Vee

May not be an option with HBO Now, believe it or not.

Yeah, it's Now, which I may settle for. I had access to my friend's HBO Go acct last year but HBO upped verification last summer - at least for my system, it now seems to make you login via cable provider through an arcane provider system. The issue is, HBO Go plays on some consoles and TVs while HBO Now plays on others - and my TV console of choice supports Go, not Now, which means I'd have to watch Now on either my computer or iPad instead of my big TV. Sucks but I may do it (or just 'acquire' the episodes as I did before last year). Or bully Time Warner into giving me HBO since I'm fed up with them to begin with...

No, they think they're writing Steve as the underdog and a great guy. To me he comes off like a stalker. (Also Scott Weinger is super-gay)

Star Trek 2017 is apparently set to film in Toronto in the fall. It's rumored to be set in the decades between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Star Trek: The Next Generation, after the Klingon peace talks. (It's worth mentioning that VI was new co-producer Nicholas Meyer's last Trek project, and the best of the films IMO.) Unsure if this is true, though. Here's a new Trek oral history from the Smithsonian, with some nice nods to Lucille Ball:

I'm not sure - I have heard it's from an actual episode. I think they start filming in May, as I think Pearl Mackie is currently doing theater. I think a big part of the year break is that Moffat is unavoidably committed to Sherlock.

I do like that she's more overtly screwball comic than Clara or even Amy. Reminds me a bit of a '60s companion. I think big drama would've been the wrong way to go after Jenna. This does remind me of how casually Freema Agyeman was treated by the show with its Billie Piper hangover when she could've run for years like Lis Sladen. I'm glad they've finally added a new companion of color to right that wrong.

Here she is, world: Pearl Mackie as "Bill".

With one day left, a cryptic teaser: Current rumors on tomorrow's companion reveal include EE star and Carl favorite Rakhee Thakrar, Pearl Mackie and Georgina Campbell. Also allegedly bandied about: Coronation Street star Michelle Keegan.

Very glad Matt/Jared/John Brotherton is still in the picture. I vastly preferred him to Stalker Steve, and they made good use of the comic instinct JB had on OLTL.

It seems tacky to post in the Prince thread, so:

I think they just wanted to keep it to the same seasonal length. HBO, of course, wants to prolong its natural runtime to maximize profit. I don't really have a problem with the network potentially shortening the episode orders to keep it going a bit longer. If they made them elongate the story (as I felt Season 5 did in some ways, and was probably their weakest year) that'd be a different matter, but I don't see that happening.

Good news for those of us who got locked out of our friend's HBO Go account when they cracked down on verification: HBO is free this weekend.

I just can't believe anyone in the Sanders campaign thought the key to winning over the black vote was Cornel West.

Birth. Movies. Death. is reporting - and they're almost certainly correct in this case - that Noah Segan (ex-Connor Lockhart, DAYS) is in Star Wars: Episode VIII. Why are they right? Because Segan has been in all of director Rian Johnson's films.

I just can't with these people claiming voter disenfranchisement in New York because they didn't bother to register as Democrats when Bernie changed his party affiliation to get access to that filthy, corrupt DNC war chest. You knew what you had to do! It's not that complicated! There is actual voter fraud and then there is voter stupidity and laziness, and I resent their being conflated. This is ridiculous. I think Bernie Sanders is a good man whose ideals and plain speaking I have always admired, but the unfortunate thing this primary has done is highlight the flaws of the man behind the superficial rhetoric. Like Trump, Bernie began as a protest candidate who got further than he'd ever anticipated before. Like Trump, he couldn't seem to find a way to stop if he even wanted to before it went too far. And like Trump, he has basically no specifics beyond his initial rhetoric. He's been pressed on how he would do these wonderful things and he can't answer the questions. Now he's gone super-negative and it looks awful on him. He also is incredibly evasive re: he and his team and supporters' unfair criticisms of the Obama administration, especially as he knows that the vast majority of actual Democrats (and black voters) are overwhelmingly in favor of Barack Obama. So he's been dodging the issue, talking out of both sides of his mouth to try to appeal to his far left/independent supporters, and somehow still expected to sway the black and Dem vote? Are you serious? You can't run a Democratic campaign where you single out your primary ideological adversaries as Bill and Hillary Clinton - authors of a Democratic dynasty in the '90s - and Barack Obama, a transformative, two-term Democratic president. And then he still expects all the rules to be changed for him and his independents, and to still get the full party support when he became a Democrat last week. Ugh.

So apparently overtime filming is happening. In Paris. From the social media accounts of TP director of photography Peter Deming and Kyle MacLachlan's wife, producer Desiree Gruber:

I think he just said they intended to fight to the convention. That's insane.

GL's Tom Pelphrey and 90210's Jessica Stroup join Iron Fist. Joie Lenz is also playing Powers Boothe's daughter on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Laura Harrier joins Spider-Man: Homecoming.