Merlin-Complete 5th Season

After three years of peace and harmony, the future of the Camelot couldn't be brighter. But as King Arthur and his new Queen look to bring the kingdom into a bright future, the seeds of Camelot's destruction are drawing together. The evil Morgana is hiding in the darkness. As an old face returns to the castle and gains a position amongst Arthur's inner circle, Merlin must protect the king more than ever... For the new arrival is Mordred, the druid boy whose destiny is to end the king's life and bring chaos down on Camelot. But as the death song of King Uther haunts the castle and Guinevere crosses over to the dark side, both Merlin and Arthur find that their destiny is approaching... the battle of Camelot is about to reach a deadly conclusion... and nothing will ever be the same again.

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Mets’ Johan Santana Probably Out for the Season

Instead, the 34-year-old Santana, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, will probably spend the season rehabilitating a new tear in his pitching shoulder, which Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson disclosed in a conference call Thursday evening.

The injury, a recurrence of the issue that led him to miss all of the 2011 season, adds an unhappy final chapter to his time with the Mets. The team acquired him in a trade with the Minnesota Twins in the winter of 2008, signed him to a $137.5 million contract — the remainder of which Alderson said was not insured — and then watched as physical ailments began to cut into his effectiveness after a strong first season in Queens.

To some degree, the announcement was not a big surprise because Santana had reported weakness in his pitching shoulder since arriving at spring training. He had not pitched in a single exhibition game and, under the best-case picture, was not expected to pitch in the regular season until late April or late May. Now it appears he will not pitch at all.

“I’m not a doctor nor am I a medical historian,” Alderson said in the conference call, “but these injuries are very difficult to recover from after one surgery, and I don’t know the history of recovering from a second.”

Alderson said Santana had flown to New York on Wednesday to consult with Dr. David Altchek, the Mets’ team physician, who performed a magnetic resonance imaging exam on Santana’s left shoulder and concluded that he had retorn the anterior capsule. Alderson said that Altchek, at the request of Santana’s agent, Peter Greenberg, then reviewed the M.R.I. with two prominent sports orthopedists — Dr. James Andrews and Dr. Lewis Yocum — and that both had agreed with Altchek’s assessment.

Alderson said Santana would remain in New York over the weekend as he decided his next step. “A second surgery is a strong possibility,” Alderson said.

Santana had hoped to represent Venezuela in March in the World Baseball Classic but encountered a succession of negative developments once he reported to camp. At one point, in early March, Alderson even questioned if Santana had reported to camp in proper shape. The comment did not sit well with Santana, who, perhaps unwisely, threw a bullpen session to try to prove a point.

Alderson spent part of Thursday’s conference call trying to clarify how everything had deteriorated so quickly.

“We don’t know when it happened or how it happened,” he said, “but we do know that at some point the symptoms worsened.”

Asked if the bullpen session might have contributed to the new diagnosis, Alderson said, “We just don’t have facts.”

The disclosure is more of a blow to Santana, who had been thought of as a potential Hall of Famer, than it is to the Mets, who did not have great ambitions for the 2013 season and were not counting on Santana to propel them into the postseason. The Mets are looking to turn things around in 2014, with a core of young players that was clearly not going to include Santana.

If he does not pitch again for the Mets, Santana will be remembered for two games. The most recent came last June, when he pitched the first no-hitter in the team’s history. But it was a bittersweet accomplishment because he was forced to throw 134 pitches to get through nine innings, substantially more than the Mets wanted him to throw at that point in the wake of his first shoulder surgery.

After that game, Manager Terry Collins expressed misgivings about what harm might have been done, and his instincts might have been correct. In the 10 games he started after the no-hitter, Santana had an earned run average of 8.28, and he was eventually shut down for the season.

Santana’s other standout effort came in the next-to-last game of the 2008 season, his first in New York, when the Mets were in the process of collapsing for the second September in a row. Against the Marlins, with his team reeling, Santana pitched a three-hit, 2-0 shutout. The victory temporarily drew the Mets even in the wild-card standings, although they proceeded to lose the next day, finishing out of the postseason.

It turned out that Santana pitched the game against the Marlins with a torn meniscus in his left knee. That injury was easily repaired. His damaged shoulder, however, is a different story.

The Mets have one more vacancy to address in a starting rotation that now leans heavily on two young pitchers: Jon Niese and Matt Harvey.

Dillon Gee still has to prove he is capable after having surgery last season for a blood clot in his pitching shoulder, and Shaun Marcum, acquired in the off-season, is sidelined with a neck ailment.

“We’ll just have to see,” said Alderson, which is about all he could say at the end of one more sobering day for his team.

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Mets’ Johan Santana Probably Out for the Season

Instead, the 34-year-old Santana, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, will probably spend the season rehabilitating a new tear in his pitching shoulder, which Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson disclosed in a conference call Thursday evening.

The injury, a recurrence of the issue that led him to miss all of the 2011 season, adds an unhappy final chapter to his time with the Mets. The team acquired him in a trade with the Minnesota Twins in the winter of 2008, signed him to a $137.5 million contract — the remainder of which Alderson said was not insured — and then watched as physical ailments began to cut into his effectiveness after a strong first season in Queens.

To some degree, the announcement was not a big surprise because Santana had reported weakness in his pitching shoulder since arriving at spring training. He had not pitched in a single exhibition game and, under the best-case picture, was not expected to pitch in the regular season until late April or late May. Now it appears he will not pitch at all.

“I’m not a doctor nor am I a medical historian,” Alderson said in the conference call, “but these injuries are very difficult to recover from after one surgery, and I don’t know the history of recovering from a second.”

Alderson said Santana had flown to New York on Wednesday to consult with Dr. David Altchek, the Mets’ team physician, who performed a magnetic resonance imaging exam on Santana’s left shoulder and concluded that he had retorn the anterior capsule. Alderson said that Altchek, at the request of Santana’s agent, Peter Greenberg, then reviewed the M.R.I. with two prominent sports orthopedists — Dr. James Andrews and Dr. Lewis Yocum — and that both had agreed with Altchek’s assessment.

Alderson said Santana would remain in New York over the weekend as he decided his next step. “A second surgery is a strong possibility,” Alderson said.

Santana had hoped to represent Venezuela in March in the World Baseball Classic but encountered a succession of negative developments once he reported to camp. At one point, in early March, Alderson even questioned if Santana had reported to camp in proper shape. The comment did not sit well with Santana, who, perhaps unwisely, threw a bullpen session to try to prove a point.

Alderson spent part of Thursday’s conference call trying to clarify how everything had deteriorated so quickly.

“We don’t know when it happened or how it happened,” he said, “but we do know that at some point the symptoms worsened.”

Asked if the bullpen session might have contributed to the new diagnosis, Alderson said, “We just don’t have facts.”

The disclosure is more of a blow to Santana, who had been thought of as a potential Hall of Famer, than it is to the Mets, who did not have great ambitions for the 2013 season and were not counting on Santana to propel them into the postseason. The Mets are looking to turn things around in 2014, with a core of young players that was clearly not going to include Santana.

If he does not pitch again for the Mets, Santana will be remembered for two games. The most recent came last June, when he pitched the first no-hitter in the team’s history. But it was a bittersweet accomplishment because he was forced to throw 134 pitches to get through nine innings, substantially more than the Mets wanted him to throw at that point in the wake of his first shoulder surgery.

After that game, Manager Terry Collins expressed misgivings about what harm might have been done, and his instincts might have been correct. In the 10 games he started after the no-hitter, Santana had an earned run average of 8.28, and he was eventually shut down for the season.

Santana’s other standout effort came in the next-to-last game of the 2008 season, his first in New York, when the Mets were in the process of collapsing for the second September in a row. Against the Marlins, with his team reeling, Santana pitched a three-hit, 2-0 shutout. The victory temporarily drew the Mets even in the wild-card standings, although they proceeded to lose the next day, finishing out of the postseason.

It turned out that Santana pitched the game against the Marlins with a torn meniscus in his left knee. That injury was easily repaired. His damaged shoulder, however, is a different story.

The Mets have one more vacancy to address in a starting rotation that now leans heavily on two young pitchers: Jon Niese and Matt Harvey.

Dillon Gee still has to prove he is capable after having surgery last season for a blood clot in his pitching shoulder, and Shaun Marcum, acquired in the off-season, is sidelined with a neck ailment.

“We’ll just have to see,” said Alderson, which is about all he could say at the end of one more sobering day for his team.

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Critic’s Notebook: ‘Game of Thrones’ Begins Season 3 on HBO

And then people start to talk. And talk. And walk from here to there so that they can do some more talking.

As this popular adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” novels returns on Sunday night, it falls into an already familiar pattern. Tiny bursts of action are separated by wide expanses of conversation — veritable kingdoms of explication during which medieval spreadsheets of plot, history, geography and family lineage are explained in the mellow tones of stage-trained European actors. Presumably the balance will slowly shift toward action as the plot builds, over the course of 10 episodes, to some climactic mass bloodletting, in this case involving those who were hot on Sam’s heels.

To be fair, I enjoy “Game of Thrones” and have been happy to bear with it even when its appeal has seemed more actuarial or logistical than dramatic — during the long stretches of chessboard storytelling, when the writers seem mostly concerned with moving people around or keeping them apart. I’ve been an avid consumer of science fiction and, to a lesser extent, fantasy since childhood and share some affinities with those who see the show’s success as a validation — a succès de fantastique.

But the season premiere is a handy time to say, for the record, that the claims made in some quarters for “Game of Thrones” — including, ever more boldly, that it’s the best show on television — are overblown. Making the series a test case for the artistic validity of fantasy literature and film isn’t really necessary, or advisable, in the wake of greater achievements like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies and the better entries in the “Harry Potter” series. A well-made and highly effective piece of popular genre entertainment shouldn’t be discounted, but it doesn’t need to be overrated either.

Both serialized television and sprawling fictional cycles can exert special holds, though, and their congruence here can go a long way toward explaining the fervor fans feel for “Game of Thrones,” where they see Mr. Martin’s nerdily meticulous fantasy world brought to life with respect and high production values.

But does the show’s mainstream acceptance (to the extent that there is still an identifiable mainstream) mean that its producers have successfully translated Mr. Martin’s stories for a larger audience not normally interested in fantasy? Or does it mean that they’ve made the fantasy aspects palatable by repackaging them, wholesale, in the form of an HBO prestige drama, a highly stylized product already embraced by the upper-class TV audience? Slow pace, hushed quality, studiously restrained performances, constant leaps among multiple simultaneous story lines: in its bones “Game of Thrones” bears a startlingly close resemblance to shows like “Boardwalk Empire” and “Band of Brothers.”

The early episodes of Season 3 contain another sign of premium-cable conformity: plots or situations that address themes of slavery, women’s empowerment and sexual orientation in obvious, heavy-handed ways, particularly for a show set in a medieval fantasy world.

On the positive side it’s nice to have back Peter Dinklage, the cast’s token American, in the role of the combative and honorable dwarf Tyrion Lannister, though he’s more subdued than usual in the aftermath of the traumatic Battle of Blackwater in Season 2. He still dispatches the show’s artfully sub-sub-Shakespearean dialogue with panache, and he’s joined in that all-important endeavor this season by estimable performers like Ciaran Hinds, Paul Kaye (in a role very different from his hilariously wasted Billy in “Pulling”) and Diana Rigg, doing the medieval-warfare version of the dowager played by her fellow dame Maggie Smith in “Downton Abbey.”

They’re all fun to watch, even when their characters don’t have anything in particular to do besides relay information that we need to keep up with the story or keep straight the seven (so we’re told) warring families. In any case, in “Game of Thrones” people always take second place to machinery — the big ticking clockwork of plot and relationships, of family trees and maps and flowcharts symbolized by every episode’s best feature, the beautifully animated opening-credit sequence that gives an aerial survey of the show’s world. It symbolizes a seductive mechanism that’s deeply appealing, even as it chews up characters and ideas.

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