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Q: Why has it taken so long for V to show us what the Vs look like? I don’t remember the original series taking this long — and they didn’t even have CGI back then! — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

If the network had had their way, it would’ve taken even longer still.

“When I took over the show [mid-way through the first season], there were some mandates from the people who pay my paycheck,” says V showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. “I was told I could not show what a visitor looked like, under any circumstances.”

Rosenbaum wasn’t happy.

“I reacted very negatively to that,” he says, “but I was put in a position where I couldn’t [show the Vs]. I fought that fight every day, every phone call, every [set of notes]. It was difficult for me, because I was reading this fan-stuff online [about the need to show the visitors], and I was thinking, ‘I agree with that!’”

Eventually, the network relented. “And it happened to coincide with what I think the fans wanted right from the start,” Rosenbaum says.

It’s hard to imagine what the suits were thinking, except to acknowledge that it had been a while since there’d been much sci-fi on broadcast television, and they may simply have been unfamiliar with what the audience wanted.

“Sometimes less is more, but this is a case where it definitely wasn’t,” Rosenbaum tells me. “I understood the fan frustration. Look, we know what they are [from the original]. It’s not a secret, so there’s no reason to hang onto it. There are a lot of other secrets to keep, but that was one that you owe it almost to show it to them. If it had been up to me, I would’ve showed them by the second episode.”

Q: Ever notice how Yoda’s words of wisdom are so often wrong?

The Oracle Speaks:

You have a point. Consider:

• “If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.” [Not true: Luke saves them, but doesn't destroy all they have fought and suffered.]
• “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.’ [Not true: with help from Luke, Darth Vadar turns away from the dark path in the end.]

And then there’s the fact that Yoda and Obi-Wan totally lie to Luke about the identify of his father, shrugging it off with the condescending, “Not ready for the burden were you.”

And I’m not even considering any Yoda dialogue from the prequel movies (which I’ve only seen once and am now basically pretending don’t exist).

On the other hand, Yoda is also right more than a few times:

• “No. Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try.”
• “That is why you fail.”
• “No. There is another.”

The point is, when your wisdom is as wise as Yoda’s sometimes is (and when you’re performed by someone as bad-ass as Frank Oz!), you’re allowed a few blind spots here and there.

Plus, as Yoda himself points out, “When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not, hmm?”

I’d say the same thing also applies to his mental acuity.

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Q: I’m curious how Jane Badler, who played Diana in the original V, came to be involved with the V remake. It seems like such obvious stunt casting (although she’s terrific so far). Was it planned from the start — or did they bring her in once the ratings started to flag? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

Neither, according to V producer and showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. Despite some reports to the contrary, Rosenbaum tells TheTorchOnline.com that the new character of “Diana,” Anna’s mother, was conceived without Jane Badler in mind.

Mother, daughter, grandmother

“I had this idea at the end of last season about what season two was going to be, and I thought it would be interesting to do a little back-story of the Visitors,” Rosenbaum says. “I started with Anna, and I thought, ‘Does she have a mother?’ I spent some time figuring out who that mother was, why there was conflict between them.”

At this point, Rosenbaum says he still hadn’t even considered Jane Balder for the role, but that he got a message that she was in town and wanted to meet him. “But we hadn’t even started casting yet,” Rosenbaum says. “She didn’t even know there was a role.”

It wasn’t until they were actually chatting that Rosenbaum put two and two together. “She was talking about her kid in Australia, and I was completely zoning out, thinking, ‘She could be Diana!’”

Rosenbaum says Badler auditioned for the role — something Badler confirms.

“There were sixty or seventy very well-known actors who auditioned for that role,” he says. “I was shocked by the names that came in. I didn’t think we’d have such a pool of recognizable actors — some who’d had B+ TV roles. But I chose [Jane] because she was the best. I didn’t do it at all because she was from the original.”

Rosenbaum acknowledges that it turned out to be something of a publicity coup for the show.  “But I didn’t do it because I thought the fans would be excited,” he says. “The thing is, they could’ve reacted the opposite way. You have to just pick the best person.”

Rosenbaum’s story strains credibility a bit — I’m assuming the character wasn’t really named “Diana” from the beginning — but he seemed sincere to me. And he did take over as showrunner partway through the first season, so it’s possible that previous producers were working on casting Jane as well, and Rosenbaum simply wasn’t aware.

Incidentally, why did Rosenbaum decide to make the next series story-arc about three women — Anna, Diana, and Lisa — in conflict?

“I felt like there needed to be more pressure on Anna,” Rosenbaum says. “And there’s an expression I heard years ago that stuck with me. The reason why grandparents and grandchildren get along is because they share a common enemy: the mother! That’s all you need to know about this three-women dynamic.”

Q: I agree with your opinion that prequels are really, really hard to pull off (e.g. Star Wars). So is Spartacus going to do it? How? — E.J., Lake Hope, OH

The Oracle Speaks:

I’ve only seen the first episode, so I can’t say how they’ll do it. But the producers have talked about what they learned from the first season, acknowledging that their storytelling grew stronger as the season went on. Maybe it’s just spin, but what they say is so in sync with how I perceived the first season to be that they’ve convinced me that they really do know what they’re doing.

“From the first episode on, we ratchet up the tension and the stakes,” writer-producer Steven DeKnight tells us in an exclusive interview. “There’s a lot of things that happen in the prequel that inform season one. You don’t have to have seen season one to know what happens, but in true Spartacus fashion, a lot of characters won’t see in the end of the prequel.”

What does DeKnight think of the finished product?

“Honestly, it turned out better than I had ever hoped,” he says. “We really got a chance to go back and flesh out so many of the characters and tell a story that I don’t think we ever would’ve ever been able to tell otherwise.”

In fact, DeKnight says that the existence of the first season, the events of which still lie ahead in the time-line, gave them the major theme of the prequel.

“Your actions will decide your fate,” he says. “It’s something that Batiatus’s father will warn him of, and we draw directly between what happens in the prequel and where it leads him in season one.”

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Q: What’s the deal with Steven Spielberg’s time-travel, dinosaur series Terra Nova? I thought it was coming in January. — Dan, Vancouver, WA

The Oracle Speaks:

Because this is such a high-profile project – Steven Spielberg doing a big-budget time-travel TV series about dinosaurs – interest has obviously been sky-high. Not surprisingly, every little move has been chronicled by the media (including a controversy last fall, which the show’s producers now deny even happened, attributing it all to mere scheduling problems).

But I’m not sure the show is as far behind schedule as some people think, or as any other show of this magnitude might be; I think it’s simply a question of higher visibility coupled with viewer impatience. Regardless, it will definitely debut in May with a two-hour premiere movie, setting it up for a regular run in the fall.

Truthfully? While I’m interested in the show, I’m also mostly pessimistic about it.

First, I was at the network’s preview presentation of the show at last week’s Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena: they showed brief clips, and the cast and crew all talked about the project (Spielberg wasn’t there).

I was unimpressed. They emphasized that this is big, broad entertainment, nothing like Lost, which, for all my issues with it, was smart and complicated. I interpreted this talk to mean they’re dumbing the show down. I’m all for popcorn entertainment, but the central dramatic premise — about a family trying to reconnect with each other by going back through time — screamed “cliche”.

Next, the showrunner is Brannon Braga of Star Trek fame. For some, that’s a good sign, but while Braga did some interesting work on ST: The Next Generation and Voyager, he’s stayed decidedly old-school and proven mostly unable to reinvent himself in this era of changes in the TV sci-fi genre: Battlestar Galactica was the Star Trek project that Enterprise should’ve been, and Threshold and Flash Forward, which Braga was intimately involved with, ended up being major disappointments to me.

And perhaps apropos of nothing, I just finished watching Steven Spielberg’s other high profile TV “event” of the year, the alien invasion series Fallen Skies, coming this summer on TNT.

It. Is. Terrible. I mean, shockingly bad: horribly written, cheaply produced, and a complete cliche is almost every way.

It’s debatable how involved Spielberg has been with either of these shows (and given the fair amount of crap Spielberg has produced in his career, an argument can also be made that he may not be the brilliant visionary he’s sometimes made out to be; his TV record is even more mixed than his movie one: Seaquest 2032 anyone? ).

Like I said, all this makes me a little pessimistic.

Q: It depressed me to see the new movie The Rite, which seems like yet another rip-off of The Exorcist. Just out of curiosity, how many “demon possession” movies have their been now anyway? – MM, Calgary, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s a little depressing, isn’t it? The Rite opens January 28th in the US and certainly proves the long-standing fascination with the Catholic ritual, doesn’t it?

But it’s an interesting question: how many Exorcist rip-offs er, films about exorcism have their been?

In addition to four Exorcist sequels or prequels, movies where exorcism plays at least a semi-major plot element include The Exorcism of Emily Rose; Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006); End of Days (1999); The Order (2003); Exorcismus (2010); Stigmata(1999): Possessed (2000); The Unborn (2009); Requiem (2006); and two parody films, The Last Exorcism (2010) and Repossessed (1990).

Q: A new year, a new slate of genre movies. Which are you most looking forward to? — Andrew, Miami, FL

The Oracle Speaks:

In the months ahead, fantasy or sci-fi movies I’m looking forward to include The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon (March 4), about a man who decides to defy his “destiny,” and The Source Code (April 1), about Jake Gyllenhaal forced to relive the last eight minutes of his life (it’s by the director of Moon, which was flawed but interesting).

Incidentally, expect to see many many such Inception-like movies in the years ahead!

Based solely on the premise of a man suing the devil for $8 trillion, I’m intrigue by Suing the Devil (March 11).

The word on the fantasy spoof Your Highness (April 8) is pretty good, and the cast (James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel) is to die for, but the trailer was unfunny to me.

Movies I don’t want to see?

The worst actor in movies today, Nic Cage, has another movie I will naturally try to avoid, Drive Angry (February 25), and I’m already tired of the trend of “reclaiming” children’s fairy tales, so that rules out Beastly (March 3) and Red Riding Hood (March 11).

I’m think I’m mostly done with superhero movies for a few years, even Thor (May 6), but I may be talked into going to X-Men: First Class (June 3).

They’re pushing Limitless (March 18), about a man who takes a pill to tap into his potential, way too hard, and you obviously couldn’t pay me to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (May 20).

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Q: Okay, so I’m thoroughly confused about the green mist in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Who or what was it exactly? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

I’m not sure I can clear up the confusion, because the movie’s whole concept of the green mist was confusing. It’s obviously a sentient evil of sorts — though this is never explained or developed — and it’s attempting to reach Narnia to destroy it, and it’s already well past the Lone Islands. But the people of the Lone Islands have somehow made a “deal” with the mist so it will bypass them, at least temporarily, if they occasionally sacrifice people to it — people who are not killed, but are somehow magically transported into the source of the mist, which is Dark Island.

Look, this is obviously just a not-very-well-thought-out attempt to give the movie an “antagonist” of sorts, and an over-arching “goal” for the main characters to achieve — something that is noticeably lacking in the book. To their credit, they at least tried to do it by assembling existing pieces from the book — Dark Island, Ramandu’s Island and daughter, and the Seven Lords (who now each possess a magical sword, which, when assembled, can destroy the mist).

But it’s all plot contrivance, and it really, really shows.

Incidentally, will there be a fourth movie in the series? It’s true that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader opened poorly, but it hasn’t been a complete disaster domestically, and it’s performed much stronger overseas. Since the budget was considerably lower than Prince Caspian, I don’t think a movie version of The Silver Chair is out of the question.

I’ll have a full report on the question of the next movie very soon.

Stardust

Q: Movies based on kids’ fantasy books always seem to be huge hits — e.g. Harry Potter, Twilight, etc. I don’t understand why they don’t turn every kids’ fantasy into a movie. — Nina, Corvallis, OR

The Oracle Speaks:

You’re just remembering the hits. The fact is, while plenty of films based on children’s fantasies have done well, (1) they’re usually special-effects-intensive and, therefore, very expensive to make, and (2) the genre is also littered with plenty of flops — recently, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising (based on The Seeker books), Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, and Eragon — and there are lots of only middling successes as well, like Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Stardust, Where the Wild Things Are, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader),  and The Golden Compass (which did much better internationally than it did domestically).

Can we at least say that contemporary fantasies (like Harry Potter and Twilight) do better than “classic” stories, if only because they have large, passionate, existing fanbases? If you consider Alice in Wonderland and The Lord of the Rings to be children’s “classics” even that isn’t necessarily true.

The conventional wisdom is that it takes a certain kind of kids’ fantasy story to make a successful movie (and I agree) — and even then, some movies will be poorly executed and will be more or less destined to fail.

But rest assured: plenty more movies based on kids’ fantasy books are in the works.

Q: My husband and I home-school our daughter.  She is in 6th grade and loves role playing games such as D&D and Free Realms.  I am trying to figure out ways to itemize RPG’s in her school transcript so she gets school credit for playing RPG’s.  I know the obvious ways to incorporate these games into her schooling in areas such as math, reading, logic, and problem-solving, but I am having a hard time coming up with other educational benefits of RPG’s that I can list.  My husband and I support her playing (my husband even plays D&D along with her) and we would like to be able to give her school credit for doing so.  Do you have any suggestions on how to include RPG’s in a school transcript? — Debbie

The Oracle Speaks:

Truthfully, the details of school transcripts are beyond the purview of even the great Fantasy-Question-Answering Oracle, but I’m including your question here because (a) there might be someone reading this who would be more qualified to answer it, and hopefully they’ll include their perspective in the “comments” below, and (b) to add a few thoughts of my own.

First, here’s my take on the educational value of D&D.

The reason why it’s difficult to fit role-playing games into a school transcript is because American society has an extremely limited, and very traditional, notion of “education,” which reduces “knowledge” into specific parts (usually to be memorized or assembled).

Basically, we don’t see knowledge as all inter-connected, we worship “facts” not processes, and we don’t see education as holistic.

The upshot? You might have to do a little fudging. You and I both know the value of role-playing games, but other educators are not yet able to see its value, and no matter how you massage the information, I’m not sure that square peg is ever going to fit into their round hole.

But a word of warning is in order: role-playing games can be educational, but they can also be just plain goofing off (which is perfectly okay, but it shouldn’t necessarily gain one school credit).

My advice would be to have your “students” justify the value of their playing to you, an understanding and sympathetic adult. If they can do that effectively (making the success of that part of the assignment), then I think you’re ethically okay in fudging things as necessary for the school transcript.

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Q: I know that opinions differ on “A Solstice Carol,” the Christmas episode of Xena: Warrior Princess (I love it), but I’ve always wondered why they didn’t do another holiday episode? — Mehran, Camden, NJ

The Oracle Speaks:

Very few scripted TV shows do a dedicated Christmas episode every year — some, like Xena, just do a single one over the course of their run, which they can then run every year.

Why? Because TV viewership is down during the holiday weeks, many shows go into re-runs, making December sort of a mid-season hiatus.

That was definitely true in the case of Xena, which was a syndicated show: original episodes of the show tended to run from September to November, then again from January to May or June, with re-runs the rest of the year.

In other words, it works perfectly to have one Christmas episode, which they can then re-run every year even during the show’s original run. According to the writer of the episode Chris Manheim, that was always the plan with “A Solstice Carol.”

Incidentally, regarding “A Solstice Carol,” I agree with those who say that a Christmas Carol rip-off is just about the most hackneyed Christmas episode plot possible, but I still thought the Xena folks mostly pulled this one off. I especially like the use of toys as weapons.

Q: Dude, what the hell happened to Santa and his elves between the 1964 Christmas Special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus? They look totally different! The elves don’t even look like the same species! — Mark, Hudson River Valley, NY

The Oracle Speaks:

You’ll recall that between the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill was in a disfiguring car crash (which was “explained” by the Wampa attack)?

Sadly, The Oracle can finally reveal that something similar happened to Santa in 1969: a sleigh crash with a Russian satellite that was so disfiguring that it somehow even managed to move Santa’s eyes much farther apart.

Lest you feel too sorry for Santa, keep in mind that he’s also responsible for altered look of the elves. In 1972, the Rudolph elves unionized in order to ask for both heat and the option to not always be singing a happy tune. Santa immediately fired them all and hired scab-elves, two of whom, Jingle and Jangle, were featured prominently in 1974’s The Year Without a Santa Claus.

But shortly after the filming of that Christmas special, these new elves complained about the horrible, sub-freezing working conditions, and Santa fired them too, replacing them with the gang from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Since the children from Peanuts never age, and since the North Pole is excluded from international child labor treaties, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, and Snoopy continue to toil in Santa’s toy factory to this day.

Q: If an angel gets its wings every time a bell rings, wouldn’t heaven be overrun with angels? – MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s worse than you think. Every single individual “clang” of any bell results in an angel getting his or her wings — which means that a single jingle bell can produce hundreds of winged angels over the course of a minute.

Which means that, yes, heaven should be overrun with angels. Fortunately, there’s another rule that every time someone grinds their clutch, an entire legion of angels is instantly obliterated, so things have pretty much tended to even out.

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Q: I thought Donna Murphy, the voice-actress who played Mother Gothel in Tangled, was FANTASTIC! I’ve seen pictures of her, and I know I’ve seen her before, but I can’t think where. I know she’s a Broadway actress, but that’s not it. — Marcy, Fairbanks, AK

Donna Murphy in "Star Trek"

The Oracle Speaks:

It was driving me crazy too. The two-time Tony-winning was Picard’s love interest in Star Trek: Insurrection (she was also Octavius’ wife in Spider-Man 2).

And I agree that Murphy was fantastic in Tangled — one of the best Disney villains ever. I thought this recent interview with her was interesting, because she points out something I wish I’d written in my review: unlike most Disney villains, Mother Gothel has no “powers” — just her intelligence, her ruthless scheming, and a complete lack of conscience.

Murphy also mentions how the character’s great dialogue was created. “[The folks at Disney] polled many people who worked [there] about their relationships with their mothers and the things that annoyed them — the things that they’re mothers would do that made them feel trapped or made them feel smothered,” Murphy says. “Or made them feel like their mothers were trying to manipulate them. So they used a lot of that in the film, so it wasn’t just a woman who had stolen this child for her own purposes would do, but what a certain kind of mother might do to prevent her own child from having her own life, which is much more relatable and familiar to your average audience.”

I thought they got the “mother” thing spot-on!

Q: How do you think heaven looks/works? – Jaimie

The Oracle Speaks:

Um, well, gee. Truthfully, I personally think the odds of an afterlife that is anything like how we imagine it are virtually nil.

The way I see it, the existence of a heaven requires some manner of a literal “soul” — some part of the human experience that exists apart from the physical. But everything we’ve learned to date about ourselves and the universe suggests that there is no such thing. Do we all agree that single-celled organisms have no souls? What about houseflies? So the existence of a soul requires intelligence, right? But if humans evolved from less intelligent animals, doesn’t that imply that there was once a being that didn’t have a soul that gave birth to a being that did? Or did our evolutionary ancestors have a degree of a soul?

Or maybe all living things do have a soul, and they grow more sophisticated as beings evolve intelligence. But speaking evolutionarily, where’d the souls come from — and why? They could be a by-product of intelligence, but if a soul is linked to intelligence, does that mean a mentally-impaired or catatonic person has less of a soul, or none at all?

People say there must be a heaven, that there has to be something after death. But why? There’s nothing before birth, is there?

The whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it in modern terms.

Sure enough, most of our notions of “heaven” were formulated in a pre-scientific era. Science has since proved that almost everything else that pre-scientific humans believed about the physical world was wrong. As a result, we no longer believe that the sun revolves around the earth, or that every body is made up of “humors” — so why do we persist in holding fast to a pre-scientific view of the afterlife?

The answer is obvious: our belief in heaven isn’t about logic or reason; it’s about some long-standing human need for an “answer” to the greatest mystery of all. And that’s perfectly okay, even if it does require a little bit of willful ignorance.

Still, if we’re going to apply full-throated logic to the whole idea of heaven, here’s what I think is the best-case-scenario: since energy never ceases to exist (it simply changes forms), when humans die, our psychic energy somehow blends into some sort of cosmos, but we also somehow manage to maintain some form of consciousness.

But regrettably, even this seems like a really long shot to me.

Q: The ads for the new Narnia movie coming out last week say its going to be in 3D.  Was the movie made in 3D from the very beginning or was it converted after the fact? — Angela, Mooresville, NC

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s a 3D conversion, done after-the-fact.

Here’s James Cameron, the director of Avatar, on the idea of 3D film conversions, and I think he’s spot-on. “After Toy Story, there were ten really bad CG movies because everybody thought the success of that film was CG and not great characters that were beautifully designed and heartwarming. Now, you’ve got people quickly converting movies from 2D to 3D, which is not what we did. They’re expecting the same result, when in fact they will probably work against the adoption of 3D because they’ll be putting out an inferior product.”

In fairness to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, however, this was not a “rush” conversion (like the widely-panned Clash of the Titans). They’ve had plenty of time to presumably get it as right as they can after-the-fact.

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Q: The Poltergeist curse: real or not?

A: Look, it makes a great story, okay? The set of a movie about vengeful spirits was inhabited by actual vengeful spirits?

What are the facts? Dominique Dunne, who played older Poltergeist daughter Dana Freeling, was tragically strangled by an abusive boyfriend five months after the film’s release.

Heather O’Rourke, who played Carol Anne “They’re here!” Freeling, died of a bowel obstruction at age 12 while filming Poltergeist 3.

And Oliver Robins, who played Robbie Freeling, was reportedly almost chocked by the toy clown in one classic scene, the result of a prop-malfunction, and was only saved when Steven Spielberg realized he wasn’t acting.

(When talking of a Poltergeist “curse,” some people sometimes also mention two older actors from Poltergeist 2 who died with two years of filming that movie, but this strikes me as almost too stupid to mention because, um, older people die all the time, and out of a cast of hundreds between all the movies, it stands to reason some people are going to die. One the illnesses even predated the film.)

It is unusual to have two young actors die from the same film. But none of the deaths took place on the set of the movies, or even at the time of the movies, nor did they involve seemingly “supernatural” elements. In fact, O’Rourke’s death may have only come because she was misdiagnosed by a doctor — not the usual method of ghostly execution.

And a curse implies it’s the result of some intelligent force, something that’s able to distinguish people who worked on the film from those who didn’t. If so, why target the kids? Wouldn’t producer (and rumored co-director) Steven Spielberg have been a much better target (especially after the travesty that was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)? Or the set designer to chose the supposedly “real” bones used in the swimming pool scene and some later scenes in Poltergeist 2?

And if the kids were targeted for some reason, why’d the spirit give up on Robins after one lame attempt? He’s still alive.

The likeliest explanation? It was coincidence that both Dunne and O’Rourke died so young, and from that, people searched for other “evidence” of a curse, like the Robins prop mishap (probably exaggerated because, let’s fact it, that’s the story everyone wants to hear) and a few randoms deaths in subsequent movies.

But like I said, it makes a great story, right?

Q: Why has there never been a Xanth movie (based on the Piers Anthony books)? Will there ever be a Xanth movie?– Gelfling, Corvallis, OR

A: A movie based on A Spell For Chameleon has been in development (with Wolfgang Petersen producing) at least since 2006. I asked Piers Anthony for an update, and he tells me, “A producer was interested, but needed to get financing for it. No word so far on how that is progressing. But a movie from Split Infinity is due 2013.”

Q: Do you think Katherine will get out the original tomb this season on The Vampire Diaries? Before, I would’ve said no, but with this show, you never know. — Myna, Monterrey, CA

A: I agree with you completely. With any other show, I would’ve said, “They’ll let Katherine lie low for a season or two, and bring her back during sweeps.” But this show’s trademark is its tendency to do the unexpected — and its break-neck pacing. I’m actually thinking she will get out this season, sooner rather than later.

There’s a certain logic to what Katherine told Elena: that now that she hasn’t been able to secure the elements to break the Petrova Curse, Klaus will be angrier than ever with her — but he won’t be able to kill Katherine because she’s “safe” inside the tomb where other vampires can’t enter.

I’m guessing, but I’m predicting some kind of alliance between Elena, Stefan, and Katherine against Klaus (much like how Xena and Gabrielle once teamed up with uber-nemesis Callisto), and as a result of that alliance, Katherine will be released from the tomb and eventually escape — and this time, she will be gone for a season or two.

Incidentally, there are no clues in the original Vampire Diaries book series upon which the series is based. Katherine first appears in The Fury, the third book in the series, but by that time, Elena has been turned into a vampire, and at the end of the book, Katherine is killed — but at the same time, Katherine also kills Elena, who later returns as a ghost!

Speaking of which, the last time I interviewed series creators Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, right before the show debuted, they told me that they did plan to cover most of the plot of the books, but not necessarily in the same order. What about the fact that Elena eventually dies and returns as that ghost?

They laughed at the idea of having to deal with that. But you know what? As I said before, on this show, I wouldn’t put it past them.

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Q: What’s the real reason they split Deathly Hallows into two movies? Was it greed? – Erik, Athens, GA

The Oracle Speaks:

Not to hear the filmmakers tell it.

“When Steve Kloves began working on the screenplay, it became clear we would have to omit too much to do justice to Jo’s book in one film,” says producer David Heyman. “There were simply too many details that were integral to the resolution of the series.”

“The seventh book is all about resolution—the dotting of all the i’s and the crossing of all the t’s,” adds producer David Barron.

As for Daniel Radcliffe, he told the Los Angeles Times, “There have been compartmentalized subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut — although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans — but the seventh book doesn’t really have any subplots. It’s one driving, pounding story from the word go…. [Two movies] was the only way we could tell the story in a complete and fulfilling way.”

Then again, that’s what they would say, isn’t it? It’s not like they’d come out and say, “Yeah, we just wanted to make a lot more money.”

Look, let’s be real here, okay? The Harry Potter movies have grossed a total of $5.4 billion dollars — with billions of dollars more in ancillary revenue (up to $20 billion total by some estimates). Does anyone really think they wouldn’t look for another reason to extend the franchise — a way that doesn’t seem too craven or cynical, so as to not provoke a backlash on the part of the audience?

It’s absolutely not a question of necessity: Deathly Hallows isn’t even the longest of the Harry Potter books — that’s Order of the Phoenix (although it’s arguable that, unlike Deathly Hallows, that book is simply over-written, and as Radcliffe suggests, that there’s more actual “story” in Hallows).

But do the fans really care that much? On the contrary, you could argue that fans would rather have the entire story told in two movies than have it be abbreviated for one.

Truthfully, I think the filmmakers were easily convinced to do something that would please most fans and just happened to be enormously profitable for them.

“Obviously the studio are very happy with that decision, let’s not kid ourselves,” Heyman has also said. “[Screenwriter] Steve [Kloves] called me the other day and said, ‘I think we can do three.’ I think he was joking of course.”

Q: Voldemort’s nose-less face: is that make-up or CGI? — Amy, Henderson, NV

A: It’s actually a combination of the two. The nose of Ralph Fiennes, who plays Voldemort, is removed digitally, but most of the rest of the face is prosthetics (on the forehead and eyebrows), make-up (covering the skin), and a network of temporary tattoos (for the veins).

Incidentally, this is how Rowling describes Voldemort: “a man, tall and skeletally thin” with a face that was “whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s with slits for nostrils … His hands were like large, pale spiders; his long white fingers caressed his own chest, his arms, his face; the red eyes, whose pupils were slits, like a cat’s, gleamed still more brightly through the darkness.”

I think they’ve done a reasonably effective, if pretty straightforward realization of the character.

Incidentally, what about Mad-Eye Moody’s eye? That’s entirely a prosthetic.

Q: Is it true that they didn’t decide where to split the story into two movies until they’d already written one long script and filmed it? — Myrna, Edmonton, Alberta

A: No. There was some confusion in the press, because the screenplays for the two movies were written at the same time, the movies were filmed at the same time, and some of the producers talked publicly about their tinkering with the ending once filming was completed. And, of course, they did test-screenings to find out if the ending they chose was “working.”

But even before the movie’s two scripts were written, the producers had a pretty clear idea of where they were going to end the first movie — and screenwriter Steve Kloves wrote that ending in his script (although it was subsequently altered).

Here’s producer David Heyman earlier this year:

The script [for Part 1] was written with an end in mind. The first draft was written with one ending and as we developed it, it went to another ending. And then we reverted in part to the original ending because we felt it allowed us a more emotional conclusion and felt like it was more complete, as it were. But we’ve added this other scene which I think is really amazing — and I can’t tell you where the break is, I’m sorry — but I do feel it will be incredibly dramatic, very moving and make people want to watch the next film.

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3, 7, and 100-sided die

Q: So I know there are 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 20-sided dice in Dungeons & Dragons, but are there any other-sided dice in existence? What are they used for? — Jay, San Diego, CA

The Oracle Speaks:

Sure!

There’s 3-sided dice that are mostly used for gaming (especially Dungeons & Dragons).

There’s 7-sized dice that can be used for backgammon.

There’s a 1-sided die (just a sphere) and a 100-sided die (again, used for D&D), but these are mostly just gags.

You could also say that a coin is a sort of 2-sided dice.

Here’s a company that sells a collection of oddly-shaped die: D3, D5, D7, D30, and D100 (left).

Q: So after the release of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, there was the expectation that they would greenlight the sequel, The Sea of Monsters. But they didn’t. Have they yet? — MAGPIE, Toronto Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

Not that I can tell. If they’re working on the project, they’re keeping it very, very quiet. But when a movie studio declines to greenlight something, rarely do they come out and announce, “We’re done with this! Screw the sequel!” Keep in mind that they still have a DVD to promote, and they want fans to be as excited and enthusiastic as possible. And the talent has no motivation to announce the bad news either, because they’re usually hoping against hope that the studio might change its mind.

Speaking of which, if 20th Century Fox is still on the fence about the sequel, it might be because they want to take a look at the DVD sales before they actually commit. It’s happened before: the 1999 crime thriller The Boondocks Saints played in only five theaters for one week — but went onto to gross $50 million in video sales, something that eventually resulted in a 2009 sequel.

(It’s a little different in the case of this movie, however, because the stars are teenagers and are rapidly growing up.)

But if the Percy Jackson franchise really is dead (as I suspect it is), it doesn’t surprise me too much. The movie was something of a disappointment, grossing only $226 million world-wide on a budget of almost $100 million (keep in mind that the studio splits the gross with theater-owners, and they had to spend at least another $50 million to promote the film).

My opinion of the movie? Rather than film the book as it was, they tried to turn it into another Harry Potter. They almost completely eliminated the humor, which is by far the best thing about the book (and the only thing that keeps it from reading like, well, warmed-over Harry Potter).

I think they had their shot, and they blew it — which also doesn’t surprise me as I think two of the Harry Potter movies Percy Jackson director Chris Columbus directed (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets) are by far the worst in that series.

Q: How is mead different from wine and ale different from beer? — Manny, Orlando, FL

A: Ale is probably closer to what you think of as beer than mead is to wine. Ale is made from barley (like most beer), but without the addition of hops, which are the female flower clusters of a type of plant; hops adds bitterness to beer. Ale is usually bittered instead with certain herbs.

Lightly-alcoholed ale was drunk widely in the ancient world in place of water, as it had natural preservatives; to actually get drunk, stronger ales were used.

Mead, on the other hand, is made from fermented honey, water, and yeast, and is even sometimes flavored with hops.

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Q: It’s a fantasy trope that you can’t ever vanquish Great Evil completely: Sauron, Voldemort, the White Witch — somehow they always come back. I get that it’s a metaphor for how evil is eternal. But how does their ability to resurrect themselves work exactly? – MegaMouth, Manchester, NH

The Oracle Speaks:

This is a classic example of various authors basically starting from a philosophical “point” they want to make and working backwards from there: as you say, the point they’re making is that evil is a fundamental part of us all, and since we can’t ever deny our own natures, we can’t ever vanquish evil completely (although we can certainly reduce its influence and impact!).

But even apart from the fascinating philosophical question, the specifics are pretty interesting too: how do these powerfully evil beings always seem to survive death?

First, they find a magical means to ensure their immortality.

Voldemort, for example, created the multiple horcruxes — magical, hidden totems that stored bits of his soul, binding him to the material plane (Voldemort thought he had created six horcruxes — the only wizard ever to create more than one — but of course he had accidentally created seven, one being Harry Potter himself). But with each additional horcrux, he became less and less human.

Voldemort directed a Killing Curse at the infant Harry to prevent the prophecy that the boy was destined to kill him from coming true — but the spell rebounded, destroying Voldemort’s physical body (but not his soul, which was, of course, kept alive by the horcruxes).

Meanwhile, Sauron, who started out as an immortal anyway, created the One Ring to gain additional power and influence, forging it in secret to give him control over the other Rings of Power, but also requiring that he imbue it with much of his power and some degree of his essence. When Isildur cut the ring off Sauron’s finger in the War Against the Last Alliance, it destroyed his weakened physical body, but his soul lived on in hiding, desperate to regain the ring and the power it wielded over the other rings.

Finally, the White Witch (then known as Jadis) gained immortality by eating The Fruit of Everlasting Life shortly after Narnia’s creation. Subsequently, she somehow learned Deep Magic From the Dawn of Time, which bolstered her knowledge and power (but, alas, not Deeper Magic From Before the Dawn of Time, which ended up biting her in the ass).

But while these beings’ essences or souls were preserved from total destruction even in defeat, they eventually did need to draw at least some of the power necessary for regeneration from the evil in the hearts of their followers — reinforcing the authors’ philosophic point that evil lives on in the world because ultimately we allow it to.

Voldemort relies at first on weak-willed people like Quirrill and Peter Pettigrew — and later, he openly enlists other evil allies like Lucius Malfoy. But ultimately it’s the fear, prejudice, and lack of conviction on the part of the entire wizarding community that allows Voldemort to rise again.

Meanwhile, Sauron’s return to power, initially in the forests of Dol Guldur (part of Mirkwood Forest), is directly aided by the Nazgul, especially the Witch-King of Angmar — nine weak-willed former humans who were seduced and destroyed by the Rings of Power. Subsequently, infighting on the part of  the White Council and Saruman (who hoped to gain the One Ring for himself) allowed Sauron’s hatred and evil to grow unchecked.

As for the White Witch, in Prince Caspian, she is about to be brought back to life even after Aslan killed her in a previous book through black magic on the part of her evil followers, a hag and a werewolf, and also the weak-willed dwarf Nikabrik.

Incidentally, did the destruction of the One Ring in The Return of the King finally ultimately destroy Sauron, and did Harry’s defeat of Voldemort in Deathly Hallows kill the wizard?

In both cases, the answer is probably not.

In The Return of the King, Gandalf says:

If [the Ring] is destroyed, then he will fall, and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed.

As for Voldemort, J.K. Rowling reportedly said in a podcast that, post-Deathly Hallows, he would be similarly diminished, living on in a form like the vision Harry has of the piece of Voldemort’s soul inside himself: a flayed naked child, whimpering and abandoned under a bench. (Truthfully, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but I thought a lot of Deathly Hallows was a stretch.)

As for the White Witch, some say she reappears in The Silver Chair, reincarnated as The Lady of the Green Kettle (Glimfeather the Owl says she’s “of the same crew”), but after that, she’s never heard from again.

But is she gone forever? You know the answer to that: absolutely not.

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Q: What’s the biggest fantasy movie flop of all time? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s always hard to say exactly which movies are “flops”: a movie can have a respectable gross, but if the budget is insanely high (like Prince Caspian), it can still be considered a failure. Likewise, a movie can do poorly at the domestic box office (like The Golden Compass), but go on to do reasonably well via international releases, home video, and other revenue streams.

Even the terms are misleading: a movie’s “budget” doesn’t include its marketing costs (which can often equal its production costs!), and “gross” isn’t what’s earned by the movie studio; it’s split with the theaters showing the film (though not necessarily 50-50).

Still, these live-action fantasy movies are all considered major bombs. For comparison purposes, I’m using U.S. (not international) grosses:

• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008): $142 million gross on a $225 million budget.
• The 13th Warrior (1999): $33 million gross on an $85 million budget.
• Land of the Lost (2009): $49 million gross on a $100 million budget.
• Inkheart (2009): $17 million gross on a $60 million budget.
• Dungeons & Dragons (2000): $15 million gross on a $27 million budget.
• Red Sonja (1985): $8 million gross on a $18 million budget.
• Dragonball: Evolution (2009): $8 million gross on a $45 million budget.
• Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World (2010): $31 million gross on a $60 million budget.
• The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989): $8 million gross on a $47 million budget.

The biggest flop of all? If you consider a pirate movie to be “fantasy,” it would also be the biggest flop of any movie in history, Cutthroat Island, which grossed $10 million on a $100 million budget (and destroyed several careers and a movie studio in the process!).

As for animated fantasy movies, these are some of the biggest flops:

• Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001): $32 million gross on a budget of $137 million .
• The Black Cauldron (1985): $21 million gross on a budget of $44 million.
• The Princess and the Goblin (1992): $2 million gross on a budget of  $10 million.
• The Pagemaster (1994): $12 million gross on a budget of $27 million.

Q: You know what the problem with their turning kids’ fantasy and sci-fi books into movies is? They’re making movies based on the wrong books! Twilight? Percy Jackson? The Vampire’s Assistant? Please. Why (still) no movie based on John Christopher’s classic Tripod series? — Emma, West Virginia

The Oracle Speaks:

A feature film based on this story of one boy’s attempt to destroy a species that has invaded earth in huge, mechanical tripods has long been in development — at Disney for at least the last decade. It’s tentatively scheduled for a 2012 release, although production has not yet begun

Still, with the break-out success of The Hunger Games (and the upcoming movie version), post-apocalyptic teen fiction is hot right now, so I’d say the odds are high that the Tripods movie gets made

Incidentally, John Christopher, the writer of The White Mountains (1967), The City of Gold and Lead (1968), The Pool of Fire (1968), and a 1988 “prequel” When the Tripods Came, is actually a pseudonym for sci-fi author Samuel Youd.

Q: Wentworth Miller replacing Andy Whitfield as Spartacus: your thoughts? – Mark, Del Mar, CA

The Oracle Speaks:

My thoughts are that there is something of a physical resemblance between the two, but that this is yet another one of these non-stories that EW.con likes to hype in order to drive up their online traffic.

The story, as you’ll recall, is that Wentworth Miller was interested in the role. Bully for him. But you’ll note there’s not yet any indication that the producers are interested in him.

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Q: Does Satan exist in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, or is there just Asmodeus? — Robert, Lakewood, CO

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s admittedly confusing. An old article in Dragon Magazine, “The Politics of Hell,” once claimed that Satan founded hell and that Baalzebul (then Baalzebub) vanquished him and was subsequently overthrown by Asmodeus. Satan supposedly lives on, extremely powerful, but exiled and without a base of power.

But like every article in Dragon, this is not canon. The canonical “truth” is recounted in several D&D sources (including The Manuel of the Planes, The Book of Vile Darkness, and The Book of Hell), although accounts vary slightly:

In a nutshell, Asmodeus was a beautiful angel-like servant of the lawful gods of the Upper Planes, created to fight the demons of the Abyss. But his battles began to change him into something resembling the creatures he fought. Fearing what he had become, the gods put Asmodeus on trial, to be thrown out of the upper plains.

Asmodeus fought back, arguing (correctly) that he had never violated any known law. Eventually, Asmodeus got the gods to agree to something called the Pact Primeval, where he and his minions would be allowed to take over an abandoned plane of existence where they could punish those mortals who violated universal law. “Out of sight, out of mind, and no harm, no foul,” thought the lawful gods.

At some point (some say), the gods became angry with Asmodeus — whose true form is reportedly a serpent hundreds of miles long, although no one who reveals that lives longer than a day. The gods cast Asmodeus out of heaven into hell (and he reportedly created the eighth and ninth levels of hell in his fall). Asmodeus sustained deep wounds — wounds that are still healing to this day. But with each drop of blood that falls from his magical veins, a Pit Fiend is formed, viciously evil and fanatically loyal to his master.

And as for the Pact Primeval? Asmodeus had tricked the gods in the fine print of the contract, giving him the right to tempt mortals into evil paths and drawing more and more souls into his newly populated hell — souls which help in his healing and get him closer to giving him the strength he needs to eventually take over the universe.

In short, in the canonical D&D universe, Asmodeus is basically “Satan,” who does not exist. And like Satan, he is responsible for much evil.

Q: Gremlins was easily one of the dumbest movies of the 1980s, which is saying something — you can’t get them wet? Really? So … I can only assume a remake is in the works. True? — MatterOfFact, Carson City, NV

The Oracle Speaks:

Sadly, yes, and although it’s still early in the movie’s development, the plan is for it to be in 3D.

In doing so, they producers will be furthering two of the worst, most infuriating trends in today’s Hollywood: the explosion of more expensive, headache-inducing 3D projects, and the creativity-destroying over-reliance on sequels and remakes.

God help us all.

Q: So back in 1976, everyone was convinced that Howard the Duck #1 (the comic book) was going to be a collectors’ item. I was too, and bought four copies (at a whopping 25 cents each). I know the 1986 movie was a terrible bomb, but was I right? Am I fabulously wealthy now? — Mike, Chicago, IL

The Oracle Speaks:

The good news is that you made a terrific return on your investment — it’s grown by over 300% a year!

The bad news is that your initial investment was only $1, and since each comic now sells for about $30 (assuming very fine condition), your entire stash is only worth about $120, so you can’t retire just yet.

Why didn’t the comic take off the way it was supposed to? The existential parody tale of a mean-spirited anthropomorphic duck was certainly poised to become a classic — and in a way, it still is.

But speaking of stupid movies of the 1980s: George Lucas’ 1986 movie was a flop of biblical proportions. It didn’t just fail critically and commercially (it grossed $16 million, U.S., on a budget of $35 million), it took an artistic property and completely gutted and skewered it. Misanthropic Howard become a “nice guy,” and the existential elements, and all but the most obvious satirical elements, were stripped completely out, replaced by a stupid, simplistic plot.

The animatronic Howard the Duck puppet, meanwhile, looked absolutely fake and ridiculous.

In short, the movie took something cool and edgy and hip, and turned it into a laughingstock — not the first time Lucas has achieved this particular feat, incidentally.

Howard the Duck wasn’t like Batman or Superman — it wasn’t big or well-known enough on its own to survive the terrible movie version, which became the popular “face” of the character.

And let’s face it: comics are only worth what someone is willing to pay.

Something else to keep in mind: it’s true that everyone did think that Howard the Duck #1 was going to become a collectors’ item — the comic quickly sold out.

But when “everyone” thinks something, it’s a pretty good bet that they’re going to be flat-out wrong.

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