In their sci-fi preview of 2009 we find out that Takei, Sulu in the ‘classic’ Trek series, is voicing Lok Durd – a nasty and power-crazed Neimoidian general. In the two part storyline, starting on Jan 16 in North America, he has created a new weapon that wipes out all living matter but is harmless to the droids of the Separatist army. As for the themes behind the storyline, supervising director Dave Filoni says, “These episodes raise a very interesting question about the Jedi: Can they still be considered keepers of the peace now that they are soldiers in war?...

Girls Season 6 Episode 2 I was down on the first bunch of episodes in the previous season of Girls. I found the comedy too broad and the tone unreal. However, last season regained its footing about halfway into its run to become one of the show’s best. I mention this because, although the final season has plenty of time to turn things around, as of right now… hoo-boy. If I thought that the season premiere got a little too goofy (I did), I didn’t know what goofy was until I saw “Hostage Situation....

And so it’s come to this. After a year of ups and down and with the constant fear of the club being canned, New Directions have finally made it to regionals but are soon dealt a blow when Sue announces she is one of the judges along with a few familiar faces from earlier episodes, Olivia Newton John, Josh Groban and slimy news anchor Rod Remington. Sensing that this is the end of the club, all the members fall into a depression and at pizza night at Will’s discuss how much the club means to them and how awful they feel that it is all about to end....

“Spirit of the Goat” was a perfect opportunity to do something that even the better episodes of Gotham have so far failed to do: give us a case of the week that actually matters. Previews showed us a baddie who boasted a passing resemblance to the Scarecrow, with a potentially nasty serial killer vibe. Well, both of those things were there, but a compelling episode they did not make. But let’s start with something that did work....

That’s why it’s sadly not unrealistic to envision talented people like creator Chris Chibnall* and Anna Gunn on the set of Gracepoint saying “Guys…I think we’re kind of nailing this.” Lovers of Broadchurch are going to need to start speaking out in the comments. I’m having a hard time imagining Gracepoint’s source material as anything other than monumentally bad. Of course we now know that they have categorically NOT been nailing it....

Happy Valley’s first series was satisfyingly circular. It started with Catherine Cawood stopping a man set fire to himself and ended with the same. In between it told a grippingly tense story about a police sergeant grandmother taking due revenge on a sadistic misogynistic. Think Kill Bill, if The Bride had ticked all that sword business off her to-do list while banging up scrotes, making packed lunches and putting a hot pot on for tea....

Last week on Helix, the infected Dr. Farragut became the lead vector while showing off his impressive neck muscles, the CDC remembered that they were sent to the Arctic for a reason, Dr. Walker learned that Dr. Hatake was her father (and that he is REALLY in touch with his feelings), Major Balls and Daniel saved Anana and the rest of the locals, and the someone stole the virus. Plus, the Helix writers remembered that there was this thing called depth and decided to revisit some larger themes like self-sacrifice for the greater good (sort of)....

Cheyenne feels far removed from everything and everyone during the early goings of The Union Pacific Railroad’s bid to complete the job at hand. It is this type of isolation that results in people doing things to pass the time and to survive. If Cheyenne were a bustling town, fewer residents would give in to boredom, daytime drunkenness, or waiting one’s turn at the local brothel. If there were more articles to write than obituaries, Louise would be hard-pressed to bed Campbell....

4.1 The Needs Of The Many The Needs of the Many does however, have its fair share of positives. I predicted previously that Carlos may turn out to be an ‘empath’; someone who can replicate the powers of people they have come into contact with. As it turns out, the ex-soldier’s super-strength is derived not from his battle last week but from some drastic adaptations Carlos made to his brother’s El Vengador costume....

Take Angela Petrelli, who for the previous two seasons has been presented as an acerbic personality, but hardly lethal. In the space of the first five minutes she’s transformed into a narcissistic sociopath, feeding her ‘son’ Sylar another victim and another power. But back to this episode, entitled “One of Us, One of Them”. What I did like was how they represented that ‘present’ Peter’s mind was trapped in the body of another....

It also throws in the Playboy Mansion, and surely becomes the first and only U-certificate film of all time in the UK to borrow the vocal talents of Hugh Heffner. The first son is EB, the son of the Easter Bunny, voiced by Russell Brand. He’s heir apparent to his father’s job, but has no interest in taking it. Instead, EB dreams of playing guitar, and takes matters into his own hands, escaping from Easter Island and arriving in the midst of Hollywood....

But unfortunately that’s not exactly what we get, with the film instead opting to deliver a pretty standard example of its genre and concentrating more on the laughs than crafting any sort of coherent message about what it means to be young, free and single. Or older, guarded and single. Or just generally unattached. Do not be mistaken – this is not a film about learning to be alone. For much of its running time, How To Be Single is actually about the ways in which single people might go about meeting one another, and how a preoccupation with the cliches of singledom can actually be just as harmful as obsessing over finding the right partner....

It’s probably all just a matter of time. Maybe it’s something to do with having crossed the artificial barrier of the millennium. Perhaps it’s all the spin-off products of the internet that are so commonplace that we hardly think of them as ‘innovations’ any more, even though we may still occasionally marvel at their power. Whatever it is, don’t you get the feeling that we’re living in the future? Or at least one of the possible futures that have been mapped out during the past few decades....

On Thursday’s episode of Impact Wrestling, the company aired a short video on Rockstar Spud, who was recovering after he was beaten with a hammer by Swoggle on last week’s episode. The video was meant to be comedic, and most of it was quite funny. The absurdity of Spud, with dramatic music playing in the background of a black-and-white video, asking “Why’d he do it? Why me? I didn’t mean to pull down his pants,” was really funny....

Systems and processes are only as good as the people operating them, teaches Innocent episode three. Forensic science may have the gleam of objective truth about it, but when the forensic scientist is a cheapo scammer with no professional ethics, it’s about as useful as to a criminal investigation as a tarot reading. Well, sometimes, hunches are wrong. That’s why the paperwork monkeys are the real police heroes. Officers like DI Hudson, who are willing to put the work in to get to the truth....

‘Safe’ is almost entirely dedicated to the big story arc, and brings together a series of threads from previous stories. Continuing the trademark weird start, bad FBI Agent Mitchell Loeb and a team of ex-marines rob a bank using a technology that we saw previously that allows them to move through solid walls. It all goes well until they’ve got the object from the safe that they want; the technology has a time limit which the last man exceeds, leaving him stuck part way through a solid wall....

1.4 All The Mirrors Of The World That ampersand in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’s title gives the wrong impression altogether. It advertises union where there is only discord. At least there is now, after the battle lines were drawn in this week’s conflict-driven episode. The “period of collaboration” is over, Strange told Norrell in that wonderfully acted fireside scene. It was diplomatically put. Norrell clearly wanted no such thing as a collaborator in magic, or even a student, but instead an unquestioning acolyte, someone to leave his reign untroubled, sign off Lascelles’ propagandist book, and not to ask inconvenient questions about faeries....

“That’s actually typically Scottish, to go really dark with it but still have a sense of pride,” Gillan muses during our interview before the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. “It’s funny, I think, we all possess this thing where we go like, ‘Scotland’s shit.’ But also, we love it so much.” Again, it is a surprisingly focused film for a first-time filmmaker, but then that’s par for the course given that Gillan has spent many years on sets for film and television, both gargantuan in scope and intimate in scale....

There’s something freeing about the fact that much of the usual crime BS – rape, slut-shaming, overly humanizing a charismatic male killer, a system that lets white men off the hook – is off the table. It’s not to say that things like sexual violence don’t happen in the world of Killing Eve. In fact, many of Villanelle’s (Jodie Comer) targets engage in them, whether personally or as a matter of business, in the case of a human trafficker....

When it comes to television, this ethos translates into more women showrunners and directors than ever before, more inclusive casts, and stories that actually prioritize women’s experiences, instead of relegating us to love interests or limiting us to a pornified version of our actual lives, full of sexposition, the male gaze, and drinking wine in the bathtub. Killing Eve‘s co-protagonist assassin Villanelle plays into a certain ironic, misandrist delight. Her first kill that we see is a sex trafficker....