Star Wars Rebels Season 3 Episode 1 Welcome back to Star Wars Rebels coverage! Season three starts with a bang, as Grand Admiral Thrawn takes the stage, transitioning from the expanded universe to the world of animation. “Steps Into Shadow” was first shown at Star Wars Celebration London this summer, but for those unable to attend the convention, the show started at a new time slot on Saturday nights. There have been some changes behind the scenes too, with Dave Filoni handing the supervising director spot to The Clone Wars veteran Justin Ridge in order to be more involved with the day-to-day writing and animation on the show....

You’ve spent the last few years working in collaboration on projects, across film, television and audio. How does it feel to go back to one man and a microphone? I used to do stand-up years ago, and I sort-of fell out of love with it. And then, I started dabbling with it, like a hobby. It was a challenge to myself, I think. I was trying to see if I could do it, if I could do it well....

2.19 Alex While we all knew that Kara and Maggie were going to save Alex in the end (that is: if Alex didn’t save herself first), the set-up provided our characters with the chance to work through some of their issues. These character beats were much better than the plot, which featured some random dude Alex and Kara went to high school with who decided to stalk Alex for a year as part of an elaborate plot to get his dad broken out of jail....

The Knight of Hell, Abaddon, has resurfaced, and she quickly rounds up a slew of demons and…scolds them. She’s a whole different baddie than Crowley—she doesn’t believe in making deals to entrap souls, and she proves she’s a bigger baddie by snuffing out a demon with a choke-hold. Abaddon may also be a smarter villain for our hunters to face. Although she’s not been on Earth for a very long time, she quickly gets with the times, donning a Kevlar vest for protection....

6.10 Caged Heat Samuel has a change of heart and reveals to Sam and Dean where he has been taking the creatures he has captured, and where he believes Crowley can be found. Sam asks him to come with them but Samuel turns him down. Sam, Dean and Castiel meet with Meg to plan their attack, and whilst preparations are made, Castiel, seemingly unaware that Sam is eavesdropping, voices his concern to Dean that Sam’s soul would have been corrupted by Lucifer and would be unfit to put back into Sam....

Episode one dealt partly with a racism scandal hitting an Atlanta professional basketball team. And now “On the Carpet,” which was written well advance of Adrian Peterson’s suspension for child abuse, covers a professional athlete’s mother admitting to striking her son as a child. But 60 solid minutes into the show, I’ll give Survivor’s Remorse the benefit of the doubt. Mike O’Malley and his writers are just keen observers of American culture and pretty good at their jobs....

3.19 Letharia Vulpira It’s a good thing everything is plotted out so meticulously and organized so well, because there’s a lot of stuff happening in Beacon Hills. Granted, there’s normally a lot of stuff happening in Beacon Hills, but that business has actually increased during the second half of the third season and the arrival of the nogitsune. Just in case you thought evil druids were a compilation, they’ve got nothing on the influx of yakuza, demons, and serial bombers that come along hand-in-tails with the influx of Japanese mythology to the show....

There were lots of rather deep ideas to take in and process, because this story goes to the very heart of a perspective that was first floated many episodes back, about the nature of time travel in this story. Specifically, the future they’re fighting for, and how events as portrayed in the present might impact or not on the future, or multiple futures. In the context of the Terminator franchise this has been a narrative hot potato over all the movies, because the exact point of Judgment Day is moved but the event can’t be altered, maybe....

Despite this, no subsequent show has really succeeded in recapturing Lost’s initial magic. Many front-load their series too heavily, meaning that the show simply gets more and more boring week upon week. Others concentrate too heavily on mystery and conspiracy at the expense of telling any actual story. Most forget that Lost wasn’t just about surprising plot twists, it was also about engaging characters. By all accounts, it’s a tricky game to play, and you only have to look at the corpses of shows like Heroes, Flash Forward and The Event for proof....

5.11 Damocles — Part One In recent seasons, however, The 100 has suffered from a constant leaning into these new, darker expectations. Now that everyone expects the show to go dark, it’s not so surprising when it does—and in age in which it’s far more unique and subversive to tell a story about community, unexpected kindness, or the power of empathy, dark just isn’t doing it anymore. This is the context the story of Damocles — Part One is told in....

Blimey, this is an odd one! If you’re familiar with the first Star Wars animated spin-off, Droids, then you’ll be reminded of the show’s rather wistful take on the George Lucas universe. Otherwise, you might be wondering just what the flippety-flip is going on. You’ll also be reminded of Gulliver’s Travels and The Wizard of Oz as the titular droids, See Threepio and Artoo Detoo, go from one scrape to another, from one world to the next....

Mr. Jones told us about the mental and physical challenges of playing Danny Rand on his own show and in The Defenders, what he would like to see in Season 2, and much more. Finn Jones: So this is the situation. I think I was running on about three hours of sleep. We just wrapped season 1 of Iron Fist at, like, I think 9 AM that morning after six months of intense, intense shoot....

Director Xavier Gens wastes no time in laying his premise out. Nuclear bombs land on Manhattan, and seconds before they’re obliterated by the firestorm, a handful of tenement building residents scramble into a basement for protection. Fortunately for them – or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it – the building’s twitchy superintendent Mickey (Michael Biehn) has made provision for such a disaster, and the basement’s reasonably well stocked with tins of beans and bottles of water....

First off this week, I’d like to mention how great the speed force effects look at night. The Flash is a pretty slick looking show to begin with, and the contrast between the red streak and yellow lightning bolts with the clean darkness of Central City is pretty striking. Arrow usually kicks things off with an impresive stunt sequence. Maybe The Flash will start making memorable effects shots part of their openings?...

What’s important then is the way in which Mr Jackson sends off his Middle Earth cinematic opus and (just in case there was any doubt) he does so with power and spectacle. If there’s one thing above else to love about Jackson’s adaptations of Tolkien’s work, it’s the heart with which he enriches the characters relationships, not least those that have been created or elaborated on by himself, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens....

It’s 1956, and young journalist Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw) is frustrated with the perfunctory state of TV reportage. While Freddie desperately wants to report on the weightier issues of the day – racism, social upheaval – his superiors are more interested in celebrity marriages and ladies’ day at Ascot. Bel’s keen to get Freddie onto the show, too, and manages to convince her superiors at the BBC to give him an interview....

When Tom Adams was told to pack his skin tight jodhpurs and depart at the end of the series, the ship was sold off. The ship had been configured for the needs of the cast and crew of the series. Instead of the usual sealed sea toilets, ordinary flush toilets had been fitted. There was also the problem of the bowsprit, the figurehead of a buxom lady. This jutted out in front around twenty feet or so....

Doctor Who earned its buns back in the Sixties with veteran actor William Hartnell zooming onto the 15 inch, black and white screen from somewhere in a distant galaxy later revealed as Gallifrey. A technical problem, which has never been solved to this day, meant that when his Space/Time Machine, the Tardis, appeared on the scene, the chameleon device, used to make the craft fit in with the locale, jammed in Police Box mode....

The fourth series of The IT Crowd shudders to a close, and what a rollercoaster it’s been. And while most episodes have delivered something to raise a smile, writer Graham Linehan reached his creative zenith with The Final Countdown, an instalment with some genuinely inspired, amusing ideas, but has since coasted on a steadily diminishing wave of half-formed ideas and narrative dead-ends. With the series finale, however, there’s a last opportunity for The IT Crowd to pick itself up and end the season on a high....

These sorts of freak incidents involving unsecured white goods can happen. This is why it’s essential to take out travel insurance. He leaves hospital and heads to the hotel and all would be fine were it not for the fact that, when he gets there, his wife claims she has no idea who he is. What’s even worse is that she’s with another man who claims that he is, in fact, Dr Martin Harris....