Fifteen-year-old Boaz is the new Zar, freshly ascended to his throne. In the turmoil following the old Zar’s death, courtiers jostle and conspire to secure their positions – not least his scheming mother, the new Valide. It seems his only genuine friends are his late father’s mad jester; Spur Lazar, head of Percheron’s security; and a golden beauty – a new odalisque purchased in the foothills as a slave for the harem. But can a madman, a soldier and a concubine be trusted to keep him safe from the Byzantine manoeuvres of his father’s ambitious entourage? Pleasure and politics collide in Fiona McIntosh’s exotic new fantasy trilogy, set in the harem of the great Stone Palace of Percheron.

I love the small little discount book shop in Charing Cross; sometimes I come across the best deals. In this case, I found all three books of Fiona McIntosh’s Pecheron trilogy for only £12 (all three together, that is). Bargain!

I had tried one of McIntosh’s other books (Myrren’s Gift, to be exact), but I never finished it. Not sure why, cause I loved her writing and characters. Enough at least, to have no hesitation at all to buy this other trilogy of hers. I’m glad I did, cause it’s a great series. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far all McIntosh’s books has something unique about it. Each world she creates, with its own mythology and rules, feels special and fresh, making me want to find out more about it.

Instead of the familiar repeated fantasy setting of a medieval type kingdom, Odalisque is set in an Eastern realm with a Zar and a harem (apparently inspired by Constantinople). This sets an original backdrop to the rest of story. The way the harem scheming and intrigues work are again different than what you’ll see in your standard medieval “political” novels. Besides that, there’s the addition of gods to the story, but again in a way I hadn’t seen before. I think it reminds me the most of Wheel of Time where characters are reincarnations of past legends/myths; here something similar happens.

In Pecheron the story goes that every thousand years Lyana the goddess is reborn. Before she is revealed the owl god Iridor returns, as messenger and herald to Lyana. At the same time, the demon Maliz also comes into being, sent by the male god Zarab, to destroy Lyana. For the past couple of cycles, Lyana has each time been destroyed, and Pecheron only believes in Zarab, with Lyana remembered only as an bygone remnant of another era. Of course, this series is about the rebirth of Lyana, Iridor and Maliz, but the cool thing is that when the book starts you have no idea who is who and neither do the characters. You slowly get your own ideas, but even at the end of this first book you’re still not sure if someone is a “god” or just a random human. I’ve got my suspicions on how this series will end, and I’m really curious to see if my intuitions are right.

I’ve already dug into the next book of this series, and can’t wait to find out more! Definitely a recommended read to anyone who’s a bit bored by the standard medieval fantasy fare.

Odalisque is the first book in the Pecheron trilogy by Fiona McIntosh – £5.99 on Amazon.co.uk, $7.99 on Amazon.com

Yeah, I know this might be one of the more geekier choices for my ‘Listening To’ series. I fell in love with this song though the first time I heard the opening credits from Civilization IV, and it never feels to somehow cheer me up whenever I’m in a bad mood.

I used to have this gigantic silver purple jewelry box which was perfect to store all the pretties I owned (looking back now though it’s kind of kitschy). It was too heavy though to take with me when moving to London (and also not that practical), so since then I’ve been looking for a suitable replacement.

I stumbled on these beautiful boxes on design store Umbra:

Turvy Storage Box: Pine storage box that pivots from the center. 9 x 3.5 x 4.5″ (23 x 9 x 11 cm). £33.00

Tuck Storage Box: Bamboo boxes that swivel together to create a cube for easy storage. 5 x 5 x 5″ (13 x 13 x 13 cm). £30.50

Terrace Storage Box: Set of three stacking bamboo boxes for jewelry. 5″ diameter x 4″. £30.50

Spindle Storage Box: Pivoting storage box with magnetic closure. 7.5 x 4.5 x 4.5″. £30.50

Sorry, for the delay in posting this. I’ve been so busy the last couple of days, I just haven’t found the time to sit down and write some blog posts. To those of you asking about the House conference call, it got cancelled last Friday and there aren’t any new plans yet whether to do it sometime this week. Thanks everybody though that left a comment with a question behind!

And now to the interview (beware there are some things in here that might be considered spoilers; it’s stuff like casting details, who’s going to play what and appear when):

Q: For Dollhouse, how will Echo, and of course the many other characters she is flashing to, come in to her own this season?

J. Whedon: Basically, through force of will. She did have all those personalities dumped into her at once and as we pick up, we’re going to find out that that’s starting to affect her. Rather than be at sea in between engagements, she’s much more directed and driven, and even in her doll state is growing, and learning and starting to try to access these personalities to see what they can help her with, because she has a mission that she understands now, which is to get back to her personality and get everybody back to theirs.

Q: I just want to know how many seasons do you see Dollhouse going for?

J. Whedon: Dollhouse, the premise is limited and I think by season 17, you’re really going to see us repeating ourselves.

Q: Last season you began with a number of restating pilot episodes where you wanted to make sure that you could bring in new viewers. This season doesn’t begin with that sort of episode. Could you talk about how you approached the idea of new viewers following the show?

J. Whedon: Well, you know, we always try to make, especially in the first episode of the season, but generally we try and make the premise clear enough so that if you haven’t been watching it, you don’t have to do a huge amount of math. There’s a lot of exposition in the first pilot, in the first episode of the season, to help that. But at the end of the day, you do have to go, “Well, if they don’t get the premise,” and we’ve even rejiggered the opening credits to make it clearer, than they’ll either become involved in these peoples’ stories or they won’t. You have to move slow enough so people can grab a hold and jump on with you, but you have to keep moving.

Q: Do you have a pitch to new viewers on how to reintegrate themselves or is the answer as simple as watch the DVD?

J. Whedon: No, I think the answer would be more like buy the DVD, and buy some for your friends. Then have discussion groups where you buy more. Too much integrity in that response?

Q: Can you tell us what Ray Wise is going to be playing in and when we might see him first?

J. Whedon: Ray Wise, I believe, will be appearing in episode six and he’s going to be playing the head of another house, so he’s going to interact with young Olivia and it should be very exciting.

Q: How are arced is the show going to be this season?

J. Whedon: The show is going to be pretty arcy. Clearly what people responded to was the workings of the Dollhouse and the progression of the characters in it and we’re going to honor that. At the same time, I’m very much of the mind that you do need to resolve something in an episode. You can’t just create a series of twists and turns. You need an episode to have a sense of completion, so there will still be engagements or at least problems that need to be dealt with, but they will feed into the main arc as well.

Q: Obviously you can’t give too much away, but is anything of the ‘Epitaph One’ episode going to factor in to Dollhouse now at all, or are you just totally throwing it out?

J. Whedon: No, no, we’re absolutely not throwing it out. It had originally been my intention to start in that era and then come back, but I just had too much information in my first episode. What we’re talking about doing is perhaps revisiting that timeline towards the end of the 13 in a similar fashion, but we’re also looking at the show through the lens of that episode and saying, “Well, this is taking us to a more global concept of how this power is used and abused.” That’s a lot of what informs the season. You don’t have to have seen it to understand that, but it helps if you do. I think it adds a layer.

Q: Right, that was a mind-blowing thing to watch.

J. Whedon: It was fun.

Q: Every television show should have an episode like that.

J. Whedon: I think so. I want to know what post-apocalyptic future was caused by Two-and-a-Half Men.

Q: There were a lot of people who were worried that you might be cancelled after your first season. What do you think it was that convinced FOX to sign you on for another round and hopefully longer?

J. Whedon: I think it’s the nature of the business and the nature of the fan base. The nature of the fan base is they’re in it for the long haul, and they’re nurturing, and they’re intense about it and they will see it through. They will stick with it and that means years after it’s cancelled. Firefly still sells, Buffy still sells, and that’s also a business thing for the studio. They’re in it for the long haul because they know the long haul is how my work pays off. I don’t make hit shows. I make shows that stick around that people come to long after they would have stopped generating revenue in the old system.

With the advent of DVD and the eventual monetization of Online, there’s a market there that exists beyond your Nielsen numbers, and the fans showing up and DVRing, and buying a DVD, and proving on all my other projects that they don’t do these things lightly, that it runs deep in them, means that the base doesn’t have to be as broad for the studio to think it’s worth it to try and eke out another season.

Q: I have read a couple of interviews with Eliza Dushku in which she talks about how she had a hand in developing her character. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the ways in which she helped shape who Echo has become and will become.

J. Whedon: Well, she really wants to dance burlesque. We keep forgetting to put that in. Eliza has specific things she’s interested in, specific things she feels comfortable with. Sometimes I like to go to that place because I know that she can knock it out of the park and sometimes I like to go in the opposite direction to take her out of her comfort zone because that’s the best thing you can do with an actor.

The fact is she shapes it because she is very specific as a person. She’s very specific in the way she presents and even though there are many different aspects to that, the people don’t usually get to see how funny she can be, how elegant. She doesn’t always have to play the tough girl, but she really just presents. It was a conversation about all of the different things she was supposed to be, or had been, or was trying to be, or trying to get away from that led to the creation of the show. It made me think, “Wait a minute. That’s what the show should be about.” So it wasn’t so much that she said, “I’d like to be the following things,” although we talked about what the characters are, it’s just that she is so many people that we pluck from them. She did go bow hunting. I understand, however, that she herself was not hunted.

Q: Do you think there will be another one-off episode that will be exclusive to the season to you, DVD of Dollhouse?

J. Whedon: I don’t think we’ll have a DVD exclusive, because I don’t think anybody’s going to pony up the dough for it. But I do think we will be revisiting the world of Epitaph One.

Q: You guys haven’t even probably thought as far enough for the DVD, but what kinds of things can we expect as far as visiting the Epitaph One world?

J. Whedon: We’re so fascinated by that world and really in love with the actors in it, and we also want to answer some of the questions we asked about. Well where is everybody, come the future? Who’s doing fine and who didn’t make it? So we keep trying to go back to the future and then realizing well no, it’s not time yet. It’s really going to be towards the end of the season that we’ll be able to do that.

Q: I’d like to know a little bit more about the relationships that are coming up this season – what it’s going to be like with Echo and Paul, and even among the dolls this year?

J. Whedon: Victor and Sierra just can’t keep their hands off each other, and they’re like monkeys and it’s something that we’re going to be treating, they’re going to be seeing through for a while. It makes some people very uncomfortable and sometimes it’s just extremely sweet. Sometimes it’s just funny.

But Echo is very much building herself and she sees it as an indication that they’re ready to be pushed to a level like hers. She’s looking for allies and Paul is the first person she’s going to turn to for that. But then a lot of the season is going to be her attempt to put together some kind of team, even though she has trouble articulating it at first. She’s looking for the sense of family that I think the audience was looking for last season. So we’re going to be seeing who’s on her side and who, not so much.

Q: I was really impressed with what Amy did in this premiere here. Is Dr. Saunders going to factor in a little more in the season?

J. Whedon: Dr. Saunders would factor in much more in the season had we not lost her to another show. She will factor inasmuch as we are allowed to factor her in, which is exactly three episodes worth. They will, however, be three extraordinarily memorable episodes.

Amy Acker is ridiculously talented and the character’s dilemma is fascinating to us. We grit our teeth that we didn’t have the funds, or the support, or the success, to just make her a regular and now we’re paying for it. It means that every time we have her on screen, we’ll squeeze every drop out of her that we can. We’re seizing the day. We just don’t get to seize as many of them as we’d like.

Q: With Amy Acker gone, are we going to get a new doctor character to tend to the wounded?

J. Whedon: We haven’t featured the doctor. We see somebody in the BG. We will be seeing Dr. Saunders again and the stories just haven’t lent themselves to bringing in another person in that capacity. So if we need to, yes, but not so far.

Q: I noticed the guest star lineup looks really impressive this season. You had Alan on last season and Summer this season. I just wanted to know, are there plans to get the rest of Firefly on here at some point?

J. Whedon: It’s a death match between Firefly and Battlestar and which of them is going to get all their people. The fact of the matter is they’re people I admire and they’re people I know I love to work with and this season, I’m a lot less concerned with how the cast is perceived.

Last season, we felt like we wanted to make sure that this was new territory and that people didn’t think of it as just, “Oh, it’s just these faces and he’s doing his old thing.” Now I’m like, “I know these people can act,” and honestly, the people that are watching it are fans anyway. If they know who these people are, they’ll be thrilled. If they don’t, they’ll see good acting so it doesn’t matter to me as much. So yes, I have no fear of throwing anybody that I have worked with or just want to work with in anytime I can.

Q: Could you talk about the casting of Summer and also what’s in store for her character?

J. Whedon: The casting of Summer was based on the knowledge that Summer existed and the character was created with the hopes that she would play it, which she is right on stage right now doing. She’s playing the programmer of another Dollhouse. It’s a somewhat eccentric part but hopefully different than what we’ve seen her do before. The most useful part of that is that the writers work twice as hard to make sure that the character really pops and pays off because they know that it’s going to be played by somebody extraordinary.

Q: Is it safe to assume that Summer’s character works at the same Dollhouse that Ray Wise runs?

J. Whedon: I think that would be safe.

Q: And is it safe to assume that that makes it a super-cool Dollhouse?

J. Whedon: I would say much cooler than this lame one that I’m in.

Q: Can you hint at all, we know that November/Mellie will be returning, but how she will return since for her, it would seem that her time with the Dollhouse is over?

J. Whedon: It would, wouldn’t it? I can’t tell you exactly how. I can tell you that she’ll be back early on and that we’re definitely not done with the character, and that probably means there’s going to be some pain involved. More than that, you’re going to have to wait for it.

Q: You have a number of interesting guest stars in the new edition of the season, in addition to Summer. Can you tell me a little bit about Jamie Bamber’s character and a little bit about Alexis as a senator? I think I read he’s trying to shut down the Dollhouse.

J. Whedon: Yes, he’s got his own crusade going. He’s a very different person than Paul but he’s in a similar position except that he’s gone public with it. How much the Dollhouse loves a senator who has gone public with an attack on them, we will find out in later episodes. But he’s not the Paul of the season because he’s going to have a different set of problems thrown at him, but he has a similar vibe in terms of he’s very tenacious and righteous. Then, I forget what the other part was?

Q: Jamie Bamber, I read that Bamber marries Echo early on in the season.

J. Whedon: If you were those two, wouldn’t you get married? They’re so cute. He came in as the guest star in the first episode, which was just besides a geek dream for me, an extraordinary experience because he’s not just very professional, and precise and talented, but he fleshed out a character that could have been a little bit of a cardboard cutout. He has such sincerity and gravitas that you feel terrible. He makes you feel you’ve betrayed him, even if he’s completely in the wrong. It’s something that he shares with Adelle. Maybe it’s a British thing; I don’t know.

Q: What ways are you going to stretch the parameters of the tech this season?

J. Whedon: We’re going to stretch the tech fairly heftily. I actually can’t answer the question directly because a lot of it has to do with the different ways in which this tech can be manipulated, and we’re going to see that it’s not all the simple chair treatments. There’s more that can be done and the excitement and the danger of that is a large part of this season.

Q: We’ve got some glimpses at the back-story of some of the other characters like Sierra and Victor, but still a lot to fill in. Will we be delving into that more as the season progresses?

J. Whedon: Yes, we will. We know how extraordinary those two performers are and we are very curious about their stories as much as we are about Caroline’s. So yes, we will definitely be seeing some episodes that highlight them and their pasts and where they’re heading.

Q: Is the set a designer’s dream?

J. Whedon: It depends on the set designer. It might be a dream where he’s screaming.

Q: I’m wondering, a big thing that people discussed in the first season is who’s the doll. Who is secretly a doll? But now that we know that people can be remotely programmed in a flash without necessarily being dolls to begin with, is that still a meaningful question? Is everybody a doll inside?

J. Whedon: No, that’s the case in the far future. It’s not the case right now. I’ll tell you right now, everybody is not a doll because it would be very easy for us to pull that trick over and over and ultimately shoot ourselves in the foot, because you would find that nothing was at stake and that everybody would see the plot was coming. We’ve actually grounded the show fairly heavily. People who are dolls, are dolls and the other people, every now and then, I’m not saying never, I’m not saying we won’t question reality every now and then but basically, we’re taking the people we have and we’re pushing them around as much as possible.

We’re trying to keep it grounded so that people know that there is something at stake and if somebody did have their personality altered or taken away, that that would be a huge deal. That’s like the attic; that’s like death. That’s like the worst thing that can happen to a character so we want to make sure that the characters are grounded enough that people feel those stakes. If we just make people dolls, Willie-Nillie, then it’s the rabbit hole and none of it really connects or means anything.

Q: My final question is actually for Dr. Horrible. What started in the homegrown effort for you guys and it stayed that way moving forward with all of the claim and success you’ve had?

J. Whedon: The claim and success is not a problem for us. We’re totally comfortable with it. We are working on a follow-up. The question of whether it stays homegrown or whether it outgrows that is one that we ask ourselves. It doesn’t effect the storytelling. The story we want to tell is about the people, whether we do that on a shoestring, the way we did it for before, whether we do something bigger and invite other people into the process. It’s a decision we’ll make after we love the show.

Q: Thank you, and any closing remarks, Mr. Whedon?

J. Whedon: I love each and every one of you very much – possibly inappropriately. That’s it. That’s all I got.

Dollhouse’s second season premieres this Friday on Fox at 20:00.

Episode 140: “Put down the remote”

I tried to stay up for the Emmys last night. On a “normal” weekend I wouldn’t have any trouble with this, but I had just gotten home from the 48 hour CharityHack where I had only slept a couple of hours. About two thirds in I gave up; I was too tired, plus the live stream was becoming increasingly flakier by the minute, it was a pain to watch it. I think at certain moment it was so bad, I got every other sentence.

Anyhow, I did get to see two cool sequences from Neil Patrick Harris as host. The first was the opening number which had a couple of great lines in it:

The second was a Dr Horrible clip:

I already had heard there would be something Dr Horrible related, but I was hoping for a bit more than this (at least a bit more singing).

As for the actual awards, there were a couple of great surprises and a couple of disappointing choices. I loved that Kristen Chenoweth won for her role as Olive in Pushing Daisies, and her acceptance speech was so adorable! Why did Pushing Daisies have to be cancelled?

Then Supporting Actor In A Comedy. Of course, I was rooting for Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), but I also would have been fine with either of the 30 Rock guys winning it (Tracy Morgan and Jack McBrayer). But who ended up wining it? Jon Cryer. Seriously? Two and a Half Men hasn’t been funny for ages.

Another surprise was Supporting Actor in a Drama. I was completely expecting William Shatner to win again, or John Slattery from Mad Men. But it went (deservingly I think) to Michael Emerson for his creepy portrayal of Ben in Lost.

Most of the other stuff was pretty predictable. Mad Men won Best Drama, 30 Rock won Best Comedy. Glenn Close won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (for Damages), Bryan Cranston won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (for Breaking Bad, for the second time in a row now, maybe I should start watching this). All kind of to be expected. To see the complete list of winner, check out Emmy Awards Winners 2009.

As promised, here’s the transcript of the conference call with Joshua Jackson about his role as Peter Bishop in Fringe. (Sidenote: this wasn’t a one-on-one interview, but rather a conference call session with multiple bloggers and journalists)

Q: What do you enjoy more as an actor or even as a viewer, when you get to do an episode in which there’s lots of action, fighting, racing around or when it’s crazy science elements or when it’s simply doing a scene with the cow?

J. Jackson: The cow’s a diva; it’s a little known fact. She’s not very giving. I don’t know that I have a particular favorite. I think if I did any one of those things too much each one would become boring in their way. The hope is to try and balance those things out as much as possible, if not in every episode, in every couple of episodes. I would tell you that the thing I spend time thinking about is trying to keep the dynamic between Peter and Walter truthful and growing, but the beauty of being on a television show is that you get to do a little bit of everything all the time.

Q: What is your reaction when you get the scripts and it’s some new crazy thing that they’re bringing into the story?

J. Jackson: That’s the beauty of our show; if we don’t have a new crazy thing, something’s gone horribly wrong so I take it always as a positive thing. Each week it’s a little bit of a science lesson for the class, it’s a little bit of a vocabulary lesson for the class and it always presents you with some other kooky thing.

As a fan, the things that I like most about our show, the genre that our show is in is the bigger story rather than the individual creepy, gooey stuff. What we’ve done pretty well is to make each one of the creepy, gooey things add up into a much bigger story. That’s the thing that I peak out on that I thing is so cool.

Q: Did you see the twist in the finale coming? The twist involving you?

J. Jackson: They thankfully gave me a heads-up a couple months before that happened so that I didn’t read it and think that I had been fired. It sounds a little bit like a tag line, but it is the truth. The great thing about our show is that if we can dream it we can do it. I don’t think anybody really saw that twist coming. I was only told about it four or five months in advance, but I think that’s amazing. To put the last frame of the show in the World Trade Center is incredible. I love our show for that. It should keep on pushing boundaries and envelopes like that.

Q: Going forward now what can you tell us about that particular story line? How much do you know as far as what we can expect towards the first half of the season of that particular story line, as I said?

J. Jackson: The Peter story line, what I love so much about that beyond the “ain’t-it-cool” factor, is now the audience knows something about Peter that he doesn’t know about himself, something crucial about him that he doesn’t know about himself. We come to find out that this is a large part of the guilt that Walter carries around is that he baby-snatched Peter as a young boy. Inevitably that information had to come out so while I don’t know the particulars much further than the episode that I’m shooting right now I do think eventually that has to come to a head and it will lead to a conflict between the two guys.

The entire first season for Peter and Walter was about this father and son reconnecting through the craziness of their circumstances and actually becoming something of a family, a very dysfunctional family, but something of a family. And Season Two has carried that forth. In the beginning Peter is really invested now in being part of this team and actually belonging to this Fringe family, but eventually he’s going to find out that this horrible happened to him as a child and that’s going to blow up his relationship with Walter and probably with Olivia I would imagine. To me, that’s the great thing hanging over Peter the entire season and it gives me something to move toward as they go forward.

Q: Do you think that Peter and Olivia will have some sort of romantic relationship or do you hope that they don’t? What are your feelings about that?

J. Jackson: My estimation I just kind of said it a second ago, which is that I feel like this is more of a family dynamic than a romantic dynamic. What’s unique and what’s great about our show is, as opposed to having just a leading man and a leading lady, you have this crazy father in the center of it. That would be a very, very awkward love triangle, so I don’t think they’re going to go in that direction. I see Peter and Olivia as more brother and sister rather than lovers on this show. Where they’re going to take it, I have no idea, but for right now I run under the assumption that this is father, son, daughter rather than boyfriend, girlfriend, dad.

Q: I really like the interplay between Walter and Peter and the asides that Peter obviously has. How much of the sarcasm is improvised versus scripted and how much is you versus Peter?

J. Jackson: I’ll give the writers credit. I’d say most of those lines are written, though there is, particularly in the scenes with John, John and I have a very strong working rapport and he’s a very playful actor. I mean that in a good way that he likes to keep things live and so you keep on testing and trying. Just to toot my own horn, I feel like I’m a bit that way myself. So I think a lot of the humor of those moments comes out of the two of us just playing around until we figure out something that pops out of it, though the scenarios are definitely written. I would say that Peter’s a much more cynical man than Josh is; his sarcasm has a tendency to be a lot darker than my sense of humor.

Q: When we first met you in the first season we got a sense of this kind of dark background that you had, doing arms dealing and such. Will we get back to that and what he was doing in his life away from his father and the life that he’s got now?

J. Jackson: Yes. We actually delved right into that very early in the season. We kept on hinting at it last year, but never showing it and it’s not a problem of the format of the show. It’s not called Peter’s Fringe. It’s difficult to put these characters’ back-stories into the show. That’s not true, not their back-stories; it’s difficult to put their outside lives into the show. Does that make sense?

Each episode has a central focus; however, we immediately understood what it was, what function Walter has as part of this Fringe team and we spent the first season explaining exactly why Olivia Dunham in particular, as opposed to any other FBI agent, had to be the center of this Fringe team. What we never really got into until the final episode, the final frames of the final episode, was why it is specifically that Peter needs to be a part of this. Now that we’ve brought him in, this season we’ve gone a lot deeper into actually showing rather than just talking about this prior life that he had.

Q: I know that J.J. Abrahams said that he was trying to keep the series accessible to new viewers. Do you think that can continue?

J. Jackson: Yes. We’re just starting the eighth episode this year and I would say that we are, I guess the eighth episode is a mythology-heavy episode. I’d say we’re about 50/50 for episodes that are heavy into the big back-stories and stories that are just sort of one-off investigations. The idea is also that regardless of whether it’s a mythology episode or part of the larger story or not, each one of these investigations in every episode will always have a beginning, middle and end. Even it is a heavy mythology episode you can still tune in and get a satisfying story as opposed to tuning in to the story halfway through.

Everybody uses Lost as an example and let’s use it again because it’s J. J.’s show. Lost is a fantastic show, but each one of those episodes doesn’t really have a beginning, middle and end, it’s part of a continuing story. So if you don’t know the things that have come before it’s incredibly difficult to just drop in, which is just what Lost is. We should be so lucky to be as good as Lost on our show. The difference being that the format of our show lends itself to simpler storytelling, which is that every week there’ll be something that this group of people has to investigate. Sometimes it’s going to lead them to learn something about the larger story that they’re investigating that if you don’t know anything about that, you probably won’t be engaged by that. But regardless it will still come to an end that episode.

That’s one of the conceits of Fringe that if you want to pay attention every week there’s a lot of story being told all the time, but if you just want to tune in, drop in for a fun hour away where you get to cringe at the bad stuff and root for the good guys and hiss at the bad guys, there’s that aspect, too. It doesn’t turn you away at the door.

Q: Like any new show, Fringe had its share of ups-and-downs during the year, but then I think it had a really strong second half. When do you think the show really found its own voice, its own style and what kind of show it wanted and should be?

J. Jackson: I think right around the midway point of last season the show sort of decided what it wanted to be. From about the midway point it got on a pretty good streak of episodes there from, I think, either Ten and Eleven or Eleven and Twelve or Twelve and Thirteen, I can’t remember the exact number, but the two-part episode where Dunham gets kidnapped. After that it was pretty clear; we introduced the bad guys for the season and there was a much clearer narrative drive through the rest of the season.

I would say, though, that I don’t think the look of the show changed. I think visually the show always knew what it wanted to be. I think that what we were trying to figure out was the alchemy, what proportion was going to be a serialized show, what proportion was going to be one-off. We were still discovering who the character was. I think it was much more about the storytelling than it was about the look of the show in the first season, like every show, frankly, has to figure out.

Q: Obviously the show deals with parallel universes. Has this opened up your mind to the idea of parallel universes and what do you think about the probability that there might be a parallel version of yourself in some universe?

J. Jackson: I do think this idea is part of the zeitgeist right now. Maybe it’s my West Coast, liberal upbringing, but the idea of parallel universes doesn’t really strike me as being too far out there. After the 60s and after all the psychedelia and the doors of perception and what-have-you, I don’t think it’s really all that far out.

What defies my imagination is that there would be nothing out there that would defy my imagination and maybe it’s because I’m a sci-fi fan. It just seems like the only justifiable position that a human can have in 2009 is humility in the face of the universe. We’re learning so much and everything that we learn, it’s like that Carl Sagan thing, the candle in the dark. Every time the candle gets a little bit brighter it only serves to illuminate how much we still don’t know.

Q: The show’s being called a cross between, I guess, The X Files and Dark Angel and a couple other sci-fi shows. What’s your opinion about that?

J. Jackson: I don’t really get what the Dark Angel reference would be. Oh, maybe because Dunham was experimented on when she was a kid perhaps. I don’t know. I think The X Files is a more fair comparison, but even in the opening credits, The X Files, by design, dealt with things that were supposed to be part of the paranormal, what Fringe is trying to say is that these things that we would normally classify as fantastical are actually part of the normal. They all have legitimate explanations in the scientific world; they can’t be chalked up to alien possession or fairies or Dracula.

Q: You’re a big science fiction fan. I was wondering if Fringe satisfies all of your science fiction needs or is there some science fiction plotline out there that you’re really just dying to do.

J. Jackson: Of course, Fringe doesn’t fill up the science fiction quotient of my acting life. I don’t know if there’s any particular; it’s hard to say that you’d be dying to do something because it’s probably already been done, but there’s an infinite number of stories out there. There are plenty of books that I read as a young man that I would love to turn into movies, some of which have already been turned into movies.

It is a ton of fun for a guy who loves science fiction to be working on a science fiction show. Like I said to the guy before you, none of the concepts that are raised on this show are entirely foreign to me or do they seem that far out there, but I’ve never worked on a show before where we get to actually explore those ideas.

Q: One more quick thing. I just want to know what it’s like working with Leonard Nimoy.

J. Jackson: I’ve been shafted so far; in fact I’m going to lodge a formal complaint through this conference call. Leonard’s been up here twice and while I did get to meet him and that’s cool, I have yet to be able to do a scene with him and I think that’s un-cool.

Fringe premiered last night on Fox in the US, and airs weekly on Thursday 9:00 PM.

A quick note first: Thank you for all the questions for Joshua Jackson, Hugh Laurie and Joss Whedon. I had the Fringe conference call with Joshua Jackson yesterday; I have no idea how many bloggers/journalists were listening in on that call, but about halfway I decided to “stand in line” with my question and didn’t get a turn. This evening is the Joss Whedon one and tomorrow the House one (which was postponed). So just to clear things up, this is not a one-on-one interview, so I’d be even lucky to ask one of the questions. I’ll be posting the transcripts of the calls, as soon as they are available.

So the new TV season has started with loads of my favourite shows returning, plus a ton of new stuff. Instead of reviewing each of them individually I thought I quickly jot down my thoughts about those shows I’ve seen so far. Surprisingly most of the stuff that has premiered so far are the “girly” shows (Melrose Place, 90210, Gossip Girl, etc).

Gossip Girl

I love Blair and Chuck together; glad to see the writers didn’t decide to split them up during the summer. For me, those two will always be the most interesting characters Gossip Girl has. Dan remains as boring as ever, I couldn’t care less about Serena’s cry for attention from daddy (although I wonder who they’ll cast as her dad) and Jenny doesn’t even appear that much in this episode. Nate’s storyline could become interesting, plus I love Joanna Garcia (why did Privileged have to be cancelled?!?).

Melrose Place

Hmm, yeah, not too sure about this. Like 90210, I never had seen the previous incarnation of the show, so didn’t have any familiarity at all with any of the characters. It doesn’t seem though as if you need that, but still there’s something missing in this show. Also none of the characters really stood out to me, and even now I’m struggling to remember who was introduced.

90210

You know a show is in trouble when they’re already “rebooting” stuff in the second season. While I watched season 1 completely, it did have a lot wrong in it. Some of those stuff they have solved this season, but it’s still not there yet. For starters kicking Ethan out the show was a good thing in my eyes; I never liked his storylines that much. But replacing him with ‘Teddy Montgomery’? Come on, that actor is 30 year’s old and is playing a teenager?!? I don’t have a problem if the person actually looks like a teenager, but this guy? Totally unbelievable.

What I did like though is the trio that is now Naomi, Silver and Adrianna. I wish they would just write Annie out of the show already and focus more on the other three girls.

Glee

I loved the pilot of Glee; the songs were spinning in my head for days after seeing it. The second episode though was a bit meh; I didn’t like any of the songs that much, and almost none of the characters seem sympathetic yet. I want to like Rachel, but so far she’s just getting on my nerve.

Vampire Diaries

As I expected, completely nothing like the books. It still could be a great TV show, but I’ll have to wait and see for a couple more episodes. At the moment, it’s feeling very much like a supernatural version of Roswell: shy girl meets broody hot guy with a secret. I’ll still keep watching this, but it’s got to bring more intrigue and mystery, and less pining and staring into each other’s eyes.

More shows are starting this week; I’ll be sure to update about them once I’ve seen them. In the mean time, what did you think of the season premieres so far? Discuss in the comments.

Solomon Kane: A 16th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. The invention of Robert E. Howard, the legendary creator of Conan the Barbarian, the Solomon Kane short stories were published in the Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales. One part of me really likes the look of this, the other just has alarm bells screaming “Dungeons and Dragons, and Van Helsing”. It could turn out really cool, but it could also easily turn out to be something like those two movies. Release Date: unknown

A Christmas Carol: An animated retelling of Charles Dickens classic novel about a Victorian-era miser taken on a journey of self-redemption, courtesy of several mysterious Christmas apparitions. Jim Carrey stars as at least four different characters, next to of Gary Oldman, Robin Wright Penn, Colin Firth, Cary Elwes, and Bob Hoskins. This trailer has been for ages in the cinema (so you might have see it already, in front of Harry Potter for instance), but it only was released online this week. Release Date: 6 November 2009 (US, UK)

Takers: Revolves around a notorious group of criminals (Idris Elba, Paul Walker, T.I., Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, Michael Ealy) who continue to baffle police by pulling off perfectly executed bank robberies. They are in and out like clockwork, leaving no evidence behind and laying low in between heists. But when they attempt to pull off one last job with more money at stake than ever before, the crew may find their plans interrupted by a hardened detective (Matt Dillon) who is hell-bent on solving the case. Release Date: February 2010 (US), March 2010 (UK)

From Paris With Love: Starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. From Paris With Love follows a young embassy worker and an American secret agent who cross paths while working on a high-risk mission in Paris. This is the second movie from director Pierre Morel, who previously did the badass Taken. Oh and it’s co-written by Luc Besson. Release Date: February 2010 (US)

Everybody’s Fine: A widower (Robert De Niro) who realizes his only connection to his family was through his wife sets off on a road trip to reunite with each of his grown children: Drew Barrymore, Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell. Release Date: 4 December 2009 (US)

You might have seen my tweets about this, but I’m seriously geeking out right now. I’ve gotten into a couple of conference calls this week from Fox, to promote the latest seasons of our beloved TV shows. I’m not the only blogger invited, but I do get to ask any questions I want. [Fangirl mode: on] Squeeeeeee!

This evening will be the Fringe conference call with Joshua Jackson, who plays Peter Bishop. Tomorrow will be the House conference call with Hugh Laurie, who plays House (duh), and Katie Jacobs, the executive producer and director. And later that same evening the Dollhouse conference call with Joss Whedon.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for these calls; these type of moments make me love what I do all the more. I’ve already got a couple of questions in mind to ask, but I thought I’d open it up to all of you: do you have any questions for Joshua Jackson, Hugh Laurie (+ Katie Jacobs) or Joss Whedon? I can’t guarantee your question will be asked, but I’m curious to hear what you’d like to know.

Leave a comment behind with your questions.

Episode 138: “I learned my history from drinking all night in a downtown bar”

This clip is cute! It’s for the single “I Got Opinions” from Greg Johnson, and features the work of eight different illustrators.

Via Candlelight Stories