Insomnia TV again

No actual insomnia was involved, just the President's Day weekend and some time to settle back and watch a few shows.

Fringe becomes more interesting as time goes on. In the last episode, we find out why Olivia was kidnapped and given a spinal-tap, and Walter reveals that he made a teleporter but never used it because it does something hideous to those who use it. We learn a bit more about The Pattern and the group known as ZFT.

Remember Doctor Who? Remember The Army of Ghosts, and the ill-fated experiments atop the Torchwood tower? Remember The Doctor's awful warning about what happens when universes collide? Yeah. But subtler.

The show is successfully wading into X-Files territory, but in a much less mythos-bound manner than the X-Files did. It's probably going to build into something along similar lines to the backstory which Lost glories in, but since there's very little to catch up on at the moment, it's a good time to get involved with Fringe.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles returns with a very interesting episode; we were left with Sarah and Riley's lives hanging by threads, uncertain who would live or die, and not at all sure how to react to those developments. The show undercuts one set of tensions by sidelining Riley and concentrating on Sarah. I suppose that's fair, she's the one the show is named after.

Sarah has some trust issues, as you might expect, so the episode focusses on giving her someone she needs to trust - after being shot, Sarah escapes her hospital bed, kidnaps a doctor at gunpoint and then demands that the doctor treat her injury. To complicate matters, she's seeing John Connor's father - Kyle Reese, the soldier the adult John sent back to protect his mother in the original Terminator. Reese seems to represent the rational and more trusting part of Sarah Connor, which died right along with him at the end of the first movie. As Sarah connects with the woman she has kidnapped, the events of the first two movies are related in dialog - but not in exposition, it's nice to see - leading the doctor to assume that Sarah is the victim of an abusive relationship. This is subtle, well done, and nicely played by the cast.

Meanwhile, Sarah and the doctor are hunted by a cop, played by Connor Trinneer whom I last saw blowing himself up in Enterprise. His character seems very experienced, competent, intelligtent and in control. It's only when we reach the denoumont that we find out all is not as it seems, and there's a nice little sting in the tale.

The sub-plots - Riley being co-erced into tempting John away from his Terminator bodyguard, and the ongoing efforts of Agent Ellis to teach an A.I. (which looks increasingly like a nascent SkyNet) morality, are present and correct. The latter enjoys the considerable charms of Shirely Manson who, in this episode, gets to committ a little mayhem and delivers another porcelain performance - chilling, inhuman and yet somehow sensual. Manson has considerable charisma; when she's on screen, it's hard not to watch her.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is well worth finding and watching.

Dollhouse is Joss Whedon's latest and proceeds from an interesting premise. Take a person and wipe their personality and memories. You would then be free to implant any other personality or set of memories on them, turning them into anyone with any skillset.

You might think that this would be prime government conspiracy fodder, but Whedon sets The Dollhouse up as an illegal commercial enterprise instead. Eliza Dushku is our lead, a character called Echo who is recruited by the Dollhouse with the promise that after five years of service all her past problems will be made to go away.

The next time we see her, she's been transformed into someone's perfect date for the express purpose of finding out how much fun can be had in a weekend.

Should we be comfortable with this? Echo, as far as we can see, is a slave. Between Engagements she's well looked after and cared for, but by the end of the show we see her being put away in what's essentially a box. The moral ambiguity is flagged early on; one of the characters is a former cop who is cautioned against engaging in heroics - Engagements happen on a strictly professional basis - but the Dollhouse reduces the people it sends out to the status of puppets and commodities. Without a personality imprint to motivate her, Echo is a cipher and nothing more.

The idea of someone acquiring skills and/or memories to make them essentially a different person isn't new - see also Joe 90 and The Pretender for variations on the theme - but Dollhouse is the first time we've been asked to take a look at the morality of programming people and changing identities. The opening episode is engaging enough, but doesn't deliver a big enough punch to hook a big audience. Eliza Dushku's performance alone - and this is a great role for her because week to week she's going to be able to showcase her versatility - is worth watching but again, it's not enough to make this a hit. I hope it gets to run a full season, I don't think it will be back for a second, I desperately hope I'm wrong.

Incidentally, none of these are a patch on Being Human.

I'd write about Heroes but I want to see another episode before I comment.

For those who are wondering how I manage to watch this stuff without the benefit of a TV, I've signed up with a service called Hulu which uses adverts to support itself and has a decent back-catalog of material, including agreements to show new material (like Fringe, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Battlestar Galactica and Heroes) for a limited time starting the day or week after they are broadcast. There are the usual buffering issues, which you'll find on any online service of this nature, but it's simple to use and easy to navigate. So I thought it was worth a plug, because some of the content might be available to UK users. Someone let me know if it's been Geo-Locked.