Here’s a look at some interesting scifi stories from around the web:

Davies says Torchwood’s season four is ready to go

Torchwood creator and executive producer Russell T. Davies told the British press Friday that the fourth season of the sci-fi show is ready and waiting, depending on how the show’s third mini-season (”Children of Earth”) performs.

Read the full story at TVSquad.com

Joss Whedon on Dollhouse

Whedon says. “Really, just every meeting is like, ‘What’s the most fun we can have with this actor?’ about the whole cast. All I can say — ’cause I’m gonna be Mr. Un-Spoiler — is that we’re having a crazy amount of fun, and usually, that tends to translate onto the screen.”

Read the full story at EW and careful, there ARE spoilers.

Would FOX or NBC Be Willing To Bring It Back?

Yes. I think from my talks with the people running FOX that they would bring it back under the right circumstances. However, you must understand that right now Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Morena Baccarin, and Alan Tudyk (plus he was killed in SERENITY) all have gigs for the foreseeable future. However don’t underestimate the power of a movie.

Read the full story at TVbytheNumbers.com

DOLLHOUSE: Alpha (Alan Tudyk, L) imprints Echo (Eliza Dushku, R) as a natural born killer. ©2009 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Carin Baer/FOX

With the rare exceptions such as Star Trek and The Day the Earth Stood Still, scifi TV shows and movies have taught us that all aliens have one purpose – to take over the Earth. But now The Visitors have arrived and they want to be our friends. They want to share their advanced technology with us. They want to give us the cure for cancer and all they want in return is a little water.

Yeah, right.

Stock the bomb shelters and get those bullshit detectors out of storage because come January 2010, The Visitors will have landed. It’s “V”, the reimagining of the 1980’s scifi series about pretty alien people with a very dark secret.

I got to watch a little bit of the series and now I’m even more excited to see this new show.

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  We’ve been saying the same thing since Dollhouse began – it doesn’t have the wit, the spark, the pacing that we’ve come to expect from a Joss Whedon production. All of that changed last week when Alan Tudyk arrived on the scene. His introductory episode, “Briar Rose”, was clever, fast-paced and it had that pop culture wit and wisdom that was the hallmark of the best Buffy episodes.

Tudyk, known to scifi fans as Wash from Firefly, is the face behind the mysterious Alpha that we’ve heard so many scary tales about. Which is funny, because on the surface, Alan Tudyk isn’t a scary person, but he sure made us believe when he switched from the nutty and neurotic engineer Kepler, to a man you wouldn’t want to meet up with in the dark.

“I had so much fun playing Kepler, all this stupid physical stuff was great. And then turning into a bad ass was also fun,” said Tudyk, when he spoke to reporters on the phone after last week’s episode.  “Mentally speaking, and in this next episode, I’m only Alpha. I’m even more crazy, like he’s insane, insane.”

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Joss: I don’t get twitter, I think it might be dirty.
Jed: You’re going to twitter tonight.
Joss: Buy me a drink first.

Let’s hear it for the Whedon Brothers! They’re here every night and don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Joss Whedon, brothers Zack and Jed and stars Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion were all on hand for the Paley Festival salute to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog. It all went down on April 14th at the Arclight in Hollywood and I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

Here we have the brothers Grimm followed by the lovely and talent - talented and lovely Felicia and Nathan:

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Another Firefly alum is on TV tonight. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles star Summer Glau will be guesting as herself on tonight’s episode of CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory.

The episode is titled, “The Terminator Decoupling” and it takes places on a train trip to San Francisco. The trip takes a hard right turn though, when Leonard (Johnny Galecki), Sheldon (Jim Parsons), Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) discover that Summer Glau.  If that’s not enough for you, the episode also features a cameo by Nobel Laureate Dr. George Smoot, father of the big bang theory of creation. Click through for a clip from tonight’s episode.

Watch The Big Bang Theory tonight, March 9 at 8:00 on CBS.

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It’s not scifi, but fans of Firefly’s Nathan Fillion will want to tune in to Castle, premiering tonight on ABC. Nathan plays mystery writer Richard Castle who learns that a real-world copycat killer has started staging murders from scenes depicted in his novels. Castle is questioned by NYPD Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic, “The Spirit”), a bright and aggressive detective who keeps her investigations under a tight rein. Together, they try to solve the mystery as the sexual tension between them increases!

I guess after that, Castle is hooked, since he’ll be helping solve a new mystery each week. As a scifi bonus, the first episode was directed by Rob Bowman of The X-Files!

Check it out at 10:00 every Monday on ABC.

Photo: Newscom

NASA is looking for a name for a new node, not to be confused with a noid. A node is a connecting module and its cupola and Node 3 is the newest part that will be added to the International Space Station.

Node 1 is called Unity, Node 2 is Harmony and Firefly fans have banned together to get Node 3 named Serenity, a name which actually fits quite well with the first two.

Voting is open from now until March 20, 2009 and you don’t even have to register. Just visit NASA.gov to vote for one of the four choices or write in your own (Spindrift, anyone?).

Here’s how the voting stands at the moment:

Earthrise    5%

Legacy       5%

Serenity   86%

Venture     4%

Yeah, there’s nothing like dedicated sci fi fans to sway a poll. Unless those last minute Venture Brothers fans get in on this, Serenity is looking at a sure win.

Photo: NASA

Today, ABC announced that they have cut the order for Nathan Fillion’s new TV show, Castle, from 13 episodes to 10. This is most likely due to the recent announcement that ABC producers were all asked to shave 2% off their budgets. Still, it doesn’t bode well for Fillion who can’t seem to keep a project on the air.

Let’s get one thing straight. A show killer isn’t a bad actor, so don’t think anyone is knocking his ability to get the job done.  More often, a show killer is a good (even great) actor who just has crummy luck when it comes to TV shows. (Jeff Goldblum) And despite what other columnists have said, Fillion’s TV runs haven’t been all that bad.  53 episodes of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, for heaven’s sake. But it does seem like his luck on TV has turned for the worst since the demise of Firefly.

So here’s hoping that Castle has merely hit a small bump in the LA freeway and not a giant, undercarriage wrecking pot hole.

Oh, wait.  I just read the synopsis for this series, which, when I first read about it was a horror novelist helping the police solve crimes.

Direct from ABC:

“Castle” is a comedic crime procedural about a famous mystery novelist, Nick Castle, who is bored with his own success. When a real-world copycat murderer starts staging scenes from Nick’s novels, Nick is teamed up with NYPD Detective Kate Beckett and the challenge gets his blood pumping as he steps in to help solve the crime. Nick and Beckett’s styles instantly clash and sparks begin to fly, leading both to danger and a hint of romance. Nick is kept grounded by his Broadway diva mother, quick-witted teenage daughter and his long-suffering ex-wife… who happens to be his editor.

Bored writer? Broadway diva mother? Mouthy daughter? Ex-wife editor? COMEDIC crime drama with a dash of romance.

This is no bump in the road, this is a pot hole the size of Kansas. Castle comes to ABC in early 2009.

Photo: Newscom

Who would you say are the scifi and horror masters of today’s television?  TVWeek has cast their votes and you can see who they chose in their new feature Masters of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. The feature offers up short interviews with those creators they felt are truly carrying on in the grand tradition of Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry and Dan Curtis.

Several of my favorites made the cut, including J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon and Eric Kripke (who received the only Master of Horror label.)

Did they get it right, or have they overlooked a modern genre master? Check out the full list at TVWeek, then come back here and let us know what you think.

Photo by Zulfikar

Twentieth Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising and The Multiverse Network, Inc., announced this week the development of an original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” MMOG.

Calling it a “ground-breaking MMOG” it will allow players to immerse themselves in a 3D environment or play as a Flash-based 2D game.  Either way, players from both types of platforms will be able to interact (so you with the slow, old computer, can still play with your pal who has the latest, zippiest model.)

The game will be launched within “Multiverse Places,” a new social virtual world from Multiverse and they hope to go into beta testing later this year.

“Every once in a while a show comes along that lives long after its run on television, and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ is that kind of show,” commented Elie Dekel, Executive Vice President Licensing and Merchandising for Fox L&M. “We think that creating this virtual Buffy world is the perfect extension of the brand and will attract both fans of the show and newcomers interested in a great experience online.”

“As a brilliant storyteller and world-maker, Joss Whedon crafts stories that expand perfectly into the new medium of virtual worlds,” said Corey Bridges, co-founder and Executive Producer, Multiverse. “Not to give away too much, but when the ‘Buffy’ team finished the television series, they created the perfect launching point for an MMOG where everyone will feel like they’re an important character in the ongoing story.”

All great news, but in what appears to be an effort to get all-hands-on-deck for Buffy, Fox has announced that the previously announced Firefly MMOG is being put on the back burner.