Good news everybody! The best space opera television show since…well..EVER is coming back. An online series, titled Blood & Chrome is in the pipeline. The series would follow the experiences of a young William “Husker” Adama in the first Cylon War. Mark Stern, Syfy’s executive vice president of original programming and the co-head of original content for Universal Cable Productions told The Chicago Tribune “Battlestar Galactica” and “Caprica” co-executive producer Michael Taylor will write the the script. “Blood & Chrome” is “about a young man’s initiation into war: both the realities of war as fought by soldiers on the ground (and in Battlestars and Vipers), and the somewhat less real version portrayed in the media,” Taylor said to the Tribune.

The production is basically going to be a movie cut into 9 or 10 web episodes. We can probably expect a DVD release with some nifty special features. The series will be shot using digital sets, scan directly from BSG’s sets. Apparently, if”Blood & Chrome” is successful, it could be the first a series of similar webseries projects. Even better yet, if it’s very successful, it could even act as a backdoor pilot for a prequel television show.

While the series will probably be extremely cool, I have a slight concern on the fact that Ron D. Moore doesn’t appear to be attached to this particular production. I’ve always been a huge fan of his work, ever since his days at Deep Space Nine, and I know that he’d do a fantastic job on a BSG prequel. Without him involved, we’ll just have to wait and see.

For those who thought this project was dead, I have something for you…

No word on an exact date, but my guess would be somewhere in Summer. This will mean that there are no less than 6 superhero movies scheduled for 2011.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, the original flavor, you must check out this amazing collection of behind the scenes photographs from, way back in the 60′s, by birdofthegalaxy.

The collection is really impressive, from candid actor snaps, to awesome model shots. It’s a collection of images that any Trekkie will really appreciate. I especially enjoyed the pictures of the models, a good number of which have been irrevocably modified or even lost throughout the decades.

Thanks to Wilton for the heads-up!

We each process information differently. Hence, when we watch a television show or a movie, we each interpret things a bit differently. But, even then, most of us, more or less, see the things in a similar way. Until now, that is. What follows is a list of re-interpretations of classic television and films that will change the way you view the source material.

Please, remain seated throughout the journey.

MacGyver

The Facts:

MacGyver was a show that dealt with one Angus MacGyver, a genius that worked for The Phoenix Foundation, a secretive security organization that mostly dealt with saving prissy scientists from random terrorists around the world. Adverse to guns, MacGyver pulled off fantastic inventions out of thin air, and always saved the day. MacGyver is the only man in the known universe to be able to defuse a nuclear device with a used condom and some hairspray.

The Re-Interpretation:

MacGyver is an android built by the Phoenix Foundation to save humanity. His brain is actually a complex machine, with an extensive database of household chemicals that can instantly figure out what kind of bleach you can use to detonate plastic explosives safely. If you are really observant, you’ll notice that Mac is always breathing with his mouth open when he’s building things. That’s actually to prevent his android brain from overheating. His childhood memories? False memories implanted in his brain to make him adverse to guns and literally prevent him to take up arms against humanity. His grandfather? He was the genius that came up with the secret “MacDroid” program.

The Matrix

The Facts

A nobody hacker by the name of Thomas Anderson, aka Neo, finds that humans live inside the Matrix, a virtual world, prisoners of a race of robots that use them as a power source. He also discovers that he is The One, the prophetisied savior of humanity that can control the Matrix with his mind, bending it to his will.

The Re-Intepretation

Neo never leaves the Matrix. The “real world,” the world of Zion, is just a layer of control over the “mega-city” reality most humans live in, designed to give humans the illusion of control. This is why Neo is able to control things when in the “real world.” In fact, all of the humans think they know about “the real world” is false. The machines don’t actually need them to produce energy, especially since, realistically, a human produces less energy than he consumes. The machines themselves don’t even exist. Humans are actually prisoners of an unknown extraterrestrial species that enjoys eating human brains as a delicacy. Hence, the need to keep the brains active, not dormant. They’re juicier that way.

This is also why the last two Matrix movies sucked.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

The Facts:

Three friends, the suave and irresistible Ferris Bueller, his girlfriend, Sloane Peterson, and his best friend, the loveable loser, Cameron Frye, decide to skip school and spend a heavenly day frolicking around Chicago while creatively avoiding their school’s Dean of Students Edward Rooney.

The Re-Interpretation

Ferris and Sloane don’t actually exist. They are actually figments of Cameron’s imagination, constructs that let him escape from his harsh reality as a social outcast and as an abused child.

Very Fight Club, isn’t it?

Cameron, who gets emotionally and physically abused by his rich dad, creates two imaginary friends. They are popular kids, kids who wouldn’t really hang around with him. He does this in order to feel secure and comfortable. They also represent the part of him that wants to retaliate against society and his parents, making him do things he wouldn’t normally do, but that they “convince” him to do. In other words, he can wreck his dad’s car, but, psychologically, he didn’t do it, ‘cause it was “Ferris” who made him do it.

Take that, Freud!

The Smurfs

The Facts:

The Smurfs live an idyllic communist existence somewhere in the woods. There are exactly 100 individuals in the community, all of the same age, except Papa Smurf and Baby Smurf, and all have an essential role in the society. They are all males, the only female being Smurfette, who is actually an artificial Smurf created by Gargamel to ensnare the blue midgets he so desires.

So, how can a species be all of the same age and all male and reproduce?

The Re-Intepretation:

Smurf reproduction is not pretty.

The little stubby tails all Smurfs have is actually an egg sack containing a budding clone of each individual. This ensures that the next generation will be composed of exactly the individuals needed (one Chef Smurf, one Engineer Smurf, ect.) for the society to function properly. Once every 100 years, Baby Smurf murders and eats all the other Smurfs, leaving only the egg sack behind. He then spends some years caring for the eggs and, then, the Smurf younglings, living off the fat he gained when eating all the other Smurfs. (He can’t cook, hunt or plant food, since he is not “programmed” to do any of those things since his role is to be a leader in the community.)

Baby Smurf then becomes the Papa Smurf of the new generation of Smurfs.

Smurftastic.

The Breakfast Club

The Facts:

The quintessential 80’s movie. It deals with five teens stuck in Saturday morning detention: Brian Johnson, a brain; Andrew Clark, a jock; Allison Reynolds, a weirdo; a Claire Standish, a stuck-up princess; and John Bender, a teenage hooligan. Throughout the day, they discover that even though they are so different, they have much in common. And, even though in “real life” they might hate each other, they can actually be friends.

The Re-Interpretation

They are all dead and stuck in purgatory.  Yes, you read that right. School nerdy outcast Andrew Clark, pissed off from all the bullying and years of forced teenage celibacy, got a gun from his grandfather’s arsenal and shot all his classmates in a school tragedy that rivaled Columbine, Virginia Tech and UT Austin combined. Dead, they are now stuck in purgatory (which takes the form of a high-school library in a Saturday…is there anything worse than that) and are forced to come to terms with their sins in life. After spending thousands of years in purgatory, they have an epiphany, are able to transcend their sins and then are allowed to ascend into Heaven, symbolized by Bender’s frozen pose as the screen fades to black.

As a long time fan of late night television, I have been closely following the debacle involving NBC,  Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. Now that it has finally been resolved, Conan aired his last Tonight Show yesterday, we can look at the whole mess and see who came on top. Without a doubt, both Leno and Conan have been the winners, while NBC has lost. Badly.

I remember a time when NBC was the hip network. With powerhouses like Friends and Seinfeld, everybody my age tuned in to the Peacock. One of our favorite icons in the network was a goofy, carrot topped geek who took the time to poke fun of the Star Wars line-ups and entertained us with the insane silliness our sense of humor craved.

What happened to that network?

By handing down the Tonight Show to Conan, NBC was preparing for the (near) future. Nobody young watched or cared about Jay Leno. Sure, his ratings were high, but they were mostly composed of older folks, which isn’t the preferred demographic of advertisers, and, let’s face it, won’t be here as long as the younger folk. It is just now that my generation, those of us who grew up in the 80′s and came of age in the 90′s, and who giggle like little children at a grown man doing the string dance, are coming into a position of economic and social power. We’re now the young professionals with cash to spend and in need for entertainment. By choosing Conan for the Tonight Show,  NBC would have locked us in as an audience and made the franchise relevant for decades to come. By going with Leno, NBC has turned us off completely.

I am pretty sure that Leno will pull in the ratings he used to and become the king of late night again, but for how long? A couple of years? A decade at most? I don’t dislike Leno, but he’s not as relevant to the younger generation as Johnny Carson was, for example. Carson still brought in the young people, even as an old man. Leno is passe.

But this goes even beyond the Tonight Show for NBC. This battle was hard fought in cyberspace. From Twitter to Facebook, Conan’s fans rallied around their beloved CoCo. Using these online tools, fans held rallies in New York and L.A. and they were rewarded by an appearance of the man himself thanking them for their support. In an age where viral is everything and image is vital, NBC has crashed and burned in both counts. The Internet backs Conan and has made the Peacock an object to be reviled and hated.

Good luck pulling out of that one, NBC. You’d better hope Leno was worth losing the good faith of millions of viewers and muddling your image everywhere.

Meanwhile, Conan got a fat check to get out of Leno’s way. And, most importantly, he got freedom. He can now go wherever he wants, do whatever he wants. And a Conan with freedom is a thing to behold. His last week at NBC has been his funniest, most amazing week ever. He no longer felt constrained by the limits of the Tonight Show. He gleefully went back to the silliness and randomness that made him an icon. That’s the Conan we all love, the one who drove his desk and danced with the masturbating bear.

Conan has won. He has galvanized his fans like never before and he can now get a show and make it completely his, without worrying about carrying a heavy legacy, like he did in the Tonight Show. With all the good will he has cultivated in this debacle, and the support of very loyal fans, Conan now has the world at his fingertips. No matter where he goes now, be it FOX, HBO or any other network, his fans will follow him. We’ll be watching. Always.

Bravo, O’Brien. Bravo.