TVSquad

We here at TV Squad are sometimes privy to top secret industry information (information if revealed in public would result in our spontaneous beheading). Other times, we're just given the press release.

That being said, the second season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will begin on Monday, September 8th at 8 p.m. I'll wait while you run to the DVR to set the record time. Fox is also planning to run a season one marathon leading up to the premiere (the DVD is set for release on August 19th).

Returning actors include Lena Headey, Summer Glau, Thomas Dekker, Richard T. Jones and Brian Austin Green. New cast members include Shirley Manson, who plays a tech company CEO, and Leven Rambin as a possible love interest for John Connor.

Season one of the show had to be cut short due to the writer's strike (and had a somewhat unsatisfying cliffhanger), but there were some real gems of episodes. I'm looking forward to season two.

It's a rare thing when one of the major networks takes up an hour of its schedule almost every single night of the week to air the same show, but that's exactly what FOX is going to do this August.

The network is going to run a marathon of the first season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles starting on Sunday, August 10 at 9pm. Then the other episodes from the first season, in order, will air at 9pm on August 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 24. The two-hour second season premiere then airs on September 8 at 8pm.

If you were a fan of FOX's mid-season drama The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and you were wondering if the show was going to come back or not, the following information should give you a bit of relief. Or, at least a bit of hope as to the future of the series given FOX's erratic pattern of pickups and renewals.

According to Kristin over at E! Online, the sci-fi series that takes place in the universe of the Terminator movies (even though some die-hard fans scoff at it), the show will be coming back for a second season in the fall. That information comes from Thomas Dekker, who portrays the young John Connor on that program. Dekker was reported to say that Chronicles' producers are currently pitching second-season stories to the network at this time. In addition to this tidbit of information, unnamed sources are saying that production for the show will resume in mid- to late-June.

Sometimes I think celebrities should just keep some comments to themselves when they leave a TV show.

Thomas Dekker, who played Zach during the first season of Heroes and now plays John Connor on The Sarah Connor Chronicles, tells Life & Style that he thinks the relationship between 30 year-old Heroes star Milo Ventimiglia and 18 year-old Hayden Panettiere is "creepy." He says that the two dating would be like him dating a 12 year-old.

One of the better benefits of this job is that I can sometimes see television shows in advance of their premiere. This time around I was given an advance DVD of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which contained the first two episodes ("Pilot" and "Gnothi Seauton"). I'm a fan of the franchise, although admittedly I wasn't that big a fan of Terminator 3.

This show is done by the same company that was behind Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and the upcoming Terminator 4. It was originally to be titled The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I guess the creators were concerned that nobody would recognize the franchise without the word "Terminator". Such title ambiguity did not hurt Smallville, but I digress.

TV Squad already did a script review of the pilot, but what follows is a review of the finished product.

Major spoilers after the jump...

FOX is giving The CW pages a run for their money -- the network's hired a bunch of, dare I say it, "Fox-y" microphone runners for the tour.

Like yesterday, they all dress in a theme of whatever panel is going on. On Sunday, they were TV reporters for Back to You; today, they're in commando fatigues for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. You get the idea.

One of pages, Cal, who used to be a cashier (and aspiring actor) at my local health food store, says hi during a break. I got a feeling back then that I'd end up seeing him at TCA one day, but I always thought he'd be on a panel for a new series.

The Heroes controversy continues.

It has been reported that Thomas Dekker (who played Zach) and his management didn't want him to play a gay character, and that's why the character and the actor suddenly disappeared from the show. But now Dekker has said on his web site (horribly designed, and I can't find the posting) that it's absolutely untrue.

In fact, Dekker says that he has played a gay character three other times in his career, as a younger teen, and would have done it again. He says his leaving the show had nothing to do with the story arc for Zach, though he doesn't really get into why he did leave the show.

Producer Bryan Fuller said in an interview last month that Dekker left because the character was gay and they were going to explore that plot further in later episodes.

In an interview with Popgurls.com, Heroes producer Bryan Fuller discloses that, yes, the character of Zach on the show was indeed gay and they were going to follow the story through, but then negotiations with the actor's (Thomas Dekker) management got "ugly."

Fuller says that Zach was going to come out on the show and actually help Claire "come out" about her superpower, but then reps for Dekker said that they didn't want to make the character gay because it might hurt his chances of getting the role of John Connor in the new series The Sarah Connor Chronicles. So they took out a line that would have said that Zach was gay and never really got into it again, though in everyone's mind the character was still gay. Fuller, gay himself, says that he was hurt and insulted by the entire "debacle."

They had whole episodes revolving around Zach planned, but then his reps pulled him from the show completely.

Yesterday we told you about the controversy surrounding the change that NBC was making to the character of Zach, Claire's friend on Heroes that seemed to be gay. Now, creator Tim Kring has sent an e-mail to the web site that posted a long piece about the controversy that we linked to yesterday.

You can read his full e-mail at the link above, but it seems that he's saying that they did try to make the character gay, but that they didn't want to pursue that any further after some discussions with NBC execs. He says it was "too complicated behind the scenes to push this issue further," which I think is interesting. Some of the comments after the article show that some people are ticked off at this decision, especially if they have some plot where Zach's sexual orientation is changed because of the memory wipe he experienced in the fall finale. I can't imagine that happening. It's my guess that they'll just simply not mention anything he has said to Claire before or any other hints to Zach being gay and just leave it at that.

It's hard to say how long Thomas Dekker will stay with the show, since he has signed on to play John Connor in the Terminator series next fall.

[via TV Tattle]

Here's an interesting little tidbit from the world of Heroes: it looks like NBC has changed their mind about Zach.

It certainly looked to fans like Zach (Thomas Dekker) was gay, for four reasons: one, when Claire's nasty cheerleader friend made a remark about Zach, he said something to Claire along the lines of "I'm comfortable with who I am." Two, NBC's recap of that episode says he is. Three, the character's MySpace page lists his orientation as "not sure." And four, creator Tim Kring talked about the character being gay (and what happened with an NBC exec) in this interview.

So people are wondering: did NBC change the orientation of the character? Did Dekker? Did the writers change it? Here I was going to say "oh, it doesn't really matter if he's straight or gay," and if this was real life it wouldn't, but if someone actually changed his orientation for some reason (or reasons) on a TV show, that's worth talking about.

[via Pop Candy]