Just say fuck

As much as I loathe the replacement of a good swear word on a tv show, this list includes some of the best from scifi. Not surprisingly, Battlestar Galactica's "frak" starts the list, which also includes Farscape's "frell," "smeg" from Red Dwarf, and "shazbot" from Mork & Mindy.

I'd always rather hear "fuck," or whatever word can't be said on most tv. Just as a show won't usually grab me if there's not someone hot on it, I can be lured into a show by the language. Of course, it's usually shows with swearing that get me, but hey, I like swearing.

BSG can't start soon enough

THIS CLIP & ACCOMPANYING BLURB CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR BSG SEASON 4!!!

Not huge spoilers, but enough that if you're trying to stay pure, you probably want to avoid it.

Check it out here.

The commercials SciFi is airing say March, but they still don't specify a date. I impatiently wait....

New Sarah Connor Chronicles

I wish I understood what happened to River, er, I mean Cameron, between the last episode and this week's. The cool terminator with the striking ability to blend in with humans suddenly doesn't know how not to be a machine and, unfortunately, that means Summer Glau was playing the same character she played on Firefly, without the crazy. Perhaps we'll get some explanation for the change in a later episode.

Then there was the irritating and superfluous side story of the suicidal high school girl. I'm not sure what that was designed to illustrate, but I didn't find it either interesting or in any way useful to the story.

On the other hand, I definitely like Sarah. I kind of thought the nuclear program parallel was a little heavy-handed, though really, it wasn't too bad. It's a damn shame she had to burn up the cute guy's toy, but I suspect we're going to be seeing her make quite a few difficult and uncomfortable decisions as she continues her quest to stop Skynet.

The bits with the evil terminator unit were very cool, and I dug how he managed to get himself a fleshsuit. He's a seriously nasty piece of machinery. Yay!

So far, so good, though given the writers' strike, I wonder how many episodes we'll actually get.

Disaster narrowly averted

And I don't mean Atlantis' life support systems shutting down, or the self-destruct almost taking out the city, or the risk of the beacon drawing unwanted attention. Tonight's Stargate Atlantis was loaded with tension, confusion and uncertainty, liberally peppered with humour and sweetness. Overall, an entertaining episode. But, it could have gone horribly awry had Rodney actually proposed to Katie Brown. I hope the closing scene means we've seen the last of that little misguided romance.

(Am I jealous? Petty? Okay, maybe a little. Yeah, probably. I can't help it; geeks win me over and make me all crazy & possessive.)

On the other hand, Ronon makes me so happy sometimes. He's charming and funny and likes to blow things up. If he and Keller end up an item, it'll be a very good thing. As a bonus, we got a little slice of who Keller is, and it's always nice to see a character I like get a little more development.

Finally, I loved that it was Zelenka who saved the day. He's a great character who too often is stuck in Rodney's shadow. Getting to watch him rescue the city was gratifying.

"Monster-of-the-week" episodes are never my favourites, but when SGA does them, they tend to be good, so I at least enjoy them. "Quarantine" wasn't the best ever, but all in all, it was good.

Ass-kicking aplenty

The premiere of The Sarah Connor Chronicles was certainly action-packed. It's hard to tell much about what the show will be like yet, but it's promising enough for me so far. Last night, I thought that perhaps if I were an overpaid network executive, I'd understand why Fox spread a two-hour premiere over two nights. Then I watched tonight's "second half" and realized it wasn't a two-part premiere at all - last night was simply the pilot, and tonight was the first regular episode. Of course, maybe if I were an overpaid network exec, I'd understand why they billed it the way they did. Anyway.

So, if Lena Headey (playing Sarah Connor) can maintain how cool I'm finding her thus far, I'm definitely going to like her. In fact, I'm happy with all the main actors. Without a doubt, it's nice to see Summer Glau kicking some ass as Cameron, the super awesome protector terminator. And I think Thomas Dekker is going to make a good young John.

I hope the show is not too heavy on the family drama, because that shit's just torture to me. On the other hand, one of the main characters is a teenage boy whose destiny it is to lead the human resistance against an AI apocalypse, so I'm willing to cut the show some slack if it gets a little emotionally dramatic on occasion.

Well, I'll plan on catching it next week, and we'll see how it holds up over the next few episodes.

I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue

In my last post, I said there'd be a new Stargate Atlantis on Thursday, which, of course, was wrong. Then I missed the episode entirely on Friday night (albeit, for a good reason), and now that I've seen it, I hardly have fuck-all to say.

Let's see...Teyla's pregnancy is proving to be pretty damn interesting. Talk about crazy hormonal shit! As tense as the encounter with the Wraith queen was, it was nothing compared to the mere fact of Teyla and her baby being able to control a Wraith queen in the first place. Holy shit.

I hope Todd the Wraith actually did make it out in a dart before his ship hit the cloning facility. Now I wonder where he'll go and if he'll end up back in Atlantis anytime soon. [Follow-up: On second viewing, I caught that Todd did take off in a dart, but whether he got away or was captured by the other hive ship was uncertain. The question still remains, will we see him again?] But, back to the cloning facility - wasn't that place cool! Did the Wraith have just the one, because they couldn't get their life-sucking paws on any more ZPMs, or are there others somewhere in the galaxy? [More follow-up: It sounded like Todd was pretty sure there was only one of these bases, so they probably won't run across another. That's a shame, because that place was pretty fuckin' awesome it its total creepiness.]

Only two eps in since the mid-season break, and I'm getting impatient for things that I know are coming (like the return of Michael the Wraith, and, for fuck's sake!, Carson Beckett), as well as answers to some questions. Also, they could at least throw us a bone about the Athosians. And last week's wacky return of a new incarnation of Weir is just dangling out there like a big, pink elephant.

I reiterate, what the hell is going on?

Fans confirm: SGA good

Yes, I've called awards shows mockable shit, but nonetheless, I think this is pretty cool: in a wankeriffic coup, Stargate Atlantis won the people's choice award for favourite scifi show. I even helped with that, casting my vote at least every day I remembered to go to the site. If you want to see the acceptance speech, featuring Jewel Staite (Keller), Joe Flanigan (Sheppard), David Hewlett (McKay) and Rachel Luttrell (Teyla), go here. (You'll have to scroll down to the right category, then select "view speech," then wait...and wait...and eventually it'll play.)

I wonder what they do with the little statue. Maybe the cast & crew pass it around for awhile, until it ends up in someone's attic, gathering dust between the trick trunk from Uncle Mort's old magic act and the dessicated remains of little Billy's third grade macaroni art masterpiece.

Good job, SGA! Also, new ep tomorrow night. Yay!

As if Rodney's mojo was ever in doubt

Like I don't have enough grey hair! If tonight's Stargate Atlantis is any indicator, the rest of this season is going to be a seriously insane ride, with a lot of time spent on pins & needles.

Really, there's just too much love to go around. A few helpful allies are one thing, but working with the Wraith and Larrin's people (the folks from "Travelers," who live in their ships and kidnap certain Lt. Colonels especially blessed with the ATA gene), and creating their own very cute and docile Replicator, just seems chaotic, not to mention crazy. I suppose that's why it actually worked. Well, at least the supergenius twins, McKay & Carter, were able to solve their little power outage issue. Of course, it's a damn shame they couldn't take a few of those ZPMs with them when McKay, Ronon and the Marines bugged out, since they didn't need them to overload after all.

It was no surprise that the Wraith didn't show up at the rendezvous point after the big battle. In fact, when the order to get the hell outa Dodge was relayed, I wondered what reason the Wraith would have for bothering with the post-battle shindig, so it was kind of nice to get confirmation that there was, in fact, no reason.

I actually got a little choked up when Ronon was all cute with Teyla, after she told him and Sheppard that she's pregnant. In an ep with so much - well, just so much, that interlude was a nice "human" moment.

And at the end, all I could do was wail, "What the fuck?!" I have no idea what to think about Replicator!Weir and the little project she's got going. In fact, I'm sorely tempted to seek out some spoilers. But I won't! Instead, I will wallow tensely in my own sweat as I await the next several episodes.

Ew. Let's just skip that visual.

Goddamn! What the hell is going on?!!

Exciting new television - The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Two Sundays from now (January 13), Fox airs the first part of the pilot for its new show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Part two airs the following night. The Sarah Connor Chronicles is set following the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and will show Sarah and her teenage son, John, trying to prevent the creation of Skynet. They're protected by a seriously advanced terminator model sent back from the future, and pursued by an FBI agent who's convinced Sarah's batshit crazy.

If it's done well, it sounds like it could be pretty cool. I'm excited, at least, about the cast. Sarah is played by Lena Headey, who was the awesomely hot queen in 300. I've only seen her in a couple other things, but in addition to being very easy on the eyes, she's also pretty good at the acting. I hope she can be as badass as Linda Hamilton was in T2. Thomas Dekker (Claire's friend, Zach, from the first season of Heroes) is playing John, the 15-year-old who grows up to lead the resistance. Joining them is Summer Glau (Firefly's River), who plays a terminator programmed to protect John. Hopefully, that means we'll get to see her kick some serious ass.

As cool as it looks, I'm hoping it's not too cool for Fox, the same network that brought us - and prematurely took away - Firefly in 2002. But, it's early for me to be fretting about that; let the fretting wait until a few episodes have aired and I decide whether or not I like it.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles pilot part one, Sunday, January 13, 8p EST, on Fox.

Way to kick off the new year

The second half of Stargate Atlantis' season four begins Friday and, from what the commercials tease us with, it oughta be pretty damn exciting. Of course, the Wraith and the Replicators will be going at each other, with the unfortunate humans caught up in things. But much cooler than that is the return of two excellent characters, one of whom has been sorely missed. There's the very awesome and twisted Wraith, Michael. Last time we saw him, he was working a gig as an outcast mad scientist, in s3's "Vengeance," and I'm very psyched to see his return.

And then there's Carson Beckett. Holy cats! Now, Carson's dead; we watched him 'splode in s3's "Sunday" (some of us cried), saw his friends take his body back to Earth, and we've spent the first half of s4 adjusting to a new CMO. But there he is in the commercials, looking all, well, all alive! My guess is that this Carson (if he's real at all and not some hallucination or equally not-there trickery) has a shitload of nanites crawling around inside him. He's not exactly returned from the dead, but close to it. At this point, I'll take any Carson I can get, so regardless of how he's there, I'm just glad he's there. And when we find out he's a Replicator plant bent on the destruction of all the humans in Atlantis, then I'll be sad.

The first new ep airs this Friday, 10p EST, on the SciFi Channel. As a prelude, SciFi is showing the last three eps of s2 (for background on Michael), plus all of the first half of s4, starting at 8a.

Oh, hey, happy new year, btw!