WilliamShatner

A look at tonight's sci-fi TV:

Better Off Ted, "Mess of a Salesman" – I can't think of a better way to cap off Better Off Ted's second season than with a guest spot from Warehouse 13's Eddie McClintock. OK, maybe a guaranteed season three renewal from ABC might top that, but McClintock would definitely be my number two. In tonight's (probable) season finale, McClintock plays Ted's older brother, a fast-talking schemer who screws over the company and corrupts Phil and Lem. Elsewhere in the episode, Veronica and Linda work together to help a charity for girls. (8:30 p.m. on ABC)

Human Target, "Embassy Row" – Firefly's Sean Maher guest stars as a journalist who's poisoned after breaking a major scandal. Chance crashes the Russian embassy to find the guilty party and save his friend's life. Along the way, he meets Emma Barnes, a slick FBI agent posing, of course, as a hooker. (9 p.m. ET on Fox)

SciFi Science, "How to Become a Superhero" – Mad scientist Dr. Michio Kaku reveals the plans for his "super suit," a uniform that can give anyone who wears it superpowers. (10 p.m. ET on The Science Channel)

Shatner's Raw Nerve – Kick back with good ol' Shat as he welcomes guests Whoopi Goldberg, aka Star Trek: TNG's Guinan, and Mackenzie Phillips. (10 p.m. ET on Bio)

Head after the jump for clips and more TV picks.

Looking for something good and geeky to watch? Check out this week's notable sci-fi DVD and Blu-ray releases:

Gamer (DVD and Blu-ray)
Gerard Butler continues his post-300 slip with this tired and flashy action flick about a prisoner forced to compete in a futuristic Running Man-esque game. Every move he makes is controlled by a bratty 17-year-old kid, which isn't nearly as entertaining as Michael C. Hall's over the top performance as the film's nutty big bad.

Pandorum (DVD and Blu-ray)
Dennis Quaid and the great Ben Foster add some dramatic heft to this low budget sci-fi horror flick. Pandorum was criticized for being derivative of far superior films like Alien, I Am Legend and The Poseidon Adventure. Still, flicks from Hollywood schlock master Paul W.S. Anderson, who produces here, are known for offering a few hours of dumb and violent fun.

Defying Gravity: The Complete First Season (DVD)
I bailed on this soapy astronaut drama halfway through the first season, and so did ABC. Even the mighty Ron Livingston couldn't save Defying Gravity from cloying romantic plots and tedious space drama.

Kingdom of the Spiders [Special Edition] (DVD)
No cloying romance or lifeless drama here. This campy '70s horror classic features a young William Shatner battling an army of aggressive arachnids in what's billed as "the ultimate man vs. spider showdown." The special edition boasts a new interview with Shatner that's probably worth the DVD's $15 price tag on its own.

A look at tonight's sci-fi TV:

Shatner's Raw Nerve – We missed last month's premiere of William Shatner's talk show – mostly because it aired during the lost week between Christmas and New Year's Eve -- but Bio is repeating the new season's first two episodes tonight. It's not exactly sci-fi, but I doubt many Squad readers would object to watching Kirk Prime chat up quirky celebs like Gene Simmons and Weird Al Yankovic. (11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. ET on Bio)

Head after the jump for a clip and more TV picks.

The franchise comeback story of the year, if not the decade, is Star Trek, which arrived in theaters with an amount of buzz that could only be matched by a metric ton of tribbles, and eventually grossed almost $400 million worldwide. This week Trek debuts on Blu-ray in a 3-Disc Special Edition, and the set includes enough extras and special features that one can expect the series to continue on successfully for the foreseeable future – even if it's only because you can't get it out of your head.

Though it's unnecessary to revisit the merits of the movie itself – by now you're either with J.J. Abrams' reinvention of the series mythology or you aren't – it looks absolutely wonderful in high definition, emphasizing every last lens flare and visual flourish injected into its agile, lyrical cinematography. The color quality itself is just positively luminous, but augmented by the sound design, which offers a muscular 5.1 TrueHD mix, you're completely immersed in the film; in fact, so great is the sound on Disc One that even the menu screens rumble with house-shaking bass.

As for the encyclopedia of bonus materials.....

After the nuclear holocaust, the only thing left will be cockroaches and speculation that William Shatner might appear in the next Star Trek film from J.J. Abrams. This rumor just will not die. Now, Chronicles Network is heaping a captain's log onto the fire by stating that Shatner and Abrams are actually scheduling meetings with each other to see how this can work. Of course, Chronicles mentions no inside source at all, just presenting the nebulous meetings as hard fact, when it all sort of sounds like cloud talk to me.

The decision will ultimately be a creative one, but it would seem to me that the torch was already passed (in a strong way) to the new crew by Leonard Nimoy as Spock in the 2009 relaunch. With that in mind, should William Shatner even appear in Star Trek XII (or Star Trek 2 or whatever it ends up being called)? Is it time for the next adventure of the USS Enterprise to offer a completely clean break from the original cast or should they find a way to work Shatner in as Kirk for one last hurrah on the big screen?

The blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Original Series Season Three should make Trek fans very happy -- it features an extended cut of the series' second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". This cut, detailed on TrekWeb, features a different opening credit sequence and theme song, a scene that introduces Gary Mitchell, Dr. Piper, and Sulu during a Red Alert, and some minor dialogue changes. While bootleg versions of the extended pilot have shown up on YouTube, this is the first fully authorized release of this landmark episode.

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was Gene Roddenberry's second attempt to woo NBC execs into greenlighting the series in 1965. Taking their advice after he pitched Star Trek unsuccessfully with "The Cage", he focused a little more on the action, and traded up Jeffrey Hunter's Captain Pike for William Shatner's Captain Kirk. The second pilot got approved, and sci-fi history was made when Star Trek finally hit the airwaves in 1966.

Star Trek The Original Series Season Three will be released on blu-ray December 15, 2009.

When J.J. Abrams' first Star Trek film came about, it was hand-in-hand with a lot of flack from the William Shatner camp. The original Captain Kirk was not thrilled about being excluded while Leonard Nemoy's Spock held a pretty important role in the film. But while his insistence was considered inconceivable for the first installment, now there's word that Kirk, and possibly Spock, will reunite in #2. And we're not talking about Chris Pine's Kirk. During a press day for the DVD and Blu-ray release of Star Trek, Cinematical talked with Abrams about the whole Kirk kerfuffle and what could happen in the sequel.

On Kirk's Absence
"As someone who was a William Shatner fan... it was a foregone conclusion that we wanted Shatner in the movie. The problem was that his character died, on screen, in one of the Trek films, and because we decided, very early on, that we wanted to adhere to Trek canon as best we could. [That] was a huge challenge, because even the original series, in many ways, didn't always adhere to Trek canon, [so] the required machinations to get Shatner into the movie would have been very difficult to do, given the story we wanted to tell, and also to give him the kind of part that he would be happy with. It was this thing where it would have felt like a gimmick in order to get Shatner in the movie, which would have honestly, to me, been distracting. [But] how do you put him in the movie when you want him in it so badly, and yet the story actually seems in counter purposes with the story you want to tell?"

But something cleared up because ...

- Fox has released new promo images for the second season of Dollhouse featuring solo shots of all the cast members, including a fresh-faced Victor (Enver Gjokaj), who was last seen getting his mug sliced up by Alpha last season. These come just days after a batch of very, very tiny (and spoilery) promo pics for the season premiere showed up online. Dollhouse returns to Fox on Sept. 25.

- A&E Home Video has tons of special features planned for its upcoming Farscape DVD releases. The sets are due November 17. Anyone think huge DVD sales could lead to a new season of Farscape, or a jump to the big screen, ala Serenity? (Or at least a Blu-ray release?)

- Damn, those Smallville folks give good trailer. Head after the jump for the first official look at season nine -- and Clark Kent's Matrix-style super suit. Smallville premieres Sept. 25 on The CW.

Welcome to Captain's Log -- your (semi) daily round-up of sci-fi randomness from around the web. Here's what's happening today:

- Sam Jackson will not kick ass in Iron Man 2. He says, "Not this time, not yet. We still haven't moved Nick Fury into the bad-ass zone." Um, wha?

- Why hasn't Shatner seen the new Star Trek movie? Regis has the answer.

- Ricky Gervais is telling critics to lay off his new sf-tinged romantic comedy, The Invention of Lying.

More sci-fi awesomeness after the jump

Don't worry. The video above is definitely safe for work. It doesn't so much feature William Shatner's penis as much as it features Shatner talking about his penis, which all nerds of appropriate ages should be able to enjoy.

If you didn't catch Shatner's appearance on last night's Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, please stream the clip now. You'll learn how Captain Kirk likes to "rip it" on the 101 and turn the Vulcan salute into an obscene gesture. Spock would not approve.