random fan news

I'm all of a sudden excited about the new Stargate. Which almost pisses me off, because I'm pretty sure it's at least partly to blame for the other two going down. But read this, from Den of Geek:

Stargate veterans line up for Stargate Universe

Simon Brew

The upcoming Stargate Universe has added some familiar-looking guest stars to its casting list…

Published on Apr 21, 2009

The latest television series based around the world of Stargate is well into production, and some familiar faces will be popping in to lend a hand, it's been revealed. SGU: Stargate Universe, as the show is called, already stars Robert Carlyle, Lou Diamond Phillips and Ming-Na, and the crux of the show is about a group of survivors on a not-hugely-impressive ship who aren't able to get back to the Earth.

And joining them in the midst of their adventures? The small matter of Stargateveterans Amanda Tapping (who we've had the pleasure of interviewing here), Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks and Gary Jones. It'll be good to see their friendly faces in there, too.

The show is set to premiere in October, with an extended debut episode planned.

I love Robert Carlyle. No question. And Ming-Na is a mainstay of at least three of the shows I used to watch. So I'm excited. Damnit.

Other news: 

Is Gillian Anderson the new Rani? How sweet would that be? She's smart, beautiful, she's local to the UK now, she knows her way around scifi, and it'd be interesting to see a new take on the Rani. And I love when my fandoms collide.

Day One is coming up, and it's made of lovely post-apocalypticness! Den of Geek says it sounds like Jericho, which I kind of liked, so they'll have to do something else with the same general setup to be anything but a knockoff. And hopefully they won't have to fight so hard just to stay on the air.

(What is it with scifi and early cancellation? It seems like half of it doesn't get ver far. For every Star Trek or Doctor Who or Stargate, there's Firefly and Jericho and Sarah Connor... There's obviously a market for it, but I think they need to check the numbers differently; the people invested in SciFi will likely also be invested in Tivo and hulu and off-schedule viewing.)

Fringe will get a second season! Which I think is due entirely to how JJ can't fail right now. If he didn't have the first summer blockbuster and Lost under his belt, I'm sure it'd get dumped too, because Fox has no faith in it's own shows. Even though that's where X-Files came from.

There's still the Gaiman-on-Who rumor. I think it'd be awesome. I also think that if the fans circulate it enough, it'll be an innevitability. So here's to spreading the news.

news: catching up on geeks of doom

Vital Video for the new Watchmen movie! 

Down at the bottom of the list of all the promos, there's the youtube video of the 70s new report that talks about the tenth anniversary of Dr Manhattan. Pretty nifty. I think this guy playing him is a little too built, but that might just be my interpretation of the art. I wonder if he'll be naked? He was always naked in the comic...

A surfaced and mysterious Japanese Half-Blood Prince trailer.

I'm so excited! This is the one where everyone makes out before it all goes south in death and drama in the next one! Really, that's all I wanted out of this book, and it's all I want out of this movie, but I was glad to see a little character development of Malfoy, and I'm looking forward to that, too. It's going to be fun.

SciFi has picked up all sixteen eps of Moonlight.

And has put them into the SciFi Friday slot, which is woefully empty now that they've bumped SG1 and SGA, and now that BSG is ending soon (all fo which is their own fault). I hope it's fiercely successful. The story isn't done yet, and I hate unfinished stories, especially sweet ones involving strong women and pretty vampires that are different enough from the norm to make it interesting. (also, it's on DVD now and I needs must own it)

GofD is running a Coraline Prize pack with all sorts of neat things.

Just enter your addy and contact info, and off you go! This is another movie I'm really excited about-- I mean, anything with Neil Gaiman's fingerprints on it and I'm there, but the trailers look wonderful-- charming and clever and a little spooky in that quirky way we all have come to expect.

Classic SciFi comes to film in Rolland Emmerich's Foundation Adaptation.

I have a hard time reading Azimov's long fiction, and a long series of long fiction kinda makes me shy away like a nervous horse, but I love the short fic, and it's such a visual thing-- all of hard scifi is-- that a good movie can do wonders for speeding up the story and translating it into something I can digest. Just don't make it suck, you hear me, Rolland? This is SciFi Law here, the basis of huge chunks of the genre, and you better treat it as such. I'm getting so tired of big-budget shiny scifi that looks good but has no soul. No connection to the characters. It's supposed to be about the people, not just the guns.

Wall-E director Andew Stanton takes on John Cater of Mars.

Even more-classic SciFi is on the way up, too! My brother had these books, and I used to look at the covers and wonder why the women were all naked and the guys got all the rayguns, but they're some of the basic scifi stories out there. This could be really neat... though it's Disney, so it might be really sanitized. But still, I love that there's still this idea of an alien-populated Mars that we might be able to go to.

Guillermo Del Toro is writing vampire books.

That's two of my fav geekeries together: GTD and new-vamps. Now if he and Neil Gaiman would work with Tim Burton to make a movie about vampire monster-hunters starring Dough Jones, I could die happy...

McG to do a new 20,000 Leagues.

Which is super-nifty. I wanna see a kracken! Movies are so good-sounding lately...

Except for The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Which I still maintain didn't need to be made, and makes me worry for Keanu's starring role in the new Cowboy Bebop movie. Here's a whole bunch of random WTF moments in TDtESS. Also: how come Jennifer Connolly, who is a long-time standard of genre fic and who is a genuinely good acress, keeps getting stuck in the turkeys? If someone remakes this again next year and casts Liv tyler in her role, I think she should rethink her casting agent.

not really scifi, but still exciting:

The VM movie is closer to being in the works then ever before! Rob Thomas has been working on s script, and he's looking for the moolah to get it paid for! I'm hoping for first-season VM, with all her insights coming from ghostly hallucination-dreams. That was kind of scrapped for the second movie, except for, like, one episode, but it was one of the details that I thought made it different from being just any old detective show. Without it, it was still really good and amazingly well written and complex, but it didn't have that little fizzon of weirdness that set it apart.

nu who: news

We already know that the Bionic Woman is the current companion (which still sits strangely with me, as I wanted to like the new show and pretty much found myself bored and depressed and rooting for Starbuck the Crazy, and I'm not sure how much of the blame is due to writing / editing, and how much is due to her being boring)-- and I think that qualifies as at least a potential problem.

Now, however, there's actual problems with my next fix: the plot-integral red bus is busted up to the point that it can't be used, and as it was shipped overseas, there's no second option. Major rewrites.

Hopefully, it'll turn out well, and then we can get the 'leaked' original script afterward to compare and contrast and see about what might have been, and it'll prolong the fix a little. 

I seriously don't know how I'm going to get through the year.

But I'm loving the idea of a bus that transports people to strange worlds. (If that's what it really is) I already love red double deckers-- they're so iconic-- and there's one in UnLunDun that makes me happy. There's even that one in Harry Potter. I like multi-text interpretations.

news: catching up

I've gotten desperately behind in my newsiness, as well as everything else up in here, but this is part one of an attempt to get back on the ball.

So here goes:

I'm still all broken up that My Future Husband David Tennant is leaving the Whoniverse. (though I'm excited to see who's next, and there's always the alternate reality doctorclone hanging out and making babies with Rose, so he can come back without it even being a cross-time storyline or anything...). This points out the River Song issues, too, because she recognized him, and now she can't happen-- except that my roomie came up with the beautiful idea that maybe she sees him, not the form he's in, so it won't really matter who he looks like and she can still be there! Are you listening Steven?

Den of Geek is still working its way through X-Files, one episode at a time for the next six million years. Here's S01E11 - Eve (the one with all the Eves, and the first appearance of the clones), and S01E12 - Fire (the one with the English family, Mulder's ex blonde, and the dude who controls fire), and S01E13 - Beyond the Sea (the one where we find out that Scully's dad is General Hammond, and she has issues with his death while a psychic makes them switch roles), and S01E14 - Gender Bender (the one with the amish aliens), S01E15 - Lazarus (the one where Scully's ex partner and lover gets posessed).

Tom Baker hosted an interview show on the Beeb recently. I'll find it, watch it, and get back to you.

Two of Heroes' writers / executive producers have been fired because the network doesn't like where the show is going, they've been consistently over budget, and ratings are still dropping. And yet, they're still planning season 4.

Using math and crazy fandom, Den of Geek determines who the next Doctor will be and when they'll take over and how long they'll last. Chee!

My Future Husband David Tennant talks about leaving and being the Doctor and how he was almsot convinced to stay.

A reminder that Stevel Moffet likes an older, weirder actor for playing the Doctor... which leaves Bill Nighy and makes me happy. Though the articles comments remind everyone that that statement was ages ago, and things have changed.

More about who will be Doctor 11. I'm still backing my roomate. He's ginger and not mean.

Another new character on Lost: Amy

Knight Rider is getting rebooted after the 13th ep, and they're leaving all the fun side characters in the dust. And the boring ones. And getting rid of the terrorist-of-the-week idea so it's more like the old guy-does-good-on-his-own deal. So... is he stealing KITT and going solo? That might be fun. And I like asian chick and wimpy geek.

Life On Mars US gets a full season. Even though I haven't seen a single aired episode. (I had to bump it to the summer-catchup list) So it's up to 22 eps, when the brittish version is, like 6? 8? That's alot of new story to come up with, not to mention the fact that the UK one is closed, whereas the US one is open-ended like all US shows.

Lost is moving to Wednesday and conflicting with more of the shows I watch. But I'm still excited that we're on the downslope and everything is getting wrapped up.

More of who might be the Doctor: this time, Colin Salmon, who played Dr Moon. Is it just me, or are all the suggestions getting a little inbred by sticking with people who have already been on the show?

Den of Geek offers up the Ten Worst Dalek Stories Ever! And I'm kind of surprised that there's only the ten. Which points out many of the problems I have with daleks. But does not include Daleks in Manhattan??

And that catches us up with Den Of Geek. i09 Will take much longer...

news: opals on mars

They found 'hydrated sillica' on Mars. That's opals, baby.

This is exciting for several Sci-Fi worthy reasons:
1. It means water was free-flowing on the surface for long enough to change the chemical composition of the surrounding bedrock in very specific ways that mean it lasted longer then previously thought-- bringing a watery Mars into the timeframe of life development here on Earth (though it was still gone long before modern humans; not before archaic humans, though, and it just sparks the imagination all over the place to think that proto and early humans might have looked up and seen a blue dot where we see a red one...).
1a. This means there might have been life on Mars and it might have lasted long enough to grow big enough that we could find fossils with the naked eye, if we can find the sorts of terrain that would expose fossils in a weather-system entirely unlike ours.

2. It gives a reason to go to Mars and an industry to pay for it. Opals are expensive and still moderately rare here; Mars opals would be so much more exotic, rare and astronomically expensive, but if they're gem-quality in sufficient quantities, they'll pay back the cost of getting there to bring them back almost immediately. Seriously, who wouldn't want a Mars opal? And we know from experience that greed is a faster motivator for expansion and colonization for people then humanitarianism ever was, so why not prey on rich people's need to get more rich as a way to get the scientists and colonists over there? C'mon! It's brilliant! It'll be stupid-expensive, but it can be done in my lifetime!

news: week 7

the x-files revisit is up to episode 8: Ice, which is one of my favorites.


Did you know that Life on Mars (uk) has a spin off named Ashes to Ashes? It's in it's second season now.


november 14th for the Children in Need special

Rose Tyler is a mom!


India is trying to spark a new space race


The future of written scifi


Nasa unveils it's new lunar rover prototype


News has been a bit thin lately; I really need to catch up on all my blogs. You don't realize how much of your time they take up until you have to work and suddenly can't keep up on them.

week 6 news

Is SCC getting a tossed bone, finally? http://www.denofgeek.com/television/128816/the_sarah_connor_chronicles_gets_a_reprieve.html

More news on the will-he-won't-he 2011 season of Who
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/128817/doctor_who_david_tennant_to_stay_until_2011.html

A black Doctor for 2011? http://www.denofgeek.com/television/129413/doctor_who_has_the_next_doctor_been_chosen.html

Prince Charles turned down a Cameo on Who
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/129315/doctor_who_prince_charles_turned_down_role.html

X-Files Revisited so1eo6
http://www.denofgeek.com/television/129291/revisiting_the_xfiles_season_1_episode_6.html

News for the first Dr Who special http://www.denofgeek.com/television/130422/doctor_who_first_special_in_easter_2009.html

Saturn has Cyclones http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081014-saturn-cyclones.html?source=rss

news: week 5

AMC is picking up Red Mars

Those who might have been the Doctor

Eight Cheap Tricks for Dr Who 4.5

Companions that might have been

Tom Baker to come back to Who?

Den of Geek revisits X-Files, one episode at a time

Details of Dr Who Series 4 DVD Special Features

Some predictions on Heroes So3

These are some of my thoughts exactly on SCC and it's immanent cancellation

Though it seems the rumors are unsubtantiated (says Fox, who we don't trust)

Classic 80s Scifi V is returning!

More reviews of the Series 4 Box Set, including a nice look at deleted scenes I can't wait to get my hands on.

The Seven Doctors up for Children in Need?

Week 4 News

news:
Europe's biggest spaceship is going down in a ball of flames

Ratings troubles for SCC

Masters of SciFi

Kenneth Branaugh to direct Thor?


Mark R Kelly reviews the Fly Opera

SciFi / Apocalyptic play "Boom"
and the first 20 pages here

Metal Disorders that sound like scifi

Amanda Tapping has her own charcters' fanfic on her official site

Good news for Ghostbusters 3

So this is why Eureka was a little weird last week

Interactive zombie movies!

Five ways to save Heroes

Non-governmental rocketry for SpaceX

New future distopias! Americatown

We might live in an anomalous chunk of the universe

The coolest deaths in scifi

Snow on Mars!

A lovely discussion of demented family relationships in scifi; read the comments for more!

The future of ESA space exploration to be determined in Glasgow

What if everyone in Scifi really was related?

Nerdbots!

Week 3 News

The World's Strangest Clock: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7625815.stm
The most distant gamma ray burst we've ever seen: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7626532.stm
A discussion of the usefulness of mechanical things to remember for us-- and some that already exist: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7625260.stm
Scientists want to study out-of-body experiences with postcards on high shelves: http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/09/21/scientists-to-prove-out-of-body-experiences-with-postcards/
Fish had fingerbones before coming on land: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24381533-5016574,00.html
An engineering student wants to save earth from asteroids using mylar and solar power: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24224477-5016574,00.html
Plans to go back to the Moon to stay: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24050515-5016574,00.html
Virtual dating as a networking site in Japan: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/20/webkare-a-girls-only-combination-of-social-network-and-dating-game-from-japan/
Full individual genome sequencing for the price of an ipod!: http://io9.com/5052840/10-amusing-things-to-do-with-your-genome
DNA-based jewelry: http://www.perpetua.us/life_jewel_dna_pendant.htm
Nearly-instant DNA scanners: http://io9.com/5049979/instant-dna-scan-is-smrt-i-mean-s+m+a+r+t


The top SciFi shows not on (region 1) DVD: http://io9.com/5052896/science-fiction-tv-classics-youre-not-allowed-to-own-on-dvd

Farscape continues in comic form (much like Buffy): http://io9.com/5053363/farscape-comes-to-comics-with-a-boom
RTD turned down writing the live-action Starwars. That might have been really fun. :http://io9.com/5053360/doctor-whos-davies-says-no-to-george-lucas
This is about the coolest real scientific discovery I've seen in ages: http://io9.com/5054000/astronomers-find-dark-flow-sucking-matter-out-of-the-universe And also: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080923-dark-flows.html

a really thought provoking take on faeminism-- thought zombies: http://io9.com/5053881/zombie-feminism
China starts work on a new em-drive for space: http://io9.com/5054441/chinese-create-first-warp-drive
conservative dystopias: http://io9.com/5053970/future-dystopias-where-conservatives-have-won

Doctor Who pumpkin carving templates!: http://www.pinkraygun.com/2008/09/23/free-pumpkin-carving-template-doctor-who-and-tardis/
A new History Channel Show I may need to add to the lineup: http://io9.com/5054877/cool-new-science-show-recreates-teslas-high-voltage-inventions
New scifi books for October: http://io9.com/5054889/zombies-posthumans-voids-and-monsters-for-your-october-bookshelf

Hyposprays are real!: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080925-needle-video-ap.html?source=rss

Watery Mars has lasted longer than thought!: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080926-mars-water.html?source=rss
A space cold war?: http://io9.com/5055455/will-the-chinese-spacewalk-lead-to-a-space-cold-war