This weekend, Director Todd Phillips brings us the final chapter in the HANGOVER saga. We talk to Todd as well as Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis on the pluses and minuses of doing a third sequel. Plus more on the alien life on SYFY’s DEFIANCE as Jamie Murray admits she is just a bit “creepy”. And Amazon is ready to buy your fan fiction.

We’re taking the holiday off, but we’ll be back late next week with our exclusive preview of the new season of THE VENTURE BROTHERS on Adult Swim.

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Some random thoughts about Star Trek: Into Darkness.

I loved the original series when it started on NBC in 1966. It was around the time I started to read science fiction, so it felt incredibly reinforcing to see my newly beloved genre on a screen in my home. I thrilled to the smart plots, and didn’t care about the cheesy special effects. There weren’t any other kind on television at the time. I loved the banter among the leads, especially from my favorite character, “Bones” McCoy. I complained as loudly as a teenage girl can complain when it was cancelled. That said, I only watched it in syndication sporadically, and I never got into any of the sequels.

Not even the one with Scott Bakula, whom I adore.

So when J. J. Abrams was tasked with reinventing the franchise, I wasn’t too upset. If he took liberties, he took liberties. Either the movies would be good, or they wouldn’t. As someone who read all the Ian Fleming Bond books and has seen every James Bond movie, even the terrible later Roger Moore ones, I have a pretty strong stomach for filmmakers who take liberties with their source material.

Kirk is really a macho asshole, isn’t he? I mean, you could tell from the original series, but it was the 1960s, and macho assholes were all the rage. It was really obvious in this movie. Yeah, he learned a lesson, and grew as a human being, but I suspect he would still be really annoying to sit next to on an airplane.

Bones may still be my favorite. In this particular movie, he was stuck regurgitating all the catch phrases, and yet Karl Urban still manages to maintain his poise. Not easy. Just ask Joe Biden.

A few female characters were actually allowed to have story lines, or at least the inference that, if we looked at the story from another viewpoint, they would be the heroic characters. Zoe Saldana as Uhura is especially brave. It’s as if her life is about more than just being in a relationship with Spock.

I would hope this is an indication of the film makers’ perspectives. Fringe had a female protagonist, as do many other 21st century entertainments.

Certainly, the women on Game of Thrones are the most compelling characters, and that’s one of the top-ten highest rated programs on television. There is money to be made with giving women in the audience someone to admire. Yay, capitalism!

A lot of the reason I went to see this movie in the theater, instead of waiting for it to show up on cable, was Benedict Cumberbatch. He is a wonderful villain, just as he is a fantastic protagonist. And he’s a commanding presence on screen, except sometimes I get distracted because he reminds me of Neil Gaiman .

I am not the only person distracted, although not everyone thinks he looks like Neil. Some are reminded of others.

As the summer goes on, and more blockbuster movies open, you could do worse than spend a couple of hours on the Enterprise. Live long and prosper, my friends.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

Pro Se, a cutting edge independent Publisher of New Pulp, heroic fiction, and genre anthologies and novels, announces two if its next titles and makes them available to reviewers today!

BADGE OF LIES by Jason Kahn focuses on what a policeman does after his partner dies, leaving questions laced in mystery, blood, and death!  Find out how who one man was in secret affects the life of the partner left behind in this raw, gritty noirish crime novel!

Short people got no reason

Short people got no reason

Short people got no reason

To live

– Randy Newman

 Obviously, the honchos at the multi-media behemoth that Marvel Comics has become don’t agree with Mr. Newman’s lyricized sentiment. There was an item on Yahoo’s news site that told all of us who care about such information that Mighty Marvel is planning an Ant-Man movie.

Well, this could be a real creative challenge, because Ant Man was never what you’d consider a game-changing creation. His superpower was…he could shrink, like a cheat suit. But he did retain the strength he had as a full-size dude. Okay, that doesn’t seem like a trope that would suggest myriad storylines and that may be one of the reasons that the original Ant Man didn’t last too long, at least not as Ant Man. After sharing one of Marvel’s Tales to Astonish with the Hulk for a bit, Ant-Man switched personae and became Giant Man, who later called himself Goliath. He was big.

The little-guy-with-big-muscles idea wasn’t originated by Ant-Man’s creative team, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Marvel’s rival, DC, had several heroes who were known, individually, as The Atom. The first, who trod DC’s pages way back in 1940, was Al Pratt and he didn’t change size. He was just not very large, but, boy, was he tough! The second of DC’s Atoms, brought to life during Julius Schwartz’s wholesale reinvention of DC’s superhero pantheon, was Ray Palmer, a scientist whose futzing with some white dwarf star stuff that somehow landed on Earth enabled him to shrink while retaining his molecular mass, a stunt he apparently shared with Ant-Man. (This, by the way,explains what happens to the mass that’s apparently lost in the shrinkage. It doesn’t go anywhere, it just gets more dense. You science lovers satisfied now?)

There have been several additional versions of both Ant-Man and the Atom since the originals moved on. But I’m a silver age guy so I’ll ignore them. (And if any of them don’t like it, they can just go get shrunk.)

Back to the movie. The film makers told a convention audience that, though the flick will have humor, it won’t be a spoof. And that causes me to want to see it. The other superhero entertainments, past and present, delivered what we expected. Some of them delivered it extraordinarily well, but they didn’t stray too far from the basic good guy’s-powers-defeat-bad-guy’s powers structure, nor should they. But Ant-Man might prompt a different approach – present a challenge to which the film guys can rise. Watching them do that might be worth a trip to the multiplex.

RECOMMENDED READING: (You thought we were done with Iron Man? Not quite, Bucko.) Inventing Iron Man, by E. Paul Zehr and Warren Ellis.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

The strength of the Doctor Who reboot has been in its emphasis on relationships.

The name of this season’s finale was The Name of the Doctor, but everything we’ve ever really needed to know about him has been expressed through all those relationships.

The relationship between the Doctor and all of the millions and billions of lives that he has saved through all his 11 incarnations.

The relationship between the Doctor and his companions.

The relationship between the Doctor and River Song.

And the relationship between the Doctor and the girl who lived and died and lived again and died again.

The Impossible Girl.

The girl born to save the Doctor.

Clara Oswald.

We first met Clara in this year’s season premiere, Asylum of the Daleks, only her name was Oswin Oswald. Oswin is the only surviving member of the crew of the starship Alaska, which crashed onto the prison planet of the Daleks. When the Doctor attempts to rescue her, he discovers that she has become a Dalek; in order to survive, Oswin created a fantasy life—which includes trying to make the perfect soufflé. She saved the Doctor (and Amy and Rory) by erasing the memory of the Doctor from the memory banks of the Daleks, telling him to “Run, you clever boy. And remember,” but sacrifices her own life to do so.

We met Clara again in Victorian London in The Snowmen, 2012’s Christmas Special, but now she is a governess and barmaid. Clara dies after again saving the Doctor, and when he sees her tombstone, he is mystified and stunned – for it reads Clara Oswin Oswald. The Doctor realizes that this Clara and the Oswin from the Dalek Asylum are one and the same person. He becomes determined to find her again, sure that she is alive somewhere in time. And in the epilogue, we see a contemporary version of the same woman walking through a cemetery, and past the Victorian Clara’s grave. Her name is Clara Oswald.

For Clara Oswald is the “impossible girl.” Last night, the opening sequence showed Clara interacting with William Hartnell as he was about to steal a Tardis, telling him that he was taking the wrong one, that. We saw her calling after Jon Pertwee, chasing Tom Baker, yelling after Sylvester McCoy, trying to help Peter Davison and Colin Baker (shades of Zelig, Forest Gump, and Tibbles and Tribulations!) She tells us that she was born to save the Doctor, saying, “He always looks different, but I always know it’s him.”

The Doctor told Clara there is one place a time traveler must never go—to his grave. For the Doctor that is the planet Tenzalore. But it is on Tenzalore where Clara realizes her destiny—to become the “impossible girl,” and save the Doctor, and by saving the Doctor, saving millions. The regenerative energy will break her into a million pieces, confetti strips made of Clara, echoes of the original, but, she says, “it’s like my mother always said, the soufflé isn’t the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe.”

She jumps in, and she is lost in time.

She calls out for the Doctor.

Again and again.

And then she hears the Doctor’s voice.

He sends her something to hold on to, something which will lead her to him.

It is the leaf that blew into her father’s face…

…which led him to Clara’s mother…

…which led to Clara’s birth…

…which led her to the Doctor…

…all of them…

…until the eleventh Doctor found Clara…

…again…

…and again…

…and again…

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases