Today’s Guest Clack is from Izzy Plumbly, a writer from Manchester, England who has a full-blown addiction to TV and has never quite gotten over the mess that was Buffy season six. Or the last episode of Angel. But The Wire and Sons of Anarchy soon made up for those, as did Mad Men, Bones … the list goes on….

First things first, let’s get this straight. I loved Defying Gravity. Thirteen beautifully crafted episodes that paid off bit by bit, readying me for the big reveal — that I’m pretty sure would have been metered out morsel by tasty morsel over the series — Ron Livingston doing his “man with a difficult past” routine, Christina Cox’s awesome tough-girl act … I could go on.
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Pablo A. Bermudez has grown up on television all his life, and as a result he has taken to referencing TV shows and movies coloring his vocabulary with a sort of TV-quotes Tourette’s. As a child of the ’70s, he was weaned on the Banana Splits and Kroft Superstars.

Being a fan of both the books and the series, I find it interesting to spot the different nuances between the two. However, there is something to be said about seeing one of your favorite stories come to life right before your eyes. From the discovery of the tear in the veil, to the Keeper’s mark delivered by the ethereal Darken Rahl, Legend of the Seeker’s elements are excellently brought to life from the pages of the Sword of Truth saga written by Terry Goodkind … even if it is in another direction. However, the direction the series has taken, and is taking, will probably lead the story right back to the potential confrontation between Richard and the Keeper.

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Ruby T., a writer from Chicago and a science-fiction/fantasy aficionado (all right, a geek), is Guest Clacking for us again today with thoughts on the second season premiere of Legend of the Seeker.

As I watched the opening scenes of “Marked,” the first episode of Legend of the Seeker’s sophomore season, I was a bit anxious. The people were celebrating Richard’s defeat of the tyrant Darken Rahl with a victory feast, complete with children singing in the Seeker’s honor. Just as I was wondering whether the show would have enough conflict, danger, swordplay, fill-in-the-blank, now that the Seeker had fulfilled the prophecy and killed the main baddie, a creature from the Underworld interrupts the feast, sends the people scrambling, and gives Richard an opportunity to wield the Sword of Truth once more. (He looked as relieved as I was not to have to listen to any more singing.) Well, that didn’t last long, I thought.

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Today’s Guest-clacker is JJ, who lives in Austin, TX and is a Systems Engineer. He claims he watches waaaayyyy too much TV and he’s always looking for the next “better” show. To date, he’s never found anything better than Showtime’s Brotherhood.

First off I think I should preface by saying I’m a pretty big fan of Criminal Minds. I started watching it religiously, probably back mid-season two, and have watched Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) grow as a leader then turn around and fall as a failure. This episode is the first episode where Hotchner is no longer the team lead and in the “changing of the guards” Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) becomes the lead FBI agent.

This episode is pretty straight forward; it’s focused on the new leadership style of Morgan and didn’t have many — if any — twists in the episode, which is very unlike Criminal Minds. It had the typical start of the dark and depressing “killer beginning” attempting to set the mood of the episode, but honestly feels as if it fell short.

I did notice something that isn’t very typical for Criminal Minds which is we actually see a majority of the killer’s face in the first few scenes; the show usually attempts to hide the killer with overcasting shadows. This actually turned me off from the episode almost instantly because unlike the norm for the show, they concentrated on the character development instead of the crime.

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First-time guest clacker Ryan enjoyed snowy Northeast winters for a few years, but now lives back home in humid Hawaii.  He wishes it were still cold enough to wear a suit and tie when going out.

Before Friday’s episode of Stargate Universe, I was certain that Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright had merely taken the Battlestar Galactica character sketches, filed off the serial numbers, and tossed them through the Stargate.  I now know the truth, which is that they stole them from Arrested Development instead.

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Santuary’s on Syfy tonight, and frequent reader of CliqueClack, Ruby T., is Guest Clacking today with a few reasons why you should be tuning in to the show. Ruby is a writer from Chicago and a science-fiction/fantasy aficionado (all right, a geek).

1) It’s derivative, but in a fun way. I always enjoy spotting a nice sci-fi homage (or rip-off, if you prefer). Sanctuary as a whole is a kind of mash-up of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and X-Men, with the ageless Helen Magnus as a Mina Harker/Prof. X character. But it gets better. I don’t even have to know the actual names of the episodes anymore. It’s just “that Tribbles episode” or “the Fight Club episode” or “the Cloverfield episode.” Tell me, what self-respecting geek would not be intrigued by this? (Okay, if you want to look up those episodes, their real titles are “Nubbins,” “Warriors,” and “Instinct.”) On a side note, you can also play “Spot-the-Syfy-Star” with Sanctuary’s guest roster featuring names like Rekha Sharma of Battlestar Galactica and Michael Shanks of Stargate.

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Elizabeth’s back, sharing her ideas about Fringe this time, after musing on the musical TV shows and Glee’s success so far.

So now we’ve spent all summer shocked, amazed and desperate to know just why William Bell wanted to talk to Olivia in the still-existing World Trade Center. And … they waited another two and a half episodes to show us. It’s a strange cliffhanger, to be sure, being drawn out like that, but now at least she’s finally remembered her conversation with Bell, and the shapeshifting-soldier plot is moving forward — not to mention poor Charlie Francis is off the show for sure now. As character sendoffs go, it’s a pretty good one — both important to the plot and emotionally effective. He even gets Olivia to mourn him. At least he got one last chance to do something other than give exposition and act baffled.

Speaking of characters getting to do something more, Peter’s stepped up to take more of a leadership role while Olivia was out of circulation, which is a big step for his character but a welcome one. For now he’s gone back to helping out Olivia and making excuses for his father, so we’ll see what happens later on — especially if he finds out he’s not the “real” Peter, as that Rebecca woman Walter also used to experiment on saw without realizing. Now that he’s starting to have dreams that might be memories of having been taken by this world’s Walter, this new assertiveness of Peter’s could start causing trouble for everybody.

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