busy with their hobbies. If I had an eternity to read, I still might never pick up this book again.

3: The Writer Can Be A Bit Of A Prima Donna.
Although the Twilight series officially finished with the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, there was a fifth book planned, Midnight Sun, that would've retold the events of the first book from the hero's perspective. But then a first draft of the book's opening appeared online, and author Stephenie Meyer posted this response on her website:

I did not want my readers to experience Midnight Sun before it was completed, edited and published. I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being... So where does this leave Midnight Sun? My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math; in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything. If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.

(She's since recanted slightly, telling Entertainment Weekly that "[t]he funny thing about that statement is I didn't actually write the majority of it... in the end only the one or two sentences written by me seem really jarring [compared with everything else], and people didn't get that there was sort of a joke in there." Midnight Sun, however, is still on hold.)

Nonetheless, she's kept a tight hold on the movie, only agreeing to the project in the first place when teeth size met her approval, and having final say on casting and the length and passion of final clinches. "It's been good for me just in general to have to speak up because I am so invested in this," she's explained.

4: VINOs: Vampires In Name Only.
The vampires in the Twilight books don't have elongated teeth, and they have no problem going out in daytime in their Pacific Northwest hometown, because it's so foggy (I can't tell if that's actually funny or just a kind of crappy dodge). They also, as almost every example of vampire fiction since, what, Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire (or maybe Marilyn Ross' Barnabas Collins?), are tragic souls afflicted by a curse that don't really want to sink their teeth into humanity - and so, they eat animals and go on "hunting trips" to take care of their bloodlust. Yes, it's the Pacific Northwest Hipster Rural Lifestyle turned goth. Whatever happened to the good old days of Nosferatu and vampires who were unafraid to be vampires? I mean, if they have his pallor, why can't they have his mannerisms?

5: Remember The Golden Compass.
Summit Pictures, the studio behind the movie may be nervous about saying that they've got a hit on their hands ahead of the movie's release, but the movie is estimated to make somewhere between $20million and $50million in its first weekend, depending on how optimistic your sources are. It's worth remembering the fate of The Golden Compass, however; last year's "The New Harry Potter" had a similar amount of buzz pre-release, and a similarly impressive opening weekend... before audiences realized that the movies didn't live up to the books. Ultimately, the movie wasn't successful enough to warrant filming the second of the three His Dark Materials novels. The same thing may happen to Twilight. The figure to keep in mind is rumored to be $150 million; if Twilight makes less than that, you can forget about seeing New Moon, Eclipse or Breaking Dawn in theaters anytime soon. We can only hope.

Twilight is released in theaters November 21st.

Is It Time To Say A Pre-Emptive Goodbye To Dollhouse?

Graeme McMillan — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 12:00:08 PST

Is Dollhouse going to go down in history as the most troubled show ever to make it to air? The LA Times is reporting that production of the show is about to be delayed again because of concerns over the quality of the script - and this is after the show's second longterm pause to retool. Is the Friday 8pm timeslot a bad omen after all - and, as much as we don't want to say this, could Fox be doing the right thing?

The LA Times says that production on the show's seventh episode is to be delayed for "at least a day" because the script is "in such bad shape," according to the paper's anonymous outsider (Charlie posted a summary of pages from the episode yesterday, and... I can kind of see why Fox would be worried, to be honest). Similar problems afflicted the shooting of the sixth episode, according to the same source, causing more production delays "that left the cast and crew very frustrated."

The problem seems to come from Fox's concern over the show's tone, and creator Joss Whedon's attempts to give them what they want - Something that, Whedon has admitted, caused a major crisis in confidence for everyone involved on the show. But as recently as two weeks ago, Whedon was optimistic that everything was back on the right track, and Fox co-chair Dana Walden was describing the problems as simply "creative retooling". But with this latest production hiatus - it's third since production started last year - and the announcement of a timeslot for the show that Time Magazine's TV critic James Poniewozik calls "the place networks send shows to die," it's time to start facing the very likely possibility that Dollhouse may even break Firefly's record for early death.
And now, here's the part where I ask the question that will get small objects thrown at me: What if Fox is right? What if Dollhouse, in all its various incarnations, has just proven to not work? Yes, it has a great creative team and an interesting concept... but that doesn't necessarily translate into a successful finished product, and reading things like this confusing recap of the show's second episode make that a more likely possibility than we'd like to admit.

(As recapped - and it's hardly the easiest to read recap, I'll be the first to admit - the episode offers a lot of what you'd think that Fox would want to see - Eliza Dushku in the shower! Explosions! Dryhumping! - in amongst the creepier mindwiping and programmable personalities that Whedon has discussed at length, but what's missing is any idea that the show is actually about something. As opposed to Whedon's other shows, where the episodes seemed to have a point even if you weren't paying attention to the uberarc, this Dollhouse ep, "Gray Hour," just seems to be a collection of things happening without any real purpose. It doesn't just feel pointless, it feels somewhat soulless - which may, in itself, be a point in a show about the fluidity of personality and dehumanization, but nonetheless doesn't do anything to make me care about what happens, or any of the people it happens to.)

It's easy to make Fox out to be the bad guy in this scenario, the cruel corporation asking for changes to the artist's great work being one of the easiest and most compelling myths to fall for. But consider what little we know about Dollhouse's reshoots and hiatuses so far (with the possible exception of this latest one): They're all Whedon's doing.The second pilot?:

Well, the idea to do a new first episode wasn’t the network’s. It was mine. I understood their consternation, and saw the gap between my style and their expectations, and I suggested I shoot a new ep and make the one I’d shot the second. It isn’t going to be buried, like the pilot of Firefly. It’s simply coming after another, slightly cleaner ep.

The junking of the original pilot?:

The original pilot was in fact thrown out. Again, at my behest. Once it became clear what paradigm the Network was shooting for, it just didn't fit at all, even after I'd reshot more than half of it (see above re: despair). To get a sense of how completely turned around I was during this process, you should know there was a scene with Eliza and the astonishing Ashley Johnson that I wrote and shot completely differently three different times, with different characters in different places (actually I wrote it closer to eight times), and none of it will ever see air.

Similarly, Whedon has gone out of his way to defend Fox throughout these changes:

They're not wrong. Oh, we don't see eye-to-eye on everything, but wanting the first episodes to be exciting and accessible is not exactly Satanic. Being Satan is, but that's in their free time and hey, there's no judging in the Dollhouse. This kind of back and forth has happened on every show I've done, so if you liked those, chances are that was a part of why. And the need to focus on the essentials of what makes this universe tick - and which wire to cut to make it stop - really does bring up our game. So we as a staff have gone from blinking like unhoused moles to delving in with the same relish we had when we started.

(He's also said "We both know from years of experience that I’m a crap soldier, though I am an accomplished fan-dancer. No, this is a very cold look at what’s going on, and it’s not an Us vs Them," lest you think that's just playing the role of the good soldier.)

Taking Fox's obvious anti-Whedon agenda out've the equation for now, what seems to be left is a show that is having trouble finding its feet and coming together; yes, the network have asked for it to be more accessible, but that isn't the same thing as shooting a new pilot and later junking the original after telling people that that's not going to happen. The real problem with the show, I think, isn't Fox; it's Joss Whedon not being able to make the show that he imagines in his head, and getting so frustrated by that that he'd rather throw what he's done away and start again.

In one way, this is admirable - I'd rather have an overly ambitious show than CSI: Mindwipe, after all - but it's also worrying. What if Whedon isn't able to bring the show together in the short amount of time he has (Remember, the show was only given a seven episode order by Fox)? Are we going to be left with the SF equivalent of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, and if we are, the question is worth asking: Is a flawed, unsuccessful (but probably interesting, let's face it) show that pleases no-one involved with its creation better than no show at all?

And so, I ask again: What if Fox is doing the right thing by quietly trying to kill Dollhouse?

Tasty Super Scifi Cereal Breakdown

Meredith Woerner — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:00:40 PST

As a child, I was forbidden to eat marshmallowy cereal unless it was a special occasion - - so naturally, like any youth told that they can't have something, I became obsessed. I wanted to know what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pizza cereal tasted like and screamed for a taste of Batman's bowl of bat wings. I've rounded up a collection of cereal boxes and commercials that should bring back so much breakfast nostalgia, you'll get a contact sugar rush. So, pass the milk and lets go on a cereal sugar bender together.

Jurassic Park Crunch
This 90s cereal turned your milk the color of dino-vomit. Jurassic Park Crunch had dinosaur and egg shaped marshmallows with whole wheat crunchies, but the biggest draw was the roaring box sweepstakes. If your cereal box roared upon opening, you would get to go to the Jurassic Park island itself, or Universal Studios, I'm not sure which. I just remember being promised dinosaurs.

Wheat Hearts and Sugar Jets:
Whatever Mr. Peabody wants me to eat I will.

Powerpuff Girls Cereal
This 90s cereal combined multi-colored Rice Krispie treat-like bits that were laced with POP ROCKS. Plus the Powerpuff ladies kick major butt.

C-3PO's Star Wars Cereal
Kelloggs brought us spacey droid goodness with this 1984 cereal. Their slogan was "A New (crunchy) Force At Breakfast" and had "twin rings phased together for two crunches in every double-O".

Bill And Ted's Excellent Cereal
Cinnamon oats and marshmallow notes? Excellent.

Star Wars Cereal
General Mills' super new Star Wars cereal made grocery shopping a terror as they slapped Hayden Christensen's face on every single box, thankfully they also gave us plenty of Obi-Wan.

Adams Family Cereal
Creepy and cooky cereal from 1991.

E.T.
Created in 1984 this E.T. had his own blend of chocolate and peanut butter cereal, which now sells for a whole lot more. One lucky owner sold his box of E.T. at an Australian auction for $800.

Batman Cereal
Tiny Bat-symbols from 1989; I always wondered what Bruce Wayne would have thought about this. I also assumed it would taste like Capn' Crunch but instead it tasted just like sugar.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal
With pizza shaped marshmallows, sold.

Ghostbusters Cereal

Gremlins Cereal Commercial (breaks down half way sorry!)
This Cap'n Crunch rip off came out in 1985, just don't eat it after midnight.

GI. Joe Cereal

Star Trek Promo Box

The Spock Box.

Monster Cereal (With Star Trek Promotion eeek!)
Hey - You can't have a cereal post with out giving the original monsters their due.

Seriously, there is so much crazy scifi cereal I couldn't name them all... so I've compiled a gallery of other cereals equally as teeth rotting for your viewing pleasure:

And finally, although I can't justify putting Mr. T on this list, I'm including Pee Wee's breakfast of pancakes and Mr. T cereal, as both are fantastic.