Mike Moody tumbles

There’s nothing quite like a good ‘Doctor Who’ creepfest to punch up a humdrum Saturday night. This week’s episode was much darker and spookier than last week’s zippy Neil Gaiman-penned hour, and, dare I say, ‘The Rebel Flesh’ was the best episode since the epic two-part series six opener.

I’m aware that many of you fell truly, madly, and deeply for ‘The Doctor’s Wife,’ but Gaimain’s ‘Who’ entry, while great fun and ambitious, felt a bit lacking in emotion and bite. I enjoyed that episode, especially the scene with The Doctor flying around in an open-air Tardis, but ‘Flesh,’ with its gothic elements and crackling combination of sci-fi and horror, was more engaging, and it played more into my wheelhouse (I’m a big fan of gothic horror and sci-fi movies).

This was scribe Matthew Graham’s second ‘Who’ episode, and it easily topped his 2006 suburban-set offering ‘Fear Her.’ Like ‘Fear Her,’ ‘Flesh’ was loaded with mystery and scenes of terror and suspense, but this ep offered a full-on macabre nightmare scenario that raised some interesting questions about identity and ownership. Read the rest @ Aol TV.

‘The Big Bang Theory’ ended its fourth season by indulging in a bit of bedroom scandal, relationship drama, and ‘Star Trek’-themed sex jokes. The show played it safe and sleazy, and it left us laughing and scratching our heads with a strange and shocking cliffhanger ending. And it worked! The finale, despite its flaws and severe “WTF?”-ery, was a funny and compelling nugget of nerd fluff. And it was all over way too soon.

Like most of the good episodes this season, this one wasn’t particularly innovative or clever — actually, the jokes and situations were mostly pure stock — but it was still enormously entertaining. There was a lot of out-of-the-blue insanity here that mostly rang false, but who cares? This is one of the silliest sitcoms on the planet. What matters are the jokes, the delivery and the performances. And, as usual, all of that stuff — the important stuff — was on-point here.

The big shocking developments of the night didn’t really make any sense, and they all felt unearned and tacked on to raise the stakes and to throw everything into season finale cliffhanger mode. Priya is moving back to India and she didn’t tell Leonard! Bernadette is making Howard feel more insecure than ever! Raj hooked up with Penny! Wha? Drama! Awesome, ridiculous, manufactured sitcom drama. Love it or leave it. Me? Love. It. Read the rest @ Aol TV.

‘Smallville’ ended its ten-season run with an alternately exciting and disappointing finale, which, if you think about it, suits the series perfectly.

The show has always offered a consistent mix of the inspiring and the awful, even from the perspective of a Superman/comic book fan like me.

I loved seeing this story come to life on the tube, and, in some ways, this modern re-telling of Superman’s early years was more thrilling and fun than almost any other Superman origin tale. But, at its heart, ‘Smallville’ was always a sappy teen soap loaded with clunky sci-fi/fantasy mythology elements.

The show carried on in that often clumsy, unsophisticated vein all the way to the end, but there’s one thing ‘Smallville’ always got right – the depiction of Clark Kent as as a beacon of light for all humanity. Read the rest at Aol TV.

After ten seasons and hundreds of super, strange and shirtless moments, ‘Smallville’ is coming to an end. The two-hour series finale, featuring the highly anticipated return of Michael Rosenbaum as bald baddie Lex Luthor, airs tonight (8PM ET on The CW). Are you excited? ‘Cause we’re excited. Super excited! (Yeah, I went there).

We couldn’t let Clark Kent’s swan song pass us by without celebrating ‘Smallville’ one last time. So in honor of one of the longest running genre TV series ever, here’s a list of our 10 most memorable ‘Smallville’ moments. Read the rest @ Aol TV.

‘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:

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The Gate stopped spinning and Destiny went dark in the captivating ‘Stargate Universe’ season finale.

‘Gauntlet’ was a strong, densely plotted, emotional hour. It failed to wrap up all of the show’s many hanging threads, but I don’t think anyone expected ‘SGU’ to answer every single mindboggling question it ever brought up here, especially since it’s well-known that the actors and creators learned about the show’s cancellation after filming had wrapped.

But its no accident that ‘Gauntlet’ had an appropriate sense of finality to it. ‘SGU’ co-creator Brad Wright told me in a recent interview that the episode was designed to work as a season finale as well as a series finale of sorts. As the show’s ratings started to dip following the move to Tuesdays last October, Wright and crew figured that they should really make this season ender count. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

The Doctor set sail on a limey, low-budget adventure on this week’s episode of ‘Doctor Who.’

‘Curse of the Black Spot,’ while funny and genuinely rousing in places, felt like a letdown coming after the epic and cinematic two-part series six opener.

But, to be fair, almost anything that followed that brilliant, brain-searing opening arc was gonna feel like a letdown. Still, pirates? Yeah, OK … Read the rest @ TV Squad.

Remember how Peter looked all dazed and confused after he woke up in the future in last week’s episode? Well, that’s exactly how I looked as this incredibly compelling, if somewhat maddening, ‘Fringe’ season finale came to a close.

A million questions flooded my mind as the minutes ticked on. Questions like, “Why doesn’t Peter remember that he traveled through time?” and “How is it that the machine sent him 15 years into the future?”

I don’t think we got one straight answer to any of these questions before the episode was over. ‘The Day We Died,’ with its sad, stunning ending and its fuzzy “First People” plot resolution, only brought up more questions that won’t be answered until season four. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

Impressive episodes like ‘Blockade’ are making this cancellation business really hard to swallow.

From start to finish, this was easily one of the most exciting and compelling hours of ‘Stargate Universe’ to ever hit the air. I don’t think there’s another show on TV right now that’s offering this kind of classic sci-fi shoot-em-up-fun mixed with genuine suspense, great character moments and an intriguing long-form story arc.

I’d be rejoicing about the show’s recent creative comeback if we had another season, or at least a TV movie or two, ahead of us. But, sadly, ‘SGU’ is a done deal. Well, at least it’s going out with style. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

Last week’s ‘Doctor Who’ series 6 premiere left us with a million questions, and this week’s conclusion left us with a million more! Brain…melting! Confusion…winning! What. Is. Happening!?

Steven Moffat and crew hurled us straight into the deep end after leaving our heads spinning with the first half of this thrilling two-part adventure. We landed right in the middle of the story, three months after we witnessed Amy shooting the little girl in the space suit and revealing her pregnancy to The Doctor.

Amy, Rory and River Song were desperate and running from both The Silence and from Canton Delaware and his gun-toting G-men. Their bodies were covered with ‘Memento’-ish marks and, of yeah, they all died in the first act. Died! Shocking, right? Sure, but not as shocking as the image of The Doctor sporting a wild Sam Beam beard. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

First, there was mind reading, then inter-dimensional chaos, and now we’re time travelling to a post-apocalyptic future! Man, I love this show.

During season 3, ‘Fringe’ has truly grown from an ambitious mystery-of-the-week show to an epic and engaging sci-fi saga.

The events of this week’s episode solidified what the show has been hinting at from the very beginning: These characters are special, and they were brought together for a very important purpose. We’re still a little shaky on the details, but we’re certain of one thing: The fates of Peter, Olivia (and maybe even Walter) are undeniably tied to the survival, and maybe even the inception, of the world(s). Why else would the ancient machine only work for Peter? And why else would Olivia be the only one who could disable the machine’s force field? Read the rest @ TV Squad.

‘Dominion,’ like some of the most memorable episodes of ‘Smallville,’ was a mixed bag of geeky fun, melodramatic nonsense, and silly ideas stolen from other, better TV shows and movies.

But, unfortunately for first-time director Justin Hartley (aka Oliver Queen), this week’s episode was more clumsy and over-the-top than it was memorable.

Sure, there were important bits about Oliver and his spooky connection to Darkseid, and about how Lois will stand by Clark through anything, but ‘Dominion’ was mostly chock full of cheese. It felt like the meaty bits were few and far between or piled on at the end, making things feel pretty uneven

But, hey, at least we got to see Callum Blue return to gnaw the scenery as the ever-sniveling Kryptonian baddie, Zod. Read the rest @ TV Squad.