We here at The Flickcast don’t like to judge films based on their rating. While it might be in vogue to jump on the hate wagon when a popular franchise goes for a PG-13 instead of an R, none of that matters if the story is good. The rating should be dependent on content, and that content should be determined by what ever choices lead to the best possible movie.

That said, it is hard not to feel a little enthusiasm when the current rights holder to the Terminator franchise tweets outs gold like this:

@meganeellison: @terminatorfans We can’t really tell you guys anything about Terminator BUT it will be an R rated film as God and James Cameron intended.

In the years since the release of the first two Terminator films, action and violence has grown more and more accepted by the MPAA, leaving films like T2 as examples of very soft R rated films. The franchise doesn’t “need” an R rating in the same way a Zombie film or a Slasher movie does. However, knowing that at the very center of all things Terminator  an R rated film means in the writing phase there will be no compromises, which is very encouraging after the debacle that was Terminator: Salvation.

In a world of constantly evolving tech, SyFy’s Eureka stays ahead of the game. The writers seem to have an unending amount of innovations up their sleeves. Between the giant robot spiders, A.I. in the house of tomorrow, and cloud sculpting devices, the scientists at Global Dynamics are kept pretty busy.

That makes double for their new director, Douglas Fargo, played with an affable, geeky charm by Neil Grayston. Just like Fargo, Neil is curiouser than a cat when it comes to gadgets.

The Flickcast: What do you think of the future technology on Eureka that has actually come to pass?

Neil Grayston: I’m always blown away. Sometimes it’s funny if you look back at the first season, some of our “high-tech gadgets” have already been surpassed in the real world a billion times over. It’s like we were really on top of that, someone was really thinking back there. I like looking back and seeing what we maybe thought of before hand and then what the real world was actually leaps and bounds (developing). It’s kinda cool knowing what real scientists are doing and what they’re actually making up.

FC: Do you ever have trouble with the highly scientific, technical lines on the show?

NG: Those are the lines that I usually will…like sometimes I’m going to admit, I cheat, I have my little sides and I cut out just the little technical lines and I make them as small as possible and I hide them in my wardrobe so that you won’t see anything. And then just before a take I’ll just look them over.

I’m fine with the dialogue and the back and forth, but am I going to say a pulsating ionsphere photostar or is it a photographic pulsar ionsphere? You know it’s those little things that I can look up on Wikipedia forever and forever. Fortunately, the Wikipedia entries are written by people who know what those things mean.

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In what can only be described as a very interesting meeting of life and art, cast members and producers from Battlestar Galactica including Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, visited the United Nations recently as representatives of the Caprica delegation to discuss various issues facing mankind. Previously, the video of this historic meeting was not available. But now, according to the LA Times, it’s going to be very soon.

The UN and SciFi Channel will post the video, in five parts, and the transcript of the entire event at the SciFi website. The historic meeting, which was moderated by BSG fan and Star Trek: The Next Generation alumni Whoopi Goldberg, covered issues such as human rights, children and war, terrorism, and “reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faiths.”

I, for one, like the fact that cast members from one of our favorite shows get to be invited somewhere like the UN and are able to express their opinions. Granted, BSG is just a TV show (albeit a really good one) and as such, shouldn’t necessarily be relied upon for some sort of guidance on how to deal with the world’s problems.

However, good ideas that could potentially help solve the world’s problems should be taken from whatever source they come from — even if that source happens to be a geeky SciFi TV show.

Photo: Peter Foley / EPA