TVSquad

One of the pioneers on the technical side of the movie and TV industry has died. Stan Winston did makeup and special effects for several TV shows and TV movies over the years, including Amazing Stories, Roots, Manimal, Get Christie Love, and Gargoyles, as well as dozens of classic movies, including Iron Man, all three Terminator films, Edward Scissorhands, The Thing, Pearl Harbor, Batman Returns, The Wiz, Predator, Jurassic Park III, The Relic, Congo, Aliens, Invaders From Mars, Leviathan, Galaxy Quest, and many others. He also directed several movies, including Pumpkinhead and Ghosts, which he also wrote. He also created the costumes for the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. Winston won several Oscars and other awards for his work.

Winston died of cancer in Los Angeles last night at age 62. He had battled multiple myeloma for several years and died at his home. At the time of his death he was working on the next Terminator sequel, Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins.

That was one of the many insights that NBC head Jeff Zucker had on Charlie Rose last night.

Charlie wanted to know what the top five shows in the ratings were, and while Zucker mentioned shows like Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and House, he also included Heroes in that bunch. He named Heroes and four other shows and said "those are the top five." Now, I love Heroes as much as the next person, but I don't really remember it being in the top five that much (if at all). Top ten or twenty? Sometimes I guess, but not top five.

I don't know if this is good news or bad... David E. Kelley may be checking out of Life on Mars, the ABC pilot based on the hit BBC crime/time travel drama. According to Variety, the prolific Mr. Kelley -- Boston Legal, L.A. Law, Picket Fences, Ally MacBeal, The Practice, Chicago Hope, etc. -- is unhappy with the financial arrangements and if things aren't worked out, he's going to move on.

Life on Mars was a terrific show. The UK version has played on BBC America, starring John Simm and Philip Glenister. Following the British model, the series lasted just two years -- 16 episodes total. In the ABC pilot, which Thomas Schlamme directed, Jason O'Mara (Men in Trees) is playing Simm's role, Sam; Colm Meaney (Star Trek: The Next Generation) is Gene. Kelley wrote the American variation on the story of Sam Tyler, a police detective in present day who awakens from a car crash to find he's living in 1973. Has he really gone back in time or is it all in his head?

Okay, I'm finally back from the New York Comic-Con and I still smell like the Javits Convention Center. Fandom seeps into the deepest layers of one's skin and take at least a few weeks to wash out. It's a scientific fact.

The first panel I attended wasn't even TV-related. Worrying that the Battlestar Galactica room would fill before I could even step into the line, I sat through the preceding panel for Wall-E and Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian to guarantee a seat. As it turns out, the theater is absolutely huge and two big screens were on either side of the stage, so my worry was kind of pointless. I was reminded of what I already knew: Wall-E looks insanely cute, Chronicles of Narnia has a greasy-haired new guy and the Jesus lion again. However, this is when I began to play a game that lasted throughout the entire weekend: Analyze the differing levels of scary devotion throughout various fanbases!

Don't you just hate it when you get hooked on a show and it's yanked unceremoniously off the air, leaving you hanging into infinity? Yeah, me, too. Such was the case with Surface, an alien-sea-monster-inspired drama that aired on NBC during the 2005-2006 season.

The series starred the soulful Lake Bell as Laura Daughtery, a marine biologist who encounters a strange creature on the ocean floor. She writes up her report, only to have it confiscated by the government in the name of national security.

Meanwhile, nerdy teen Miles (Carter Jenkins, whom I predict has a huge career ahead of him, though not if he keeps signing on for shows like the short-lived Viva Laughlin) stumbles across a strange egg on the beach and takes it home. Imagine his surprise when out hatches a weird amphibious creature that emits an even weirder electrical current.

A fellow named Simon White is selling his Tardis on eBay. Why? Jesus.

Okay, maybe that's not the best way to put it. According to White, he has been a hardcore Who fan for most of his life, going as far as spending years and years building a K-9, cyberman and Tardis in addition to collecting figurines. After a lot of troubles with bipolar disorder and alcoholism in his adult years, he found God and ceased his self-destructive ways. Despite claiming that his fandom was the only thing holding him together in his rough times, White is now dumping his Who love and toys, calling it a symbol of the "greatest lie that Satan ever told." He'll be selling his entire collection of goodies, worth an estimated £7000, in magazines and on eBay.

Last night on BBC One in the UK, the Corporation's annual charity telethon, 'Children in Need' raised £19million for underpriviledged kids around the country.

However, the highlight of the evening was a short Doctor Who segment, filmed specially for the telethon (as has become a tradition every year at this time), which bridged the final episode of season four three, 'Last of the Time Lords' and the forthcoming Christmas Special, 'Voyage of the Damned'.

And it was a fantastic eight-minute segment of television, written by Steven Moffat, who also scripted the brilliant 'Blink' in season three, and featured none other than Peter Davidson, the fifth Doctor, playing the earlier version of himself alongside his modern-day counterpart, David Tennant.

Rich told you a year ago about ABC's new anthology series Masters of Science Fiction. It starts on Saturday, August 4 at 8pm. This is great news. We need an anthology series like this, even if it's just a series of specials and not a permanent weekly show.

There will be four episodes altogether, at least for this first go around. I'm sure ABC will make more if there's an audience for it. There are some great names involved, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Keith will be reviewing the show starting August 4. Full schedule and details after the jump.

(S02E03) Everything starts off great for Jack... Until the lights go out and his ex-wife appears in the shadows like some sort of evil pop up vampire rabbit. Well, not so much rabbity, but you get the idea.

I recently saw an ad on the Sci-Fi Channel promoting the US debut of Derren Brown's Mind Control, which was his first show from 2000. A few years ago, a friend of mine sent me a clip of the zombie video game stunt Derren pulled, and I was immediately captivated.

Soon after, I had watched every single episode of Mind Control and Trick of the Mind online. Sure, I didn't completely believe everything I saw, but the show was a refreshing change from the likes of Criss Angel and David Blaine. Brown wasn't striving for the same "magician as rock star" pretentiousness, priding himself mainly on his use of psychology and showmanship. The show is slick and super-cool, so I recommend it to anyone who has a fascination with things like the art of mind manipulation and subliminal messaging.

(S03E13) It almost seems inevitable that a series finale doesn't quite live up to everyone's expectations, with a few minor exceptions (such as the recent series finale of Lost).

I eagerly anticipated the series finale of Heroes, and while I was significantly entertained enough to have enjoyed myself, I felt kind of cheated when it was revealed that Syler was probably not dead after all.

I felt the same way with this last part of the current Doctor Who series; it was great to watch, but the inevitable cop-out at the end left me feeling a little bit like I'd been pick-pocketed.

Warning: Spoilers after the jump.

(S03E04 / S03E05) There's nothing like a good villain, especially one that won't just lie down and die.

The Cylons, the Borg, Moriarty and Blofeld -- they're what make our heroes tick, and without them, any classic fiction formula would be miserably incomplete.

And so it is with Doctor Who and his timeless nemeses, the Daleks.

(S03E03) It's still early stages in the new series of Doctor Who, so it's understandable when the writers re-visit old story arcs, and introduce new viewers to old themes.

It was like that this week, and whilst it wasn't a high-ranking episode in terms of story, it was still a good bit of fun.

And, as with previous weeks in the recent series, when Martha learned something new about the enigmatic time-traveller, so did we.

Everyone's favorite swear words get the sci-fi treatment on television so they can sidestep around the censors. On Farscape we had "frell," Battlestar Galactica has "frack," and Firefly gave us a whole slew of Chinese swear words like "tzae gao" and "ta ma de." Bilngual swearing, FTW! You know a sci-fi swearism has reached the mainstream when it's being used by a character in Scott Adams' "Dilbert" strip.

Although, come to think of it ... I'm not even sure if Captain Kirk ever said "damn." One thing is for sure, I'd really like to see Spock bust out the f-word. Just once. You know he got fed up with McCoy at some point, broke all of his Vulcan training and cold logic and just let him have it. Plus, while we're on this rant, why didn't anyone ever tell Doctor Smith to shut the f*ck up on Lost in Space? The guy earned it, for sure.

Now we can get onto the real conspiracy: is Dilbert a Cylon? Maybe he's the only human left, and everyone around him is a Cylon. We may never know the true story.

In an utterly brilliant bit of casting news, George Takei, Star Trek's Captain Sulu, will be playing Hiro Nakamura's father on NBC's Heroes. You can expect Hiro's father to be showing up stateside to bring his super son back to Japan. If you've been watching the series, you know that won't go over too well considering that Hiro is on a mission to save New York City from imploding in five weeks, which - counting reruns - should be just in time for sweeps.

Masi Oka, who plays space-and-time-continuum-bending Hiro, told TV Guide, "I just hope I get to say, 'Dad! Sulu is my hero, not you!' The sci-fi fans would love it." I'm not even a huge sci-fi fan, and I love it. What else can you say? George Takei's awesomeness cannot be contained.

Related:
George Takei on Howard Stern, new Trek and working with Shatner
George Takei: The TV Squad interview