I'm eagerly anticipating Zachary Quinto's return to Heroes as Sylar after watching Star Trek. Now, producer Tim Kring is getting my hopes up for the show's fourth season, which he says will explore some classic and intriguing superhero themes.
Kring recently revealed some details about the show's upcoming plots and themes in his latest "Heroes All Access" newsletter. We have the scoop on what Claire, Peter, Nathan/Sylar and HRG will be up to when the show returns to NBC in the fall.
(S34E22) Justin Timberlake returned for his third turn as host and it was tough not to keep expectations pretty high. I mean, if an vengeful warlock were to suddenly put a crippling curse on his music career (like they do), Timberlake could definitely fall back on being a professional SNL host. Yes, this would become a real profession, just for him.
As usual, some sketches fell a bit flat, but Timberlake's over-confident, hammy swagger made things a little more interesting. This particular episode also gave us another legendary musical Digital Short with Timberlake and Andy Samberg and a couple of all-around MILFs. It's tough to top a surprise appearance by Leonard effin' Nimoy, but "Motherlover" was certainly the highlight of the evening. Here are some other notable video moments!
I'm not the kind of person who normally resorts to pumping something full of hype, but if you are reading this and haven't seen the new big-screen adaptation of Star Trek, you need to be tied to something heavy so that "certain" people can know your whereabouts at all times.
J.J. Abrams' new vision of TV's original Star Trek has everything you expect from a summer movie flick that costs $150 million to make and $8.25 a ticket: laughs, big explosions, smokin' hot alien babes who spend the majority of their screen time in skimpy underwear.
Like a lot of Star Trek and classic TV fans, I'll be in line for the new movie when it opens tomorrow (actually, tonight in many cities - check your local listings, as they say). Leonard Nimoy is in it (no, that's not a spoiler), and this morning he sat down to talk with Al Roker on Today (video also here). Roker says that Nimoy put the ears on for the first time in 18 years. Wait, 18 years? That can't be right. I feel old.
Star Trek's new Spock isn't ready to abandon TV just yet. Zachary Quinto is slated to return for season four of Heroes.
We're still not sure if Quinto will return as a full cast member or a recurring player on the show, but he will be back.
Click through for minor spoilers for the next season of Heroes, plus major spoilers for last week's season finale (which is more than a week old so every Heroes fan on Earth should have watched it already!)
(S03E25) In my early look at this finale, I laid a pretty broad hint as to the major twist at the end of this volume, and I was impressed with some of the deductive abilities of our readers. And the fact that one of you got it exactly right. Now that we've all seen the final cut of the closing chapter of the "Fugitives" volume of Heroes, we can really look back at it and see how we think things have gone.
What was needed was to wipe the slate clean, resolve as many of the dangling plot threads as possible, and establish a tabula rasa for "Volume Five." Or as much of one as we can this far into a series. After all, these last two volumes have left some pretty sour tastes in many mouths. The set up for interesting things to come next year was definitely well done. I'm more interested in what's going to happen in "Redemption" than I was excited about what happened in this finale.
After watching the penultimate episode of "Volume Four: Fugitives" on NBC's Heroes last week, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when a dashing young man in a FedEx uniform delivered a surprise package to my doorstep later in the week. Inside was a rough cut of "An Invisible Thread," the season finale of Heroes. Now this wasn't nearly as rough as the X-Men Origins: Wolverine debacle floating around the interwebs, but neither was it the completely polished version we'll see this upcoming Monday at 9:00 PM ET.
Overall, I found myself a little disappointed as I've been with every volume finale we've had since the very beginning. And admittedly, I might just be wanting something a little bit more than what we're able to get here. As for deaths and new beginnings, those we do get. I'll tell you this: one person who I felt certain was going to die didn't. One person who I thought as a possibility to die did ... but sort of didn't. But really did. The only hint I'll give you is Marvel's first Exiles series.
The new Star Trek movie has already opened in places like England, France, and Australia. I'm not sure why it opened there first, but the reviews so far have been pretty much off the charts. Variety loves it, The Daily Mail calls it "the best prequel of all-time," Empire says it's "the most exhilarating Trek to date," Urban Cinefile says it's "an extraordinary achievement," Cinema Blend says it's "the best Trek movie since The Wrath of Khan," and Aint It Cool News says "it makes Gone with the Wind look like a maggot-infested crapfest." Well, no, but they say it's really great.
(If you click on the links above, expect SPOILERS.)
(S03E24) The penultimate chapter of this latest volume of Heroes keeps the "improved" status of the series going. As expected, Rebel returns to the series and, as seen above, has an unexpected encounter with Sylar. The episode doesn't so much as pick up where last episode's left off, with Nathan and the extended Petrelli clan watching Sylar-Nathan at a live press conference requesting a meeting with the president. Instead, we backed the clock up so we could see what everyone else was doing while Angela was making her family dig holes in the desert.
(S03E22) Considering how secretive Angela Petrelli is about absolutely everything, I guess it should come as no surprise that even her family will have to dig for answers. And this when she's indicated she's going to come clean. Yeah, I can't say that I really understand the point of the ending of this episode. Why would the digging be necessary? Nevertheless, despite this odd bit of episodic closure, the rest of the episode continued to raise the bar for the show creatively.
Giving Sylar shape-shifting abilities ratcheted the tension in almost every scene. When Sandra first showed up, I was wondering if she was Sylar. Then Danko. Then Sandra again. Well, he was at least one of those. I guess when he picked up the power last week I didn't fully realize the full implications it would have on my viewing experience. You have to pay even more attention to the subtle character nuances. It was fun, though, to see different actors carrying off some of Zachary Quinto's "Sylar mannerisms." It's a fun power to play with and certainly makes him a hell of a lot more intimidating.
So...is Heroes back? Is it as good as it used to be? Beyond repair? Has it always been good and people are just too picky? Seems like fans (and non-fans) of the show all have opinions.
So does Bryan Fuller. He came back to the show after ABC canceled Pushing Daisies, and while I have always liked the Heroes, you can tell that the show has turned a corner in the past couple of episodes. The pace isn't break-neck anymore, the time traveling stuff has calmed down, and the storytelling is tighter. Fuller is interviewed over at SciFiWire, and he talks about how he, as a fan, was frustrated with the way the show was going. He also drops a few spoilers for fans and explains his plans for what's in store for the last episodes of the season.
It's an intriguing idea. If they were to say thatHeroes was going to end, let's say, after the 6th season, then the writers and producers could actually start planning the story in a certain way and give it a real ending. I also think that if the show were to have a definite end date, fans and former fans would watch the show, knowing that it is actually going somewhere. James Hibberd makes a good case, saying that scarcity increases demand, that it will probably increase ratings, and the show is, well, a goner anyway.
Of course, this could probably be said about a lot of shows on TV, that giving them an end date would make the stories better and get fans interested. Except for According To Jim of course. ABC just renewed that the sitcom through the 2021-22 season.
There are still a bunch of episodes left in this third season of Heroes, but producers and writers are already working on the fourth season (the show was renewed by NBC for another season earlier this week). There isn't much being disclosed about specific plots or what is going to happen to specific characters or what characters are going to make it out alive from this third season (though I would assume The Hunter will be gone). But there is one big clue as to who won't be the major character that is going to die at the end of this season, and we'll discuss that a bit after the jump.