TV Guide is reporting that the SyFy Channel will be airing the third season of the fantasy show Merlin.

The show, which is a co-production between NBC and Britain’s BBC (where it runs under the name The Adventures of Merlin), ran last summer on NBC, but ratings were poor by broadcast network standards: it had an average of 4.17 million HH/viewers per episode.

For its second season, Merlin gravitated to SyFy, which is part of the NBC Universal Group. Ratings were considerably lower — an average of 1.28 million HH/viewers — but it’s been a strong performer by SyFy standards, increasing its time-slot by over 80%.

The third season of the series has already been filmed for U.K. broadcast.

• MTV managed a spoiler-free review of True Blood #1 comic, and they had mixed emotions about it. They say that freed of budget constraints of a television show, the story can get absolutely insane. On the other hand, they found the dialogue tame, with no real profanity to spice things up. Lafayette without profanity just isn’t the same.

• Harry Potter’s Tom Felton has been cast in Caesar: Rise of the Apes. He’ll play the son of the co-owner of the ape facility. Previously announced cast includes James Franco, John Lithgow, and Frieda Pinto.

• Well, the next book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series is three+ years late, and the HBO television series doesn’t have any footage to show at Comic-Con, but at least we know something about the video game. A Game of Thrones: Genesis is being called a Real Time Strategy game by Cyanide Studio. You can win with economics, war, or diplomacy, and it will be available on PCs and major consoles. I believe the art is of The Wall.

• Take this with a huge grain of salt, but supposedly the seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy, has been cast in The Hobbit as the “second biggest lead.” This has lead to a lot of speculation on whether the second biggest lead could actually be Bilbo, and you count Gandalf as the lead?

• As far as I knew, Imagi Studios financial problems had killed the Gatchaman (G-Force) movie. But over the weekend, a new teaser trailer of a fight scene surfaced on their website with 2011 at the end. I’m a bit unclear on Gatchaman – I’d always considered it science fiction, but the trailer description specifically talks about the team being magic: “Gatchaman constitutes an action-fantasy about a magical band of five heroes.” Can anyone clarify?

• Will Smith is going to star in The Legend of Cain, which is a retelling of the Biblical brother story with the vampire twist. I’m led to believe this is a common vampire origin story, but I can imagine the heads of several religious organizations exploding over this high-profile story.

• I’m not going to spell out the Merlin Season 3 spoiler this article purports to have about a “smirky look” being pivotal to the storyline. It’s not that I’m opposed to spoilers, I just don’t understand it well enough to spell it out.

• Inception pulled in a healthy $60.4 million at the box office this weekend, meaning it should finish the theater run right around $190 million, which is the top end for a non-franchise movie. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (which I saw) earned an anemic $17.4 million for the actual weekend and finished behind Despicable Me (which is a much better film), which had $34 million in the second weekend.

• I’m becoming increasingly fascinated by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I’ve not read the books, but it looks to be fun and funny. I don’t think it’s precisely a fantasy movie, but it’s not science fiction either. It’s square in a fairly unique space: it’s a comic book movie that isn’t about super heroes. They’ve been releasing remix trailers for the film, which are pieces of art in themselves. They plan seven remixes, this is #5, “Fight.”

I recap and write about a lot of TV and it is exceptionally rare for a television show to surprise me (in a good way) — but that’s exactly what happened with the second series of Merlin. I went into it intending to gently take the piss for its silliness, but I found myself crying actual tears over more than one episode.

Mostly I blame Colin Morgan.

I said it once before, but I want to echo it now: I mock because I care. I ended up really, really loving this show.

Looking to buy anything Merlin-related (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Just a quick note from your friendly neighborhood fantasy serf Merlin recapper: I know I’m supposed to bring the tender snark to this campy delight of a show, but this week’s episode slayed me. Colin Morgan, man. In the penultimate scene, when his breath hitched between the first and second spell, before he set his lady of the lake aflame: I came unglued and sobbed my eyes out for about, oh, fifteen minutes.

I mock because I care, not because I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this episode.

Looking to buy anything Merlin-related (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Looking to buy anything Merlin-related (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Another spring is giving way to summer, and you know what that means: Love is no longer in the air.

Oh, it’s easy to fall in love in March and April when the cold, harsh winter is melting away and the sun is shining on your face and the birds are singing and the trees are flourishing and the bumble bees are all exhausted from all their pollen-gathering and bee-copulating.

But summer is stifling and the kids are out of school and, if you’re me, you’ve been crawling around in your attic trying to fix your air conditioner eight out of the last ten days. Summer makes for grumps, and that means it’s far less likely that you’ll feel the delicious bite of cupid’s arrow — unless you take your cue from the world of fantasy.

Using the sci-fi canon as a guide, we’ve made a list of five ways to make someone fall in love with you, even in the sweltering heat.

1) Become a fighter pilot — 30 Rock has taught us a very important lesson about humor: Things are funny when they’re true. And so Liz Lemon’s series-long fascination with her imaginary boyfriend, Astronaut Mike Dexter, never gets old because we’ve all been there. Who hasn’t been in love with a fighter pilot at some point? (Seriously, show of hands. I don’t believe you.)

Han Solo, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, Starbuck, Apollo, Buck Rogers, Maverick, Ice Man. It takes a perfect storm of athleticism, arrogance and cockpit know-how to become a top pilot, and when you master it, it’s like making the perfect mix CD. You can get anyone to fall for you at any time in any place on any planet.

2) Give a gift from the heart, preferably one that’s charmed — It’s not just the inexplicably gullible Uther from BBC’s Merlin that has been hoodwinked into love by donning an enchanted pendant (although we can’t remember anything as disgusting as him shagging a troll).

Since the beginning of time, women and men have been using enchanted gifts to woo one another. And it always works because humans are the most narcissistic creatures in the galaxy! We think we deserve gifts! Everyone of us is Snow White: we would all take apples from bitches because … who would want to poison us? No one! We’re lovely!

3) Trap the object of your affection in a confined space, become emotionally unavailable — This technique can work on a spaceship (see, again: Han Solo), but it works equally well with something as ordinary as a police box. Say you are a centuries-old, always-dangerous, occasionally-curmudgeonly, slightly-unhinged bloke with a Messiah complex and a bizarre fetish for being called “Doctor.” Do you think any woman in her right mind would fall in love with you? Absolutely not. Especially if you made clear at the very beginning of your relationship that you’re always being called to sacrifice those closest to you for the good of humanity.

But then, why do all of Doctor Who’s companions fall hopelessly in love with him? And even more bizarre, why do we — who have had the advantage watching eleven doctors over 40 years — fall hopelessly in love with him? We’re not sure. We just know that small spaces and emotional distance is a foolproof recipe for love.

4) Brew or purchase a love potion — No, we’re not talking about tequila. We’re talking that special witches brew that was explored so thoroughly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It can be administered directly from a cauldron, concealed in confectionery, even diluted in a beverage.

The effects of love potion are immediate and they are potent. It is a powerful aphrodisiac, as evidenced by the fact that the wealthy, handsome Tom Riddle shagged the disfigured pauper Merope Gaunt. (And that Ron Weasley thought he was in love with Romilda Vane when, well, have you met Hermione Granger?) The benefit of a love potion is that if you fall out of love, you can stop giving it. The danger of a love potion is that it can spawn the most evil wizard of all time.

5) Die — No, we’re serious. Accept the fact that you’re never going to snag the man or woman of your dreams and give yourself over to a vampire. In a few centuries, gorgeous women 200 years your junior will not be able to resist you. You can try to murder her. You can verbally abuse her. You can cause her families to be slain. You can hate her friends. You can invite her to a party where your family will try to suck her blood. You can even almost (accidentally) kill her while having sex with her, and it won’t matter. She will love you FOREVER.

You don’t need to be funny or smart or charming. You don’t even need to be handsome. All you need to be is dead. Also, you might want to think about growing your hair out.

Do you have any other sure-fire ways to make someone fall in love with you? Share them in the comments!

Looking to buy anything Merlin-related (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

Looking to buy anything Merlin-related (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.