After months of delays, the Pushing Daisies season 1 original soundtrack CD is finally set for release in time for Christmas – barely – with a in-store date of Dec. 23. The disk features original music composed and arranged by Jim Dooley.

Many Daisies fans have been looking forward to the CD because it would feature three season 1 highlights: "Morning Has Broken," performed by Ellen Greene in "Smell of Success" (1x07); "Hopelessly Devoted To You" from Grease, performed by Kristin Chenoweth in "Dummy" (1x02); and the They Might Be Giants classic "Birdhouse In Your Soul," an excerpt of which was giddily performed by Kristin Chenoweth and Ellen Greene in "Pigeon" (1x04).

In fact, over Thanksgiving Chenoweth and Greene went into the studio to record full, complete versions of these three songs specifically for the CD. Both stars are Broadway belters (Greene is Tony-nominated for Threepenny Opera, and Chenoweth won for You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and was nominated for Wicked) who obviously enjoyed a chance to add music to their Daisies performances. (Hey Chenoweth lovers: she also has a Christmas CD out.)

The CD also features a full version of the opening credits theme and 31 more tracks of Dooley's atmospheric scoring for the show, many of them in an extended form, as performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony.

Originally slated for release Oct. 21 to promote the show's second season, the CD has been pushed back more than once. As there will now be nothing to promote – Daisies was recently canceled by ABC – a soundtrack CD of the second season is looking extremely unlikely.

The Pushing Daisies original television soundtrack is being released by the soundtrack/compilations label Varèse Sarabande, which is accepting preorders on its website. The CD includes a lovely booklet featuring images from the show, full credits, and notes from both Dooley and show creator/executive producer Bryan Fuller.

Best of all, the CD itself is a big ol' cherry pie.

The complete track listing is as follows. Read more...

Season 23 of the original Doctor Who came out on DVD recently after a gap of over two decades – and that lapse of time has given the key players in the twisted story of Colin Baker's last season some interesting perspectives on what happened to the show and why.

"The Trial of a Time Lord" on DVD is the ideal resource for fans of classic Doctor Who who want to know the whole story behind the show's most controversial Doctor, Colin Baker, and the twists and turns of his final season on the air.

Though the 14 episodes of season 23 are of varying quality, they contain many of Baker's best moments in the show and some of the entire series's most indelible moments, including the death of Peri Brown. The commentaries and extensive featurettes on the "Trial" DVD set are impressive, making it fun for Who fans and a must for those who appreciate Colin Baker's turn as the Doctor.

Sci Fi has released a trailer for the final ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica. The 90-second clip teases the conflicts resulting from the first half of the season, which ended in mid-June and climaxed in a human-Cylon alliance to find an "Earth" that seems to have been destroyed and abandoned.

As in the past, Sci Fi has mixed in old footage from the first half of the season with new stuff not yet seen. In addition to all of the regulars, the trailer, interestingly enough, gives facetime to Richard Hatch's character, Tom Zarek. And it has an exchange already being extensively quoted around the net, in which Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) says to Adama (Edward James Olmos), "If you're a Cylon, I'd like to know." And Adama replies, "If I'm a Cylon, you're really screwed." Well, yeah.

The biggest mystery, of course, is who the twelfth Cylon is and how that revelation will impact both races. The secret was originally intended to be revealed during the mid-season finale in June, but its was decided to push it back to the final ten episodes – so expect the revelation to come early in the slate of episodes, with the the balance of the season dealing with repercussions and the resolution of the human-Cylon-Earth storylines. (The net is rife with rumors that the twelfth Cylon's cover has been blown, but it's clear to me from past encounters that Battlestar's creators are more than capable of planting a red herring or two. Your best bet, folks, is to wait and see.)

The final ten episodes begin airing on Friday, January 16.

E! Online is reporting that creator Bryan Fuller has confirmed the (more-or-less expected) cancellation of Pushing Daisies, the highly regarded but low-rated fantasy-comedy that has been under a Hollywood deathwatch for the last few weeks.

Eli Stone and Dirty Sexy Money also are said to have gotten the axe, though so far the word is unofficial.

Creator Fuller is philosophical about ending Daisies, which has had a bumpy road. "To be honest," Fuller told E!'s Kristin Dos Santos, "I'm really not feeling very boo-hoo about it. I am so proud of the show. We put together 22 really good episodes, and there is a lot to be proud of. I'm sure I'll be working with a lot of these people again, and I would love to do so."

Kristin Chenoweth, who plays the bright-and-shiny Olive Snook on the show, said Thursday night she'd already gotten the bad news. "I just found out about an hour ago," she said. "Pushing Daisies will probably forever be one of my most happiest times of my career. I loved being a part of that show, such quality, and I'm very sad." Chenoweth speculated the writers' strike, which interrupted and truncated the first season, had a lot to do with the show's failure to find an audience despite sharp scripts and innovative production.

The orphaned storylines for the unmade "back nine" episodes of this season are slated to be covered in a comic book, and Fuller has joked about the possibility of a feature film.

I'll miss Pushing Daisies a great deal, but I also agree with Fuller – perhaps a show this unique is better off, in a way, being represented as a handful of gems. Eli Stone, however, has, I think, run its course. My review of the second-season premiere noted how the show had, in deliberately casting aside the mystery involving Eli's visions, damaged its own appeal considerably, and the ensuing episodes tracking the disintegration of Eli's firm haven't changed my mind.

Goodbye, Daisies. Bryan – thanks for the pie. It was delicious.

The CW's entire bottom-rated Sunday night line-up, including the unwatchable romantic fantasy Valentine, will be purged as part of the network's break with the independent media company it hired to take over the evening's bloc of shows, according to a report in The New York Times.

The good news is that The CW, with access to the programming of its parent companies CBS and Warner Brothers, is using reruns of the outstanding first season of Jericho to help plug the hole on Sunday nights, airing the canceled CBS postapocalyptic drama at 7 p.m. Eastern starting Nov. 30. Also filling the gap will be shows from season 1 of Everybody Hates Chris and season 2 of The Drew Carey Show.

Media Rights Capital contracted with The CW to control the network's five hours of Sunday programming for a full year, including three hours of original programming. But the new shows produced by Media Rights – Valentine (Greek gods move to L.A. to help humans find love), In Harm's Way (a reality show featuring dangerous jobs), and Easy Money (a dark comedy set at a family-run short-term loan company) – are scraping the bottom of the ratings, getting fewer viewers than any other shows on any of the five broadcast networks.
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Paramount has released a new trailer for J. J. Abrams's forthcoming Star Trek film, giving fans a tantalizingly close look at the new Enterprise, the new Kirk, and Abrams's new vision for how Trek's original band of heroes got started in the business.

The trailer hints at an origin story for Kirk as a boy and a young man (played by Chris Pine), and a parallel story for future best friend Spock (Zachary Quinto), and an early adventure for the green Enterprise crew.

A set of images from the film has also been released, posted here as an image gallery.

Abrams unveiled four additional clips from the prequel at a press event in London last week, as reported by the BBC. The clips gave away more of the storyline and included a scene in which Spock delivers the famous Vulcan benediction, "Live long and prosper."

Abrams said he wanted the film to feel "legitimate and real." Though not originally a fan of the show himself, Abrams became excited by the project and says he wanted to be true to the show despite its "cardboard planets."

"It was always someone else's show," he explained but after reading the script, he said he would have been "jealous" had another director taken on the project. Simon Pegg, who plays Montgomery Scott in the new film, told the crowd he couldn't express how excited he was to co-star in a Star Trek film.

The trailer looks very promising in a number of respects: the film is obviously designed to be both glossy and action-packed, on the one hand, yet with a serious attempt to explain what motivates Kirk and Spock and how these two strong-willed individuals forged a partnership. At least one more trailer can be expected between now and the release date to shed light on Abrams's vision and the new actor's depictions of these characters we've known for 40 years.

The movie stars Chris Pine (Kirk), Zachary Quinto (Spock), Eric Bana (Nero), Simon Pegg (Scotty), Winona Ryder (Amanda Grayson), Zoe Saldana (Nyota Uhura), Karl Urban (Leonard 'Bones' McCoy), John Cho (Hikaru Sulu), Bruce Greenwood (Christopher Pike), Ben Cross (Sarek), Anton Yelchin (Pavel Chekov), Leonard Nimoy (Old Spock), Greg Ellis (Chief Engineer Olsen), and Chris Hemsworth (George Kirk).

The television industry is abuzz with talk that ABC is on the verge of canceling its most unusual comedy, Pushing Daisies, after watching its ratings plummet over the course of the season – but nothing is confirmed yet and the show's irons might still get pulled out of the fire.

The network ordered 13 episodes for the innovatively bizarre series, about a pie-maker who uses his ability to bring people back from the dead for 60 seconds to help solve (very strange) crimes, and insiders expect ABC to decide not to pick up the show's back nine and complete the second season.

So far show creator Bryan Fuller is insisting no word has come yet, and he and the cast and crew are optimistic. ABC has lately been lenient with low-rated fan favorites, so it's still possible Daisies will continue.

Read my article for all the gory details and possibilities for Daisies' future.

There's no denying Daisies is doing poorly this year, both week to week, and compared to last year, despite some big-name guest stars and continuing strong performances from a very talented cast. Why do you think Daisies is in trouble?

Sci-fi actor and fan Ted Raimi talked to me about how being on Legend of the Seeker was like, yet unlike, his old days on Xena: Warrior Princess.

Plus: why acting with Bruce Spence was like a Playboy party, and the fanboy thrill of being on Supernatural ("I'm in the Chevy! I'm in the Chevy!!") And yes, I did ask him about Spider-Man 4.

• Interview: Ted Raimi
• Review: Legend of the Seeker Premiere
• Image Gallery for Legend of the Seeker
• Stations carrying Legend of the Seeker

The new syndicated sword-and-sorcery series Legend of the Seeker is now available on iTunes.

Each original episode from the first season (22 episodes in all) will be available for purchase and download the Monday after its initial weekend broadcast premiere. The purchase price is $1.99 in standard definition or $2.99 in high definition. Season Passes are available for $34.99 in standard definition or $49.99 in high definition.

This link will take you directly to the iTunes page if you have iTunes installed.

To find out more about where and when Legend of the Seeker is broadcast in your area, click here.

Michael Crichton, author of dozens of bestsellers including the classic science fiction novels The Andromeda Strain (1969) and Jurassic Park (1990), died Tuesday at the age of 66. The cause was cancer.

Crichton was a master of using crisp and clear writing to draw readers into an unfolding and deepening story about the dangers of increasingly complex systems. His influence is wide-ranging, inspiring countless other writers (one who recently mentioned Crichton's effect on his work was J. J. Abrams).

Crichton's other forays into science-fiction and fantasy include Sphere (1987) and Timeline (1999).

Several of Crichton's stories were adapted to film, including two versions of The Andromeda Strain, Timeline (2003), Sphere (1998), and, of course, Jurassic Park (1993); Crichton wrote a few screenplays as well, including Twister (1996) and Westworld (1973), a remake of which is scheduled for next year. Crichton also executive-produced and wrote for the television series ER.

Crichton's way of bringing out the potential problems involved in combining hubris with entropy spoke to me as a young man about the naivete of expecting the gee-whiz, all-progress future postulated by everyone from Asimov to Heinlein to come without cost and failure. His carefully reasoned and developed scenarios were that much more frightening for being so easy to enter into, confident and capable, unaware of what you've begun.