Writer Damian Kindler and director Peter DeLuise (Dom's scion, of 21 Jump Street fame) indulged their obvious fondness for Star Trek's "Amok Time" episode for this tale that landed Mitchell in the clutches of a Jaffa warrior sect that follows the Ori. Forced to bolt through the Stargate in a hurry, SG-1 had to leave the wounded Cameron behind. On the positive side, Mitchell's foes nursed him back to health. The bad news was they did this just so he could be trained to fight in a ritual clash to the death. Mitchell's quandary recalled that scene in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory when Private Arnoud received a skull fracture and was bandaged up just so he could be shot. (By the way, Arnoud and his two fellow comrades "died wonderfully," according to the French general who executed them to save his own butt, but I digress.) No, Kindler and DeLuise aren't Kubrick, but who is? Obviously Mitchell had to squirm out of this jam alive an
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It's only one day into the summer Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills, and already we've seen one of the best shows (albeit not on TV) that we're likely to get in the next three weeks of hype and schmooze.
The occasion: a panel late Tuesday afternoon promoting Pioneers of Primetime, a PBS special (airing Nov. 9) about the legendary vaudevillian clowns who first made TV popular. Several gave their final TV interviews for this documentary, including the late Milton Berle, Steve Allen and Red Skelton — who turned down producer Steve Boettcher's interview requests at least half a dozen times before relenting and rewarding him with three and a half hours shortly before he died.
At TCA, this all-star panel of 80-something golden-age talent, which at first glance promised to be an exercise in fawning nostalgia, quickly turned into a rollicking display of classic shtick, as Red Buttons and Carl Reiner me
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