TV Spoilers & Speculation Corner: 12/14/11

The U.S. remake of Being Human returns with a second season on January 16. SyFy has been putting out previews of it for about a month now. We will start reviewing it again when it comes back off its interseason hiatus.

This week, we have spoilers for Once Upon a Time,  Doctor Who and Supernatural:

Once Upon a Time (Sunday nights, 8pm, ABC)
By Heather S. Vina

Well, the first death has occurred on the show and Kristin at E! has a few non spoilery tidbits about it here. And an exit interview with actor Jamie Dornan here. Sounds like the Sheriff is gone for good, but Jamie could potentially be back as his fairy tale counterpart, the Huntsman.

Since it’s now the winter break, there isn’t a whole lot out there for the show right now in the way of spoilers.  There’s a nice little article about filming up in Vancouver here, with a few minor spoilers in the way of pictures of upcoming guest star Eion Bailey.

And, alas, the show fell even lower in the ratings this week, to a 2.9/7 in the demos (down from 3.1/7 the previous week) and 8.92 million viewers (last week, 9.611).  Hopefully, this is just due to the winter slumps – which most shows face – and not a sign of things to come.

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

Not really anything in the way of spoilers this week, but there has been an interesting tidbit that has come out about the discovery of two lost Doctor Who episodes! One episode is from William Hartnell’s run as One, from the storyline “Galaxy 4″, and one is an episode from Patrick Troughton’s run as Two, from the storyline “The Underwater Menace”.

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

This being the week before the week before Christmas, it’s pretty quiet on the spoilers front. The two main things were set photos (They’re currently filming 7.14) of Jensen Ackles (chatting with a crewmember about the high cost of celebrity children) and Jared Padalecki (doing a Legally Blonde bend-and-snap moment for the camera) and a short, actual spoiler from Kristin at E! (I know! I’m as shocked as you are):

“Vanessa: You’ve been holding out on us Supernatural fans! Give us some scoop to make up for it please!
“Fine, but only because you asked so nicely. The show is currently looking to cast the role of Nora, a well-meaning and hardworking Wiccan who’s a little bewildered by the darker side of evil. Bonus scoop: They’re also casting a troubled postal worker who has something in common with Transformers: There’s more to him than meets the eye. Get it? OK, that wasn’t our best, but you get the idea.”

Kurt Fuller also gave a new interview in which he discusses his past role on Supernatural and his current role on Psych. No mention of Zachariah coming back to the show any time soon. Since Zach really oughtta be toast forever and ever after crossing Dean Almighty a few too many times, this seems only fitting. Though I still miss Mr. Fuller’s snark.

Jim Beaver has been tweeting about reprising a role (two episodes so far, with perhaps seven or more in all) he started earlier this year on Justified and is currently filming on that set. So, even if Bobby is not dead, don’t expect to see him before 7.15. At least.

Jim Michaels has been counting down the production days until the end of filming for season seven. Yesterday was day 107 out of 184. According to a local reporter, they were filming at least part of it “at Rocky Point in Port Moody.”

Meghan Ory, who is a regular on Once Upon a Time and guests on Supernatural‘s first episode after the Christmas break, has a new Twitter account up and briefly mentioned filming the episode, as well as working on Once Upon a Time. Be nice.

The CW is shutting down their on-site forums, with apparently only a day’s notice. I’ve seen a great deal of gnashing of teeth over it in other forums, even pronouncements that this spells the doom of the CW. However, I can’t say I’m surprised to see it happen (albeit in the CW’s usual, ham-fisted way that manages to anger a maximum possible number of fans). It’s become a trend over the past few years for networks to open up official Facebook and Twitter accounts, and the CW did not put up any on-site forums for the new shows this year.

While it’s never any fun to see one’s official show forum get taken down, especially on short notice, it’s not a new thing, either. Syfy and USA have been prime offenders, with more wardrobe changes in the past two decades than a catwalk model, each time somehow losing all of the previous archive of discussion threads (not to mention a prestigious zine or two). And if you look at venerable, current discussion sites, like IMDB, busier boards get purged of discussions that haven’t been updated in the past few months, presumably to keep under control the huge cache such messages build up on the site (reportedly also dragging bandwidth to a standstill, though those annoying wallpaper ads don’t help on that account). Does this justify telling everyone at the last minute? No. Is it pleasant for the folks who have been regulars there for years to be so suddenly uprooted? Nope. But don’t expect any explanations, either, since one of this network’s bigger marketing issues is a tendency to make bone-headed, last-minute maneuvers and then act like nothing happened when people complain.

There’s another article out about the pros and cons for the CW’s new streaming deals, with a mention of Supernatural. There are also two articles out, that also mention the show, speculating that the number of dark fantasy shows on TV right now reflects an increase of interest in fantasy and horror during economic hard times. Ya don’t say.

Finally, ratings are in for the repeat of season premiere, “Meet the New Boss”: 0.4/1 and 1.00 million.

Don’t forget that Supernatural comes back with 7.11, “Adventures in Babysitting”, on January 6, 2012.

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, Once Upon a Time, and Supernatural.