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Starting this Labor Day, PBS stations will start airing a slice of fandom with the one-hour documentary, Four Days at DragonCon. Filmed by Atlanta- based documentarians, Jack Walsh and Gordon Ray during the 2009 con, the film is set to debut 9 p.m. (ET) Aug. 28 on WPBA PBS 30 in Atlanta and then roll out nationwide to other PBS member stations in the following months.

Dubbed in the media as “Woodstock for nerds,”  ”the ultimate pop culture convention” and “the South’s sci-fi fantasy Mardi Gras,” this is no small regional sparsely-attended fan convention as Dragon*Con has grown to become the largest fan-run science fiction and fantasy convention in the world with tens of thousands of attendees taking up more Atlanta hotel space than the 1996 Summer Olympics (true, ComiCon is larger and gets more attention – but it is put on by a large corporation, not volunteer fans – and it shows.)

Below is a sneak preview of “Four Days at DragonCon”

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The following press release is published as a service to the readership:

New York, New York – August 12, 2010 – Syfy has announced additional casting for its previously announced pilot Alphas, inking actress Azita Ghanizada to co-star in the wry action-adventure project from writers Zak Penn (X-Men: The Last Stand, The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk) and Michael Karnow, it was announced today by Mark Stern, Executive Vice President of Original Programming, Syfy and Co-Head of Content for Universal Cable Productions, which is the studio for the project. She joins previously announced cast members David Strathairn, Ryan Cartwright, Malik Yoba, Warren Christie and Laura Mennell. Additionally, Callum Keith Rennie has been signed to guest star in the pilot.

Alphas is executive produced by Gail Berman, Lloyd Braun and Gene Stein for BermanBraun Television and will be directed by Jack Bender (director and executive producer of Lost). Production is underway in Toronto.

Alphas follows a team of ordinary citizens whose brain anomalies imbue them with extraordinary mental and physical abilities. Taking the law into their own hands, the unlikely team, led by Dr. Lee Rosen (David Strathairn) investigates cases that suggest other Alpha activity to uncover what the CIA, FBI and Pentagon have not been able or willing to solve. These gifted individuals must balance their quirky personalities and disparate backgrounds with their not always visible powers as they work to solve crimes, stop the ticking time bomb and catch the enemy.

Azita Ghanizada plays Rachel who, from an early age, has been able to “hyper-intensify” her senses, one at a time – vision, hearing, taste, and smell. Her mother and father – who are conservative parents — thought she was cursed and discouraged this unique and amazing ability. Overly sensitive – literally – Rachel has always felt ashamed and rejected. With Dr. Rosen’s help and encouragement, she’s learning to appreciate her skill and grow increasingly confident and adventurous.

Ghanizada’s credits include appearances on the television series Castle, Ghost Whisperer, Entourage, How I Met Your Mother, Psych, The Closer, Numbers and The Wedding Bells. She is represented by Joel King of Pakula/King & Associates and managed by Katie Mason of Luber/Roklin Entertainment.

Callum Keith Rennie plays Don Wilson, a Washington bureaucrat, and Lee Rosen’s superior and contact inside the Pentagon.

Rennie is no stranger to Syfy having portrayed Leoben, a Cylon on the critically acclaimed series Battlestar Galatica throughout its four season-run on the channel. Other roles include memorable arcs on 24 and Flash Forward, Lew Ashby on Californication, and he was featured on Syfy’s Emmy-winning miniseries smash Tin Man. He is managed by Elizabeth Hodgson at Hodgson Management Group and represented by Agency for the Performing Arts (APA).

About BermanBraun

BermanBraun is an independent media company whose three divisions – television, feature film and digital media – create and exploit entertainment content and advertising solutions throughout the world. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based Company, founded by principals Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun in January 2007, has separate strategic global alliances with NBC and Microsoft to create and distribute creative content across all platforms. In February 2009, BermanBraun launched WONDERWALL – the primary celebrity destination on the MSN Network, ranking ahead of TMZ.com and People.com in traffic, with number one user engagement in the celebrity news space. In April 2010, partners BermanBraun, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (HFM U.S.) and MSN launched GLO, a lifestyle destination site. BermanBraun is currently producing THE CAPE for NBC’s 2010/2011 television season. They are also producing DECODED for the History Channel for Fall 2010. BermanBraun also produces SWORDS for The Discovery Channel and IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM? on MTV.

About Universal Cable Productions

Universal Cable Productions creates quality content across multiple media platforms for USA, Syfy and other networks. A leader in innovative and critically acclaimed programming, UCP is the studio behind USA’s Royal Pains, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Psych, In Plain Sight, Covert Affairs and Facing Kate, along with Syfy’s Eureka, Warehouse 13 and Caprica. The studio also produced both long-running series Monk and Battlestar Galactica. UCP is a division of NBC Universal.

About Syfy

Syfy is a media destination for imagination-based entertainment. With year round acclaimed original series, events, blockbuster movies, classic science fiction and fantasy programming, a dynamic Web site (www.Syfy.com), and a portfolio of adjacent business (Syfy Ventures), Syfy is a passport to limitless possibilities. Originally launched in 1992 as SCI FI Channel, and currently in 95 million homes, Syfy is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies. (Syfy. Imagine greater.).

spring 2011 after first airing on BBC One in the UK starting in September 2010.

“We are thrilled that Syfy will be broadcasting the third series of Merlin. The upcoming season will add an exciting new twist to Merlin’s ongoing struggle to protect Prince Arthur, as well as thrilling audiences with bigger and bolder action sequences, stunning CGI monsters, mysterious villains and comic fun for all the family,” Merlin creator and executive producer, Johnny Capps said in a written statement.

Syfy citing ratings as a prime reason for the announcement. Merlin almost doubled Syfy’s Friday 10 p.m. timeslot overr the previous year. “The enchanting imagination of Merlin proved very popular with our audience and we’re delighted to bring the series back for a third season on Syfy,” Chris Regina, Syfy VP of programming, said.

Anna Paquin at DragonCon (Image via Wikipedia)

topping the list at $1.25 million an episode – outpacing the next-highest paid performer, Two and a Half Men, co-star Jon Cryer’s $550,000 per episode salary by almost a million dollars an episode.

Of the stars of genre TV, only four stars made TV Guide’s list, with Anna Paquin, of HBO’s Ture Blood, topping the list of returning stars at $75,000 per episode. Tied with her is Blair Underwood, star of the new NBC entry in genre TV, The Event. Next up is The Vampire Diary‘s Ian Somerhalder at $40,000 an episode. The last genre TV star is Selena Gomez, start of Disney Channel’s  veteran fantasy kid’s comedy, Wizards of Waverly Place.

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Despite a few bright spots on cable and network TV – most notably Sunday night’s vampire melodramas True Blood on HBO and the much-better than expected The Gates on ABC, as well as Friday’s quirky fantasy series, Warehoue 13 and Haven on Syfy – genre TV fans are in the doldrums on the other 5 nights of the week.

One bright spot is that the new 2010 Fall TV season starts in a few short weeks. This is your guide to the debut dates of the returning genre TV programs (and a couple new shows, too).

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Bryan Fuller (Image via Wikipedia)

Finally, someone is trying to bring back space opera to television, at least, according to Entertainment Weekly.

In “The Ausiello Files” TV section, EW columnist Andy Patrick reports that Syfy has hired Bryan Fuller to adapt John Chrisopher’s novel, The Lotus Caves into s script for a possible series.

Among SFTV fandom, Fuller is known both as the creator of Pushing Daiseis as well as the main writer for some of the best episodes of Heroes (or, when Heroes didn’t suck) and as the creator of cult classics, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me.

PREMISE FOR THE NEW SHOW:

It’s set on a future Lunar colony where the colonists tumble upon the fact that intelligent aliens have set up shop on our moon in the caves for a very long time.

But a final caveat – this is just a production deal. It’s for a pilot script and series treatment. There is no guarantee that this show willa ctually make it on the air.

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THIS DECEMBER… ‘TIS THE SEASON TO JOIN SYFY FOR FIRST EVER HOLIDAY-THEMED EPISODES OF HIT SERIES WAREHOUSE 13 AND EUREKA

Judd Hirsch (Taxi) and Paul Blackthorne (The Dresden Files) Guest Star on Warehouse 13

and Chris Parnell (Saturday Night Live) and Matt Frewer Visit Eureka

New York, New York – August 11, 2010 – This December Syfy fans no longer have to imagine what the holidays would be like in their favorite government hideaway or quaint town of geniuses. For the first time, two of Syfy’s most popular original scripted series will debut special stand-alone holiday episodes featuring both new and familiar guest stars (exact premiere dates are TBA).

On Warehouse 13, as the Warehouse team prepares to celebrate the holidays in snowy South Dakota, Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly) are called upon to hunt down a malevolent Santa Claus. Meanwhile, in time for Hanukkah, Artie and his estranged father, Isadore Weisfelt reunite after 30 years.  Award-winning actor Judd Hirsch returns to television guest starring as Artie’s father. Paul Blackthorne also guest stars as a harried work-a-holic who becomes terrorized by a strange series of robberies committed by a thief dressed as “jolly old Saint Nick!”

Judd Hirsch has been nominated for an Oscar for Ordinary People and honored with an Emmy for the revered comedy Taxi. He has also received a Golden Globe (Dear John) and two Tony Awards (I’m Not Rappaport, Conversations with My Father). Paul Blackthorne previously portrayed the wizard P.I. Harry Dresden on the Syfy series Dresden Files, appeared on Lipstick Jungle with Brooke Shields and can currently be seen on The Gates. Executive Producer and Showrunner Jack Kenny will direct the December holiday episode.

On Eureka, as the Global Dynamics employees celebrate the season at the company holiday party, staff member Dr. Noah Drummer (Chris Parnell) nearly absconds with a volatile experiment. The halls get seriously decked when Dr. Drummer’s unstable hydrogen crystal starts to grow at a frightening rate. Carter (Colin Ferguson) and Henry (Joe Morton) attempt to deal with the potentially explosive crystal, but before long the true scope of the problem is revealed, and it will take more than tinsel and carolers to save Christmas and Eureka. Former series regular Matt Frewer also returns as Taggert.

Chris Parnell appeared as a regular cast member on ten seasons of Saturday Night Live and was featured in the show’s breakout digital short Lazy Sunday. He is a recurring guest star on 30 Rock as Dr. Spacemen.

Warehouse 13 follows two Secret Service agents who find themselves abruptly transferred to a massive, top-secret storage facility in windswept South Dakota which houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and preternatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government. The Warehouse’s caretaker Artie (Saul Rubinek) charges Agents Lattimer (Eddie McClintock) and Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly) with chasing down reports of supernatural and paranormal activity in search of new objects to cache at the Warehouse, as well as helping him to control the Warehouse itself. Scagliotti plays Claudia, Artie’s apprentice.

Eureka seems like any other cozy, Pacific Northwest town, but is actually a secret community of geniuses assembled by the government to conduct top-secret research. What they’ve unwittingly created is a place where anything imaginable can happen… and does.  Eureka stars Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Joe Morton and James Callis. The series also stars, Erica Cerra (“Jo Lupo”), Neil Grayston (“Douglas Fargo”), Niall Matter (“Zane Donovan”) and features Jordon Hinson (“Zoe Carter”). Returning special guest stars include Jaime Ray Newman (“Dr. Tess Fontana”) and Matt Frewer (“Taggart”). Co-creator Jaime Paglia and Bruce Miller are Executive Producers.

Both shows are produced by Universal Cable Productions.

Syfy is a media destination for imagination-based entertainment. With year round acclaimed original series, events, blockbuster movies, classic science fiction and fantasy programming, a dynamic Web site (www.Syfy.com), and a portfolio of adjacent business (Syfy Ventures), Syfy is a passport to limitless possibilities. Originally launched in 1992 as SCI FI Channel, and currently in more than 96 million homes, Syfy is a network of NBC Universal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies. (Syfy. Imagine greater.)

Echo is strangely drawn to a college campus, where a new drug is causing the students to kill themselves. She has flashbacks to her life as Caroline, where her boyfriend Leo was killed at the same college.

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire – following the exploits of a neurotic hero, a free loving pagan warrior woman, a conman/sorcerer, a pig-troll-man, and a fiercely proud queen as they quest to fight evil while battling to overcome their own foibles.

NETWORK: Comedy Central
DAY: Thursdays 10 p.m. (9 Central)
STARTS: April 9, 2009

GENRE: Raunchy Action-Adventure, Anachronistic Period Comedy, Fantasy, One-Camera Sitcom (no laugh track)
RUN: 6 episodes (Premiere: 1-hour; other eps: 30 min.)

CHILD FRIENDLY: No
PARENT WARNING: Although semi-adult language may be a concern to some, the overriding theme of this show is its sexuality with the open mocking of heterosexual and homosexual foibles. This is refreshing for an adult audience – but may not be appropriate for children.

EYE CANDY: Lots of well-toned male and female body parts are shown. But rest assured, the only nipples on display are male.

(NO SPOILERS)

I have to be honest that when I heard that Comedy Central was planning a spoof series lampooning the sword and sorcery genre, with the name of Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire, my reaction was more about skepticism than excitement.

Let’s face it, Comedy Central is much more frat boy than fanboy.

Added to that, the title character is played by British actor Sean Maguire – best known to American audiences as “Leonidas” in the groaningly un-funny and not-good 300 spoof, Meet the Spartans.

So, when I sat down to watch the reviewer’s screening pilot episode, I was dreading the worst. Boy, was I wrong.

This show is brilliant. Seriously. Despite some cheap shot broad comedy and fleshy gratuity, I was laughing out loud and wishing out loud that the episode was longer than a mere hour.

HERE’S WHY THIS SHOW IS GOOD: The WRITING

The studios that created this series are MTV Networks and the BBC, believe it or not. How can this be any good?

It’s quite simple: the creative energy behind this show is BBC Television – not Comedy Central parent, MTV Networks. That means the writing is witty, subversive and written for folks with IQs in the three-digit range. But the MTV influence really helps this show be more accessible to a broader audience. Somehow it works.

The creative force is series creator Peter A. Knight, creator of turn of the century cult favorite, Big Wolf on Campus.

HERE’S WHY THE SHOW IS GREAT: The VILLAIN

The old saw in fannish circles is that a heroic adventure series is only as good as its villain. If that is true, Krod Mandoon is destined for greatness.

Here, the personification of petty blithe evilness is Chancellor Dongalor, played by the glorious Matt Lucas, from Little Britain . He brings his talent for being unabashedly unselfconscious and somehow brings a sense of wit and dignity to what otherwise would be a series of cheap gross-out scenes in less able hands.

The character Dongalor is self-centered and so ignorantly blissed out in a stream of consciousness manner, he is a joy to watch. It’s like he embodies all that is shockingly hilarious about the best of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live skits.

OH YEAH – THE STORY

This show follows the all-too-familiar formula of an unwitting but able hero who discovers and accepts his destiny to save the world from an evil overlord. And as you can tell by the title, it has a flaming sword in it.

I’d tell you more, but I promised no spoilers.

THE CAST
The obligatory “Scooby Gang”:

• Sean Maguire (Eastenders, Meet the Spartans) as Krod Mangoon, the “golden one”
• India de Beaufot (Run, Fatboy, Run) as Aneka, the pagan warrior
• Steve Speirs (PotC: Dead Man’s Chest) as Loquatso, the half ogre
• Kevin Hart (Superhero Movie) as Zezelryck, the sorcerer
• Marques Ray as Bruce, the widow queen

Other Noteworthy cast members and future guest stars:

• Matt Lucas (Little Britain) as Chancellor Dongalor
• John Rhys Davies (Lord of the Rings trilogy) as Grimshank
• James Murray (Primeval) as Longshaft
• Roger Allum (V for Vendetta) as Gen. Arcadius

Every other science fiction, fantasy or horror show on broadcast TV last week was still in reruns.

In the battle for viewers, Fringe attracted 9 million viewers last Tuesday – topping the list of genre programs. The show’s debut brought in close to 10% of the viewing public, which is FOX’s highest debut for a drama series in two years.

The network ran a repeat episode of Fringe on Sunday, Sept. 14, where it attracted an additional 5.7 million viewers for about 6 percent of the TVs being used that night.

It’s a good start, but may not be an indication of how well the show will perform once ABC, CBS and NBC stop showing repeats and start airing new episodes on Tuesdays. Luckily, Fringe has a great lead-in following House starting on the 16th.

FOX’s other debut this past week, the sophomore season of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles didn’t fare as well against NBC’s Deal or No Deal and CBS’s repeat of The Big Bang Theory. Sarah Connor attracted a mere 6.3 million viewers, barely beating out a repeat of Ghost Whisperer for the No. 2 Genre TV spot.

Following are the ratings for speculative fiction shows that aired on the broadcast networks last week:

SHOW [NET] # Viewers – 18-49/% watching (18-34/%) | Date

• 1. Fringe [FOX] 9 million – 3.2/9 (2.5/8) | Sept. 9
• 2. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles [FOX] 6.3 million – 2.4/7 (2.1/6) | Sept. 8
• 3. Ghost Whisperer (repeat) [CBS] 6.2 million — (1.6/5) | Sept. 12 (9 p.m.)
• 4. Fringe (repeat) [FOX] 5.7 2.3/6 (19./6) | Sept. 14
• 5. Ghost Whisperer (repeat) [CBS] 5.7 million — (1.5/5) | Sept. 12 (8 p.m.)
• 6. Chuck (repeat) [NBC] 2.5 million — (0.8/3) | Sept. 13
• 7. Smallville (repeat) [CW] 2 million – 0.8/2 (0.7/2) | Sept. 11
• 8. Supernatural (repeat) [CW] 1.7 million – 0.6/2 (0.5/2) | Sept. 11

Source: Nielsen Media Research