News The Dog Stars It’s the End of the World Again in the Trailer for Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars Nobody feels fine, though By Molly Templeton | Published on June 8, 2026 Screenshot: 20th Century Studios   Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: 20th Century Studios   Peter Heller’s 2012 novel The Dog Stars was a bestseller, which might explain why Ridley Scott (Gladiator) wanted to make it into a movie. But in 2026—after more post-apocalyptic movies and series than I can count on both hands—the story of folks trying not to be desperately miserable after the end of the world feels awfully familiar. It doesn’t help that this first trailer went for the painfully-on-the-nose song choice with Nine Inch Nails’ “The Day the World Went Away.” If you can watch this trailer without snorting a little bit at the lyrics, you are made of stronger stuff than I. But we are clearly meant to take this all very seriously. Jacob Elordi plays a pilot who thought himself very lucky before the end of the world. He had—but does not seem to still have—a wife. He hangs out with a haggard Josh Brolin and a very clean-faced Margaret Qualley. It seems like almost everyone else left in the world … really sucks. As the synopsis says: The film tells the story of Hig (Jacob Elordi), a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley (Josh Brolin), has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world. But when Hig receives a mysterious radio transmission, he ventures into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exist. There is also a dog, and I can only assume nothing good happens to them. Unlike a lot of other end-of-the-world scenarios, this trailer does have a handful of gorgeous shots of the world without humans, lush and green. But there are also empty cities shot in a chilly blue-brown light that recalls The Walking Dead. I don’t think there are actual zombies here—just desperate people resorting to violence and destruction, like they always do in the movies, no matter what the facts tell us. The Dog Stars has a great cast that also includes Allison Janney, Benedict Wong, and Guy Pearce. The world ends in theaters on August 28th.[end-mark] The post It’s the End of the World Again in the Trailer for Ridley Scott’s <i>The Dog Stars</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Vampire Lestat The Rewrite Begins: The Vampire Lestat, “Detroit” “The fourth best thing a vampire can do to avoid thinking about the past is to have sex.” By Molly Templeton | Published on June 8, 2026 Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Photo Credit: Sophie Giraud/AMC Every single time I think about this show, I think about one image: the photo someone posted of the first page of The Tale of the Body Thief, but with “Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel” written over the first line (which is “The vampire Lestat here. I have a story to tell you. It’s about something that happened to me.”). The vampire Lestat (Sam Reid) does not yet use YouTube. The vampire Lestat does not write a cheugy little book. He would never do anything so obvious as responding to Louis’ story—as told by Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian)—with another book. “No one reads anymore!” according to Louis (Jacob Anderson), and while that may not actually be the case, it is the case that Daniel’s book came out, everyone learned that vampires were real, and then they went, “Huh,” and opened TikTok again. Modern life, as a very different band once said, is rubbish. People are out there swiping left on gods. What’s a lovelorn drama queen who wants to set the record straight to do? Welcome to the show formerly known as Interview with the Vampire, in which the immortal Lestat is going to spend a good deal of time never giving a simple answer to the question “Why rock music?” In the season premiere, he is for much of the time incapable of giving a coherent answer to anything, having once again made very poor choices about which people on which to snack. The episode title/location of this week’s vampire concert, “Detroit,” summons up recollections of Tom Hiddleston’s modernity-avoiding vampire in Only Lovers Left Alive, but there’s none of his reticence here. No: We are here for flamboyance, tight pants, unsubtle lyrical double entendres, drug-trip fight sequences, and a story so out of order Lestat himself keeps getting mixed up. There are also about a million hints about a vampire queen and assorted suggestions that shit is going to go epically, globally sideways before long, but, like Lestat, I’m getting ahead of myself. This episode will make your brain do that. It was remarkably challenging, after one viewing, to line up the scenes in my head, make them sit still and solidify. Narrative, as has been shown over and over again on this show, is slippery. Stories are told; the teller makes all the difference.  Photo: Sophie Giraud/AMC Now Lestat is doing the telling. But to whom? With a new season and a new name comes a new framing device (one that the more fluent-in-musical among us noticed is a direct Phantom of the Opera reference). At some unspecified point in the future, an auction takes place in an airplane hangar. Several known quantities arrive looking the worse for wear: Louis is missing a foot, Armand (Assad Zaman) an eye. There’s a cardinal? (The church guy, not the bird; IMDb lists him as “Vatican rep.”) Raglan James (Justin Kirk) looks just fine, though he gets up in apparent alarm when the second item goes up for sale: a “music box” curated by Lestat, containing a vinyl pressing of all his masters and 111 vinyl records containing an “omniscient history” of the album release and tour of the band The Vampire Lestat—and the global catastrophes that followed—as narrated by Lestat. The collection is called The Failures. There is also a bottle of port from 1863 and a bottle of Lestat’s blood. Armand and Louis both bid for this object, but it is not at all clear who obtains it. That’s a lot to process all at once, but there is no time to linger: It’s straight into Lestat’s version of events, picking up in Detroit, in the middle, he says. One must leave room for lots of flashbacks, after all. Lestat also makes a casual reference to the attempted extinction of the Y chromosome, which was not totally his fault, promise! It’s just teaser after teaser, and he hasn’t even gotten on stage just yet. Lestat’s voiceover has the distinct flavor of someone looking back from some distance, which does make a person wonder from how far in the future he’s speaking. Or, alternately, he’s just fucking with us—“us” including his unknown, in-show listener. Everything is a performance, darling. “Detroit” is a lush and chaotic tangle that asserts itself, repeatedly, dizzyingly, as a whole new show. It’s stage lights and dingy backstage spaces, black hallways and band flyers and stickers everywhere; it’s lush hotels and a mystifyingly spacious tour bus (complete with middle-of-the-room shower); it’s insistently of the now, giddy and replete with references to FOMO and Tiktok dances and how humans shouldn’t be allowed to swipe left on “a god.” Louis and Armand’s Dubai penthouse was almost as far from this as it was from Louis’ New Orleans flashbacks. This is a world where vampires said “Hey, we’re here,” and the world mostly just shrugged. Lestat is here to shock us out of our anesthetized algorithm comas. He may be going about it rather oddly, but at the same time he’s fairly poetic about it all: “They came for cosplay and left converted and I baptized them the beautiful unwell.” If his poetry has the ring of the overpracticed, well, he did say he needed about 50 years of practice.  Thrown into the chaos of Lestat’s narration of his pursuit of hedonistic delights are the practical details of vampiric life on the road with a band that doesn’t even really know there’s a vampire among them. There is a manager. There is a doofy body double (also played by Sam Reid) who is sent to strip-mall Applebee’s to take photos with fans in order to convince people that the vampire schtick is just a schtick. There is a familiar on-call doctor for blood transfusions. I am not entirely clear on the role of Dee (Amaka Umeh), but she seems to serve in several capacities and be on the payroll, if her unintentionally hilarious, deeply stressed-out recitation of a mantra about work-life balance is anything to go by.  And then there is Daniel Molloy, now a vampire and quite chipper about it, who is directing a documentary about the tour. At present it mostly seems to consist of crowd scenes and Lestat being difficult to interview. The documentary, Lestat says, is the liner notes to his story. The band’s sound is what he hopes will “counteract Mr. du Lac’s portrayal of me as a mayonnaise villain with sociopathic tendencies.” Or is he just saying that?   Photo: Sophie Giraud/AMC In The Vampire Lestat, the novel, it is rock that brings Lestat up out of the coffin where he has been sleeping for years. It is Satan’s Night Out, in part, that tempts him back to the world, where he decides to use music—and his own autobiography—to tell his side of the story. At the end of Interview with the Vampire’s second season, I had a theory about why he would do it this time: not just to tell his side of the story, but to take the heat off Louis, who closed out that season by basically inviting all the vampires in the world to come visit. It would, could, be a way of saving Louis again. But as far as we know, he’s still quite angry with Louis. The Montreal-at-Halloween flashback is charming as hell: vampire Facetime! Louis being naive about saving files in the cloud! Lestat’s outraged “NO THANK YOU!” at the bookstore clerks! Lestat’s editing binge!!! That moment may, in all honesty, be my favorite moment in this entire episode, especially for how it’s mirrored by his editing of the band’s painful song. But first: LITTLE TINY LOUIS HALLOWEEN COSTUME WITH HIS PERIOD-INAPPROPRIATE CAMERA! That poor kid. Bless. I hope one of his friends traded him for that Mounds. (The worst candy. He can have all of mine.) Lestat is reacting to everything: someone else’s version of him, someone else’s bad songs, someone else dressed like Louis. It’s Lestat’s version of the story, and yet he’s not at all in control. But the next performance demonstrates that sometimes, it’s better to not be in control: When his guitarist (Noah Reid) once again steps all over Lestat’s violin solo (!!!!!!), he tries, in a rage, to bite him, and instead gets slapped back by… what, exactly? The majesty of the song going somewhere unexpected? The rawness of his own feelings? I’m not a thousand percent sold on his sudden onstage moment of transformation, or the revelation that he was the one holding the band back. In concept, yes: if it’s a band, not a frontman with a backing group of paid players, it has to be a band. But nothing changes except that Lestat tries to bite one of them. The song remains the song. (The best of the songs, to be fair.)  Our unreliable narrator feels extra unreliable here, when the muses come out. And he’s not even drugged to the gills yet. Lestat, Lestat, Lestat. I will take a million of his bad choices when they lead to scenes like the one in which Daniel and Dee are using blood and cocaine to revive drained Baby Jenks (Ella Ballentine), who meanwhile is floating on the ceiling, Trainspotting baby style, telling Lestat all kinds of things she could not possibly know. Why is Lestat so sad? Why does he keep coin-op dryering himself? And why is Daniel going to die badly? When Lestat is on drugs he is especially incoherent, leaping around in time (the narrative voice that announces which of his 111 albums you’re listening to skips attentively with him). Puking blood in a motel toilet. Dressed to the nines in a pink corseted suit for the fancy hotel opening. Face melting. Pissing in eco-friendly urinals and making the locals mad. (I quite liked Rus. They were right about “Long Face.” Even Lestat said so.) Sex in the elevator, with bonus tangent about where sex ranks on the things that vampires enjoy (fourth place, no trophy). He keeps talking about the queen’s blood (we are very clearly setting up Queen of the Damned, which feels like it’s going to creep into this season for sure). He gets disrespectful about pronouns when he’s mad. He is very into all the things about the body, about the physiology of vampires, that Louis, so tasteful, left out.  Photo: Sophie Giraud/AMC This—when he’s high as a kite and peeing and fucking—is when he gets the most overt about what Louis got wrong and elided. The writing in this episode is dizzying, poetic, dense, cramming things in one on top of another, like Lestat wants to change the record through sheer overwhelm. He talks about the wolves he fought as a youth, and how for a time he let that define him, while fighting the Tooth Team in the hallway. (The way he snarls at their outdated vampire biases, like he’s stuck at dinner with a homophobic uncle!) He tosses off some lines about how he probably owes Daniel his life for that hallway save and a bit about how probably a bunch of other people wouldn’t be dead if he’d died then. He never stops talking. Where Louis was measured and cautious, trying to control the narrative, Lestat just goes. He’s a wind-up toy of emotional damage. And some physical damage, too. The hallway fight is great. There is a body stuck in the ceiling by the end of it. I do want to know about the cleanup, though. Lestat rolls back into the party, murders Tim, reveals his nature once and for all to his previously skeptical bandmates, and flies out the window while muttering about how gods hang out in the clouds alone. There are a LOT of bodies back in that hallway. These vampires don’t conveniently turn to dust like they did on Buffy. Did Daniel have to deal with them? Does the vampire themed hotel also have a handy incinerator?  I know these are not important questions. I know I’m supposed to be left gasping at the Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle) reveal. This is where my recent reread of the book is a detriment: I love book Gabrielle, who wants to fuck off to the wild places of the world and basically ignore the world of men (one of the texts Lestat gets hints at this). I am not sold on Ehle’s wig and I am not sold on focusing on this part of her character rather than her immediate embrace of trousers and freedom.  But! It’s just an introduction. And showrunner Rolin Jones—who co-wrote this episode with Hannah Moscovitch—has, by the end, pulled off something astonishing: When Lestat crawls across the bed and kisses his “fledgling, lover, mother,” it’s just one more moment of excess. One more variety of physical chaos; one more item on the long list of ways Lestat has used, discussed, abused, enjoyed, overshared with, his physical being in this episode. The physical excess is everywhere: OD’ing on drugs and blood; the bassist getting a blowjob in the middle of the backstage space; Daniel drinking from Dee; the long, long scene of vampire pissing. Of course Lestat gives out full-size candy bars for Halloween. If you’re going to do it, do it. And if you have an immortal body, you get to do it—whatever version of “it” floats your boat—more, harder, louder, longer. (Or not that long, in the case of the elevator. But he was on a lot of drugs.) Rock is where you go to do excess. It’s where you go when you admire icons like Bowie and Prince and Freddie Mercury. It’s a welcoming place when you want to join a long and storied and occasionally dubious tradition of songs that are just elaborate metaphors for sex (“Black Licorice” is going on that playlist along with “Little Red Corvette” and Warrant’s “Cherry Pie,” among ever so many others).  Photo: Sophie Giraud/AMC In the early pages of The Vampire Lestat, Lestat says: I was enchanted by the world of rock music—the way the singers could scream of good and evil, proclaim themselves angels or devils, and mortals would stand up and cheer. Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness. And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their performance. It was barbaric and cerebral in a way that I don’t think the world of ages past had ever seen. He also compares it to the Italian commedia. He compares it to a lot of things. Lestat has been a performer for centuries (though sure, yes, he spent one of those literally underground. Or so he says). He’s a theater kid who is also a vampire. Honestly I don’t think he could do anything but rock. (That doesn’t mean he’s doing it well.) I have a million more thoughts on this—sorry not sorry, but you got as your Lestat reviewer the last unembarrassed rock-enjoyer on the internet, apparently—but I’m trying to stop myself from doing too much theorizing until I see more of what the mad geniuses behind this show are doing here. “Detroit” is a new paradigm, a new narrator, a new everything. It takes the beautiful, perfect two seasons of Interview with the Vampire and tosses them up into the air to scatter like cocaine-laced glitter. It’s carnal and lush and overtly destructive. This is what a quarter-millenium crisis looks like.  LITTLE SIPS CORVALLIS. I am deceased that he got sloppy in Corvallis. Corvallis is a town in Oregon of about sixty thousand people. Corvallis is in between Portland (where a lot of bands play) and Eugene (where a decent number of bands play). Corvallis is not a place where a lot of bands play. Someone on this writing staff has been to Corvallis.  The way Sam Reid as Lestat pronounced Red-DEET just sent me. I was quite charmed to find that Joey Chestnut is in fact a real competitive eater.  As a fan of the Scottish band Idlewild I was intrigued by the many posters for “Idyllwild.” Lestat noting that there are “no witches” in Montreal made my ears prick right up. VAMPONS Really feel like that was entirely too casual a response to the entire city of Detroit going dark.  You absolutely know that Lestat calls Daniel “Dan” to annoy him.  “And yet it’s respectful, like silence at a urinal.” “I am building a career that supports my well-being.” If the Talamasca put Sam (Christopher Geary) at the Theatre des Vampires, and then he wrote that terrible play for Santiago—were the Talamasca involved in trying to overthrow Armand? I know that show got cancelled but I feel like I really need to go back and watch it. [end-mark] The post The Rewrite Begins: <i>The Vampire Lestat</i>, “Detroit” appeared first on Reactor.

News Hercule Edward Bluemel Will Play Young Poirot in Upcoming Series, Hercule The BritBox show will center on Agatha Christie’s iconic detective as he tackles his first cases By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 8, 2026 Credit: Mammoth Screen / Jonathan Ford Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Mammoth Screen / Jonathan Ford Hercule, the BBC and BritBox television series centered on Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective, has found its lead. Today, BritBox announced that Edward Bluemel (We Might Regret This, My Lady Jane) will play Hercule Poirot, the famous investigator known for sporting an extravagant mustache. Hercule, however, is more of an origin story for Poirot, and will cover the detective’s first cases. It’s not clear if the young Bluemel will sport the mustache or not. According to BritBox, the show will be “an intimate study of Hercule the man and an epic portrait of Britain between the wars.” It will focus on three of Christie’s “most celebrated stories” and also center on Hercule’s new friendship with Captain Arthur Hastings, his first run-ins with Scotland Yard’s James Japp, and butts heads with “one particular nemesis,” though BritBox is being coy on who the last will be. Poirot, of course, has been played by several actors over the years, including Kenneth Branagh, John Malkovich, and David Suchet. “I feel very lucky to have been trusted with such an iconic character who has been played by so many great actors,” Bluemel said in a statement. “I can’t wait to continue Hercule’s legacy.” The new Poirot series comes from Benji Walters (Code of Silence, The Leopard, Obsession), with Jonny Campbell (Am I Being Unreasonable?, Dracula) directing the first two episodes. Filming will begin this summer primarily in Liverpool, with no news on when the show will make its way to BritBox. [end-mark] The post Edward Bluemel Will Play Young Poirot in Upcoming Series, <i>Hercule</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Darkness Ascending” Lennier investigates coded signals, while Alexander continues Byron’s dream of finding a homeworld for telepaths… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on June 8, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Meditations on the Abyss”Written by J. Michael StaczynskiDirected by Janet GreekSeason 5, Episode 15Production episode 516Original air date: June 3, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… Garibaldi has a nightmare that sees him walking through a trashed Zocalo and everyone is dead. Franklin blames him before he dies. Then he discovers that he himself, carrying a big fucking gun, is responsible for the carnage. He then “wakes up” in his cabin to see Alexander with glowy white eyes saying she’s experimenting with her fancy Vorlon-enhanced telepathy. Then he wakes up for real (or does he????) and is surprised by a visit from Lise. Once he gets past the confusion and annoyance of his nightmare—which he doesn’t tell Lise about—they fall into bed together. Lennier covertly contacts Delenn from Maria. He’s detected a coded Centauri signal exactly 20 hours prior to every cargo ship attack. He’s working on decoding it. As they talk about how this is still a secret only between the two of them that even Sheridan doesn’t know about, Sheridan walks toward the open doorway, and then hides in the corridor, overhearing the rest of the communication. Delenn conveniently walks out of the office in a manner that prevents her from seeing her husband lurking right on the other side of the doorway. Alexander is trying to convince a business person to employ some of Byron’s gaggle of rogue telepaths, the sweetener being that they can have as many telepaths as they want on each ship—Psi Corps only allows one telepath per ship. And in exchange, all they ask is to borrow a ship to find a homeworld. But that would violate their contracts with Psi Corps, so the business person has to decline. He suggests she find someone who doesn’t have contracts with Psi Corps. Mollari is confused and annoyed, as the Royal Court is asking for information on trade deals with other IA worlds—which they don’t normally do—and important appointments for practical governmental matters with the Drazi and Gaim ambassadors have been cancelled. Lise goes to prep some breakfast while Garibaldi is in the shower, and she discovers an open and half-empty bottle of booze. She confronts Garibaldi, who gets all defensive, insists he’s a different person now, and that Bester’s mindfucking him has left him feeling out of control, but he insists that he’s in control of this. Lise insists that he not drink as long as she’s there, and he agrees, pouring the booze into the sink. On Maria, Lennier and Montoya discuss his attempts to decode the Centauri signals. (Huh. Coulda sworn this was a secret covert mission…) Montoya also announces that they’ve been recalled to B5 by Sheridan. For his part, Sheridan confronts Delenn about her sending Lennier on this covert mission without telling her, but then Delenn short-circuits his high dudgeon by capitulating, saying he’s right, but also saying that she did it because if he knew about it, he’d have forbidden it, because Delenn and Lennier are friends. But Lennier is also the best person for the job. Montoya then contacts Sheridan to inform him that Lennier absconded with a fighter and is now missing. In the stolen fighter, Lennier records a log entry outlining his plan to trace the signal. He then goes into a meditative state to preserve his air supply. Credit: Warner Bros. Television On B5, Alexander goes to G’Kar’s quarters and revisits the transaction G’Kar requested of her way back in “The Gathering”: she’ll provide the genetics sequences of a whole mess of telepaths for the Narns to try to develop their own telepaths, in exchange for a few bottom-end ships to find a homeworld and total secrecy. G’Kar points out that the need for telepaths is less urgent with the Shadows no longer being a factor, but he will bring it to the Kha’Ri. Garibaldi and Lise have a romantic dinner at Fresh Air. Garibaldi comments that he hasn’t eaten here since Sinclair and Sakai told him and Ivanova of their engagement—shortly after that, Garibaldi was shot in the back and when he woke up, Sinclair was reassigned. He also orders coffee to drink, which the server assumes is for dessert, not as part of the meal, which proves that the server is spectacularly incompetent (I’ve ordered coffee with my meal many many times, and never did the server bat an eyelash). Garibaldi then sneaks off to pour booze into the coffee under the guise of bringing it to the kitchen to complain about its poor quality. Montoya contacts Sheridan and informs him and Delenn that they’re now past the point where Lennier’s air supply should have run out. However, Lennier has encountered a Centauri vessel and is able to tether himself to it while in stealth mode, also siphoning off some of its air supply. He sadly has to watch helplessly as the ship goes into hyperspace and then comes out and blows up a Brakiri ship, but he does record the whole thing. He disconnects when the attack is over, hiding as a piece of debris. Once the Centauri ship jumps to hyperspace, he sends out a distress call. On B5, Mollari gets a call from Minister Cholini, saying that the Centauri are being framed for being responsible for the attacks on the cargo ships. G’Kar tells Alexander that the Narns will go for the deal, but only if the telepaths psionically eavesdrop on other ambassadors from time to time. Alexander says that’s a deal-breaker and starts to leave, but G’Kar says that that was a test—if she’d agreed to that stipulation, the deal would’ve been off. They do, in fact, have a deal. Montoya informs Sheridan and Delenn that Lennier is safe and sound and has irrefutable evidence of the Centauri’s responsibility for the raids. Delenn is hugely relieved and moves into the corridor so she can cry in peace. Mollari sees her, and Delenn hugs him, to his surprise. Lennier arrives on the station and hands over the evidence, then goes to take a desperately needed nap. Sheridan calls a meeting for all the ambassadors except for Mollari. Vir informs Mollari of this, and Garibaldi also goes to Lise and tells her to leave the station immediately, as it looks like they’re about to go to war with the Centauri. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan is justifiably pissed at Delenn for keeping him in the dark, but she gets him to apologize for being pissed in fairly short order, because she is way better at manipulating people than he is. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi is still drinking and still lying about it, even to the woman he loves. He hasn’t yet told Sheridan and the others that he plans to move back to Mars to help Lise run Edgars Industries, as he promised Lise he’d do, and he also has decided that he should never eat at Fresh Air because something bad always happens after he does so. Credit: Warner Bros. Television If you value your lives, be somewhere else. Delenn is able to justify her keeping Sheridan in the dark, but at the cost of fear and grief over the possibility of Lennier being dead. In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Apparently, his experiences over the past few years have caused Mollari to lose all interest in casino gambling. This leaves him with no idea what to do with leisure time… Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. G’Kar and Alexander get to replay their conversation from “The Gathering,” but this time it’s about 75% less sleazy, especially since G’Kar actually behaves honorably and nobly this time. The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Psi Corps regs are apparently that only one telepath can be assigned to a post. (This also explains why Alexander and Winters were both the only telepaths officially detached to B5.) It takes Alexander a surprisingly long time to think of approaching non-humans with her proposal, since Psi Corps would cut off any human avenue. We live for the one, we die for the one. Lennier gets the evidence they need to prove the Centauri are behind the raids. Because he’s just that awesome. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Alexander reminds G’Kar of the fact that sexual congress was part of the deal when he first proposed it five years earlier, and she makes a lewd comment about her high sexual threshold to torment G’Kar in one of those scenes that was so obviously written by a man…. Welcome aboard. Thomas MacGreevy commences the recurring role of Minister Cholini; he’ll be back next time in “And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder.” Richard Yniguez concludes the recurring role of Montoya (who is criminally underused in this one), back from “Meditations on the Abyss.” Denise Gentile continues the recurring role of Lise, back from “Rising Star,” to return in “Wheel of Fire.” Wesley Mask plays the snotty Fresh Air server who annoys Garibaldi and Edmund Shaff plays the business person who disappoints Alexander. Trivial matters. Garibaldi, had dinner with Sinclair, Sakai, and Ivanova at Fresh Air right before he got shot in “Chrysalis.” He says that he hasn’t eaten there since, though we did see him order takeout pizza from there at the end of “Meditations on the Abyss.” He may only be referring to eating in the restaurant—or he may not remember ordering the pizza, as he was really drunk when he ordered it… Garibaldi also comments that the other three people at that dinner are all gone. Sinclair was reassigned between “Chrysalis” and “Points of Departure,” and he buggered back to the past to become Valen in “War Without End, Part 2.” Ivanova was promoted to ship captain and left the station in “Rising Star.” Sakai has not been seen onscreen since “Chrysalis”; Garibaldi mentions that she disappeared “over a year ago,” but that disappearance happened two-and-a-half years prior to this episode, as chronicled in the novel To Dream in the City of Sorrows by Kathryn Drennan. G’Kar proposed Alexander sharing her genetic sequence with the Narn so they could breed telepaths—and also proposed mating with her—in “The Gathering.” Apparently, the pair of them hadn’t had a real one-on-one conversation since then until this episode. Delenn sent Lennier on a covert mission to find evidence of who is responsible for the raids last time in “Meditations on the Abyss.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “I want you to get out of this part of the space and back home just as fast as you can. Because barring an act of God—and since I don’t believe in God, that kinda narrows the odds a bit—by this time tomorrow, we’re gonna be at war with the Centauri.” —Garibaldi urging Lise to leave, the final line of dialogue of the episode. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “I have been working up a good mad all day, and I am not about to let you undercut it by agreeing with me!” There were some comments in last week’s rewatch that talked about how absolutely horrid Delenn was to Lennier, using his infatuation with her to manipulate him. I didn’t get into it in the comments there, though I thought about it, but I actually want to talk about it here, because this episode also is a good showcase for Delenn’s ability to manipulate people and events. Which is not only strong, but has been part of her character from jump. It’s easy to forget because Mira Furlan has that 50,000-megawatt smile and she and Sheridan have their incredibly adorable chemistry, but Delenn is incredibly manipulative and has a superlative capacity for cruelty. We were reminded in this episode of what G’Kar was doing in “The Gathering” with Alexander, and it’s worth reminding everyone what else G’Kar did in that episode: approach Delenn about an alliance, but the moment G’Kar mentioned the Grey Council, Delenn nearly killed him in a particularly painful manner. She spent most of the first season manipulating Sinclair, she circumvented the wishes of the Grey Council whenever it pleased her, she’s barreled forward with her own plans whether or not they made sense. Delenn is not a nice person. These last two episodes, in which she has played both Lennier and Sheridan like a two-dollar banjo, demonstrate that rather impressively. Anyhow, this is a strong episode that moves things forward nicely—and, for a change, speedily. Lennier finally gets the proof that the Centauri are responsible, while the Centauri have already got their plausible deniability plan going. And the IA proves themselves to not be handling this at all well, as excluding Mollari from the meeting—especially since they’re fairly sure he has no knowledge of it—is not a great idea. But then, we had pundits spending ten minutes in “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” talking about how the IA shit the bed in their first year, and while their evidence was the botching of the Byron thing, this qualifies, too… It’s nice to see Garibaldi’s falling off the wagon (not getting on it as I stupidly said last week, sorry about that) is finally being dealt with directly. Denise Gentile hasn’t impressed me overmuch as Lise, though the scripting for her hasn’t done her any favors. However, she nailed this episode, especially the way her body language completely changes when she finds the half-empty booze bottle. Lise was there the last time Garibaldi left the wagon behind, and she knows more than anyone currently on the station how bad this can get. (Garibaldi also mentions at one point that he’s a war hero, and what the what? His primary role in the recent war was as Benedict Arnold, not as George Washington…) Finally, this episode is another reminder that Lennier is a total badass. Bill Mumy plays him with enough low-key modesty to mute the badassery, but that just makes it all the more effective when the badassery comes out to play. Next week: “And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Darkness Ascending” appeared first on Reactor.

Books Alice in Wonderland Eight Overlooked Characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books Everyone loves the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, but what about these weird and wonderful creations? By Kelly Robinson | Published on June 8, 2026 Illustration by John Tenniel Comment 0 Share New Share Illustration by John Tenniel There are few works of fantastic fiction as perennially adored and obsessed over as Lewis Carroll’s Alice Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking Glass (1871). While every Alice fan has their own darlings, the same character names always seem to be repeated. Fan art, spoofs, and merchandise are frequently focused on the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, The Queen of Hearts, and their ilk. As someone who has read the books almost annually since childhood, I’m frustrated that so many brilliant characters are ignored. It’s wonderful that readers are still excited about a literary property from over 150 years ago, but the hyper-focus on a select few of Carroll’s creations gives short shrift to the rest of them. Both Wonderland and the world beyond the looking-glass are full of fascinating denizens, many of whom never seem to get their due. Some of them are rarely portrayed in film versions, and they’re certainly not emblazoned on tee shirts and coffee mugs. Here are just a few of Carroll’s magnificent creations that could do with more attention and recognition… Bill the Lizard Illustration from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by John Tenniel (1865) While the Alice books are loaded with wit, it’s primarily found in the form of word play. Puns, riddles, invented language, and parodies of well-known Victorian poems are Wonderland’s love language. That’s why the Bill the Lizard sequence is such a standout. When an oversized Alice kicks the White Rabbit’s reptilian gardener up the chimney, it’s not only an uncommon act of violence on her part, but a hilarious bit of physical comedy. The casualness of the onlookers’ “There goes Bill” is at odds with the fact that the poor creature is being propelled into the sky. John Tenniel’s illustration provides a visual punchline. Carroll somewhat crudely drew his own version of Bill’s ousting in his early handwritten manuscript Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, and his lizard is also quite funny, with an expression of dopey despair. Bill turns up later in the book as part of the jury, once again a victim when Alice snatches away his squeaky pencil, leaving him to awkwardly attempt writing on the slate with his finger. The lizard is briefly seen in the 1915 silent film, as well as the animated Disney film (though Alice sneezes him out of the house instead of kicking him, in that version). In the 1972 film he’s given a great comedy line with “What’s me tail doing in me hand?” Top prize for best Bill the Lizard has to go to stuntman Ernie F. Orsatti, whose claim to fame as the guy who falls through the skylight in The Poseidon Adventure no doubt prepared him for sailing through the air, as witnessed by Scott Baio in a guinea pig costume in the 1985 CBS version. (Note: If this character can be in so many films, where’s my Bill the Lizard merch?) The Leg of Mutton Illustration from “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” by John Tenniel (1871) Near the end of Through the Looking Glass, Alice becomes a queen and attends a banquet in her honor. Here she is presented with a leg of mutton which the Red Queen courteously introduces (“Alice—Mutton; Mutton—Alice.”). Even for a passage written by Lewis Carroll, it seems surprising when the leg of mutton gets up and makes a little bow. We’re used to talking animals in this world, but talking objects? Humpty Dumpty morphed from an egg, and Wonderland’s royal court is based on playing cards, but they’re all still more person than thing. Humpty Dumpty isn’t an actual edible egg. The cards are no longer literally cards. The mutton, however, is mutton. The Leg of Mutton is in fine company with other anthropomorphic food in children’s lit, such as the title characters of both The Gingerbread Man (who tries to avoid being eaten) and The Magic Pudding (whose greatest pleasure is offering up slices of himself). Tenniel’s illustration is again right on the nose, from the meat’s smug expression to the jaunty paper frill on the bone-end of the joint. The Leg of Mutton gains a perfect partner when the Pudding turns out to also be alive, exclaiming “What impertinence!” when Alice cuts a slice. In a perfect world, the Leg of Mutton (and the Pudding) would be featured in every film version, but they’re rare enough that seeing them in the 1933 production elicited a squeal of glee when I first saw it. (It’s well worth looking up, and the resemblance to Tenniel’s drawing is spectacular.) The Wasp in a Wig During my first (pre-internet) years of college, I spent hours at the university library, poring over books I was thrilled to be able to access. One of the first things I looked up was The Wasp in a Wig: A “Suppressed” Episode of Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There to finally read a sequence that I’d heard about but never seen. The Wasp is an overlooked character for a good reason: Lewis Carroll cut the creature out of his final manuscript. Scholars had long known about the excised segment from a letter Sir John Tenniel wrote to Carroll saying that he wasn’t thrilled about illustrating the wasp: “If you want to shorten the book, I can’t help thinking – with all submission – that there is your opportunity.” A wasp in a wig, he believed, was “altogether beyond the appliances of art.” Carroll capitulated. The cut content was long lost until the galley proofs turned up at a Sotheby’s auction in 1974, and though some question its provenance, the majority of scholars have accepted it. The “Wasp in a Wig” would have followed the White Knight sequence, and has Alice performing what Martin Gardner calls “a final deed of charity that would justify her approaching coronation.” The Wasp is an elderly character who exclaims “Worrity, worrity!” and complains about the cold. A highlight is Alice reading to him from a wasp newspaper (“Latest News. The Exploring Party have made another tour in the Pantry, and have found five new lumps of white sugar …”). The sequence is plenty of fun, and it’s a pity now that it’s been found that it isn’t included in more projects. Ian Richardson plays the Wasp in 1998’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, and even wearing a yellow fright wig, his performance seems within “the appliances of art.” The Ape Illustration from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by John Tenniel (1865) As a child, I spent a lot of time reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but I spent almost as much time staring at the pictures. A pair of John Tenniel’s original illustrations gripped me more than any of the others—the depictions of the creatures gathered for the caucus race after the flood in the “Pool of Tears” chapter. The group is primarily made up of birds and small woodland animals, plus a couple of crabs. There’s the Dodo, the Mouse, a duck, an eaglet, an owl… and an ape. Wait, what? It’s such an incongruous creature to find in this bunch, and it’s all the more strange because it’s never mentioned in the book. It’s tempting to speculate that Tenniel created this ape from his own imagination, the same way he created the look of the Jabberwock or the Mad Hatter (his hat and price tag are not in the text, and in fact, he is not described at all). However, if you look at Lewis Carroll’s own illustrations from his original publication of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, the group also includes an ape. The question that remains is: why? Some writers have suggested that its inclusion may have something to do with the popular discussion of Darwinism during the Victorian era, but if Carroll wanted to make a commentary on something, he was far more likely to include it in the text. Others suggest that the ape is Pat, who appears at the White Rabbit’s house. My own theory is that perhaps he included it for Alice Liddell, who liked primates, and often fed nuts and biscuits to the monkey at the Oxford Botanic Garden. We may not know much about the ape, but that’s what makes it so compelling. It’s there. The Gnat Illustration from “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” by Peter Newell (1902) While I was a Theatre student in 1989, a director asked me to replace some actors in his stage production of Alice in Wonderland. The show moved to a big venue, extending the run, but not all of the original cast could commit to the new dates. Thus, I was pulled in to play multiple roles and found myself wearing a number of hats (and masks and headdresses) as the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, the Gryphon, the Walrus, and—most excitingly, to me—the Gnat. The director had a deep understanding of the source material and its Victorian sensibilities (Tim Dial went on to become a professor, Shakespearean costumer, and a millinery expert). He envisioned the Gnat as a sort of decrepit music hall comedian, and the text supports this. The Gnat is pathospersonified (insectified?), a blend of humor and sadness, full of weak jokes that never really land. (It’s no wonder that after telling one joke, he tells Alice “I wish you had made it.”) Tenniel neglected to illustrate the Gnat, which makes it easy for some to ignore it in favor of the bizarre insects he introduces. That may be why some film versions leave him out entirely. George Gobel, in the 1985 TV miniseries, looks less like a gnat than Sasquatch meeting the larval form of Mothra, but Steve Coogan fares better in the 1998 British film adaptation, sporting a handlebar mustache so long and thin that its upturned ends look like antennae. His intentionally-underplayed Gnat conveys the resignation of despair. The Sheep Illustration from “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” by John Tenniel (1871) For a creature that has its own chapter in Through the Looking-Glass, the Sheep doesn’t get near enough love. It may be that the main character of “Wool and Water” isn’t exciting enough for some people, being an older, bespectacled female that knits—someone that, if human, would be socially invisible. And yet, “Wool and Water” is perhaps the most explicitly dreamlike of all the chapters. For starters, the Sheep appears after the White Queen abruptly begins baa-ing and bleating and abruptly transforms into the ovine knitter, and the scene is inexplicably transported to the inside of a shop where items on the shelf keep moving out of reach. The knitting itself is increasingly wild, with the Sheep sometimes using fourteen pairs of needles at once (“She gets more and more like a porcupine every minute!” remarks Alice). Suddenly the needles become oars, and the pair are in a boat gliding down the river. Once they’re back to the shop, Alice purchases an egg that becomes Humpty Dumpty. It’s one dizzying ride of a dream. The Sheep’s shop itself was inspired by a real (and still existing) shop in Oxford where Alice Liddell used to buy barley sugar candy. It’s fun to consider the idea of a shop in this world. Its presence suggests a town where these creatures carry out everyday activities. Tenniel’s illustration shows delightful detail, with a window and shelves packed with shovels, a bellows, jars of sweets, hula hoops, dolls, and the soon-to-be-Dumptified eggs. The Fawn Illustration from “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” by John Tenniel (1871) After leaving the Gnat, Alice meets a fawn in the wood where things have no names. What’s extraordinary about this fawn is how much it seems to be a real fawn rather than some kind of Wonderland or Looking-Glass fawn. It’s not wearing clothes or carrying a pocket watch. It’s not doing human things like riding on a train, and unlike the snap-dragon-fly, its head isn’t on fire. It seems to be a fawn in the same way that Pluto is a dog in a Disney cartoon world that also includes Goofy. And what a beautiful fawn! In Tenniel’s illustration, it’s all spindly legs, dappled fur, and wide eyes. In Peter Newell’s 1901 illustrations, the Fawn is just as splendid, perhaps more so, a little fuzzier and rounded, a little softer, with shining eyes. Alice connects with the fawn, and they proceed together through the wood with her arm around its neck. The Fawn is able to speak, but there’s a sense that its ability to converse with her is the result of its forgetting who it is. Once they are out of the wood, the Fawn is instantly startled (“Dear me! You’re a human child!”) and it runs away “at full speed.” The sequence explores a philosophical idea: who are you if you don’t know who you are? There’s something else here, too. It’s a beautiful moment that’s lost in the blink of an eye, the same as when Alice picks the scented rushes that melt away. The Fawn, like the rushes, represents the fleeting nature of beauty. The Fawn makes a rare appearance in the 1985 film. It’s accompanied by a treacle-y song, but the moment between an actual little girl and an actual fawn offers a nice reprieve from the otherwise-manic energy of the rest of the film. The Oysters Illustration from “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” by John Tenniel (1897) There’s something gleefully absurd about anthropomorphic oysters. To begin with, they barely seem like an animal. There are other small creatures in Carroll’s works: the baby crab at the Wonderland caucus race, for example, and the caterpillar (which may seem large if you’ve forgotten how small Alice is at that point, but states his height as three inches tall). The oysters are not only the smallest creatures in the books, but they also don’t have a brain, or limbs, or eyes. They’re squishy rocks with a nervous system. Yet even Alice recognizes that they’re the most important players in “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” They’re also the only characters to die in the text (the Queen’s various orders about beheadings and the probable fate of the bread-and-butterfly are things that either will happen or have already happened, and may not happen at all). It’s easy as a reader to feel the same sympathy as Alice over their being eaten, especially looking at Tenniel’s illustrations, which give them tiny legs and little shoes. Carroll himself felt enough sympathy for them after seeing an 1886 stage play that he penned a new ending for the sequence, having three oyster ghosts come back to exact revenge. (My kingdom for a ghost oyster tee shirt.) In the 1933 film, though the rest is live-action, “The Walrus and the Carpenter” poem is an animated segment presented by Tweedledum and Tweedledee on a little television. An oyster mom and oyster babies are sleeping under the covers on an “oyster bed.” Walt Disney borrowed the idea for the 1951 animated film, but made each little shell its own cradle, with the top shell a baby bonnet. In the 1985 miniseries, the oysters are bizarrely played by adults, their long legs sticking out of the oyster shells. It’s certainly memorable. How is it that the oysters don’t have a bigger legacy? Among the reasons Lewis Carroll’s books have endured so long is the strength of the characters, and not just the biggest or most obvious ones. Wonderland and the Looking-Glass world teem with incredible creatures in every wood, river, and tree. They’re hiding in plain sight in the details of the text as well as the illustrations. Take a closer look, and see what you can find—do you have a favorite character or scene? Let us know in the comments…[end-mark] The post Eight Overlooked Characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books appeared first on Reactor.