TV Spoilers & Speculation Corner: 9/28/11

This week, we have spoilers for Doctor Who and Supernatural. Also, don’t forget to check out Supernatural Fridays and our new Gothic horror anthology, Candle in the Attic Window:

Doctor Who (Saturday nights, 9pm, BBC America)
By Heather S. Vina

It’s coming up, the finale of season six of Doctor Who! What will happen to the Doctor? Will he meet his demise in Utah, as we saw in the first episode of this season? What will happen with River, now that Madame Kovarian has captured her again?

Here’s the BBC Synopsis for this weekend: “As the Doctor makes his final journey to the shores of Lake Silencio in Utah, he knows only one thing can keep the universe safe – his own death – in the concluding episode of this series of the time-travelling drama. But has he reckoned without the love of a good woman?”

Here’s the BBC’s preview for this coming week’s episode, “The Wedding of River Song:” Is that Winston Churchill I spy? And in a Roman kind of room? Hmmm….

And here’s a very creepy prequel BBC has released for this episode. It seems like everyone is wearing eyepatches! I just can’t quite understand what the children are singing in there. It almost sounds like, “Doctor, prayed that he/turned away from violence./When he/understands/the falling of the Silence.” But I don’t know if that’s right, because it’s hard for me to understand some of the words there. If anyone can understand it, please let me know!

The SyFy Blastr site has a bunch of promo pictures up for the episode here. The most interesting to me is the poster, where everyone has an eyepatch on. I saw a few people theorise that the eyepatch is worn because it allows the wearer to see the Silence and remember them. Interesting and plausible theory, especially considering the soldiers are wearing them in the prequel clip.

And Blastr also has this synopsis up for the episode. It is longer than the BBC one:

“The city of London, 22 April 2011 – soaring buildings, glittering and mighty under a perfect blue sky, and life tumbling onto pavements below. And horse-drawn Roman chariots driving through the streets. And a Victorian steam train on a monorail…hang on, like in a sci-fi city, but with Romans and steam trains? And hot air balloons? And pterodactyls? And Charles Dickens appearing on BBC One’s Breakfast! Something isn’t quite right….

In Buckingham Senate, at 5.02pm, Holy Roman Emperor Winston Churchill calls for his Soothsayer to be fetched from the Tower. Greying, unkempt, older, tireder, but unmistakably – it’s the Doctor. ‘Tick tock goes the clock,’ Winston tells him, ‘but they don’t, do they? The clocks never tick.’ It’s always 5.02pm these days. All of history is happening at once. ‘What happened to time?’ asks Winston. The answer, it seems, is a woman…”

And alas, to end on a disappointing note, the DoctorWhoTV site is reporting that “Doctor Who Magazine has officially confirmed what has been clear for a while now – Series 7 will not air until Autumn 2012.”

How disappointing! But at least BBC picked it up for a full season – and not a handful of specials, as was rumoured previously. So, it may be a while away, but at least it will be 13 episodes!

And we still have the Christmas special to air this year. And speaking of, Doctor Who News site has listed the episode’s guest list: Claire Skinner, Bill Bailey, Alexander Armstrong, and Arabella Weir. I know Bill Bailey from the UK comedy, Black Books, and Claire Skinner from the miniseries, Second Sight, with Clive Owen. But the other two I’m not familiar with.

So…one more week to go! I can’t wait!

Supernatural (Friday nights, 9pm, CW)
By Paula R. Stiles

We’ve got two promos and a clip (all three of them about Sam’s wall breaking and, therefore, pretty repetitive and noninformative about this week) for 7.02. More interesting is the “Don’t Drink the Water; Your Sanity Will Evaporate” promo for the general season, which gets more into the modus operandi of the Leviathans and heavily hints that there’s a Something’s Wrong with Dean storyline coming up. Dear God, I hope so. There’s been so much wrong with that boy for years that it really needs to be a significant part of the uberplot. Ask Kristin hits that he’ll be soul-searching, but that really doesn’t say much. Nor do the hints that he’ll hit a “turning point” in 7.04. I mean, for all we know, that could mean that Dean will have a bit of angst in that episode and then be “running and gunning” and sidekickin’ the rest of the season.

Sera Gamble is now teasing that 7.02 may not be the last we see of Misha Collins. Or Castiel. Ya don’t say. With all those plot anvils raining down about Castiel and the budgetary needs of casting a single person as a Big Bad (with nothing on the horizon for who that might be), it’s sure sounding like Collins will continue, quite gleefully, to portray a Castiel/Jimmy possessed by Leviathans. Gamble also admitted to TV Guide that Lucifer’s claims about the past two seasons being all in Sam’s head are bogus. Well, that’s nice to hear.

This new video interview with Gamble appears to be a longer version of the one they showed during the commercials last Friday night.

Official photos of 7.03 are up (HD versions here), showing lots of Dean in a cast; Bobby in a suit (Land sakes, Mr. Beaver! You’re lookin’ mighty fine!) and driving an ambulance; and Bobby wheeling Sam out; strapped down to a stretcher. Clearly, it’s not been long enough since I was an EMT who had to restrain out-of-control people on a regular basis, as I immediately found myself calculating how many seconds it would take an out-of-control Sam to get out of those straps, especially since some idiot put a blanket over his hands. At any rate, I really, really hope Crazy Sam goes away as a trope very soon. Sam Done Come Back Wrong IV: The Revenge sounds an awful lot like yet another excuse for Padalecki and the writers to engage in yet more OOC shenanigans that Make No Sense. You know – like Sambot. On the other hand, Dean is far hotter in that hospital johnny than he has any right to be. Dear Lord.

Short, non-spoilery video interview with Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, in which they answer some rather odd questions (“Boxer-briefs!”). Separately.

The official synopsis for 7.04 is also up:

“DEAN IS PUT ON TRIAL FOR HIS PAST SINS — Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) investigate a string of gruesome murders and discover the Egyptian god Osiris (guest star Faran Tahir) is behind the deaths. The vengeful god is putting people on trial for their past mistakes and killing them if found guilty. Osiris hones in on Dean’s guilt and decides he’s the next to stand trial. Sam steps in as Dean’s lawyer, but both brothers are unprepared when Osiris calls an unexpected witness – Jo (guest star Alona Tal). Robert Singer directed the episode written by Adam Glass (#704).”

This episode sounds as if it could be either fabulous or godawful. On the one hand, Egyptian mythology is great fun. On the other hand, this sounds suspiciously like “You Can’t Handle the Truth”. Which was good, but the mythological element (especially a highly-entertaining Veritas) was given very short shrift, with a pagan god(dess) again reduced to a mundane cannibal.

Sam being Dean’s lawyer could be interesting (We’ve not seen Sam use his knowledge of the law much, lately), or yet another excuse for the writers to Gary Stu him into mush, while beating on Dean with ugly-guilt stick one more freakin’ time (Plus, what about Sam’s guilt? Hmm? He’s got a ton of his own). And the opportunity for turning it into a clips show, or retconning some things that don’t need retconning (We don’t need to see to see Dean and Jo get it on. Really) seems very high. So, I’m trying not to get my hopes up for this one.

More episode titles are out. The first hiatus will occur after 7.09, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, which comes out on November 18. It will last one week (Thanksgiving) and 7.10 (“Not Fade Away”) will come out on December 2. In the New Year, the show will return a week early on January 6, with 7.11 (“Adventures in Babysitting”) and on January 13, with 7.12 (“Amazon.com”).

New promo photos are up from the TV Guide spread. There are also some not-very-spoilery set photos from 7.07. Speaking of which, Guy Norman Bee tweeted yesterday that he was doing his first day of prep for directing 7.09, which means they are either currently filming 7.08, or very close to starting.

There’s an excerpt out from the upcoming companion for season six. Also, DVD and Blu-ray sales have been good.

In somewhat-related news, D.J. Qualls, who was in Vancouver to film an episode, was beaten and arrested by a Vancouver Police constable, basically for being impertinent. Ah, VPD. Not the most disciplined police force on the planet, it must be said. Qualls tweeted about the incident and expressed safety concerns about the fact that he might have to come back for future episodes (and also, that he’s in a lot of the episode). Yeah, those are probably spoilers for his character.

Amazon is now selling individual episodes for season seven, in both HD and SD.

Eric Kripke is involved in yet another project, this time with J.J. Abrams. I am not entirely sure why he keeps jumping around from project to project, whether he’s getting in and out that quickly or is hooking up with projects in various stages of Production Hell, but I suspect it will be a while before we see anything new from him actually put up onscreen.

Finally, we’ve got ratings for the season premiere, “Meet the New Boss”: 2.011 million viewers, 1.2/2 in the Household demo, 0.8/3 in A18-49, 0.7/3 in A18-34, and 0.9/3 in W18-34. I’ve heard a lot of slamming the ratings as being terrible and the show doomed. When one points out that the show is not doomed and the ratings aren’t bad, the response is to declare that the CW is dying – dying, I tell you!

Okay, first of all, there is no current evidence that the CW is dying. At least, not from anybody besides the usual people who’ve been wishing it dead for years. So, if Supernatural gets no season eight, it’s unlikely to be because the CW went down the tubes by next spring.

Second, let’s put those ratings into perspective in comparison to the rest of the network (because nobody on the network actually cares how the show does in comparison to, say, Fringe, which did come back with terrible numbers, come renewal time). Supernatural had the second highest audience for a season premiere of any returning show on the CW this fall. It was also one of only four shows (including two of the three new ones) to clear two million. Strictly speaking, networks don’t look at raw audience numbers for renewals, anymore, but since demos are portions of total audience, yeah, having a larger audience is important.

Supernatural also came in sixth in returning show season premiere demos (equaling one new show, Hart of Dixie), behind 90210 and America’s Next Top Model by only 0.1 in the demo (as well as The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle and Ringer), and second in returning show demos this week. Since the network can probably only field two or three new shows next season (and One Tree Hill is already set for its last 13 episodes), it definitely matters that both Gossip Girl and Nikita did significantly worse, that 90210 dropped 0.2 in the demo this week (already) with a much smaller audience, that H8R is DOA and America’s Top Model losing its mojo, and that Hart of Dixie only equaled Supernatural in the demo (because new shows tend to drop faster than older shows, which are more stable).

In other words, the show is currently in no danger and the drop in ratings was normal and expected (and in line with the rest of the network), so everybody just needs to chill out.

We’ll be back next week with more spoilers. Stay tuned and check out our reviews of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, Torchwood, The Event and Supernatural.