Stargate Universe is over. (Sadness.)

Syfy aired the show’s final episode on Monday (read my recap for AOL TV), and its pretty clear that the franchise won’t be bouncing back for at least a few years. It’s a shame, since SGU was only starting to find its legs as a compelling, ambitious, arc-driven sci-fi drama, and Stargate was one of the most consistently entertaining sci-fi brands of the last decade. Here’s hoping it’ll return some day in some form, and when it does, I hope I’ll be here to write about it again.

I interviewed Stargate Universe co-creator Brad Wright and star David Blue about the series finale for a recent AOL TV feature. Below you’ll find text from a follow-up email interview I conducted with Wright about the show. The interview features Wright’s answers to specific questions about the finale that I didn’t use for the AOL feature in order to avoid giving away spoilers. Enjoy, Stargate nerds:

Me: The final episode, to me, played like a series finale, thematically and emotionally. Is that what you were going for when you came up with this story and shot the episode?

Brad Wright: Actually we wanted it to be both. I had pitched the idea of putting the crew into suspended animation — with someone having to stay behind because one pod didn’t work — because I thought it made for an interesting reset of the earth side of things. A three year time cut would have been interesting. The story of the person that was going to be left behind was also a great opener for season three. But when we saw the Tuesday night ratings on Syfy we knew it might be the end. By having our leads come together for one last meal before going off into the void, we got a chance to see them as a team in the way we were always working toward. And by making the person left behind Eli, it brought the series full circle. Those two elements make it feel like a finale.

What was the most interesting or exciting aspect of this finale for you as a creator and as a viewer?

We all went down to watch the dinner scene. It was the last thing we shot main unit.    Nobody on the crew or in the cast wanted it to be the end. But we knew if it was, it was a fitting end. And I think the final shots of the series are very moving.

We see the main crew members come together like a family in the finale. Was it always the plan to build to that?

Yes. It was always the plan for the wrong people to become the right people.

How would the characters and their relationships have grown and changed in the third season?

I don’t want to say where we were going to go with the story. It didn’t happen, so the show is what it is now. I think a pretty decent two seasons of television.

Earlier, we talked about your idea for a movie that would combine elements from all three Stargate shows. Why did you think that would be the way to go to continue this story?

I intended to incorporate elements from both SG-1 and Atlantis to make it a “Stargate” movie and not just a “Universe” movie. The combination of elements also happened to be the only way I could think of compressing what was intended to be a longer series arc into one movie.

How do you feel when you look back on the accomplishment of producing 15 years of Stargate?

I feel proud. But I’d by lying if I didn’t say it’s a shame SGU was canceled.   It deserved at least a final season, and where we were going with the story was very cool. Shepherding the final episodes through the post production process, sitting in mixes, etc, I kept thinking to myself “this show got canceled?” But business is business. And as I said to our crew members as we said our final goodbyes recently… “Time to start typing something else.”

This week’s episode of No Ordinary Family expanded the Powells’ scope of trouble as viewers were introduced to the mysterious “Ms. X,” played by Lucy Lawless.

Lawless was just as menacing here as she was as the manipulative Lucretia in Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Perhaps she is the one Joshua mentioned last week as “the person Dr. King must answer to?” Whatever her plans, she wasted little time putting them into motion with her own super-powered recruit.

Sophie Adler was a black widow personified. Her chemically enhanced pheromone seduces men into doing whatever she wants – perfect since Ms. X tasked her with building a bomb to blow up Global Tech’s secret lab. It took no time at all before George and Jim were under her spell and stealing the drugstore chemicals needed for the explosive. Then again, with beautiful Battlestar Galactica alum Tricia Helfer playing Sophie, who needs pheromones? I probably would’ve fallen for her tricks too, but nothing beats a man with super strength to do your bidding – even if he is married.

Of course, Stephanie had something to say about that, but first she dealt with her own ethical dilemma. I loved the unfolding emotional trap that came with assisting Dr. King in order to gain his trust and find out how to defeat him. She was complicit in unleashing his dangerous superhumans upon the world: When she injected Lucas Winick, a man she later discovers to be a death row inmate, with her super-serum, it gave him a version of Wolverine’s retractable claws.

A show that was once characterized as nothing more than a live-action Incredibles is now attempting to say something bigger. In the season’s concluding episodes, Stephanie’s family will now have to wrestle with the consequences of her creation. This is where the theme of the season is found: The exploration of superpowers as both a blessing and a curse.
It wasn’t until Jim realized the blessings of his marriage to Steph that he was able to break Sophie’s spell…but this was where the episode began to wane. In Jim’s case, like a fairytale, the spell could only be broken with his wife’s kiss. Yet George seemed able to snap out of the trance by getting away from Sophie – it didn’t seem fair or believable.

Daphne finally learned that she can’t keep manipulating people’s thoughts to suit her will, because eventually those old thoughts will come back again and again. Her entire storyline this week was one big punch line, since no matter how many times she changed his mind, Chris couldn’t stop bringing up this crazy notion that her family had superpowers, leading her to tell him the truth.

What happened to the Wolverine clone that Stephanie helped to create? He became Ms. X’s latest minion. He was given the job of killing Sophie, since she had failed to complete her mission. Next, watch out for former Six Feet Under cast member Eric Balfour helping to wrap up this season of NOF.

Quotables & Observations

•    Lucas Winick is named after comic book artist and former Real World star Judd Winick.

•    George: Girl smells like angel food cake, but she tastes like French toast. Jim: She sounds… fattening

•    Jim: Hey, does this guy look familiar to you? George: No, but he’s a hell of a good-looking guy. What? I’m secure enough in my masculinity to recognize a good-looking guy when I see one.

•    Stephanie: Don’t do this. Whatever you feel for Sophie, it’s not real. You and me—we’re real. Eighteen years of candlelit dinners…backyard football games, arguing over shelving units…seeing your daughter born…and JJ’s first stitches…remember? I was so scared and you held my hand and you said everything was going to be OK, and I believed you. It’s like you said. We fit. This is real.

•    Stephanie: You don’t think she’s a super do you? George: It would explain why Jim is behaving like Charlie Sheen.

•    George: I can prosecute this from my Lay-Z-Boy.

•    Stephanie: Speaking of friends with boundary issues. Jim: Hello, George.

Tonight’s episode of The Big Bang Theory had a lot of callbacks and contained the largest number of regular supporting characters to appear since the series began. We got Priya, Amy, Bernadette, Zack, Stuart and Barry Kripke. We even got a LeVar Burton cameo at the end. 

Sheldon got a lesson in humility tonight when he learned the group of friends was Leonard-centric. It’s a pity it won’t last, but Leonard, Raj and Howard showed a little humanity tonight by realizing that they missed Sheldon’s presence. I doubt he could find that with any other group of people.

It seems that Howard and Bernadette are no longer together given the events of last week. If I had to make a guess, given the “dream sequence” that Raj had about her a few episodes ago, it’s likely that the two of them will start dating and cause a rift between Raj and Howard.

As for Penny, further evidence of her continuing feelings for Leonard mount even as Leonard is dating Priya. Priya’s job has her constantly moving, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she was out of the picture before the end of the season.

It also wouldn’t surprise me to learn that Amy Farrah Fowler is bisexual (from her pining for Zack in a previous episode, you know she at least fancies men). She certainly makes enough vague passes at Penny to make one wonder.

It says something about Sheldon’s state of mind when he’s willing to invite Barry Kripke to a get-together. Kripke’s lisp is less funny with every episode; I wish they never introduced that aspect of his character.

Overall, this was one of the season’s better episodes with some familiar faces and finally a little character development. Hopefully this trend will continue in the future.

Quotables/Episode Highlights:

·         Sheldon:  “We could also stop using the letter ‘m’, but I think that idea is isguided and oronic.”

·         Sheldon:  “Oh look.  It’s Harry Potter and 98% of the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

·         Sheldon:  “Sadly, Penny.  This night I am the Dark Knight wandering these mean streets alone.  Windbreaker for my cape and stern expression for my cowl.”

·         Sheldon:  “Raj put on reggae music and his sister took off her shoes.  It was like the last days of Caligula.”

·         Penny:  “Here you go.  Just like recovering alcoholics drink in the Caribbean.”

·         Amy:  “I know you’re devastated that you’re ex-boyfriend found an exciting new lover with flawless, camel-colored skin.”

·         Barry Kripke:  “One more question…” 
 Sheldon:  “Yes, you must be present (for the raffle) to win.”

·         Amy:  “If you had let me bring the chloroform we wouldn’t have had to put up with all this jibber-jabber.”

·         LeVar Burton:  “I am so done with Twitter.”

Nearing the end of the season, No Ordinary Family is moving away from its ‘villain of the week’ themes and toward resolving its season-long story arcs. As the Powells and their friends face bigger and bigger revelations each week, everything that was set up earlier in the season is gradually paying off.

In ‘No Ordinary Proposal’, Joshua continued to shed his past as The Watcher by proposing to his lady love, Katie – but the other shoe soon dropped…hard. To be with Katie, Joshua had withdrawn his services as Dr. King’s familial errand boy, and flatly refused to do any more of his evil bidding. Using Joshua’s vulnerable relationship as his best leverage, Dr. King tried to lure Josh back into the fold of their faux family by outing him as a memory modifier. Josh’s relationship with Katie — while genuine – always did look like a son’s rebellion against a father, so this week’s confirmation that Dr. King and Joshua are at least life-saving father and chemically-altered adopted son was hardly surprising.

As usual, I enjoyed watching Stephen Collins portray sinister machinations masquerading as safety concern. King’s fatherly understanding of Joshua’s abilities keeps us guessing whose interest King is really representing – the public’s or his own. The only sure thing is next week’s episode is titled, ‘No Ordinary Love,’ so I’ll bet we’ll see Katie and Josh back together sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately for the Powells, King’s puppet strings are tied to more than just Josh. We found out that Mr. Litchfield, (Jason Antoon) J.J.’s blackmailing science teacher, is also on the take. How should we feel about this? I liked him better as just a regular jerk. Thanks to his help, King now knows all the powers of each and every member of the Powell family, but does everything need to be so conspiratorial?

Another sign of NOF’s maturity came when Daphne’s boyfriend Chris, a former minor character, had to deal with misused superpowers. In keeping with his trajectory of doing bad things for good reasons, he stole Stephanie’s serum and used it to cure his abusive father’s spinal cord injury. Impressively, the writers resisted the stereotype and didn’t change his dad’s criminal ways, but, although they stuck to the once-a-douche-always-a-douche philosophy, pushing his own son through a window was a little over the top. On the other side of this storyline, Jim Powell had to deal with the unintended consequences of heroism, an issue comic books didn’t start exploring until the mid-’80s – yet NOF is brave enough to tackle it here in the first season: Jim’s deflected bullet not only didn’t kill its unwitting victim, but the shot actually led doctors to a tumor that would have otherwise gone undiscovered. Did Jim’s actions really deserve to be so rewarded by such an unlikely outcome?

Quotables:

•    Katie: Holy Frak!

•    Katie: Okay, so I always had a crush on Wolverine, but I never thought about what would happen if I actually married Wolverine and if we had little wolvie babies. I mean, if we had kids, do you think they would have superpowers? Because the terrible twos would be much terribler with telekinesis.

•    Stephanie: I’d like to throw you an engagement party. It’s what Batman would do for Robin.
Katie: Aw, Steph, you’re the best. But I’m pretty sure that Robin is a confirmed bachelor.

Stephanie: Huh?

Katie: If you know what I mean.

•    Katie: At the risk of being overly allegorical, with or without your powers, you make my cardiac organ levitate.

No Ordinary Family finally offered some organization, tight plotting and even more compelling storytelling here. And I’m happy to report that nobody received the ‘character-they-didn’t-know-what-to-do-with’ award this week. I’ve complained before about the series stumbling through without ever unifying its diverging plot strands in a satisfying way, but ‘No Ordinary Detention’ was different. It was an almost-perfect hour of television.
 
Every member of the Powell family had to deal with some kind of detainment: Jim was held inside the precinct with a Die Hard-style hostage-taker; the kids traded secrets during detention Truth or Dare; Stephanie and Katie were trapped in the lab by the shape-shifting Victoria Morrow. Confined settings led to revealed secrets, making this one of the most exciting NOF eps yet.

‘Joshua’ permanently dropped his evildoer side to defend his love for Katie, delivering the one key moment we see in every great superhero love story — the moment the hero lets love win and reveals his powers/identity. It happened for Spider-Man and Mary Jane; it happened for Superman and Lois Lane, and now it was ‘Joshua’ and Katie’s turn. But why wasn’t she more curious about the seemingly dead Victoria Morrow? As the show’s resident comic-book geek, Katie should’ve figured out that the entire Global Tech Corporation might be involved in this whole superpowers thing. Am I being too picky? After all, Joshua floating a flower into Katie’s hand became this ep’s Jerry Maguire moment.

The kids were at the center of the ep’s strongest storyline, which (we can hope) signals an end to the writers’ constant struggle to give J.J. and Daphne anything interesting to do. They not only served us the No Ordinary Family version of The Breakfast Club, but cranked it up to eleven by confining both Daphne and J.J. in detention with their crushes, and then mixing in a game of Truth or Dare: a recipe worthy of the best teen dramas.

Last week’s bad boy with the heart of gold, Chris Minor, (Luke Kleintank) wasn’t so disposable after all. He’s back, and shaping-up to be Daphne’s new love interest…at least until the end of the season, according to IMDB.

As for J.J., I knew that Natalie girl (Katelyn Tarver) had issues. He was bending over backwards for her even before he made it snow in the classroom and told her to believe in the impossible. What kind of girl dumps a guy after he recreates Miracle on 34th St. right in front of her? I’m predicting that Natalie will realize the error of her ways right at about the same time J.J. will get sick of dating Bailey, (Katrina Begin) the “popular girl“. I might seem like some middle-aged woman who’s raving about her favorite soap opera, but the fact I’m so invested in this story says something about the quality of the episode.

It was also loads of fun watching Jim “pull off a John McClane,” as George put it, and take on those fugitives at the precinct. I loved that his story was just a straight action movie, but he had to reveal his powers again, and he can’t be this lucky forever.

Quotes & Observations:

• According to IMDB, both Austin Davies’ henchman were called Waid & Quesada, after comic writer Mark Waid and former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada.

• Chris: “So you didn’t tell anyone any secrets today.”
  Daphne: “My secret is…I like you.”
  Chris: “That’s a good secret.”

• George: “Bruce Willis never would have gotten out of there if it hadn’t been for that black dude. Let me be your black dude.”

• George: “Look man I had a venti latte before you guys went all Black Hawk Down in here and I think the milk was off. I’ve got a nervous stomach without all of the guns being pointed at me. So I’ve gotta go, and I’ve gotta go bad. Speaking as your attorney, I strongly advise you against preventing a man from doing his business.

• Katie: “Victoria is the VP of Human Resources.”
  Joshua: “Human resources? That’s interesting.”

Today is Buffy Summers’ 30th birthday! It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 14 years since Buffy and friends started battling Sunnydale’s endless parade of nasty beasties.

Celebrate Buffy’s big 3-0 by picking up the final issue of Joss Whedon’s Buffy Season 8, in stores today, and by clicking on the several Buffy birthday-related links and videos we’ve posted below. Se ya at the Bronze …

List of comic shops hosting special Buffy birthday parties

Special sneak preview of Buffy: Season 8 No. 40, which hits stores today (Dark Horse)

Joss Whedon talks about the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (EW)

TV DeathRay’s recent Buffy features:

‘Slayers: Every one of us’: Looking back on the Buffy finale

Confessions of a Buffy-aholic!

More Buffy birthday links:

Buffy’s not-so-happy Birthdays (TV Squad)

Oxygen presents a special Buffy marathon, starting Jan. 22 (Futon Critic)

Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Gellar to star in new pilot from Supernatural writers (AICN)

Buffy defeats Sunnydale’s first big bad, The Master:

We’ll continue the celebration by posting more Buffy videos later today.

Syfy’s new spin on ‘Being Human’ isn’t straying too far from the original cult BBC series … yet. The setup — a vampire and a werewolf share an apartment with a ghost — hasn’t changed, and, like the original show, the new version follows the three supernatural twentysomethings as they attempt to live “normal” human lives.

Several scenes of this new pilot played like they were carried over from the the UK version’s first episode, but with new actors taking on the lead roles. But that won’t be the case for future outings; word is that ‘Bieng Human’ U.S. will start to stray from the events of the original series later this season.

Read the rest @ TV Squad.

Rod Sterling on Science Fiction.

Pioneers of Television: Science Fiction
Tuesday January 18th 8pm
PBS

Fringe moves to a new night for its mid-season premiere this Friday, Jan. 21, and time will tell whether it proves to be a death slot. I really hope the show prevails, because I continue to love it, even though I found the universe-jumping last fall to be a bit choppy. The weeks-long hiatus during the World Series didn’t help either.

Friday’s episode, ‘The Firefly,’ finds The Observers moving beyond their watchful role and actually doing something. Oh let’s not mince words – they’re Badass Observers! They fight! They shoot! They look menacing! And they’re … knitting a web?

“The Observers are knitting a matrix, a web that the team is struggling to understand,” says director Charles Beeson. The mysterious ones also have a hand in bringing Roscoe Joyce, a.k.a. Christopher Lloyd, into a Back to the Future type storyline.  

But even more intriguing is how episode nine, ‘Marionette,’ ended, with an Observer looking at Walter and Peter from a distance and saying this into a (probably inter-universal) phone: “He is still alive.” The question is, which “he” is the Observer talking about?

If it’s Walter, that would certainly make things easier for Walternate to carry out whatever dastardly plan he’s got percolating in his stern brain. On the other hand, we know that Peter is the missing link that can put the machine together, so there may be a reason for him to get taken out of the equation. Either one would be a devastating loss.

The other big question is how will Olivia move forward after dealing with Faux-Livia taking over her life, her work, and her love? She told Astrid she’s OK with it, but then again, she had that little breakdown moment where she started grabbing all the clothes out of her closet and dissolving into a sniveling mess. We’ll see how that goes. I’m still pulling for her and Peter.

In the meantime, here’s a little sneak peek of ‘The Firefly,’ which, not surprisingly, features Walter with his pants down. Please watch it on Friday and tell all of your friends. I really want the show to continue on to season four.

Portlandia is here! I’ve been looking forward to watching Fred Armisen’s new sketch show ever since IFC picked it up almost a year ago. Armisen co-stars with Sleater-Kinney’s Carey Brownstein in the six-episode series that, as far as I can tell, exists to mock the more absurd aspects of Portland, Oregon subculture.

The show premieres on IFC on Friday, Jan. 21, but you can stream the first episode now on IFC, Hulu or embedded after the jump. I’ll be recapping the show for TV Squad this year, so head there next Saturday for the first post.