SFTV Blog

What a Year (or more)!

2010-05-31T20:36:00.002-06:00

This past weekend was the 2010 Phoenix ComiCon, which concluded a pretty crazy year and a half for me.

At the start of 2009 was the 2009 Phoenix ComiCon at the end of January, where I helped set up the first ever Wil Wheaton Rock Band event there. I was vice-chair of FiestaCon, the 62nd Westercon, which happened over July 4th Weekend and helped rebound Westercon after a low turnout one in Las Vegas in 2008. I chaired the first North American Discworld Convention over Labor Day weekend in 2009, for which our main guest (and creator of Discworld), Terry Pratchett, declared it was the best Discworld Convention ever! A couple of weeks ago I chaired LepreCon 36, which even though we had a dissapointing amount of attendees, those that did come had a great time. This past weekend was the 2010 Phoenix ComicCon, which moved to the Phoenix convention center after having outgrown the Mesa Convention Center, and it was definitely bigger than any prior ones. I oversaw the SciFi programming tracked, helped put together Wil Wheaton Rock Band again this year (which was an awesome event - yes, that is me in my Devo flower pot hat), and helped set up the Super Happy Fun Time panel with Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi which announced a special charity project they are organizing. For the first time in quite a while, I do not have a major event in the near future I'm in charge of! However, I am looking forward to LepreCon 37 the first weekend of May in 2011 for which we will be having the first ever Shadow Unit mini-con as part of the convention. And, for Phoenix ComiCon 2011, I hope we can make more awesome things happen. I also attended and was on programming for Gallifrey One in 2009 and 2010, LosCon 36, Anticipation (WorldCon 2009), and also attended ComiCon International and the first two Tucson Festival of Books.

Once I get caught back up on real life, I hope to get caught up with my online life as well.

Who Are You...

2010-02-07T21:22:00.005-07:00

No, this is not about Doctor Who, but The Who. Seeing them perfrom live (or what's left of them) at the "The Big Game" brought back some memories of The Who, pretty much my favorite band of all time.
I first really became aware of The Who during the summer of 1969 when Pinball Wizard was getting a lot of airplay on AM radio. I remember sitting in the back of my parents car as we drove across Kansas to visit my grandparents in western Kansas and hearing Pinball Wizard a number of times on the radio going out there and back. Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer was played just as much, but for a 12 year old kid, a song about a "pinball wizard" was a lot more cool.
So, of course, I picked up the 45 of Pinball Wizard, and I quickly became a fan of The Who, getting Tommy, Meaty Big, and Bouncy, and their other LPs. I then found out about all their songs NOT on albums and started tracking down those to get the B sides. Over the years I acquired multiple copies of many of the albums, various greatest hits and rarities collections, and of course, CDs. One time I won a complete set of Who LPs on KY102 in Kansas City when I answered the most questions correctly on a Who trivia contest, missing only one question. However, the station never actually CONTACTED me about it! I found out when a friend of my sister mentioned to her that they'd heard my name mentioned as a winner of a contest on the radio station. Once I finally verified with the station that I had won, I drove over to their offices from Lawrence, KS, to pick up my prize package. It was a complete set of Who LPs (up through The Who by Numbers which had just came out) as well as a nice pair of headphones.
Later that year was my biggest regret related to The Who. I was in my freshman year at the University of Kansas, and The Who were playing Kemper Arena in Kansas City on Dec 1st. I got tickets for it, then later realized it was the same night as my Chemistry 101 final. Now, the class was set up so that for your final grade, you got to throw out the worst test of the semester and the rest would be averaged for your final grade. I had a solid B in the class, but for whatever reason I felt that I had a good chance to do well enough on the final to bring my grade up to an A. So I sold my ticket to someone else, took the test, then did bad enough on it that it was the test that got thrown out. I was upset at the time about it, and several years later, I really had wished I'd gone to the show when Keith Moon passed away.
I did finally get to see the band a couple of times in Arizona in the 1980's, (1980 and 1982) and those were memorable shows. I'm glad I did see them back in those days at least.
One other bit of Who memories:
When I first went to Phoenix for a job interview in late 1979 and stayed the weekend, I ended up catching a double feature at the Valley Art theatre of The Kids are Alright and Rust Never Sleeps.
I still find it somewhat amusing to see that their songs are now mostly known for being used as the theme songs for the CSI shows (which is probably why CBS had them do the halftime show). But it is also fun to play their songs on Rock Band! (Incidentally, they made available a recording of their Super Bowl set on Rock Band right after the game).

Oh, and congrats to Neil Gaiman, who will finally be writing a Doctor Who episode! I figured it was only a matter of time, but he has now officially said he is doing one.

Congrats to Neil and Amanda

2010-01-15T16:55:00.003-07:00

Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer announced that they are going to tie the not. See the announcement on Neil's blog.

In honor of the occasion, here's Amanda singing "I Google You", written by Neil Gaiman, at the San Diego Women's Club benefit for the CBLDF during ComicCon last July that I got to see.

A New Pos! and a New Doctor!

2010-01-01T19:45:00.005-07:00

Yes, trying to get back into the habit of posting to this blog hasn't been easy. So, here's a short post to get things rolling...

Doctor Who - The End of Time.

Right now, BBC America's having obtained first run rights to Doctor Who is really paying off. Their broadcast of The Waters of Mars two weeks ago set ratings records for the channel and I imagine the two part finale will do even better. We're in the middle of 46 hours straight of Doctor Who leading up to the end of David Tennant's run with The End of Time Part 2 on Saturday night, one day after it was aired on the BBC in the UK. Hopefully, this type of lead time will continue when the new series with Matt Smith debuts in the spring. (Click the link to go to You Tube - the imbedded video is a bit funky on here....)

I Aten't Dead. Just Been Busy with this...

2009-09-08T23:07:00.003-06:00

I've gotten way behind on my regular postings at SFTV.org and other websites due in part to being the chair of the North American Discworld Convention, held last weekend in Tempe, AZ. Terry Pratchett told the crowd that "The North American Discworld Convention has been the best Discworld convention ever!" That is a very big complement from the man who created the whole thing! Kudos to all my staff and committee who made it a big success.

Of course, now I have to go back to work in the real world...

Still Alive

2009-04-27T22:51:00.004-06:00

Yes, I've not gone underground, just been busy with house hunting, work, convention stuff and way too many things to have much time to actually blog.

I am now on Facebook, but tend to ignore any requests that come my way. I use it primarily to keep an eye on friends, associates, and family.

Thus, a few short bits to tide you over:

SFTV Schedules are almost updated. A mostly updated Season to Date list is up at www.sftv.org.

I bought a Subway sandwhich today to help save Chuck (and it really should not end!)

I saw the Star Trek movie last week and really enjoyed it and plan to see it again.

The last weekend of Star Trek: The Exhibition in Phoenix is this weekend. Make sure to catch it if you haven't yet.

This coming Saturday, May 2nd, is Free Comic Book Day. I've put up a list of comic shops in Arizona (Phoenix and Tucson) over at the AZSF Blog. As far as I've been able to tell, there are no comic shops in Flagstaff (unless there's a new one).

Lee

Dalek Unearthed in UK Pond!

2009-03-05T23:23:00.002-07:00

moar funny pictures

Full details at The Daily Mail

Phoenix ComiCon Rock Band with Wil Wheaton

2009-01-25T20:58:00.006-07:00

This post on Wil Wheaton's 's blog and the comments pretty much gives you a good idea of how much fun people had. Thanks to the help of various Phoenix ComiCon staff members, Harmonix, the Rock Band Blowout with Wil Wheaton was a big success.

Check out some of the videos some of the fans shot on YouTube.

And edited to add this wrap-up post by Wil...

A New Post of Sorts

2009-01-18T22:49:00.004-07:00

Been keeping busy getting things ready for the Phoenix ComiCon next weekend and also trying to keep up with various other things. So here's a few random things to post here...

James Moran has posted his 2008 Gallifrey One Report which is a lot of fun to read. James was a lot of fun to talk to at the con and I enjoyed getting his point of view on it (finally!) Incidentally, the 2009 Gallifrey One convention is less than a month away now!

Coraline, the movie, based on the Neil Gamain story is coming out in a couple of weeks. They've been sending out special boxes to bloggers, but so far I haven't seen one. I guess I should have posted more about the movie beyond my 2008 San Diego ComicCon post of images of the dolls or my 2007 Neil Gaiman SD Comicon report which included the screening of Coraline footage. I've been keeping an eye on the Evil Buttons blog about special Coraline stuff being sent out or made available. I've been also trying to get one of the Coraline Keys up on Ebay (since so far that I know of, none have been distributed in Phoenix and so far, none have been provided to the Phoenix ComiCon. I was able to get three of the four Coraline toys available at Carl's Jr.

For the Phoenix ComiCon, I've been working with Wil Wheaton to set up a Rock Band Blowout with Wil, some of the other guests, and fans playing Rock Band together.

Battlestar Galactica - Catch the Frak UP & New Webisodes

2008-12-21T14:46:00.004-07:00

The last half of the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica begins on SciFi on January 16th. You can Catch the Frak Up! with the below embedded video and also catch new webisodes over the next few weeks bridging the two season halves.

SciFi.com is releasing new Battlestar Galactica: Face of the Enemy webisodes as a lead up to the resumption of the 4th and final season of Battlestar Galactica. SciFi is also releasing enhanced webisodes with commentary by writer Jane Espenson. They are also being made available on Hulu.com and I have linked the first three below:

Webisode 1

Webisode 2

Webisode 3

Babylon 5 Music Videos Now Available

2008-12-08T18:27:00.006-07:00

Back in the day, whenever J. Michael Straczynski made a convention appearance about Babylon 5, he'd usually open with a music video done by John Hudgens, and his Z Team Productions, Aside from a couple of early ones that ended up on some bootleg tapes, they've never really been available to watch online before. Now, with the permission of jms, John has made available the music videos on You Tube at The Z Team You Tube page.

I've enjoyed seeing them at the cons and its great to be able to see them again!

Catching Up After LosCon, Blood on the Satellite of Love

2008-12-07T00:20:00.003-07:00

Still catching up a bit following LosCon. Still need to write up a report or two to go with the pictures. I did get the SFTV Schedule lists updated! Lots of changes coming up in the network schedules.

Typing has been slowed down a bit by a cut index finger that happened when I was opening the tin case for the MST3K 20th Anniversary collectors edition. Be careful opening up the back of it to free Tom Servo from his cage! Wow! In putting in the link to Amazon.com, I realized that it is now worth a lot more than what I paid for it at Borders with my 40% off coupon earlier in the week... Maybe I should auction it off complete with blood stains?

2008-12-02T23:05:00.007-07:00

LosCon 35 Report is forthcoming. In the meantime, here's some pictures...

Some SF TV & FIlm Writers

Jane Espenson

John Scalzi, Bacon Cat, and Wil Wheaton

Scalzi's Ribbons

Closing Ceremonies with Double Doubles

A COnjunction on the trip home.

Star Trek The Exhibition Comes to Phoenix

2008-11-16T22:52:00.006-07:00

Star Trek: The Exhibiton opened in Phoenix at the Arizona Science Center this past weekend. I've put together a report on the United Federation of Phoenix web site. Also reporting on it is Trek Movie Report and Nerdvana.

I Want to be Elected!

2008-10-27T23:25:00.004-06:00

Yes, I have the original CD.

Somewhere....

Then there's this guy named Alice that seems to have also done the song with its own primitive music video....

It's Time to Get Political....

2008-10-27T22:50:00.008-06:00

I have that same poster set (but alas, I only have five of the original six).

You want a candidate That's a War Hero?

Or Someone who's a real team player?

Or a female candidate with some spunk?

Or someone to help you feel secure about the future?

Or someone who's experienced with dealing with obstacles?

The Choice is yours!

Doctor Who News, Rumors and all sorts of stuff

2008-10-21T23:39:00.007-06:00

OK, there's been lots and lots of Doctor Who related news, rumours and what not in the last few weeks. It's made the usual rounds on the internet and in the British papers. Partick Stewart, Tom Baker, Sean Pertwee, Zygons, Ice Warriors, Neil Gaiman, and Paul McGann have all been mentioned. Some of it is rubbish, some of it may happen, some of it may end up not happening. I have no sources (or those that I have emails for I'm not going to email them and ask what's true or not).

Of late, things have focused on who will be the Doctor after David Tennant leaves?

Even The Doctor Who News at Outpost Gallifrey has avoided some of these, but the spoiler threads on the Doctor Who Forum have been very active (and likely the fodder for some of the news articles). The Thoughts in Time and Space blog by Eddie has broken some of the rumors and also pointed out some that were intentional leaks to help them find out who some of their leaks are.

So, according to some people (Rich Johnston in his Lying in the Gutters column), "Paterson Joseph as the prime suspect" for the next doctor and Rich has a link to a video clip from Neverwhere that has Paterson pretty much channeling The Doctor in his role as the Marquis in Neverwhere (written by Neil Gaiman and inspired by Hartnell and Pertwee). A SciFi Wire article on the subject also appeared.

However, Eddie is still insisting that Marc Warren and Sean Pertwee (Jon Pertwee's son) are near the top of the running for the 11th Doctor. Marc Warren most notably was Teatime in the Hogfather movie., and played Dracula in the 2006 TV movie and Elton Pope in the Love and Monsters Doctor Who episode.

Sean Pertwee has been in a lot of stuff over the years, genre and otherwise. In actuality, ten years ago, when we were still reeling from the FOX movie, I saw a movie called Stiff Upper Lips in which Pertwee had a role as George (the dashing young man of sorts) and a pretty silly send up of the Merchant Ivory films (I actually saw it in a theatre in Los Angeles when I was out there for a training session). I could see a bit of his father in that role and thought at the time "too bad the movie tanked, he might make a good Doctor if it ever came back". For a look at a recent picture of Pertwee, this Sun article from November 2007 talks about his desire to play the role.

As indicated in one of the articles on Eddie's blog, Steven Moffat, as he deftly detailed in Silence in the Library, really doesn't like spoilers. But, we've definitely got a few more episodes with David Tennant, and likely a full season after the set of specials in the next year, so lets maybe get a chance to see those before we find out about what's happening afterwards.

Misc SF TV Stuff

2008-10-13T21:26:00.004-06:00

We're most of the way into the new fall season with a couple of things left to debut. Here's a few notes about the season so far....

Heroes - NBC is hoping the ratings will return to former heights. Not sure if the time travel and jumping around is doing much for casual viewers.

Chuck - Still good, but not drawing in the numbers. However, NBC is hurting all over the place and already gave the show a full season order.

Knight Rider - About as expected. Ratings have been soft but NBC appears to be sticking with it for now.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has not done very well opposite the Dancing with the Stars juggernaut (which also hasn't helped Chuck or Heroes) and if things don't pick up after the baseball pre-emptions, it may get terminated.

Life on Mars versus Eleventh Hour - In the battle of the Brit adaptations, both did about the same overall in the ratings with their debuts but Life on Mars held on to much more of its lead-in ratings (77% vs 49%) than Eleventh Hour.

Star Wars Clone Wars did very well for Cartoon Network and Sanctuary debuted very well for SciFi. Lets see how they hold up on a week to week basis.

Returning show The Ghost Whisperer has held up with ratings similar to what it did in the past however ABC's Pushing Daisies is definitely down from its first season (but ABC's entire Wednesday is down across the board).

Fringe has done well for FOX and is holding on to most of the House audience (although House is down without American Idol as a lead-in) and The Mentalist has drawn big numbers of viewers for CBS (but Fringe is still beating it in the demos). Also doing well for HBO (and getting a second season order) is True Blood, which has helped to bring all of Charlaine Harris's novels onto the top 20 besteller paperback lists.

Over in the UK, the debut of Merlin has done well for the BBC, with the ratings having gone up despite some really tough competition from ITV. Sarah Jane has also returned to Children's BBC and is doing comparable to what it did in the first series.

Still to come (as I type this) is My Own Worst Enemy on NBC, the Return of Eli Stone on ABC, and Crusoe on NBC. Crusoe actually looks like it might turn out pretty good. It is being show run by Stephen Gallagher, who created Eleventh Hour, and also has James Moran (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Law and Order: London) contributing an episode.

At the start of November is the debut of Legend of The Seeker, based on the Terry Goodkind series of novels starting with Wizard's First Rule.

I've limited the number of links here since the last time I put a bunch of links into a post, Google blocked my acces so they could determine if it was a spam blog or not, but you can get to official show pages and schedule links via the SFTV Schedules page.

Lee

Books Out Now Worth Getting if You're Young or Old

2008-10-02T23:48:00.005-06:00

This week sees the release of two "children's" books by two popular SF/F authors, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. You've probably seen more about Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book than Terry Pratchett's Nation. Between Neil's own online journal and a nationwide book tour that started at the National Book Festival (where you can see video of his talk) and has continued on where he is reading a chapter from the new book at each stop and they are putting the video up the next day on his Mouse Circus website.

Terry's novel actually came out earlier in September in the UK where he did two signings, one in a small bookshop on an island and then another (after a helicopter ride) in the big Waterstones store at Picadilly Circus. Since then he's done TV chat shows, spoke at the Tory conference, did an online chat at the Washington Post (who had a good review of Nation, and will also make an appearance in Second Life on October 8th.

Terry also read from Nation at the UK Discworld convention in August, a snippet of which is here on Youtube. The best part was at the end of the reading when he read straight through the part of the book where Mau and Daphne have a tea party that ends with both of them almost drowning and Mau defiantly yelling "Does Not Happen!" Yes, it makes sense.

Both books are very good books, going beyond what is expected for younger readers (Graveyard book is for 9 and up, while Nation is marketed as for Young Readers). Neil's is obviously written for young readers, using simpler grammer and words, but still doesn't pull any punches in the story (it starts with the murder of a family with the son wandering off into a graveyard). Nation reads much more like an adult novel but also deals with loss, starting with the aftermath of a tsunami that wipes out the entire population of an island and kills everyone on a ship except a young girl.

For more information on the various editions of The Graveyard Book, visit this Subterranean Press website. Nation had a limited edition of 275 sold only on the day of the two signings. There is also a Waterstones limited edition still to be shipped. You can also get signed copies of Nation from PJSM Prints, Terry's official merchandise site.

SFTV Updates and more!

2008-09-18T23:25:00.007-06:00

Still playing catchup after the Conapalooza at the end of the summer...

The SFTV Page has been updated with updates to current and season to date lists. I've also updated the individual schedule links page listing (which I use in tracking down the various schedules). Also updates to Connie Willis.net.

Over on the BBC, Merlin starts up this weekend on Saturday night. You can check out most of the content on the official page on the BBC website and even more information on the Press Office in the Merlin Press Pack.

Starting up on September 29th on the BBC and children's BBC is the second series of the Sarah Jane Adventures. Check out the official BBC site as well as a Press Office Press Pack.

Be warned that Spaceballs: The Animated series debuts on G4 this weekend. It looks pretty low-brow and treading a lot of ground already tread very heavily by others.

HBO has picked up True Blood for a second season after liking what they've seen in the ratings so far. Press Release at The Futon Critic.

One more quick UK update with a couple of pictures...

2008-08-27T13:52:00.006-06:00

For the last week I've been in the UK and got to see some of the sights in London, go to the Doctor Who Exhibition at Earls Court, attend the Discworld Convention in Birmingham. Here's a quick picture update...

The Model of Big Ben used for Doctor Who on display at the Doctor Who Exhibition.

The real Big Ben, still in one piece (with the London Eye - no longer in use by the Nestene) in the background.

Daleks exterminating!

Me at the Discworld convention with Twoflower's Iconograph and hat from the Colour of Magic miniseries.

My time is up and I have a plane to catch back to Arizona....

Discworld UK & WorldCon

2008-08-25T16:02:00.001-06:00

Quick update to the blog.

Still in the UK with reports on WorldCon and the UK Discworld coming soon.

Lee

The Blog that Couldn't be Killed... More Comic Con Photos

2008-08-03T23:57:00.016-06:00

OK, for whatever reason (maybe all of my links to reports on Comic Con), Blogger decided that my blog might be a spam blog and locked me out from editing it until they had a chance to review it. It appears that I do have control again, but they never sent me any confirmation or apology about it. In any case, here's a few more pictures from Comic Con. I was hoping to get more of an organized report up, but I'm in the process of trying to get ready to go to WorldCon in Denver, Denvention 3, this coming weekend.

I've put up a report about Connie Willis at Comic Con over on the Connie Willis blog (it wasn't locked out even though it is under the same account). Connie will also be at WorldCon, and is nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novella.

There were lots and lots and lots of people in costumes, most of which I didn't get pictures of. These three I did manage to catch, though, as well as the Batman and Wonder Woman seen at the top of this entry that were hanging around the Sony DC Online booth.

There were stormtroopers, ghost busters, jedi knights, all sorts of comic book characters running around all weekend. Some of the costumes were OK, but there were a good number that were very impressive, like this pair below.

I caught up with a Rincewind and his Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. This Green Lantern was busy texting or playing a game while waiting for the Masquerade. I also came across a Hal Jordan Green Lantern and a Green Arrow in the lobby where the Green Lantern was conversing with someone (Black Canary? Carol Ferris?) who he was trying to find and had just been told that she was standing in front of a Starbucks. There's only about five or six Starbucks in the convention center alone. Needless to say, GL was a bit frustrated....

There were also lots of authors and comics writers and artists there. I did catch up with John Howe, who it was nice to meet him in person

finally (after having exchanged a few emails with him). I also caught Dave McKean at the Allen Spiegel Fine Arts booth and had a few things signed, inclding one item that Dave was surprised to see. The original UK edition of Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic, for which Dave did the cover art for when he was just starting out. He wasn't too embarrased, though, since he had to show it to Allen. I also was lucky enough to get a ticket to the Amano signing at the Dark Horse booth and got a couple of things signed. Watching Amano draw a sketch is always a neat thing. I brought a few things for Todd Klein to sign (or letter, since that is how he does his signature, too.) He has some real neat posters available on his website that he was selling at his table that you can also order. He has done most every comic written by Neil Gaiman, Fables, Castle Waiting, and lots of other stuff, and has been a consistent winner of the Eisner Award for Lettering.

Down at the Donato Arts booth, they did several art demos in association with Spectrum and Tor, I caught a bit of the Greg Manchess demo, where he painted an image of Hellboy. Tor.com has an article on the demo as well as a sped up video of him painting the picture.

At the DC booth, I made it to the X-Files signing with Co-Producer Frank Spotnitz and artist Brian Denham. The suprise was that Chris Carter was also there, signing the comic and some promotional photos for the X-Files movie (for the few of you who did see the movie, did you stay all the way through the end credits? Is that the Lost island they are heading for?), Unfortunately Chris decided to lean back as I took my picture, so all you can see is the top of his head behind Frank. It was nice to chat with both Frank and Chris for a bit. Also at the DC booth, I caught up with Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, who were responsible for the original Ambush Bug comics and are working on the new Ambush Bug series, Year None. Get it, you'll be glad you did.

Finally, to close out this entry, one of the not-usually-at-comic-con celebrities was singer/songwriter Tori Amos, promoting the release of Comic Book Tattoo. Once I have the time, I'll devote an entire blog post to the Odyssey of Comic Book Tattoo at this year's Comic Con...

SDCC Coraline Figures

2008-07-30T23:58:00.007-06:00

One of the things somewhat hidden at San Diego Comic Con this year was a display at the NECA Booth. This article at the LA Times talks about them a bit, but doesn't really give you a good look at them. The movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline is being done in stop motion by Henry Selick and is scheduled for release next February. DreadCentral also took a lot of closeups of the figures, but missed the one with the faces.

This figure of Coraline with a multitude of faces wasn't in the display to start with but showed up later in the show.

The Other Mother (Teri Hatcher)

Coraline's Doll & Mr. Bobinsky

Coraline and Wybie

The Ghost Children

Comic-Con Survival Guide Episode One

2008-07-28T23:04:00.000-06:00

Comic Con is over and I survived!
Yes, it was a long hectic weekend which I spent running around the exhibit hall tracking down authors, artists, producers, writers of stuff and so forth. I will hopefully have some coherent reports covering a wide variety of subjects ranging from the futile search for an Arc Welder to the Comic Book Tattoo Odyssey.

In the meantime, here's some links to sites that covered the convention pretty thoroughly in their areas of expertise:

Newsarama ComicCon Index

Comic Book Resources

ComicMix

Tor Books, searching for Comic Con

Suvudu.com (Bantam's new SF news website)

NBC's Comic Con website

SciFi's Comic Con Website

BBC America's ComicCon Website

The End of an Era: Star Trek: The Experience Beams Out

2008-07-18T01:37:00.001-06:00

A little over ten years ago, a new attraction opened at the Las Vegas Hilton that became the destination of choice for Star Trek and science fiction fans visiting Las Vegas, Star Trek: The Experience. But now, the owners of the attraction (Cedar Faire, who acquired it when Viacom split itself up) and the Las Vegas Hilton have not been able to come to terms to extend the lease for the exhibit and it will be closing down on September 1st. What it will be replaced with is unknown, but it will likely not be anything similar. The Hilton will likely create something entirely new to take advantage of the monorail stop that will generate more income for them than they got by leasing the space The Experience was in.

The Experience was launched during the latter part of the run of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the attraction relied heavily on the look of that incarnation of Star Trek for the décor and atmosphere as well as the names for Quark’s Bar, Moogie’s Trading Post, and Garak’s Clothiers. The main attraction was the Klingon Encounter that took fans into the future and onto the bridge of the Enterprise D where you learned that one of that one of your group was a ancestor of Captain Picard and that you needed to be returned to your own time with help from Geordie and Commander Riker. The ride ended with a simulator ride that featured your shuttle being chased down the Las Vegas strip by Klingons. In later years, the ending video sequence became very dated as most of the casinos seen in the sequence were long gone or remodeled and jokes were made that your group had been returned several years early. On your way to the ride, you got to take a look at the History of the Future, featuring many props and costumes from the entire history of Star Trek, which was periodically updated with information and props from the newer versions of Star Trek on TV and in the movies. In 2004, the Borg Invasion 4D was added, which made use of newer high definition video technology to provide an updated ride tied into Star Trek: Voyager. It featured Admiral Janeway, the Emergency Medical Hologram, and The Borg Queen in an adventure on a space station being overrun by The Borg. The ride was an example of what can be done with newer technology, but the simulator part was a bit tame.

The attraction has been a very popular location for weddings and other events, with many couples taking their vows on the bridge of the Enterprise D over the years. Additions of a behind the scenes tour and photo opportunities on the bridge set were also popular with fans. But what kept fans coming back even if they didn't go on the rides was the Star Trek atmosphere of The Experience. The Quark's Bar menu features themed dishes (my favorite is the Holy Rings of Betazed for the Onion Rings) and the Warp Core Breach was always a popular drink. The ambassadors (waiters) and the roving aliens (Ferengis, Klingons, and Borgs) were always fun to talk to and usually did not break out of character and some fans more than likely tested their patience at times. The Hilton has also become the site of the annual big Star Trek convention run by Creation and the Experience has always been a focal point of the convention. With the attraction gone, it is unclear if Creation will continue having the events at the Hilton. This year's convention happening August 6-10 will definitely be a bitter-sweet one for the fans who have considered The Experience part of their annual convention experience.

Over the years, I've made many visits and had many dinners at Quarks. Sometimes it was a quick stop while I was in town for the Consumer Electronics Show and other times it was with friends as part of a group trek. The United Federation of Phoenix has made several trips as a group to the Experience which always have been fun outings and they are organizing one last trip the weekend of August 1-3.

I was in Las Vegas for the Westercon 61 convention over July 4th weekend and made sure I went back there for a final dinner at Quark's and spent some latinum for a few trinkets to remember it by. Saturday night was still pretty busy and they also had a couple of weddings going on, so it was pretty much business as usual. It did appear that a lot of the people there had heard about the closure and the employees were acknowledging it but they were still fairly low-key about it. The waiters and gift shop employees should be able to find similar jobs without too much trouble, I'd think, but I'm not sure what having "Ferengi host at Quark's", "Klingon Ambassador", or "Enterprise-D pilot" on their resumes will do to help them find a similar job.

It was hoped that with the advent of the new Star Trek movie coming in May 2010 The Experience would be kept going for another year, but in the end it was decided to shut it down. Hopefully something new will be created somewhere that can give fans old and new a place to go to experience the Star Trek universe in person. I've enjoyed my trips there over the years and will remember Star Trek: The Experience fondly.

PS. They do now have a Star Trek video slot game, sitting right outside of the Experience....

ComicCon Craziness is Coming!

2008-07-17T21:34:00.002-06:00

Yes, next week is the annual Comic Con International in San Diego. Lots of stuff will be happening and I'll be attempting to point you to the neat stuff and will be trying to catch some of it myself (but there's only one of me to go around). In any case, stop by the Arizona SF Conventions table in the fan table area on the mezzanine (where the food services are halfway up the escalators).

For all the official schedules, there's the Comic Con web site, where you can check out the exhibitors, the programming, and the autographs. But that's just the beginning. There's also booth signings and parties and giveaways and who knows what else going on. Here's some handy reference links to try to make sense of all of it....

CBLDF's Thursday night Welcome Party details, I plan to be there....

NBC/Universal's Comic Con Plans on the official NBC Website

BBC America is making a big splash at Comic Con this year with Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, and Spaced. Details on their Comic Con minisite.

Bantam Spectra's Schedule (including Connie Willis and a free magazine with an excerpt from George R.R. Martin's forthcoming novel) is laid out on their MySpace page.

Jim Butcher's Comic Con Schedule (it's Jim's first time there).

DC Comics listing of writers, artists and other personnel.

Official Marvel Plans

Dark Horse Comics Booth Signing Schedule (tickets handed out with random drawings)

Image Comics Schedule (including Tori Amos)

IDW Publishing's Comic Con Events

Virgin Comic's Comic Con Plans

Io9's Guide to things to catch at Comic Con

Mysterious Galaxy's list of author's signing at ComicCon
More to come as I find it...

2008-06-19T22:27:00.001-06:00

The Deadline for voting in The Hugo Awards is coming up and I thought I'd take a look at the Dramatic Presentation Categories, starting with the Dramatic Presentation Short Form categorie.

In the Dramatic Presentation Short Form category, we've got the following:

Doctor Who: Human Nature/Family of Blood
Doctor Who: Blink
Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness
Battlestar Galactica: Razor (televised version, NOT the DVD version)
Star Trek: New Voyages: World Enough and Time

Doctor Who and Steven Moffat stories are definitely on a roll, ahving won the last two years, but htis year's race might be really close. Of the five, I see the weakest one as the Torchwood entry. It got enough support to get onto the ballot, but I don't think that will equate to enough first place votes to give it any chance at the hugo.

Battlestar Galactica has a strong support base, and has gotten a fair number of votes in recent years for its entries (the first episode of the series, "33", did win a Hugo. There was some talk to put the DVD version on the Long Form ballot and it may have gotten some votes, but not enough. It would have been interesting if it had made both ballots for the different versions, though. Mojo was really pushing for the DVD version to be nominated at Gallifrey One, but I don't think there were many Hugo voters there.

STNV: Director/co-writer Marc Scott Zicree has talked this up quite a bit and did a screening of it at last year's WorldCon in Japan. He also went through a bunch of stuff to justify its nomination for the Nebula Script award. There's also still a lot of Star Trek fans out there and it could get a significant number of #1 votes. The sympathy factor may play a role with co-writer Michael Reaves suffering from Parkinson's disease. Reaves made an appearance at LosCon last year when they screened it and it was a bit hard to see him in his weakened condition. He's recently had some surgery, but I haven't seen anything about how he's been doing following it.

Doctor Who: Both entries are strong contenders and have been getting mentioned a lot. There appears to be some sentiment to lean towards Paul Cornell's two-parter since he hasn't got one yet. Of course, these are the same voters that have given the same award to Locus Magazine (for semi-prozine) and Dave Langford (fan writer) for many years running (although Langford may finally get unseated by John Scalzi this year). Moffat will be taking over the show for its fifth season in 2010, so he stands a good chance of continuing to have episodes nominated. Since it is not clear how often Paul will get to write for the series, he might not get another chance for a while.

The Neil Gaiman Factor: Neil Gaiman has come out in support of each of the two Doctor Who nominees and the ST NV nominee over the last several months, and has made additional mentions of all of them in other blog posts. Gaiman did co-write a novel with Reaves and recently had a dinner with Moffat turn into a big rumour about Neil writing a script for Doctor Who.

What will I be voting for? I'm still trying to decide. There are good and valid reasons for nominating four of them and maybe in a week I'll figure it out for myself.

In any case, the voting deadline is coming up so if you are a member (attending or supporting) of Denvention, make sure you use your vote. I could have made a difference in one category (and likely two) if I had voted last year. I think this category may be pretty close, so if you have a favorite, make sure to vote for it.

A Few Random Notes.

2008-06-19T21:49:00.001-06:00

What is Science Fiction?

First of all, John C. Wright has a very extensively researched post about just What is Science Fiction? With many great examples like the one above.

Charlie Jade Banished to 3 am.
Following two weeks of lackluster ratings, SciFi has once again pulled an "acquired series" out of the 8 pm ET/PT time slot. This time, it is Charlie Jade, which now has a "NEW TIME MONDAYS AT3 AM!" notice on SciFi's Charlie Jade page (which translates to really early Tuesday morning). For the time being, SciFi will be repeating the previous week's Doctor Who episode in the 8 pm ET/PT time slot.

Middleman Ratings
I haven't seen any official report on the ratings for the debut of The Middleman on ABC Family this week. Indications are that it was less than spectacular, though. Hopefully it is good enough to not get it banished to 3 am in the moring. It is worrying that The Middleblog has not been updated for a week, though.

Fear Itself

Over on NBC, Fear Itself has not been tearing things up in the ratings, but is probably doing about what NBC expected and is likely drawing the demographic they want.

Galactica Mid-Season Finale, Ghost Hunters Ratings & Darth Mojo!
SciFi appears pleased with the ratings Galactica drew in the first half of it's final season. Check out their press release. SciFi is also quite pleased with the summer run of Ghost Hunters, doing even better than Galactica! For a report on the special screening of the Galactica mid-season finale, check out Darth Mojo's blog. Mojo has a lot of neat stuff on his new blog, looking back at his work on Babylon 5 and Star Trek as well as his current work on Battlestar Galactica. He's also responsible for the Pon Farr edition of Star Trek: TMP.

MiddleMan Mania

2008-06-13T19:01:00.000-06:00

This coming Monday night is the debut of the new series, The MiddleMan, on ABC Family at 8 pm ET/PT. It is a series created by Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who has worked on many genre shows over the years including Lost, Charmed, Medium, and The Chronicle. The series is based on the Viper Comics series of the same name, which itself was created when Javier wasn't able to sell the concept as series initially. The complete run of the series will be collected in The Middleman: The Collected Series Indispensability by Viper Comics in July.

At Gallifrey One, Javier joined us for the SFTV panel and talked a bit about the series and how he'd had the script locked down before the writer's strike and filmed the pilot during the strike and then got the series pickup once the strike was over. He split his time between working on the pilot and joining picket lines. He was excited to have his first show as a series picked up (he'd had a few pilots before this not get picked up). The series very much will draw on its comic roots, with the pilot episode and the third episode being a faithful adaptation of two of the three arcs done in the comic series.

As part of the promotion for the debut of the show, the pilot episode is available to download for free for a limited time on Apple's iTunes as well as on XBox 360. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to more of the series.

Javier has been all over the place of late doing lots of interviews on the show and there's a fairly comprehenisive fan site, MiddleFan, up and running already. They've been keeping track of all of the news and interviews on their News Page. Javier has also been blogging a lot about the show's production at the MiddleBlog. ABC Family has been doing their part with the official ABC Family Middleman pages.

New This week, Fear Itself & Charlie Jade

2008-06-04T23:35:00.001-06:00

This week sees the debut of two shows, one a new anthology series on NBC, and the other an "acquired series" on SciFi that has aired in most of the rest of the world.

NBC Has nothing to fear, but Fear Itself (and low demographics)
Fear Itself is the new horror anthology series on NBC featuring top line horror directors and writers and some recognizable actors in the starring roles. If it seems like a familiar concept, it is. The majority of the people involved behind the scenes were also involved with Masters of Horror, which aired for two seasons on Showtime. As you might expect, Fear Itself will be subject to broadcast TV standards and will thus not have near as much nudity, violoence, gore or language as Masters of Horror could get away with on pay cable (although expect there to be special unrated DVDs released eventually). Here's the specifics on the first four episodes airing on Thursday nights at 10 pm ET/PT starting this week.

Premiering June 5, "Sacrifice" has a screenplay written by Mick Garris ("Riding the Bullet," "Amazing Stories") from a story by Del Howison ("Dark Delicacies") . Breck Eisner ("Creature from the Black Lagoon") directs. When four criminals find themselves stranded in an old, snow-covered fort, they slowly discover both the fort and the seductive trio of sirens who reside there are filled with deadly secrets. Jeffrey Pierce ("The Nine"), Jesse Plemons (NBC's "Friday Night Lights"), Stephen Martines ("Port Charles"), Rachel Miner ("Californication" ) and Mircea Monroe ("Drive") star.

Airing June 12, "Spooked" is directed by Brad Anderson ("The Machinist") and written by Matt Venne ("White Noise 2: The Light"). While on a stake out in a haunted house, a private eye (Eric Roberts, NBC's "Heroes") is made to confront the demons of his past. Jack Noseworthy ("Judging Amy"), Cynthia Watros ("Lost") and Larry Gilliard Jr. ("The Wire") also star.

Debuting June 19, "Family Man" is directed by Ronny Yu ("Freddy vs. Jason," "Bride of Chucky") and written by Dan Knauf ("Carnivàle," "Supernatural" ). This action-charged, psychological thriller focuses on a likeable family man (Colin Ferguson, "Eureka") who switches bodies with a serial killer (Clifton Collins Jr., "Star Trek") after a near-death experience. Now, he must fight from behind bars to keep the murderer from adding his wife (Josie Davis, "Ghost Whisperer"), son (Gig Morton, "Psych"), and daughter (Nicole Leduc, "Kyle XY") to his long list of victims.

Debuting June 26, "In Sickness and in Health" is directed by John Landis ("An American Werewolf in London") and written by Victor Salva ("Jeepers Creepers"). On her wedding day, a beautiful bride (Maggie Lawson, "Psych") receives a mysterious note that reads: "The person you are marrying is a serial killer." James Roday ("Psych") stars as the groom. Christie Laing ("The 4400"), Sonja Bennett ("Eureka") and Marshall Bell ("Hamlet 2," "Tales from the Crypt") also star.

It will be interesting to see how much of an audience NBC is able to get for the show and if they stick to the entire 13 episode run. Since their primary group of advertisers will be movie companies, as long as they keep the demographics up, it might stick around for the rest of the summer. If not, they can always burn them off on SciFi or Chiller TV.

For more details, check out the NBC website for the series or The Futon Critic's show page.

SciFi Gets Jaded, Finally.
SciFi will be adding Charlie Jade to their SciFi Friday lineup this week, airing it at 8 pm ET/PT as a lead-in to Doctor Who. The series debuted in Canada in 2005 and at the time SciFi passed on it. It has developed somewhat of a cult following, though. As usual, since it is an acquired series, SciFi is doing their minimal promotion for it. They do have a web site for it at SciFi.com. You can also read more about the series at Space's mini-site for it . There's also a good writeup at Wikipedia . Unfortunately, the powers that be that controlled the official show website at http://www.charliejade.com/ have opted not to keep that site going, however, it does appear you can still look at it via archive.org .

In any case, the series does a good job handling three parallel Earths and a multitude of characters with a limited budget. Jeffrey Pierce does well as the title character (and his variations). The big question is if enough people will tune in to keep the show on Friday nights, or will SciFi decide they can do better with SG-1 repeats.

Next Zicree Supermentors Class & Special Weekend Class

2008-05-31T20:16:00.000-06:00

Passing this along for Marc Scott Zicree. Of note is the special weekend session with showrunner guests Tim Minear (BUFFY), Joe Dougherty (SAVING GRACE) and Michael Nankin (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) being held at the end of June. More details can be found at the Supermentors page at the Zicree/Simkins Podcast.

SUPERMENTORS CLASSFOR ACTORS, WRITERS, DIRECTORS, PRODUCERS
GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL!
What's your goal, your big dream?
To create your own TV show?
Write big features?
Star in your own series?
Create a one person show?
Direct powerful, successful films?
Team with the top people working in the Industry?
Or maybe just have a financially successful career in film and TV…You're trying to carve your niche in the Industry, make a name, get established, earn a living – and it can be pretty challenging.

Well, imagine what it would be like to be mentored by someone who has triumphed in all the areas of the Industry you want to succeed in.

Not just sold one script but over a hundred, with hundreds of produced credits on many of the hit shows of the last few decades, someone who has personally hired lead and guest actors for numerous series and pilots, who has written bestselling novels and non-fiction books that have changed and influenced film and TV greatly. What if every question you had could be answered? What if every step of the way you had someone guiding you, rooting for you, giving you real answers YOU could apply? Showing you how to get your work in shape to where it will blow people away – and helping you get to the people with the power to say YES. Marc and Elaine Zicree, the Supermentors, are that someone. Successful writer-producer-directors, they've worked for all the major studios and networks, and their work has been nominated for the Humanitas Prize, American Book Award, Writers Guild Award, Hugo and Nebula Awards, and they just WON the TV Guide Award! "Great, that's them - what about me?" Every month, over a period of years, their students have landed leads and guest star roles in features, series and pilots, gotten films produced, sold pilots, episodic TV scripts, novels, landed on TV writing staffs, launched and advanced thriving careers.

Six Week SuperMentors Class Beginning Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 for six consecutive weeks in West Hollywood.
Six-Week Teleconference Class Beginning Monday, June 2nd, 2008 for six consecutive weeks (for those not in the Los Angeles area)

SPECIAL ADDED NOTICE!

How to Create, Pitch, Sell, and Run a Network ShowJune 28-29, 2008With showrunner guests Tim Minear (BUFFY), Joe Dougherty (SAVING GRACE), Michael Nankin (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) and many more - details are below! Don't wait any longer, feeling clueless or hopeless. It's all possible, just by starting now. But the six-week classes are limited to only ten students each, so they'll fill up fast!

SPECIAL DISCOUNT!!
Mention this email when you register for the Supermentors Six Week Intensive, or the Teleconference Class, and get $200 OFF!! Classes are normally $799 but THE SPECIAL DISCOUNT PRICE IS JUST $599! How to Create, Pitch, Sell, and Run a Network ShowAlso sign up for this special weekend class, and get $226 OFF!! For just an additional $199 (normally $425!), get a bonus two-day weekend class (June 28-29) on how to create, pitch, sell, and run a network show, with showrunner guests Tim Minear (BUFFY), Joe Dougherty (SAVING GRACE) and Michael Nankin (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA)! Class will be held in North Hollywood.TO REGISTER, or for questions or more information, feel free to call (323) 363-1259 OR email
marc@zicree.com

Catching Up a Bit, TV & Doctor Who News

2008-05-24T18:03:00.000-06:00

Catching Up

I'm getting caught up a bit, between LepreCon 34, going back to Kansas for my father's funeral, and bringing a nasty cold back from Kansas, I've not been keeping up with a lot of stuff, including the SFTV Blog.

I have gotten the SFTV Schedules updated, including schedule information for the new NBC series Fear Itself, the new ABC Family series The Middleman (and the fan site, Middlefan), and new to SciFi series Charlie Jade (more details at the Wikipedia Charlie Jade web site). Check it out on the SFTV Schedule links to the right of the blog. I'll have some more details on the new stuff as well as information on the broadcast networks Up Fronts soon (highlights are in the SFTV Schedules News section if you can't wait).

Doctor Who New Executive Producer - Steven Moffat
The BBC announced that writer/producer Steven Moffat will take over as Executive
Producer and Head Writer of Doctor Who starting with Series five in 2010. Russell
T. Davies will step down after producing the four planned specials in 2009. Moffat has been the writer of the Hugo award winning episodes The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and The Girl in the Fireplace (and is also nominated this year for Blink) and the upcoming Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead two-parter is highly anticipated). It is good to see another well-respected writer/producer who is also a fan take on the show. I've had a chance to talk with Moffat at the Gallifrey One conventions and, while he indicated last year that he wasn't interested in the job, being much too busy doing things like scripts for Tin Tin movies for the likes of Steven Spielberg, I have a feeling it was already in the works and he was just trying to avoid the question. I'm looking forward to seeing what he will do with the series as well as who he might bring in to write an episode or two that hasn't yet had the chance. The only downside I can see is that he may no longer be able to join us at Gallifrey One now that he is the person in charge. But, since he is the person in charge, he may be able to change the current BBC policies.

Other Doctor Who Writer News
Paul Cornell recently survived a nasty car crash which he documented quite thoroughly on his blog. I'm glad to hear that Paul and his wife, Caroline, both escaped with relatively minor injuries when it sounds like it definitely could have been a lot worse. Paul has been a fun guest at Gallifrey One for the last ten or so years and it has been fun hanging out with Paul and Caroline occassionally at WorldCon and World Fantasy recently. Besides some of the better received Doctor Who episodes (including Human Nature/Family of Blood, also nominated for a Hugo this year), Paul has recently written for Robin Hood and Primeval and has been working on pitching his own series to the UK production companies. He's also started doing comics for Marvel, having done a Wisdom miniseries last year and having just launched a new series, Captain Britain and MI-13 with a Fantastic Four miniseries on the way (and who knows what else is coming up that he can't talk about). Here's a nice list of all of the recent and upcoming comics Paul has done for Marvel. Paul has also published a few novels as well, including British Summertime, recently published in the US by Monkeybrain Books. He'll be at WorldCon in Denver in August, hoping to take home his first Hugo award for Doctor Who.

James Moran has been writing about his experiences writing for TV on his blog. He's started a series of posts on his experience writing for Torchwood and promises a detailed report on his experiences at Gallifrey One. He wrote The Fires of Pompeii episode for the current series and has episodes in the new series of Primeval as well as the new UK version of Law and Order. He's also got several other things in the works that he can't yet say what it is. James was a big hit at Gallifrey One this past year with the fans and he is already scheduled for a return visit next year.

In Rememberance of my Father

2008-05-14T10:24:00.001-06:00

Ed Whiteside

1925-2008

Battlestar Streaming Again

2008-04-11T02:04:00.001-06:00

It appears the one time (noon ET) streaming of the season opener was a success and that SciFi will be continuing to do that on a weekly basis for the time being. So if you have access today at noon, head over to Scifi and watch the episode early.

Also, SciFi has started up a Humans vs. Cylons social network/game. I figured I'd give it a try and see if I can help the Cylons to win the war. Following this link will take you to a signup page where the whizzy heads will gain points by signing up new recruits.

Sarah Jane comes to SciFi

2008-04-11T01:27:00.001-06:00

Tonight is the debut of The Sarah Jane Adventures on SciFi. What SciFi won't tell you is that it is a show made for younger viewers to watch and that is not a bad thing in this case.

The show is somewhat simpler in plot and lighter in tone than the current Doctor Who but actually has a lot in common with Classic Who. Tonight is the one hour (90 minutes with commercials) debut story which sets up the series, although one of the kids (the mostly annoying friend) does not return for the series. Next week starts the airing of the regular episodes, which are half hour episodes that are essentially two parts of an hour long story.

They may rely a bit too much on the Slitheen for villians (but they appear to be popular with kids in the UK) but the stories overall hold up pretty well and are certainly worth catching regardless of if you have a kid to watch them with.

The neatest thing about all of this is that it has given Elisabeth Sladen a chance to continue the character of Sarah Jane Smith, who was brought back in the School Reunion episode of the new Doctor Who series. The year before all that happened, Elisabeth was a guest at Gallifrey One, a month before the new series debuted and one of the questions asked her was if she thought that they might want to bring back any companions from the original series. She didn't think they had any thoughts in that area, but sounded like she'd consider it if she was asked. This was before the show had aired and became a big hit in the UK. In any case, Elisabeth has always been a fan favorite and I think it is great that she's been able to revisit her character 35+ years down the road.

The first series did well for Children's BBC and a second series is in the works. There are also rumours that we may see Sarah Jane turn up in the new season of Doctor Who. If you believe all of the rumours (and some of the revealed appearances), it sounds like everyone that's been a part of the new series will be back this season. Stay tuned. Next week The Doctor is back on SciFi!

As an addendum, my email to Matt Roush about Sarah Jane made the Ask Matt column today. And to boot he put in some snark about Flash Gordon!

April Fooling - A Roundup

2008-04-06T00:59:00.000-06:00

First up, this special preview of the new season of Doctor Who appeared online on April 1st.Locus Magazine had their usual selection of April Fools news items as well including the first season of Top Writer on Bravo and Cory Doctorow releasing himself under the Creative Commons license. No direct link to the stories, but look at all of the April 1st stories.George R.R. Martin also had a post about a solution to how to end The Song of Ice and Fire series by a crossover with the Wild Cards universe!TrekMovie.com has a roundup of some of the various Star Trek related April Fools jokes from this year.

A Package Arrived Today....

2008-03-31T22:16:00.002-06:00

A couple of days ago, I filled out a form, promising that I would keep certain information to myself and not divulge anything about the last fifteen minutes of what I was going to see because I filled out the special document. So, was it a secret government document I was being entrusted with? No, it was the first episode of Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica, "He That Believeth In Me", that will debut online at noon ET on Friday on SciFi.com and be aired at 10 pm ET/PT Friday night on the SciFi Channel.

For those of you who need a refresher on where we were at the end of the season, the episode starts out with a 2 and half minute "previously on..." and the episode picks up right where we left off, with the Galactica and the fleet being attacked by a large fleet of cylons and Lee Adama having just met up with a returned (or is it resurrected?) Starbuck, who was last seen going to pieces in an exploding viper a few months back. Needless to say, everyone is a bit skeptical about Starbuck, but being a bit occupied with a possibly devestating cylon attack, they order all pilots out to join in the fight and Starbuck joins into the fray.

The battle and fight with the cylons is very dramatic and when it turns on a single instance (that only the Watchtower group knows the truth about), they are saved for the time being, albeit with some losses. As expected, Starbuck is not trusted, especially when her ship looks like it just came off the assembly line, and she is kept under watch even while she tries to explain what happened to her.

When we last saw Baltar, he was being whisked away by some women and we get to meet his followers, who want to protect him (and make him feel much better). Of course, they don't know that he has the Six in his head for that, but they are right about trying to protect him from those that would want to hurt him.

The four newly revealed cylcons (the Watchtower group) no longer hear the Dylan song but are starting to develop their own sign language, giving each other knowing looks when the subject of hidden cylons come up. They're also having a bit of trouble dealing with it on a personal level, leading to one very surprising daydream early in the episode which would liken Bill Adama to the bowl of petunias in the HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy ("Oh No, Not Again.").

As the first installment of the final season, it keeps things ramped up and ends with one of those "To Be Continued's" that make you want to wish they were showing two episodes this week instead of just the one.

For those of you in the NY or LA area, you may be able to take advantage of a special "Free Pizza for Humans" promotion, so watch for special ads in your area and be prepared to make a call for a late night snack. When you call them up, say ""I want to order a frakkin pizza!" and if you give them the proper answer to a question, you'll get a free one! Don't ask me which pizza places are participating, that is being kept under wraps as far as I can tell. Since it is only in the two areas, I certainly can't take advantage of it...

For lots of links and such about Galactica and the new season (and a link to scans of Tricia Helfer's FHM magazine spread - although I think we've seen her in less on the show...), check out the Galactica Sitrep blog.

Battlestar Galactica: What the Frak?

2008-03-19T23:15:00.000-06:00

If you need to catch up on the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica to getr eady for the fourth, here's your chance in this video similar to the recent one done for Lost...

For more Galactica videos (including snippets from the Battlestar Galactica Revealed special airing on Friday, March 28th, visit the official SciFi Channel YouTube page.

Also, the Battlestar Galactica Season Three DVD set has just been released and can be ordered from Amazon via the Magrathea Marketplace.

Caprica Pilot, BG Webisodes, New Scare Tactics, Alice Miniseries

2008-03-19T22:50:00.001-06:00

The Scifi Channel had their upfront presentation last night and announced a bunch of things coming up soon and in development. I'll summarize the highlights with links to the press releases at the NBC Universal Media Village SciFi page.

The Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica, has been given the greenlight for a two hour backdoor pilot. Production will beging soon with an airdate likely this fall. The official description for the pilot movie is "Set 50 years before Battlestar Galactica, Caprica follows two rival families - the Greystones and the Adamas - as they grow, compete, and thrive in the vibrant world of the 12 Colonies. Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe. Caprica will deliver all of the passion, intrigue, political backbiting, family conflict and hardcore action that always leaves Galactica fans begging for more. " Full Caprica Press Release

Also on the Galactica front, SciFi will debut the fourth season opener online at Noon ET on Friday, April 4th, the same day it debuts on the channel. They will also be having new webisodes but didn't announce any details. Finally, they will be launching an online social gaming experience pitting humans versus cylons. Other new online features will be a new site, The Game Site, that "will be a hub for reports on all things relevant to the gamer lifestyle." and The SciFi Game Center collecting various casual online games to play. The David Hewlitt produced series Starcrossed will be an online show and will debut in late 2008. Finally, the SciFi Rewind video player will have a large catalog of SciFi channel shows to watch on demand. Full SciFi Digital Press Release

SciFi Reality

Reality shows include more Mind Control With Darren Brown, the return of Scare Tactics (now hosted by Tracy Morgan), more Ghost Hunters International, and a couple of new pilots, Estate of Panic and BrainTrust. In conjunction with the release of the new Indiana Jones movie, SciFi has a new documentary special on The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls that will air on May 18th following a marathon of the first three Indiana Jones movies. Full Reality/Alternate Programming Press Release. Full Ghost Hunters International Press Release

Scripted Development

New scripted developement includes the following:

(Full Scripted Press Release)

Alice - The producers of Tin Man adapt Alice In Wonderland for a mini-series.

The Stranded - A pilot movie based on the Stranded comic by Mike Carey, recently part of the SciFi/Virgin Comics partnership. Carey is writing the script for the pilot. Virgin Comics has part of Issue 1 of the series available to view online.

From a Virgin Comics Press Release: “From day one,” Carey says, “working on The Stranded has felt like being at a nexus point of creativity. Virgin and SCI FI created the perfect platform, and then supported the book and the creative team through all the stages of development. This feels like something we all own, and we all love. I can't wait to take it forward into its next incarnation.”

True Believer - Rosario Dawson produced pilot that is "a quirky, contemporary dramedy about a 20-something comic book nerd who hires a washed-up real-life Superhero to be his crime-fighting sidekick and teach him the ropes. Together, this unlikely duo set out to save the World. "

Deputized - A 2-hour pilot written by Joe Gazzam, Deputized is a dramedy in which an "average Joe" suddenly finds himself possessing special abilities after being accidentally fitted with an alien exoskeleton that cannot be removed. As a result, he is enlisted to serve on the inter-galactic police force that patrols the universe.

Finally, Richard Branson (head of Virgin) has joined SciFi's Visions for Tomrrow Advisory Board. Full Branson/VOT Press Release

SciFi Friday is Back with a Vengeance in April

2008-03-13T20:39:00.001-06:00

April 4 - Battlestar Galactica

April 11 - The Sarah Jane Adventures

April 18 - Doctor Who Series 4

(although Donna isn't in it until April 25th)

A Statement from Marc Scott Zicree

2008-03-01T21:38:00.001-07:00

I've been following the various comments in regards to nominating "World Enough and Time" for the Nebulas and Hugo awards and thought that the statement Marc Scott Zicree prepared for SFWA should be posted publicily. Marc has given me a revised version of it to make available for the blogosphere. Instead of posting it in multiple places, I have made it available on my blog and will post links to it. Feel free to post it elsewhere.

Lee Whiteside
SFTV.org

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STATEMENT FROM MARC SCOTT ZICREE

Hi, guys –

I’ve just been informed that there have been some misconceptions relating to the professional status of STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES “World Enough and Time,” starring George Takei and written Michael Reaves and myself, which has just been nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Script.

First off, I just want to say how deeply honored I am to be nominated for the Nebula Award. When I was a teenager and being mentored by Theodore Sturgeon at the beginning of my career (I’d just gotten back from Clarion, having sold my first short story), I remember going to his home and seeing the Nebula on his mantle. With its spiral galaxy held in that gleaming block of Lucite, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I was so impressed by Ted having written a work that had won such recognition, and hoped that someday I might create something of such merit it might have a possibility of winning that award.

I am so grateful to my fellow writers in SFWA, and so proud to be part of this community. Michael Reaves has just undergone brain surgery and is temporarily out of commission, but I know I speak for him when I thank every member of SFWA – and all those who worked on “World Enough and Time” so selflessly and well -- from the bottom of our hearts.

As co-writer, director and executive producer of “World Enough and Time” (and also as someone with a thirty-year career as a writer-producer in network television), I’m glad to clarify things and categorically state that “World Enough and Time” was a professional production that utilized literally hundreds of men and women, many of whom work full-time in film and television, and that it was done entirely with Paramount’s knowledge and approval, and in no way violated their copyright.

First, a little history on STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES. Prior to my arrival on the scene and writing “World Enough and Time” with Michael Reaves (both of us having previously written for STAR TREK – THE NEXT GENERATION), STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES had produced three episodes. Although a number of Industry pros worked on the episodes – including STAR TREK writer D.C. Fontana and STAR TREK actors Walter Koenig, Malachi Throne, William Windom and Barbara Luna – they were primarily episodes produced by the fans and intended for a non-professional fan audience.

When Walter Koenig told me of NEW VOYAGES and I viewed their impressive work, I first got the idea of teaming with the NEW VOYAGES crew to create “World Enough and Time.”

I didn’t want to exclude the STAR TREK fans from the production in any way – many of us who are now professionals in the Industry were inspired to these careers by watching STAR TREK when we were kids and still consider ourselves fans – but I was committed to raising the level of STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES to that of a network show and bringing aboard Industry professionals that I knew personally to augment the already-existing and very-talented NEW VOYAGES personnel to help make that happen.

This is in no way to denigrate or minimize the many in our cast and crew who came from other careers or had day-jobs in other pursuits; I found them as hardworking, dedicated and professional as the Oscar and Emmy winners they were often working shoulder to shoulder with on our production.

In all, “World Enough and Time” took one and a half years to make, and required all the skills and talents I have honed in a career that has included sales of over 100 scripts to all the major networks and studios. Pre-production took six months, we shot nine days in New York, two days in Los Angeles at the Gigapix Production Facility, and one day on the Universal lot in Florida with the effects team at the renowned DAVE (Digital and Visual Effects) School facility. Post-production took a full year. The episode was shot on state-of-the-art Hi-Def and boasts 700 effects shots, far more than any network show would ever be able to afford, and more than most features (made possible in part by my having decades of working relationships with the finest artisans and technicians in the Industry, and by relationships fostered by James Cawley and others on the team).

As to any rumors regarding STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES being unpaid and thus unprofessional, in several key and vital areas payments were made. Michael Reaves and I were paid for the script of “World Enough and Time” by James Cawley through his production company, Cawley Entertainment Company, prior to production. We negotiated a contract with James which was under WGA rules, as both Michael and I are members of the Writers Guild, as well as SFWA. In addition, my contract was under DGA guidelines, as I was also the director of the piece.

Beyond this, George Takei was paid to star in the episode. This was under a SAG contract negotiated with George’s manager and agent. Grace Lee Whitney was also paid under a SAG contract. All of our actors who were SAG members were hired under SAG contracts.

At an early stage of pre-production, I founded my own production company, the Magic Time Company, made up of myself, William H. Wallen – formerly Senior Vice President of Marketing for Sony/Columbia-Tristar – and one other partner, an investor in the film and TV industry.

It was clear by that point that “World Enough and Time” would be a huge undertaking in terms of production logistics and would require the full commitment of not only James Cawley’s production company, but mine as well. As a result, “World Enough and Time” became a co-production between Cawley Entertainment Company and the Magic Time Company.

In all, my company invested significant funds, largely for production expenses and key crew salaries. I personally hired my editor, Chris Cronin – a professional who works in Los Angeles on numerous TV shows, features and music videos – full-time for a solid four months, again at Industry rates.

Although “World Enough and Time” was not produced through Paramount, it was done with Paramount’s full knowledge, from Business Affairs on down, including J.J. Abrams, director of the new Star Trek feature, and Bryan Burke, producer of that film. J.J., in fact, advised me during pre-production as I was planning my directorial angle of attack, as did Guillermo del Toro, Frank Darabont, Roxanne Dawson (director of HEROES and LOST), Michael Nankin (director of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) and Armin Shimerman (Quark on DEEP SPACE NINE).

I consider all of these actors and directors friends and professional compatriots (I accepted Guillermo’s Hugo for PAN’S LABYRINTH at Worldcon when he couldn’t be in attendance) and, in fact, have worked with Armin when I wrote for DEEP SPACE NINE (“Far Beyond the Stars”) and collaborated with Michael Nankin when he and I wrote a pilot for Showtime.

“World Enough and Time” premiered August 23, 2007, at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. The event was extensively covered by the press, including the L.A. Times, CNN, NBC and ABC News and many other radio, TV and print outlets. Since then, the episode has been screened at venues around the world, including Spain and Greece, at Worldcon in Yokohama with George Takei in attendance, at numerous conventions and professional conferences, and at the 2007 Nebula Awards, to standing ovations and rave reviews. In addition, the episode has been streaming online at http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ and been seen by many millions all over the globe.

Which speaks to the core issue at hand. The best way for anyone to be satisfied as to the quality and professionalism of “World Enough and Time” is to simply watch the episode. You can view it real time streaming in Standard Def or Hi-Def by logging onto http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ (or if you’re a SFWA member and would prefer, drop me an email at marc@zicree.com and I’ll be happy to mail you a DVD). The work speaks for itself.

Since its premiere, numerous executives at Paramount/CBS in a number of key divisions in Los Angeles and New York have seen the episode and reacted favorably to it, as have the producers and stars of the new STAR TREK feature.

I should add too that “World Enough and Time” just won the TV Guide Award. The other nominees were all produced by NBC Universal. None of us were considered amateur productions in any way, and I’m proud to say that “World Enough” won the award.

In all, over 300 people worked on “World Enough and Time.” The following list covers only a small percentage of those who labored on the episode – not even most of our major department heads – but gives sense of our professional credits and standing, along with what we did on “World Enough” (and to our cast and crew, if I left you off this list it’s in no way a reflection of anything other than merely trying in a reasonable space to address the concerns that have been voiced by SFWA and others; I urge everyone to read our episode credits fully, and I thank every single person who made the episode what it is):

MARC ZICREE, Co-Writer, Director and Executive Producer: In addition to the 100-plus script sales (including STAR TREK – THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE, BABYLON 5, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE, FOREVER KNIGHT and many others), I’ve served as executive producer on numerous network pilots, producer on SLIDERS and THE LAZARUS MAN, executive story editor on BEYOND REALITY and story editor on FRIDAY THE 13TH – THE SERIES. My work, which includes such bestsellers as THE TWILIGHT ZONE COMPANION and the MAGIC TIME trilogy, has been nominated for the American Book Award, Writers Guild Award, Diane Thomas Award and the Humanitas Prize. Currently, I’m in negotiations to write, direct and executive produce the series MAGIC TIME, based on my bestselling trilogy of novels for HarperCollins, in partnership with executive producers of a hit network show. I’m also in talks with a major Industry writer-producer (who must remain nameless at this time) to have his company come aboard to produce a previously-unfilmed Rod Serling TWILIGHT ZONE pilot, with myself as director.

MICHAEL REAVES, Co-Writer and Executive Producer: Emmy-winner for THE ANIMATED BATMAN, with over 400 script sales to all the major networks and studios. Other credits include STAR TREK – THE NEXT GENERATION, THE NEW TWILIGHT ZONE (WGA Award nomination), SLIDERS, INVASION AMERICA (for Steven Spielberg), GARGOYLES and many more. He’s the only writer I know who’s personally worked with Spielberg, Lucas and Roddenberry. In addition, he’s been on the New York Times bestseller list many times (including twice in the last five months) and was nominated for the British Fantasy Award.

JAMES CAWLEY, Senior Executive Producer and Star: the producer-star who started it all and who has had a decades-long career in the entertainment industry, which includes work on STAR TREK - THE NEXT GENERATION and who will be seen in the new STAR TREK feature film. None of this would have happened or been possible without him.

ELAINE ZICREE, Executive Producer: Numerous network credits as a writer and executive producer, including series and pilots. In pre-production on the feature film, THE VOICELESS ROAR, which she has written and will direct. Actors from THERE WILL BE BLOOD and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN are attached, as is Ed Asner, with Ed Harris currently reading the script to star.

WILLIAM H. WALLEN, Executive Producer: For seven years, served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Sony/Columbia Tristar, previously head of Wallen Media, the top marketing and design firm in Hollywood. Credits include the first three STAR WARS films, the Indiana Jones films, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, E.T., POLTERGEIST, MEN IN BLACK (which he discovered and brought to the studio), JERRY McGUIRE, AS GOOD AS IT GETS, STARSHIP TROOPERS, hundreds more.

DOUGLAS DREXLER, Executive Producer: An Oscar and Emmy winner, Doug worked for many years on the STAR TREK franchise series, including THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE, VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE, and is currently head of CG Effects on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

MAJEL BARRETT RODDENBERRY, Enterprise Computer Voice: Extensive TV credits, including Nurse Chapel and Computer Voice on STAR TREK and Troi’s mother on STAR TREK – THE NEXT GENERATION; is also the widow of STAR TREK creator Gene Roddenberry.

IAIN McCAIG, Character Designer: Lead concept designer on the last three STAR WARS films, designer of Darth Maul and Queen Amidala. Other feature credits include INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, HARRY POTTER, CHARLOTTE’S WEB, the live action PETER PAN and many others. Most recently, Iain worked on PRINCESS OF MARS for director Jon Favreau.

GABRIEL HARTMAN, Storyboards: Many feature credits, including SPIDERMAN 3, where he worked directly with director Sam Raimi.

LEE STRINGER, RON THORNTON, RON B. MOORE, DAN CURRY, DAREN DOCHTERMAN, JOEL BELLUCCI, Special Effects: Multiple Emmy winners (more than ten among them), with credits that are a who’s who of film and television, including CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, E.T., BABYLON 5, the recent STAR TREK features and TV series, many more. Stringer and Thornton head up the spectacular DAVE School, which did the vast majority of the incredible effects shots.

STEPHEN LES, Post-Production Supervisor: Numerous film credits, the most recent being ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS for Rhythm and Hues.

TASHA HARDY, Line Producer: Many professional credits on features and music videos. Currently producing the feature film HUMANITY’S END.

DON BALDERAMOS, Co-producer and Unit Production Manager: Currently serving in that capacity for Gigapix, a noted soundstage and production facility serving the film and television Industry in Los Angeles.

SCOTTY MOODY, Producer: Works full-time in production at the CBS affiliate in Burlington, Vermont.

ERIC GOODRICH, Producer: Works full-time in production at the CBS affiliate in Burlington, Vermont.

CRYSTAL ANN TAYLOR, script supervisor: Has worked in that capacity on numerous network shows, most recently JOAN OF ARCADIA.

NEIL JOHNSON, Post Production: Editor and Director of thousands of music videos and nine feature films.

ALAN DERIAN, composer: Has composed scores for over fifty feature films.

LESLIE HOFFMAN, Stunt Coordinator: Stunt woman on many features and TV series, including DEEP SPACE NINE.

JOHN VULICH & OPTIC NERVE, Special Effects Makeup: Multiple Emmy and Oscar winner, credits include BABYLON 5, X-FILES, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and BATMAN.

JACOB PINGER, Director of Photography: Cinematographer for many years on numerous network shows, including REAL STORY, the pilot Elaine and I wrote and executive produced in association with Executive Producer Tom Fontana (HOMICIDE, OZ).

JOHN LINDAUER, Camera Operator: Emmy-winning director of PEEWEE’S PLAYHOUSE, currently writing the sequel to THE 300.

And on and on.

All of which goes to show the enormous amount of time and effort and manpower it takes to create a piece such as “World Enough and Time.” I consider it my masterwork, of all the many shows and books I’ve done, and it pretty much sums up everything I have to say about why we’re alive and what makes the journey worth the candle.

And finally, of all the accolades we’ve received, for me the greatest lies in the many people who have gone out of their way to tell me how profoundly the episode has moved them, that they’ve found themselves in tears at the end of the episode. It’s true for me, too. I still cry when I watch it.

Again, thanks for all the many kind words that have been said, and for this wonderful science fiction community that has given me not only a rewarding career, but such a rich, full life.

All good wishes,
Marc Scott Zicree

STAR TREK NEW VOYAGES “WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME” BLURBS

“It’s just great!” RAY BRADBURY

“Great production values and an insightful, emotionally resonant script.” JOSS WHEDON, creator BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

“A major accomplishment. It’s a knockout.” JOSEPH DOUGHERTY, Emmy-winning writer-producer, THIRTYSOMETHING, SAVING GRACE

“It was cracking! I loved it!” PAUL CORNELL, writer, DR. WHO

“Enormously entertaining, and beautifully done.” MEL GILDEN, STAR TREK novelist

“Wow… a major turning point in the history of mass communication! I teach a mass communications class at my college and you’re now part of the curriculum.” PROF. SANFORD FRIES, Chicago

“It really is one of the best classic Treks, not a ‘fan’ film as the others have been, but a real episode -- and the best Sulu one done.” MARV WOLFMAN, creator BLADE

“The final product is very impressive indeed… An emotional story that focuses on a parallel life lived by Sulu following an away mission, it has a genuine feel of classic sci-fi and Trek” STAR TREK.com

“Despite low production costs (in comparison to a studio episode) the NEW VOYAGES production team has brought passion, meaning and good storytelling back to STAR TREK. Thanks for keeping the dream alive.” EUGENE “ROD” RODDENBERRY

“J.J. watch out! Wow. I felt like I was 9 years old again, sitting at the TV and watching Star Trek. Great job!” MARK ROSMAN, director

“Trek now has an 80th episode...well done.” MARK ALTMAN, writer-producer, FREE ENTERPRISE

Zicree/Simkins Podcast

2008-02-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

One of the new podcasts that have been started up recently is The Zicree Simkins Podcast hosted by writer/producers Marc Scott Zicree and David Simkins. Both have worked on a number of SFTV shows with Zicree writing for various forms of Star Trek, Sliders, and a host of other shows with Simkins working on Charmed, Dresden Files, Lois and Clark and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr to name just a few.

They are planning on interviewing writers and showrunners and in the first set of episodes have already talked with Rockne S. O'Bannon, Robert H. Wolfe, Brad Kern & John Wirth, as well as a few others.

Zicree is currently nominated for a Nebula Script award with Michael Reaves for their Star Trek New Voyages (now rebranded Star Trek Phase II) episode World Enough and Time (although there is some trepidation about whether it qualifies for the award - a ruling is expected soon from SFWA). Look for it to likely end up on the Dramatic Presentation: Short Form hugo ballot (for which I need to get my nominations in ASAP).

Lee

Gallifrey One's Nineteenth Symphony: Opus 2008

2008-02-23T15:54:00.004-07:00

This looks like it was the year that the newer members of Doctor Who fandom made their presence felt. This year's Gallfrey One convention (the 19th) was the largest one ever, with 1080 members, besting its prior record by 270. There were a lot of first time attendees, many of us regular attendees and a good many occasional attendees which made for a fun, if sometimes crowded, weekend.

This year's Doctor Who focus was on the Sylvester McCoy years, with Sylvester McCoy (Doctor #7), Sophie Aldred (Ace), script editor Andrew Cartmel, and composer Mark Ayres. Also appearing from in front of the camera on Doctor Who was Daphne Ashbrook (Grace Holloway), Moya Brady, Sean Gallagher, and Derek Riddell, the later three having had guest roles on the new series. Writers from the new series included Steven "double Hugo" Moffat, Paul Cornell, Rob Shearman, and newcomer James Moran (Torchwood and Doctor Who). There were some writers such as Gary Russell, Keith Topping, Andy Lane, David J. Howe, and Simon Guerrier. From outside of Doctor Who, there were actors such as Bob May (Lost in Space), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Dark Shadows), Richard Chavez (War of the Worlds) and Jennifer Rhodes (Charmed). Others scheduled included Mojo (B5/Trek/BG Visual Effects), comics artist Arne Starr, Steve Bartlett from OASIS and some JPL scientists for a science track of programming as well as some of the local Gallifrey regulars such as Jill Sherwin, Eric Hoffman, and Tadao Tomomatsu. As is usual with Gallifrey One, there were a few last minute additions including Joel Hodgson and Josh Weinstein from Mystery Science Theatre 3000, author David Gerrold, comics writer/editor Mark Waid, and TV producer/writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach. There were also a lot of fans (including myself) taking part in various panels as well, giving the convention a fairly well-rounded slate of programming.

The convention handled the additional fans relatively well with the main instances when it was evident a larger room was needed was for the live episode commentary sessions with Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell, and James Moran. These were all placed in one of their secondary programming rooms, not in the main ballroom. For Moffat's commentary on Blink, fans stood in the hallway to listen. Several of the popular fan panels were also held in packed rooms. Next year, organizer Shaun Lyon has already indicated the commentaries will be in the big room (or at least in larger spaces). Fortunately, with the LAX Marriott, there is room for the convention to expand if it is needed.

For this year, I flew in on Friday morning and out on Sunday night, missing the closing ceremonies and apparently a lot of hanging around in the hotel lobby by fans and guests. Next year I plan to stick around until the next day to have more of a chance to just hang out and chat with people which was harder to do when the convention was in full swing. I realized when I got home and was putting this together that I really didn't take many photos at the convention. Fortunately, Jeff George (in vampire garb) did take a few pictures and a good number of them here are from his camera.

As I've done the last couple of years, I brought along badge ribbons for my website, SFTV.org. I also brought two different ribbons to promote the 2009 North American Discworld Convention that I am chairing in 2009. I'd posted about the Discworld ribbons on the Gallifrey message board and had a couple of people wanting to make sure they got them. As the convention went on, I had people track me down after being told who was handing them out. On Sunday, when I was talking to the people manning the Browncoats table, another fan joined in and commented that she'd been trying to find out where those ribbons were coming from and I gladly handed her a pair. At Loscon, I did wear a Death costume at the Discworld party we had, but only brought the cloak with me for Gallifrey since I was flying and the plastic scythe was a bit too long for my luggage. I did wear the cloak on Saturday night, but most people thought I was the Meddling Monk from the William Hartnell "The Time Meddler" episode. Without the skull mask and bony hands, it isn't nearly as obvious.

I tended to gravitate towards the fan panels in the secondary programming rooms and didn't see too many of the main stage panels. There was definitely some interesting stuff going on in the main room, but having been to every Gallifrey, I have seen Sophie and Sylvester a few times and taking part in a good discussion was more appealing to me. I caught the tail end of a Gallifrey One-Oh-One panel with several of the con committee giving advice to newcomers on how to enjoy the convention. They had a good sized crowd which was an indication of how many new attendees they had this year. Up next was a TV Shows on DVD panel with Keith Topping and others talking about some of the better DVD to look for and the end of the HD DVD format wars and what thay might mean to TV collectors. We also got some information from Steve Roberts on some of the processes involved with releasing Doctor Who to DVD.

I caught most of the Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred interview, moderated by Gary Russell and also waited in line to get some books and comics autographed in the second autograph session of the afternoon. I had some older books from Paul Cornell as well as the rest of the Marvel Comics Wisdom miniseries for Paul to sign. Paul indicated that the new Excalibur comic he was working on would have a lot of the characters from the Wisdom comic in it. I found out on Monday morning that Marvel had been fibbing a bit when it was announced that Paul's new series would actually be called "Captain Britain and MI-13". Comic Book Resources had an interview with Paul about it on Monday and Paul admitted on his blog that he'd had to lie about what it actually was until it was announced. I also had some books for Andy Lane, including his new Torchwood novel, Slow Decay, as well as the two unauthorized Babylon 5 books he did that I helped supply videotapes for back in the day when trading was done by putting tapes in envelopes and mailing them across the Atlantic. Andy hadn't been to Gallifrey since 1999, so it was good to see him again. I intended to catch up with him later in the convention, but I never really caught up with him when he wasn't on a panel or already occupied.

Ending the day of regular programming was the Opening Ceremonies where all of the main convention guests were introduced by Shaun Lyon and brought out to say hello to the crowd. On the left side is Shaun Lyon with the main guests, Andrew Cartmel, Sophie Aldred, SylvesterMcoy, Mark Ayres, and Lisa Bowerman. On the right is Shaun and the writer guests, Stephen Moffat, Paul Cornell, Rob Shearman, James Moran, Gary Russell, Andy Lane, Scott Alan Woodard, Arnold T. Blumberg, and David Howe. Much fun was made of Steven Moffat's Hugos..

I caught up with our small Arizona contingent in the sports bar for dinner, catching up with Karen Funk-Blocher, a Tucson fan that hadn't been at Gallifrey much in recent years. You can read her thoughts on the convention on her blog. For both of us, some of our friends that used to go to Gallifrey with us are no longer around and are definitely missed.

That evening saw the Masque of Mandragora (i.e. the Masquerade). Gallifrey's isn't a big formal masquerade, so there was a mixture of entries that were pretty much "here's my costume" as well as a few impromptu skits. They did have some well respected judges on the panel, though, with Mary Jane Jewell, Laura Brodian Freas, and Colleen Crosby doing the judging. The masquerade was hosted by Tadao Tomomatsu and Patrick Beckstead (who is the same age as the convention and has pretty much grown up with the convention every year with his parents usually working on some part of it - of course, that can be said for LosCon as well). There were a number of Doctor Who costumes, including many Doctors, an Ace, Martha Jones, a Cyberboy, a Dalek, the Master (Saxon version) and The Master's wife. (Karen F-B posted pictures of most of them on this blog entry). The crowd favorite and best of show winner was a couple of fans dressed in white outfits as attendants to a very good recreation of Cassandra, the last human, from the new series. As part of their skit, they started getting phone calls and took advantage of promotional opportunities and slapped advertising logos onto the expanse of Cassandra's skin.

The presentation part of the masquerade went fairly quickly, so the halftime entertainment wasn't quite ready (they were probably still in the bar). Tadao and Patrick amused the audience while they were being rounded up (including when an attempt to screen the Time Crash Doctor Who Children in Need short was aborted due to technical problems with the projector). Finally, the guests for the halftime entertainment were all on hand and they were ready to go.

For the third time at Gallifrey, Paul Cornell hosted a rendition of the Just a Minute game show where contestants are asked to talk for one minute without Hesitation, Repitition, or Deviation about a subject chosen by Paul. Last year, Colin Baker won hands down with his oral eloquence and competitiveness. This year, Sophie Aldred did a fair job of handling the writers and took the honors, but it was a lot of fun watching them. Joining Sophie were writers Rob Shearman, James Moran, and Steven Moffat. Paul had topics for them such as "My Favorite Doctor", "My Favorite Volcano", "My Fireplace", "My Dalek", and "My Love for Russell T. Davies". Highlights were Sophie's veering into risque territory about "My Part on Eastenders" and discussions of "William Hartnell's Fluffs" as well as Rob Shearman doing a rant on bad catch phrases when he took over the "Are You My Mummy" topic when Steven was caught with an error. There is video of the game on Google video with part 1 here and part 2 here. Probably best to view it in a small window since it is somewhat shaky footage. I may get mine fixed up online that was with a tripod. Click on "more from this user" to see other footage they shot at Gallifrey.

Following the masquerade was a screening of some video presentations that not everyone had seen yet which kept a good sized crowd in the room. Also going on was Gallifrey One's Karaoke Kafe with a lot of fans making fools of themselves performing Karaoke songs, including these classic performances caught on videotape. Gallifrey has never been much for room parties, but Friday night did see a party from the League of Evil Geniuses to promote the upcoming Costume Con 26. Their gallery of Evil Geniuses is always fun to look over and it will be missed as their promotional parties have now ended for the convention. I ended up crashing fairly early, having gotten up at 5:30 am Arizona time to get to the airport for an early flight. I've been fighting off a cold or allergies or something, so I was definitely dragging late in the evening.

Saturday is a full day of panels and activities including many cases of "which panel do I choose from?" In my case, the decision was made by how the programming schedule filled out. There was a lot of last minute shuffling going on, but no matter how it went, I always had a panel opposite of Steven Moffat's Blink commentary. After sleeping in a bit and getting some breakfast, I got ready for the Save Our Shows panel, the one opposite the Blink commentary, which was in the next room and packed to the gills with people standing out in the hallway listening to it. The volume was loud enough that at times, it was hard to talk over it in our panel (where we had no microphones, either). There were slightly more people in the audience than on the panel, although I suspect the ones on the left hand side of the room may have been listening to the Blink commentary through the wall for most of the panel. We still had a good chat about varoius save our show attempts over the years, with Tara O'Shea and Mark Ayres doing most of the talking while I, Benjamin Elliott, and Tina Beychok got an occasional comment in. Mark had some good insight into how the Doctor Who fan efforts were handled at the end of the John Nathan-Turner reign. At that time, the Doctor Who production office was quite small, and most fan letters were either dumped in the trash or sent to the production office. Tara had been involved with efforts for shows going back to Forever Knight and Lois & Clark. I talked a bit about some of the recent efforts including the successful one to bring back Jericho and what’s been attempted with some of the current shows that have been cancelled such as The Dresden Files and The 4400.

Save Our Show panelists, L-R, Mark Ayres, Tina Baychek, Benjamin Elliott, Tara O'Shea, & Me

Next up in that room was a "Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Doctor Who?" panel with a good number of the writers in attendance talking about what is "Too Much". After starting out in regards to TV spin-offs, it veered into discussion of the plethora of Doctor Who related merchandise and how much of it there is in the UK and how it is everywhere. It was generally agreed that there will be as much Doctor Who on TV and in the shops that the market will bear and right now all of it is getting eaten up by fans of the show with no slowdown in sight.

I went back to the other side of the table for an "Anticipating Star Trek" panel, with myself, artist Arne Starr, writer Jill Sherwin, and Ken Deep, Louis Trapani from the Doctor Who Podshock podcast. Right off the bat, both Jill and Ken (or was it Louis?) were upfront in indicating they aren't as enthusiastic about the new movie. Jill, in particular, seems to be of the opinion that the movie is mostly J.J. Abrams and his crew putting on a movie and not always getting the best person for the role. Arne pointed out the error of her assumptions in some areas and indicated he thinks it will end up a good production. He's also hoping to get to do the comic adaptation for IDW. I'm somewhere in the middle. There was also some discussion about what pushing it back from Christmas to May really meant, was it a chance for them to do some rewrites and re-shoots now that the writers strike is over or really a move to get bigger box office in the summer? It was agreed that pushing it back six months would make it harder to keep the buzz going that has been started with the debut of the teaser trailer. In any case, we were all looking forward to it and hoping it will do well and bring some life back into Star Trek. While we were discussion the merits of Spock with Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto, Arne sketched this picture of Spock on the Marriott notepad on the panelist table.

I didn't stay in the room for the Battlestar Galactica panel with Shaun Lyon, Keith Topping, James Moran and others, but it was packed and had a good discussion from what I heard. After collecting my camcorder and getting some food, I was back for the MST3K panel, "Celebrating 20 Years of Mystery Science Theatre 3000" for which Scott Armstrong had managed to get Joel Hodgson and Josh Weinsten to come out for. They talked about the show, especially the beginnings of it, their favorite bits, the hardest one to do (Manos: The Hands of Fate), and answered other questoins from the fans. They also talked about their newest endeavor, Cinematic Titanic, how they put it together and worked with the original filmmaker to get the rights for the movie they make fun of. Joining Joel and Josh are other MST3K cohorts, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff and Mary Jo Pehl. Afterwards, Joel and Josh signed copies of Cinematic Titanic (the forty copies they brought to sell didn't last long) in the dealers room. They were hoping to screen it but by the time they committed to coming there wasn't any room to squeeze it in the schedule. Maybe next year they can come back and do a panel in the big room.

I caught the last half hour of Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz's Battlestar Galactica visual effects panel. When I got there, Mojo had been showing lots of segments done for the Razor movie and was talking about the sequence for the reveal of the classic cylon fighter was done and developed. Once he realized that this would be the first time that viewers saw the classic series cylons, he made sure that the battle sequence was done to make it a surprise to the audience. The video included several iterations of the battle CGI as well as how it looked in the final edit. He also showed how the movie was originally planned to start with a fight sequence that would extend through the whole movie. Joining him onstage was editor/producer Andrew Seklir. It was good to see Mojo at the con. He's always excited about his work and puts on a fun presentation. We've had him out to Phoenix for conventions a couple of times and it may be time to bring him back for one.

Next I sat in on the "The Obligatory Gallifrey Comics Panel" which had Mark Waid join in along with Paul Cornell, Lars Pearson, Ed Green, and Arnold T Blumberg. There was a lot of discussion about the state of comics today and how the market is pretty stagnant while the Manga market is growing by leaps and bounds. There was also talk about what are the better comics out ther right now and Paul Cornell talked about his experience working for Marvel (still having to say Excalibur instead of what the actual title was).

After a break for dinner in the sports bar with our Arizona trio (me, Jeff and John), it was time for the Mysterious Theatre 337 with Steve Hill and company making fun of Silver Nemesis, the 25th Anniversary story with Sylvester and Sophie. It was a lot of fun, especially during the bits of the episode that were cringe-worthy to begin with. Steve Hill was making a valiant effort to keep his voice going (which seemed to be affecting a lot of people over the weekend). Afterwards, they talked a bit about how they put their performances together and how you can see the scripts online on Steve's web site, shillpages.com. Afterwards, they screened the Buffy episode, Once More With Feeling, as a Buffy Sing-a-long and those taking part had a lot of fun joining in with the Buffy cast. I checked out the Daleks in Manhattan party, which had food and drink and a lot of people crowded into the room.

Sunday started with the Guest Brunch, with a brunch buffet with about 50 fans and a few of the guests. Its always fun to chat with the guests in a more relaxed atmosphere, although you still need to let them have time to eat their food. Sophie had her ten year old son with her and he seemed to be really enjoying the weekend, proud of his mom having been on TV and getting a lot of attention. Sylvester also had his son with him, who is in his 20's (I think). The two sons briefly chatted with Sylvester's son telling Sophie's son "My dad and your mum were on Doctor Who together". Steven Moffat told us that his kids and Peter Davison's kids play together. Peter's kids are big fans of the new show which tends to leave their dad feeling a bit outdated. When Peter agreed to do the Time Crash for Children in Need, Steven pointed out that he'd now get his own Top Trumps game card as his Doctor and would be cool to his kids for once.

After brunch it was time to pack up the luggage since there wasn't any late checkout offered (all the more reason to stay until Monday next year). I checked out the beginning og the Charity Auction, which benefited Actors And Others For Animals. They had a good amount of stuff, although not as much Doctor Who items as people wanted. Recent years have seen donations of large amounts of books. A couple of years ago it was pretty much a full set of the Doctor Who New Adventures and then a whole set of the Target novels. This year they had a plethora of Star Trek novels, most of which went for about 50 cents each in various bundles. There were still a good number of who related items, some going cheaply, some going higher than expected (or that I wanted to go). A Doctor Who cookie kit went for $45 (you can find them on Ebay for $4 ), and, surprisingly, a signed copy of the His Master's voice artwork went for less than $50. The first hour of the auction was the bargain time, since a good number of people were in the Sylvester McCoy Era panel with most of the main guests. Once that let out, the audience grew and prices started going up. I managed to get the newspaper copy of Paul Cornell's christmas story in the Telegraph from this year and caught up with him in the autograph session later in the afternoon to get it signed. In doing so, I found out that Martin Guierrer was the one who had donated it to the auction. The auction went on for most of the afternoon and ended up raising over $3000.

Between the auction and other things, I ended up not catching any other panels. According to reports, both the fan panels "What's With all the Squee: The Appeal of David Tennant" and "Torchwood 101" were a lot of fun. The Torchwood panel was standing room only and ran over a bit into the time for the "The State of SF TV & Film, and the Impact of the Writers' Strike" panel that I was on. We had a surprise addition of Javier Grillo-Marxuach to that panel with James Moran, Paul Salamoff, and Tara O'Shea also on hand. We spent most of the hour talking about the strike, the affect it had on the pros on the panel and how the support of the fans really helped the cause. Javier talked about his situation where he filmed a pilot for The Middleman for ABC Family during the strike, doing both producer duties for the pilot as well as picketing as a writer at other times. Once the strike was over, ABC Family did pick up the series, look for it later this year. James wasn't directly affected by the strike but talked about how agreements are handled in the UK and how they did what they could to support the writers in the U.S.

After the panel I took care of a few things (arranging for convention flyers to go to the LASFS clubhouse and to ConDor in San Diego), got some food from the sports bar one last time, said my goodbyes to those people I came across and headed out to the airport to fly back home. Once I got there I found out that there had been an incident earlier in the afternoon where they had to clear the terminal, but things were pretty much back to normal by then and I didn't have any flight delays.

From what I've heard, the final big panel, a planned live commentary of Dragonfire (the episode where Sophie Aldred's Ace was introduced) ended up changed to Ghost Light because they didn't have a VCR available to play back Dragonfire, which has not yet been released on DVD, while Ghost Light has. After that, they screened a compilation of clips as a Year in review and brought everyone back out on stage for closing ceremonies and give everyone a chance to say goodbye before officially ending the convention.

All in all, this year's Gallfrey One convention was a lot of fun with lots to do and after19 years of attending them, I can't wait to go back next year.

Doctor Who & Sarah Jane on SciFi details

2008-02-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

The April cable information site PDF is now online for SciFi. They've tried to keep it from us, but changing the "3" to a "4" gives me the new one at https://www.nbcunetworks.com/Assets/...th_4_feed1.pdf They have also updated the Schedulebot with the preliminary April information.

As expected, Dr. Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures will be on Friday nights. Here's how it is scheduled currently (subject to change).

Friday April 4
7:00 pm Chuck
8:00 pm - BG Season 3 (Crossroads Part 1 most likely)
9:00 pm - BG Season 3 (Crossroads Part 2 most likely)
10:00 pm - BG Season 4 - First episode

Friday April 11
7:00 pm Chuck
8:00 pm Sarah Jane Adventures (assume edited Invasion of the Bane)
9:00 pm BG SEason 4 Repeat (First Episode)
10:00 pm - BG Season 4 - 2nd episode

Friday April 18
7:00 Chuck
8:00 pm Sarah Jane Adventures (First half hour episode)
8:30 pm Doctor Who Season 4 (Voyage of the Damned - 90 minute time slot)
10:00 pm - BG Season 4 - 2nd episode

Friday April 25
7:00 Chuck
8:00 pm Sarah Jane Adventures
8:30 pm Sarah Jane Adventures
9:00 pm Doctor Who Season 4 (Voyage of the Damned - 90 minute time slot)
10:00 pm - BG Season 4 - 3rd episode

Starting with April 25, it is not clear if they will be showing two new episodes of Sarah Jane (which would make it Part 2 of one story and part 1 of another story) or if they will show a repeat of the previous weeks episode in the first half hour time slot. (or maybe they've split Invasion of the Bane into three half hour episodes with commercials?) In any case, we now have out answer to how things will start up and when.

Gallifrey and All That

2008-02-19T23:12:00.001-07:00

A quick post as I'm catching up on things following a fast weekend in Los Angeles for the 19th edition of Gallifrey One, the annual Doctor Who convention in the L.A. area.

This year's convention was their largest attendance ever, at 1080, 270 more than their previous record last year. Since the LAX Marriott handles LosCon with closer to 1500 people, it wasn't overly crowded for the most part, although some of the panels in the secondary programming rooms proved more popular than there were seats for. That should be remedied next year with some changes in their programming layout.

I did three panels, one of which on "Save Our Shows" was up against (and next door to) Steven Moffat's live commentary of Blink (which was one of the overflowing panels), only had a few in the audience, but we had a good discussion with Mark Ayres and Tara O'Shea doing most of the talking. The Anticipating Star Trek panel had a good turnout later in the day as well as the State of SFTV and the Writer's strike on Sunday.

The Masquerade had some good entries, especially the duo who were attendants to a very well made Cassandra that won best of show. The halftime show with Paul Cornell wrangling Sophie Aldred, James Moran, Rob Shearman, and Steven Moffat into doing Just a Minute was hilarious.

Mysterious Theatre 337 taking on Silver Nemesis was a hoot as well. I'd forgotten how cringeworthy some parts of that episode were.

We got a suprise appearance my Joel Hodgson and Josh Weinstein from Mystery Science Theatre to celebrate its 20th Anniversary. They also talked about their new project, Cinematic Titanic . Also on hand to do a presentation on Battlestar Galactica special effects was Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz who showed some of the shots he worked on for Razor, including several iterations of the big reveal of the classic Cylon fighter. It's always fun to see Mojo, especially when he gets all charged up about his work.

As always, it was fun to meet a lot of old and new friends, talk with the writers and the actors, and take part in a fun convention. Next year's theme is 20 Years to Life for the 20th convention.

I'll have a more detailed report and some pictures soon....

Terminator time

2008-02-04T20:53:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks back the Terminator Tour made a stop in Phoenix to promote Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. There wasn't much promotion for the local stops and their stop at ASU they couldn't even film due to not having the proper permits. For those, like me, who caught up with them, you got a t-shirt and the chance to appear in a scene from the pilot episode. I thought they were also putting in a gun like we saw in the pilot, so I look a bit silly holding my hands like I was shooting a gun. Oh well.

Watch me take out the Terminator

SciFi Channel News - Sanctuary, Doctor Who & Sarah Jane

2008-02-04T20:15:00.000-07:00

The TV Critics WInter tour is not happening this year due to the strike, but we're still getting some announcements and press releases.

SciFi Channel is in the middle of a string of releases, all of which can be seen at the NBC Universal Media Village's SciFi page.

First up is their press release about the acquisition of Sanctuary, the web series starring and co-produced by Amanda Tapping. In the press release, it indicates that Tapping will not be returning to Stargate Atlantis as a regular cast member for season 5, but will be on in a limited number of episodes as a guest star. An Atlantis press release is expected soon (and I'll update this post with the information). Gateworld has a two part interview with Tapping (part 1, part 2) about the series pickup and no longer being a Stargate regular.

In regards to Stargate Atlantis, producer Joseph Mallozzi discusses some of the rumors spreading about Atlantis on his blog and will likely post more about it tomorrow once the press release is out.

In today's press release from SciFi, they announced that they will begin airing Season 4 of Doctor Who in April AND will also be airing The Sarah Jane Adventures, the spinoff series featuring Sarah Jane Smith in her own series with a group of kids helping her out. The press release doesn't indicate what time slot or day they will airing the shows, but it is likely to be on Wednesday. For more about Doctor Who and its producer, Russell T. Davies, the Los Angeles Times ran an interview with Davies last week.

As of yet, the BBC hasn't announced for sure when the new season will start on BBC 1, but it is likely be around the end of March and/or Easter weekend.

Paris Hilton is having a party next door and won't turn it down!

2008-02-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

The Big Game (I could say "Super Bowl", but I'm not a licensed partner, so I shouldn't be using its actual name) is in town this weekend. Actually, it is in Glendale, AZ on the far other side of the valley from Scottsdale, AZ. However, Glendale isn't yet hip enough to have a party scene, so Scottsdale is host to the parties and ESPN's live broadcasts. Knowing that there was all this stuff going on in downtown Scottsdale, I figured I'd avoid the area this weekend. What I didn't think about is how the big parties, starting last night with one hosted by Paris Hilton, would be even more noticable due to them having their permorfmers outside and the volume turned up to deafen everyone at them.

Last night, well after 11 pm, I could hear rhythmic bass thumping through the wall and thought it was my upstairs neighbor with their stereo turned up. I opened the patio door to check and realized it was coming from the direction of the spotlights to the West. I live about a half mile from where the party was and could hear it well enough to tell that it was some rapified version of Mr. Roboto (50 cent was the musical act last night, if he has to stoop to using Mr. Roboto as the basis for a rap song, I'm surprised he's still relevant). It was a weeknight and I really would have liked to have gotten to sleep before midnight. I figured I'd give the Scottsdale police a call to add my name to the list of complaints they were likely getting and was told there wasn't anything they co do about it and that they had permits to be noisy until 1 am! Sure enough, the thudding finally ended around 1 am.

I see by the party listings in the paper that the parties tonight and tomorrow featuring Kid Rock and Snoop Dogg will go to 2 am. I guess I might as well plan on sleeping late this weekend.

This is a test of Hulu

2008-01-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

I've signed up for Hulu's beta. It is a new video sharing site where studios will be making complete episodes and other clips available to share. I thought this clip from the Pilot for The Invisible Man is a good place to start with the Doctor Who references.

It's that time of the year - Hugo nominations

2008-01-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year when members of last year's Worldcon and members of the upcoming Worldcon try to figure out what were the best works in the past year in a whole bunch of categories, otherwise known as The Hugo Awards. I'll leave the fiction and other nominations to other blogs, but I thought I'd throw out a few things to be considered for the Dramatic Presentation award. The deadline for submitting ballots is midnight, March 1st, so there's a bit over a month left to figure things out (although if you aren't currently eligible to vote, you have to be a member of Devention 3 by Jan 31st to be eligible). You can keep track of the Hugos and other SF awards at the Science Fiction Awards Watch website.

In the Best Dramatic Presentation Award, they have a short form and a long form, which was split from a single award a couple of years ago to provide a means primarily to separate movies from TV episodes. However, this year there's several TV productions that might very well end up in the Long Form slot.

In the Long Form category, there's a good number of movies from the past year that can be considered, ones such as Stardust, Boewulf, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Golden Compass, Transformers, Spider-Man 3, I Am Legend, 30 Days of Night, and 28 Weeks Later all might get some votes. However, there is a call to nominate the first season of Heroes in the long form category (and, technically, the second season could be considered separately, since it will likely be considered finished in December due to the writer's strike) . In TV miniseries, there is also Hogfather, a four hour miniseries that first aired in the UK in 2006 but didn't air in the US until 2007, as well as Tin Man, the six hour miniseries from SciFi that aired in December.

The Short form category tends to be single episodes or two part episodes of TV series, so a two-parter or TV movie tends to fall in here since most of those are less than 90 minutes. Seeing as Doctor Who episodes by Steven Moffat have won the last two years, his episode "Blink" from last season is a front runner for this year. Even though it was the "Doctor Lite" episode from this season, Moffat delivered a story that provided one of the better episodes of the series. Also in contention from Doctor Who is the two parter "Human Nature/Family of Blood" written by Paul Cornell with some support also for the two part season finale of Doctor Who "The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords" written by Russell T. Davies. Besides Doctor Who, there was the two part season finale of Battlestar Galactica "Crossroads" as well as the TV movie "Razor" that aired in November. Also in consideration are shows like the Stargate SG-1 finale "Undending", The Torchwood debut "Things Change", and maybe episodes of The Dresden Files and Blood Ties. There's also the direct to DVD Babylon 5: The Lost Tales that might get a few votes. Babylon 5 did win two hugos for episodes before they split the Dramatic Presentation category. One non-broadcast show that has a good chance of making the ballot is the Star Trek New Voyages episode "World Enough and Time", written by Marc Scott Zicree and Michael Reaves and directed by Zicree with fan favorite Trek actor George Takei starring. Zicree screened the episode at Worldcon last year and got a very good response to it. This could be the wild horse that keeps Moffat from getting a hat trick of Hugos.

Let's change the future one more time... But still Stay in the past...

2008-01-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

Yes, the Terminator franchise is alive and well and on FOX Televsion. However, I realize it starts out in 1999 when few TV shows were broadcast letterboxed, but you'd think for a high profile action TV series in 2008, it would be broadcast in letterbox mode for those of us who don't have a high def TV. That's one way to encourage people to download the HD torrents or upgrade to a TV capable of receiving the HD signals. I think even the online preview they did on yahoo TV was in widescreen.

In any case, the pilot does deliver a lot of action for a TV series and will probably do well for FOX until they run out of episodes in eight weeks.

Just ignore the third Terminator movie, the Terminator 3D ride, books and any other things they've done since the 2nd movie, though.

Lee

Rock Chalk Jayhawk, Go KU!

2008-01-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

Definitely not used to doing this for the football team....

Way to go Jayhawks!

SFTV Roundup - Schedule Updates and Network juggling

2008-01-02T21:23:00.001-07:00

SFTV Schedules Updated, Schedule Shuffling, TV Big Shot

The Upcoming SFTV Schedule list and Season to Date list have been updated with the latest information I've been able to track down. With the writer's strike now really having an affect on availability of new episodes for most of the shows that started this fall, there's a lot of schedule juggling going on as new shows are brought in, shows with no more episodes left are dropped, and the networks play chicken with each other to try to gain an advantage. Right before Christmas, CBS dropped new episodes of three shows at short notice to run repeats. This past week, ABC and NBC played chicken with the start of Celebrity Apprentice with apparently NBC winning as ABC didn't move the last new Grey's Anatomy to Jan 3rd after NBC moved The Apprentice back to that date, after moving it to Jan 10th AFTER having previously announced it to start Jan 3rd.

Yes, I've been paying much more detailed attention to non-SFTV shows to attempt to keep near the top with TV Bigshot. My top network, SFTVPlus, is at #17 currently. Aleph still has most of the top ten but others have been gaining on him. I'm just trying to keep up with them. TWOP will definitely need to rethink the game for next season, though. Too much of the game has become dependent on increasing your network value by buying and selling shows to gain network value.

But I digress. The latest schedule juggling is from FOX, who instead of just burning off New Amsterdam on Friday nights starting in late February, have now decided to give it a big push by previewing the first two episodes following American Idol episodes and then putting it into the Monday night 9 pm time slot once they run out of Terminator episodes. That's a pretty surprising turn of events for the show considering FOX shut down production on it BEFORE the writer's strike, effectively killing it before it aired. With the strike continuing, that may be a new lease on life for New Amsterdam.

Fans4Writers Auction, Special shirts

The fans4writers web site is having an auction to raise money to support their efforts that includes a lot of signed Galactica scripts and other items of interest. You can also support the strike by buying Strike Swag including the special Star Trek day shirt (assuming they aren't all gone.) I got mine already...

I definitely would like to see the strike settled soon, but only if the writers get what they are due. If anything, we've got some new genre stuff coming up including new Torchwood and Doctor Who (which is UK made and not affected by the strike).

The Doctor's Biggest Audience in 28 Years and a Torchwood Preview to boot!

2007-12-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Christmas Day broadcast of Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned was the most view Doctor Who episode in 28 years, averaging 12.2 million viewers and a peak of 13.8 million. This is the highest viewership of a Doctor Who episode since City of Death in 1979 when it was only The BBC and ITV and ITV was on strike. More details on The Doctor Who News Page and at BBC News. The only thing higher in the UK was Eastenders at a peak of 13.9 million. When it likely airs on SciFi later this year, it will do well to get 2 million viewers. At the end, the BBC aired a trailer for Doctor Who Series 4 and also a short one for Torchwood.

You can see those currently on YouTube below with both the Doctor Who series 4 trailer and the Torchwood series 2 trailer as they aired on the BBC:

The BBC has still not yet confirmed WHEN they will start airing Torchwood, although it is likely starting Wednesday, January 16th on BBC2. BBC America has said it will start airing Torchwood series 2 on Saturday, January 26th and has started airing the following preview...

Note: All photos are copyright The BBC/BBC America

A Blue Greeting

2007-12-19T22:44:00.000-07:00

Create Your Own Video

SFTV Roundup & News Tidbits for December 2007

2007-12-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

Stardust DVD

First of all, the DVD for Stardust is released this week. Pick it up at the SFTV Amazon Store in regular DVD or in HD DVD. If you saw it in the theatre, you will likely be picking this up. If you didn't get around to seeing it, you should definitely pick it up.

On to the SFTV Roundup....

STARTREK.COM Team Let Go!

First of all, the Star Trek.com website has had several brushes with being shut down in the last couple of years with the restructuring of Viacom/Paramount/CBS but it has managed to continue and still be a very good and informative web site for all things Star Trek. Unfortunately, it appears that CBS Interactive, which is in charge of the site has decided to restructure and has fired the entire production team for the site with no warning! The Trek Movie Report website has an article about it and will likely have further updates down the road. You'd think someone would realize that they have this movie called Star Trek coming out a year from now and they might want to keep the site current? My kudos go out to the people who have been keeping the site active and current. Here's hoping someone gets a clue and brings them back on board.

Tin Man's Surprising Success, SciFi Update

As mentioned here previously, the first part of the SciFi's Tin Man miniseries did surpisingly well, setting records for the channel. The other two episodes did pretty good as well as SciFi indicated in their official press release touting it. Of course, the next day SciFi announced their new reality series, Run for the Money, that had everyone going Huh? It is described as "Run For Money is an action-packed, edge-of-your-seat reality competition show that pits a group of contestants against each other in the quest for cash prizes, while being stalked by relentless "hunters." Based on a successful Japanese format from Fuji Television, the action takes place over 60 minutes of real time in various landmark locations. As the clock winds down, the competition gets harder as more hunters appear on the streets, the game perimeter gets smaller, and tasks are assigned that test fraying nerves. Contestants earn money for every second they "stay alive" and may opt out at their choosing. If they keep playing and are overrun by a hunter, they lose everything. The last person standing takes the prize." I guess it will pair up well with ECW...

GHI & Guinea Pig

SciFi is debuting two new shows in January, Ghost Hunters International and Guinea Pig. Ghost Hunters International is a spin-off from Ghost Hunters, which has been very successful of late on SciFi, drawing better numbers and younger demographics than Stargate Atlantis. Guinea Pig is about "In the name of science and adventure, extreme-performer Ryan Stock and his partner AmberLynn Walker, push the frontiers of what the human body can endure. By making the world-class good sport Ryan a human guinea pig." Guinea Pig debuts on Tuesday January 8th at 9 pm ET/PT while Ghost Hunters International debuts at 9 pm ET/PT Wednesday January 9th.

Stargate Atlantis and Flash Gordon Return, Galactica set for March

The holiday break for SciFi Friday ends on January 4 when Stargate Atlantis and Flash Gordon resume their current seasons. SciFi will continue to run Flash at 8 pm ET/PT with a repeat of the previous Atlantis episode at 9 pm ET/PT. SciFi has a marathon of Season 4 Atlantis episodes during the day if you need to catch up. On the following Friday, SciFi will add Haunted to their SciFi Friday lineup at 7 pm ET/PT. It stars Matthew Fox and aired on UPN in 2002 where it was canceled after 7 of the thirteen produced episodes had aired. According to ads they have been running, Battlestar Galactica will begin its fourth season on SciFi in March. With the season finale of Atlantis likely on March 7th, March 14th is a good bet for the return of Galactica.

Strike Schedule Updates

The latest schedule announcements from the networks give us the following start date for some new and returning shows coming up in the new year. With shows like Chuck, Heroes, Reaper, Bionic Woman, Journeyman, and Pushing Daisies having aired all of their produced episodes, there's a lot of change coming in the genre show area.

NBC will have Medium back on the air on Monday nights at 10 pm ET/PT starting January 7th.

CBS has the return of Jericho for its seven episode second season on Tuesdays at 10 pm ET/PT starting February 12th. Ghost Whisperer, Moonlight, and Numb3rs will remain on Friday nights. All three appear to have a few number of episodes left. All three CSI's have a few episodes left as well.

ABC will bring back Lost for eight episodes on Thursday nights at 9 pm ET/PT starting January 31st. They also have Eli Stone scheduled to debut the same night at 10 pm ET/PT.

FOX has Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Mondays at 9 pm ET/PT with the first episode debuting Sunday, January 13th at 9 pm ET/PT and the second episode in its regular time slot on January 14th. FOX will also debut New Amsterdam on Fridays at 9 pm ET/PT starting February 22nd.

The CW has run out of Reaper episodes but still has a good number of Smallville episodes left and a few Supernatural episodes.

On cable, ABC Family brings back Kyle XY on Monday, Jan 14th at 9 pm ET/PT. BBC America is currently running Season 2 of Life on Mars on Tuesday nights and, as reported previously, will have season 2 of Torchwood starting January 26th. USA Network has new episodes of Monk and Psych starting January 11th.

Happy Holidays from Max Headroom

2007-12-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

Biggest Shock of the Day!

2007-12-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not talking about seeing who lived and died on Heroes (or who got better), I'm talking about this press release from SciFi Channel.

The first part of the Tin Man miniseries set records for the SciFi Channel, beating out Taken and anything else that has ever aired on the channel. Whether they will also stick around for Parts 2 and 3 remain to be seen, but the fact that a record number of people actually tuned in to SciFi and watched it live is a very big surprise. Considering SciFi's regular shows have been struggling to get much abouve a 1.0 rating, drawing a 4.2 Household rating is pretty significant. It looks like if SciFi puts together something that catches peoples interest, they can still find the channel. Now if only they were running ads for a second season of Dresden Files instead of a second season of Destination Truth or Ghost Hunters International. They also promoted the second half of Stargate Atlantis' season as well as the eventual return of Battlestar Galactica while not airing any promotional ads for Flash Gordon. Maybe its just as well not that many people have been watching Flash Gordon otherwise when they saw Mings palace in Tin Man and recognized the same Vancouver forest that Flash spends a lot of time in, they might have tuned out.

Tonight, however, it is up against the Heroes mid-season finale (or season finale depending on the writers strike) as well as a special two hour episode of The Closer on TNT (which normally does ratings most broadcast networks would love to have). As it is, SciFi has a new record, which means they will take that as a go-ahead to remake more classics as series and miniseries. I'm not sure if I even want to contemplate what they might do next right now.

Back to figuring out my money picks on TV Big Shot ...

Lifetime Stakes Blood Ties, NBC Extends Chuck, ends Journeyman, and BBC America Speeds up Torchwood

2007-11-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

NBC's Chuck & Journeyman
Early in the week, NBC announced that it had given Chuck a full season renewal (of course, dependent on what a full season will actually mean with the Writer's strike). They have also announced that the final two episodes of Journeyman will air December 17 & 19th (Mon & Wed) at 10 pm ET/PT.

Blood Ties on Lifetime - Final two episodes online only
Lifetime will not be airing the final two episodes of Blood Ties, making them available online at lifetimetv.com. Blood Ties creator, Tanya Huff, has commented about it on her Livejournal indicating the blogs she has been doing for Lifetime TV's web site will not be posted for the final two episodes in support of the Writer's strike. She will post them on her livejournal when the shows have aired in Canada (the show is currently about halfway through the season on broadcast TV and the cable channel Space. It is not clear if Lifetime dropped the last two due to low ratings or if they didn't think they would go well with the Christmas movies they have scheduled for the next few weeks now that their Psychic shows have ended. They may also be available on iTunes.

Torchwood on BBC America - Season Two on the heels of BBC2!
BBC America has announced that they will start airing season two of Torchwood on January 26th, shortly after the BBC starts airing the series on BBC2. This is an indication of BBC America getting much more aggressive in their programming and acquisition of shows. Having Torchwood being their highest rated series ever is probably a factor as well, and this should make it do even better for the channel with a very short time span between the BBC airings and the US airings. If there's a pre-emption in the UK, BBC America might even get ahead of BBC2. The BBC, as usual, hasn't yet indicated exactly when they will start the new season of Torchwood, but you can likely be certain it will be sometime before January 26th.

Who's Best - People's Choice Awards

2007-11-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

This year, the People's Choice Awards has Doctor Who up for best SciFi show.

I think it would be really neat to have Doctor Who win the award over the other shows that are up for it. Here's a handy widget to use to cast your vote while there's still time.

World Fantasy 2007 - Days 1, 2, 3 & 4

2007-11-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Well, my intention to post daily from World Fantasy 2007 in Saratoga Springs, NY didn't end up happening. So here's a bit of a report with pictures. You can see other pictures from Ellen Datlow and Scott Edelman on their respective Flickr web sites. Theres also reports online, some with pictures, from artist John Picacio, author John Joseph Adams, John Klima, and others I'll ad later.

First up on Thursday, we helped to put books into the duffel bags they got this year for the book bags. There were a few good books, but definitely not enough to fully fill all of the bags. Having a shipment of 4 books from Tor not make it into the bags (due to issues with receving pallets for 4800 books) or a couple of books from Tachyon Publishing be left out made the bags a bit empty inside.

The book bag assembly line.

Lots and lots of filled bags.

Book bags ready and waiting for the attendees to cart them off.

On Thursday night was a group author reading/signing at Flights of Fantasy in Albany, NY, with eight authors seen above in this panoramic shot made from two photos. From Left to right are Toni Kelner, Charlaine Harris, James Alan Gardner, Esther Friesner, Lois McMaster Bujold, Lynn Flewelling, Anne Bishop, and Caroline Stevermer. The cat's name is Amber.

Each did a short reading. Lois McMaster Bujold read from her latest novel, The Sharing Knife: Legacies.

Back at World Fantasy, there were lots of panels during the weekend including this one on Ghosts moderated by Paul Cornell. Other panelists are Esther Friesner, Jennifer Swabach, Maria Lima, Stacey Cochran, and Jennifer Dunne.

Friday night was the mass autographing. Here is the ballroom before everyone arrived.

Here's the ballroom mostly filled by signing authors and fans trying to find all of them. We had a lot of books to get signed and were mostly successful. I probably should have taken more pictures, but running around with a lot of books takes a lot of time. I did get a few pictures of some authors signing or chatting.

Tim Powers

Jay Lake (with some extras of the freebie book of his)

Terry McGarry, Esther Friesner, and Jennifer Swabach

Holly Black and Cassanda Clare

Lisa Tuttle and Patrick Rothfuss

Scott Lynch (in the art show)

The art show was set up with a large open area where some of the artists hung out. On Saturday a lot of them were doing sketches. On the left hand side above are Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell.

Charles Vess working on a sketch.

David Hartwell is known for his loud ties. I'm not sure if loud is the correct adjective for this one. He even wore it to the World Fantasy Awards banquet on Sunday.

On Sunday night we were back at Flights of Fantasy for an even bigger reading/signing. This time they were asked to read a paragraph. From left to right are Patrick Rothfuss, Delia Sherman, Joshua Palmatier, Ellen Datlow, Patricia McKillip, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear, Morgan Howell (Will Hubbell), David Lunde, Jana Paniccia, Julie Czerneda, and Kristen Britain.

World Fantasy 2007: Day -1

2007-10-31T23:04:00.000-06:00

We've made it to Saratoga Springs for the 2007 World Fantasy convention. Nothing official is happening yet other than setup and a lot of people in the bar already. If it is anything like it was in 2004 in Phoenix, the bar will be packed all weekend and they will probably need to restock by Friday.

Just tonight we ran into Arizona author Adam Niswander, Brit Paul Cornell, Charles Vess, John Picacio, Gardner Dozoi, Locus editor Liza Trombi, and Locus publisher Charles Brown. Those were just the ones I easily recognized.

Lee

Hogfather is coming, as well as Colour of Magic

2007-10-31T22:46:00.000-06:00

Its getting to that time of year when the Hogfather shows up to hand out toys to all the good boys and girls. At least in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The TV miniseries adaptation of Hogfather will be broadcast in the U.S. for the first time on Sunday night, November 25th on ION TV at 7 pm ET/6 pm CT as part of the RHI Movie Weekend. ION Television (formerly the PAX Network) airs on many local stations and is also available on cable and satellite TV. To find out where the network is in your local area, go to the ION TV website and click on "Find us by Zip Code" in the upper right corner of the screen.

The full press release about the airing can be found here. Youtube has the trailer for the premiere The RHI Films Hogfather page has some information an pictures for the US broadcast. The Sky One TV page for the UK broadcast of Hogfather last year has a lot of good behind the scenes information. Sadly, at this time the video portions cannot be viewed by U.S. viewers. If you can't wait for the TV broadcast, a Borders Exclusive DVD release will hit Borders stores on Tuesday, November 13th. The DVD will contain the miniseries and an interview with Terry Pratchett. It apparently will not include the additional material that is on the U.K. DVD which includes several Making of Hogfather segments as well as The Twelve Days of Hogswatch that were made availabe on the Sky One web site. The general release of the DVD to the rest of the U.S. is planned for March and will likely be a 2 DVD set with the extra material.

The Hogfather miniseries is just the beginning, though. Currently in production is a miniseries based on the first two Discworld novels, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. It stars David Jason as Rincewind, Sean Astin as Twoflower, and Tim Curry as Trymon. Sky One has an official production site for The Colour of Magic. It is expected to air in the UK around Easter and likely will air in the US later in 2008.

Yes, I will be chairing the first North American Discworld Convention coming up in September of 2009. Full details will be announced soon.

Lee

New Schedule Lists Updated, TV BIg Shot

2007-10-28T23:59:00.000-06:00

The latest schedules have been updated at sftv.org. I've also got a good bit of news in the Upcoming Schedule update as well. Things have been a bit busy as I get ready for a busy month of conventioning with World Fantasy Convention, TusCon 34 (still a maybe) and LosCon 34. I did make it out to the Horror/SciFi Film Festival and got to see Claudia Christian.

As for TV Big Shot, after some problems getting things working properly, things have settled down a bit. My SFTVPlus network is in the top 60 and moving up fast. I missed out on some of the initial ratings gains that garnered bonus points for those that caught on in time for the first week of ratings, but I've managed to keep pace to some extent. The main issue is that one of the users did make the right choices in the first couple of weeks and has several networks heading up the top of the heap. I think its still possible to catch him by making the best use of your budget during the heavy repeat weeks and if there's a writer's strike, trying to guess what will do well in the filler shows will not be a simple task. If anything, I've picked some shows this week that may garner significant bonus points if they do as I expect them to while the leader appears to be playing things safe this week.

Lee

Bloodsuckers, Zombies, and Horror/SciFi Film Festival

2007-10-09T22:38:00.000-06:00

Blood Ties Is Back.

First up, this weekend is the return of Blood Ties to Lifetime on Friday night at 11 pm ET/PT, following their new psychic shows. This is the back half of the first season production order of 22 episodes. Lifetime originally committed to 13 episodes when they aired it back in March and it did well enough for them they picked up the back 9, and also held back the last episode of the first block to make it an even ten episodes.

Tanya Huff, the writer of the book series the TV series is based on, has been continuing to blog about it on her livejournal, especially since it recently started airing in Canada as well. At this point, Lifetime has not indicated if they want more of the series and producers are encouraging Canadian Fans to write to CITYTV and Space.

Phoenix Zombie Walk

This past weekend as part of the Phoenix Cactus ComicCon and International Horror/SciFi Film Festival Promotion, they held a Zombie Walk during the First Friday Art Walk in downtown Phoenix. Lots of pictures can be found at Amy Black's flicker archive. She's the Zombie Beauty Queen and organizer of the walk. They will be having a Zombie beauty pageant at the Comic Con in January.

Horror/SciFi Film Festival in Phoenix - with Claudia Christian & Linda Blair

Coming up next weekend, Oc 19-21, is the International Horror/SciFi Film Festival in Tempe, Arizona. Brian Pulido judges the Horror films and Michael Stackpole judges the SciFi Films. In addition to the various films that were submitted and judged, they've got some special screenings with Linda Blair, Claudia Christian, some Star Wars Fan Films, and others.

If you want to catch a lot of films at the festival, the best way is to get the VIP pass, which normally costs you $100, but since I'm involved with Leprecon, Inc., which is a sponsor of the festival, if you use the code PARTNER, you can get the VIP pass for $80.

SFTV Network Ratings Update

2007-10-08T22:27:00.000-06:00

The second week of the new season has come and gone and none of the new genre shows have been cancelled yet!

That doesn't mean that a few dropped off a bit in the second week and they better not keep sliding, though.

First up, NBC's SciFi Monday has some legs, although Journeyman's are getting a bit wobbly, in part due to losing a good chunk of the lead-in provided by Heroes. The first week's total ratings for Heroes were bumped up a bit due to a new Nielsen rule that allows a network to show the same episode twice in a week and add the ratings points together if all of the commercials are the same. Thus the second week of Heroes dropped quite a bit from the first week but in actuality was close to the same. Both Chuck and Journeyman dropped a bit over 10% from their first week, which isn't too bad compared to some of the other new shows in their second week.

On Tuesday, Reaper did OK, dropping about 15% from its debut, but not losing any of its Beauty and the Geek lead-in.

Wednesday saw a big drop by The Bionic Woman, about 18% in ratings and 27% in the adult 18-49 demographic. Wednesday also saw Pushing Daisies debut very strongly with an 8.3 overnight rating.

On Thursday, Smallville held fairly close to its season debut and Supernatural returned at about its season average.

Friday saw CBS's lineup hold fairly steady, with Ghost Whisperer, Moonlight, and Numb3rs dropping only slightly from their season debuts.

Thanks for The Futon Critic for the ratings info...

On the cable front, Stargate Atlantis returned to SciFi on Sept 28th and drew a 1.2 rating. Definitely better than Painkiller Jane or Flash Gordon had been doing. This past Friday, SciFi started airing the Battlestar Galactica Razor flashbacks during Flash Gordon, which in turn delayed the start of Stargate Atlantis. If you don't want to sit through Flash Gordon, SciFi is making them available online as well. Also, it appears that the Friday night before the Razor movie airs, SciFi will air all of them during the 9:00 pm to 10:30 pm time slot during an Enterprise marathon.

In other SciFi news, they announced that Ghost Hunters International will debut in January. It looks like between the original Ghost Hunters, the Ghost Hunters International, and the upcoming UFO Hunters, they'll be having something new each week year round.

As for my TV Big Shot Network(s), I've done fair the first week (didn't realize how significant the points were for a ratings gain, which really paid off for shows that debuted strong versus the network's average last year) but I hope to take advantage of the gains in budget I made selling sliding shows and buying rising shows to start to make progress. That's why there isn't much SFTV in SFTVPlus because most of the genre shows dropped in the second week. Yes, I have no clue about the image for my network, it keeps showing up even when I have replaced it with something else. There's still a few bugs to be worked out of the system.

New Season Ratings Report

2007-09-30T11:29:00.000-06:00

Network Ratings Update

We're at the end of the first week of the new season with somewhat surprising results from the new crop of genre shows. Here's a quick rundown using numbers reported on The Futon Critic.

Monday - NBC's lineup of three back to back genre shows fared relatively well. The second season debut of Heroes had ratings comparable to the season average for the show and about 10% above the show's debut last year.

Both Chuck and Journyman debuted with OK numbers, although compared to year ago ratings of previous time slot holders, they were both down. NBC may be willing to give both shows a chance to be found or at least see where the ratings level out to in the next couple of weeks. Last year, Studio 60 debuted strong but dropped quickly and nothing else NBC aired after Heroes was a success.

Tuesday - The CW's debut of Reaper did slightly better than Veronica Mars season opener last year in the time slot, especially in the male demographics.

Wednesday - In probably the biggest surprise so far, the debut of The Bionic Woman drew very good ratings for NBC, handily beating the year ago ratings and giving NBC its best ratings in the time slot since The West Wing in 1999. This was up against the debut of the highly promoted spinoff of Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice. Bionic Woman didn't have the top overall ratings, but did beat Private Practice in the adult 18-49 demos.

Thursday - Smallville's return was 13% lower than last season's debut. It may pick up a bit this week with the episode fully introducing Kara Zor-El.

Friday - Moonlight debuted with ratings pretty much on par with Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs, providing a pretty good link between the two shows. However, both Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs were down close to 20% in total ratings and the adult demos from a year ago.

The other thing to keep in mind is that DVR penetration has gotten higher since a year ago, so once live + 7 day ratings are added in, the overall ratings will likely improve. If anything, none of the new genere shows had debuted with weak ratings which would get them pulled right away (ala Nashville on FOX).

Still to come for its series debut is Pushing Daisies on ABC this coming Wednesday, which will likely benefit from lots of promotion during Dancing With the Stars. The CW's third season of Supernatural returns on Thursday.

SciFi Notes

SciFi Channel has renewed Eureka and Destination: Truth for new seasons, both of which will air next summer.

The Battlestar Galactica minisodes from Razor will start airing next week during Flash Gordon. These feature a young Bill Adama during the first cylon war and preview the Razor TV movie debuting on SciFi on November 24th.

SciFi also reported that the return of Ghost Hunters on Wednesday drew its biggest numbers ever at a 1.44 rating and over 2 million viewers, doing very well against new shows on cable and the networks (even beating The CW's Gossip Girl in the adult demographics). It will be interesting to see how Stargate Atlantis fares in its return without SG-1 as a lead-in and low ratings for Flash Gordon.

Lee

I'm a TV Big Shot!

2007-09-21T23:42:00.000-06:00

TV Big Shot!

Television Without Pity and Bravo have launched a new Fantasy TV competition called TV Big Shot which allows users to buy and sell current TV shows, gaining points on how well they do in the ratings and other factors. It launched early this week and appears to be having some growing pains (as well as some confusion about how it all will work, especially with shows going on hiatus or in limbo). Since they do have a grand prize of $100,000, there will be a lot of people trying to win and right now it isn't clear what is the best strategy. You are limited to a budget of $300 million and the way shows are priced, that will get you two hit shows and one or two other lower priced shows. My network, SFTVPlus will likely not win overall, but I figured I'd try a mostly genre strategy. No one will actually get
any points until after next weeks ratings are in, so it's currently a list of 6000+ networks all hoping to do better than the others. With the limited budget for each network, it may make it difficult to have one single one break ahead of the pack.

SFTV Schedules Updated

The SFTV Schedules have been updated and the upcoming schedule file will be emailed out this weekend. In the meantime, you can check things out to the right of the page.

WorldCon, The Mini Doctor, Flash Fizzles Even More

2007-09-11T00:11:00.000-06:00

A few quick things to post here after a bit of a lag due to CopperCon last weekend.

Paul Cornell's WorldCon report - A report by Paul Cornell on his trip to WorldCon and Japan.

Which includes a link to the Mini-Doctor's trip. "She had good buns, indeed!"

As a followup to the post about Flash Gordon and Bonnie Hammer. This week's SciFi top ten did see Flash Gordon in its third week, at a .8 rating. That means almost half of the people who tuned in to the debut episode have not come back. No sign of Doctor Who, Who Wants to be a Superhero or Painkiller Jane, either. Repeats of former Saturday night movies such as Mega Snake and Ice Spiders still have legs.

TOP 10 SCI FI CHANNEL PROGRAMS
1 ECW 1.7
2 Eureka 1.7
3 In the Spider's Web 1.0
4 Mega Snake 1.0
5 Ghost Hunters 0.9
6 Sasquatch 0.9
7 Ice Spiders 0.9
8 Flash Gordon 0.8
9 Marabunta 0.8
10. Earth vs. Spider 0.8

Source: Nielsen Galaxy Report, 8/20/07 -- 8/26/07

Long Range Dr. Who Plans for the BBC, Galactica to be Strung Out?

2007-09-03T16:04:00.000-06:00

BBC Commits to Doctor Who Through 2010

In an official BBC Press Release, the BBC has announced their plans for Doctor Who into 2010. Recently, it was announced that David Tennant was committed to a lengthy run for the Briitish Shakespeare company that would obviously overlap with what the normal filming schedule for Doctor Who would be. In the BBC Announcement, they indicate the Doctor Who schedule will be as follows:

Christmas 2007 - New special
Season Four - Spring 2008
Christmas 2008 - New Special
2009 - Three specials (with Tennant and Russell T. Davies)
2010 - Full Fifth Series of 13 episodes

The BBC doesn't indicate any more details about the fifth series, which has already led to speculation on if Tennant or Davies will continue. This does make some sense when you look at the production of other BBC series, most of which don't do more than a few series and then end. The fact that Doctor Who has done four series in four years plus three Christmas specials is pretty remarkable and giving the actors and producers a bit of a break will probably help (plus they still have Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to produce and who knows what else they might come up with for other productions, be it a Doctor Who related spinoff or something completely different).

Battlestar Galactica Final Season Being Stretched into 2009?

In a report on some of the Battlestar Galactica actors at DragonCon this weekend posted on Ain't It Cool News, the actors indicated that SciFi currently plans to run the first half of the 20 episode final season in January 2008 and hold the remaining ten episodes until early 2009! SciFi appears to want to get as much mileage as they can with the final run of BG, and this will likely mean a split season release (or calling them season four and season five). Of course, if Sky TV in the UK gets to run all 20 episodes straight through and airs them before SciFi, it may be a moot point for a lot of fans.

A Quick Note to NBC Universal

2007-09-02T22:18:00.000-06:00

Dear NBC Universal,

Don't you think its about time to admit that Bonnie Hammer doesn't really need to oversee two networks and let someone have a shot at running the SciFi Channel that might be able to either come up with something people will watch or let something that people do watch and has potential to grow its audience stick around?

Cases in Point...

1. Painkiller Jane - Debuted at a 1.3 rating, settled down at maybe a .6 or .7 rating. That has already been canceled. Maybe it was a good deal since you did a co-production arrangement so the people who produced it could sell it in weekly syndication and it didn't cost SciFi that much. At least they let the viewers who were watching it know that it will end at the end of the season and it isn't being renewed.

2. Flash Gordon - It debuted with the highest numbers of any new series on SciFi this year. At a 1.5 rating it was slightly better than Dresden Files' 1.4 debut. Dresden Files did manage to keep most of its viewers though. Looking at this weeks SciFi Wire report on the top 10 SciFi Channel shows we see no sign of Flash Gordon, which means it at best was a .9 rating, which means over 1/3 of the households that tuned into the first episode didn't come back the next week.

3. Tin Man - SciFi appears to be concerned about this year's big miniseries. A recent survey done with the NBC viewer survey board was primarily to see if a different name might encourage people to watch it. Things like "Behind the Brick Road" or "Battle for Oz!" were asked opinions of. How about "Oz ReImmed" to reflect the reimagining of The Wizard of Oz to the point where no one wants to see it? Of course, that appears to have not worked very well with Flash Gordon.

SciFi in general is suffering from a lot of ratings erosion, whether its due to people using their PVRs, buying them on Itunes (which NBC Universal has pulled the plug on for the new season, reportedly because Apple wasn't willing to charge more for the episodes), or just downloading them off the internet. Down the pike they don't have anything really exciting in the works for new series and coming up this fall, to go with repurposed episodes of The Bionic Woman, they will be showing Odyssey Five as a lead in to Flash Gordon and Stargate Atlantis. Granted, O5 was an interesting series, but it has been out on DVD for a while but its not likely to do gangbuster ratings, either. I have a feeling that Stargate Atlantis will have trouble keeping its viewers with the lousy leadin it will have with Flash (assuming Flash makes it to October).

I noticed that Who Wants to be a Superhero apparently isn't doing that well, either. It's season debut was at best a .8 rating and it hasn't made Scifi's top ten so far. Mind Control with Darren Brown hasn't cracked the top ten in its short run, either. WWTBASH is a fun show, and I'll have more on it later this week, but its not going to save the SciFi channel in the ratings wars. In fact, SciFi has moved up the finale a week, airing the final two episodes this week and dropped a planned marathon of the rest of the episodes that would have aired on September 13th. Unfortunately, the Skiffytown Superheroes may not have a show to try out for and Stan Lee can concentrate on his turning Paris Hilton into a superhero. Says Stan "The plan is to make an animated cartoon show with her on TV. A hip comedy in the superhero comedy-adventure genre. We get on very well. This is a charming, very likable person. Sophisticated. Great comedic sense. A fine voice. And seriously, hard-working. Totally unlike whatever the public is led to believe."

FYI, there is a petition at petitionsonline to have Bonnie Hammer replaced. A lot of their demands on the petition are a bit misplaced or not possible, but the sentiment is good.

New Star Trek Worth Catching

2007-09-02T18:57:00.000-06:00

Last week saw the debut of the latest episode of the fan produced Star Trek New Voyages series, "World Enough and Time." This is the third full episode of the series and sets a new standard for "fan" produced episodes. There's been a lot of attention given to the Star Wars Fan Films and the prior New Voyages episode, "To Serve All My Days" featured Walter Koenig as Chekov in a script by D.C. Fontana, got a bit of publicity. There's also the ongoing Star Trek Hidden Frontier fan film series that has produced seven seasons worth of episodes.

For the latest Star Trek New Voyages released, Marc Scott Zicree approached the producers with a script based on a story originally developed by Michael Reaves for the Star Trek Phase II TV series that was scuttled in favor of the first Star Trek movie. Zicree directed and co-wrote the script and enlisted George Takei to play an older Sulu, seen on the Excelsior with Janice Rand (played by Grace Lee Whitney) as well as Sulu after he was stranded for 30 or so years on an alien planet. Zicree also enlisted a lot of well regarded people for behind the scenes and also worked with the regular cast to improve their acting (Zicree's wife, Elaine, ran acting workshops for the cast). When I talked with Zicree last year at WesterCon and again at CopperCon (just a couple of weeks before filming was done), he was excited about putting it together and wanted to make it the best production it could be.

For the new episode, they did a hollywood premiere and set the episode up to be streamed online but found out that they grossly underestimated the demand for it and had a lot of problems getting it streamed. They do now have it streaming for the most part and also have set the episode up on their official Star Trek New Voyages Bittorrent site.

The episode tells a good story, bringing Sulu to front and center early in the episode and putting him through an emotional wringer by the time the episode is done with. The acting by the regular cast has improved over the prior episodes and the guest cast is very good. Takei definitely enjoys getting a chance to play Sulu again and makes the most of it.

What's next for the Star Trek New Voyages crew? They've already filmed the next installment this summer, "Blood and Fire" with David Gerrold directing his own script, which was adapted from his original script done for Star Trek: The Next Generation. On David's blog, he goes into detail on the genesis for the story and the original script, why it didn't get made back then and what he hoped to accomplish with it now. This doesn't have any of the original crew reprising their roles, but he does have Denise Crosby (ST:TNG's Yar) and Bill Blair (The Alien Actor) taking part and a good crew behind the scenes including Rick Sternbach and Daren R. Dochterman (currently working on remastering the original series for HD). After that, they have a Harry Mudd centric episode, "The Sky Above, the Mudd Below", written by Howard Weinstein, and starring J.G. Hertzler (DS9's Martok) as Harry Mudd.

Until we get the new Star Trek movie next December, we've got some good efforts to watch continuing the Trek legacy.

BuboniCon 39 in Albuquerque

2007-08-28T23:36:00.000-06:00

You want Authors? We got Authors! and some Green Slime, too!

I made it to Bubonicon for the second time last weekend, which is a small, but growing, convention that's been going for quite a while. The majority of the local authors come out to take part and they usually have a good number of authors coming from nearby areas as well as a few from out of town. It is a fairly relaxed convention and a lot of the authors hang around to chat with fans and each other, or sit in the audience for panels with other authors.

This year's Author GoH was Vernor Vinge, with William Stout as Artist GoH and Jane Lindskold as Toastmaster. Other authors participating included Connie Willis, Daniel Abraham, Walter Jon Williams and more. Check out the Bubonicon site for the full list. George R.R. Martin wasn't scheduled to participate, but did show up to hang out and participate in the group signing.

Highlights for me included Connie Willis' "50 Minutes With" where she discussed the current state of her new novel and also read from her new novella,"All Seated on the Ground", being published in the December Asimov's. It is a pretty funny story and I'm glad we won't have to wait too long before being able to read the rest of it. It's about a group of aliens who land in Denver, come out of their ship, and just stand there. For months. Without anything getting a reaction from them, until they all sit down when hearing a christmas carol. Connie left us with the line "Whatever you do, don't play them any more christmas carols!".

They had their mass autographing on Saturday afternoon with almost all of the participating authors taking part. Here's just a few of them....

They also held a remembrance panel later in the day on Saturday, with Connie Willis and Melinda Snodgrass talking about Jack Williamson and Fred Saberhagen, who passed away in the last year. Members of Williamson's family were not able to attend due to services for Richard A. Hauptmann, a friend of Jack who passed away on August 20th. Connie, Melinda and other authors and fans related stories about Jack, Fred and Richard.

During their Sunday auction, one of their annual traditions is auctioning off a copy of John Lymington's Froomb!, a really bad novel that is auctioned off each year with the winner having to read it and write comments in the book. This has been going on for several years and they have recently added a copy of Lymington's other novel, The Green Drift, to the package. This year it went for $100!

To close out the convention, the Green Slime awards is presented by Kathy K. Kubica. There wasn't a really outstandingly bad movie this year, but Underdog was awarded for being a movie that really wasn't needed, SciFi for mucking with the Dresden Files and then canceling it without giving it a chance, Laurell K. Hamilton for her continuing decline as an author, The Creation Museum, and a Superman toy with sound effects and glowing eyes when his heat vision comes on that looks demonic.

There's some con photos uploaded to the Bubonicon Flickr group (which will soon include some of mine).

If you want to get some signed books from some of the authors, you shoudl contact Who Else? Books. They do not have online listings, but most of the authors signed new and used books for them.

SciFi October Preview

2007-08-27T19:26:00.000-06:00

SciFi Goes Halloweenie this October

SciFi's October schedule is now visiable via SciFi's schedulebot or via their cable info PDF file. With October being the month of Halloween, SciFi is going overboard with a 13 days of Halloween promotion in addition to a week of horror tinged episodes during their daytime blocks.

First up, as indicated previously, Doctor Who and Eureka end their current seasons on SciFi early in October, with Eureka having an all day marathon leading up to its season finale on October 2nd. New episodes of Flash Gordon and Stargate Atlantis run each Friday night during the month along with repurposed episodes of The Bionic Woman at 7 pm ET/PT (with no sign of repurposing for Chuck, Journeyman or Heroes). Joining the SciFi Friday lineup on Oct 13th at 8 pm ET/PT will be Odyssey 5, starring Peter Weller and Christopher Gorham (Jake 2.0 and Ugly Betty). When originally aired on Showtime in 2002, Showtime stopped airing the series with eight of its 20 episodes left to air and finally screened them two years later in October 2004. It has been released on DVD and SciFi's airings will likely have some bleeping going on (or alternate audio).

For Halloween, SciFi starts things off the week of October 15th where their daytime rotation will feature horror tinged shows (Night Stalker, X-Files, Kindred: The Embraced, Wolf Lake and Tales From the Darkside. Starting on Friday, October 19th, SciFi goes into full "13 days of Halloween" mode with their schedule being pretty much nothing but horror and monster movies aside for their Friday night original series, Tuesday's ECW, and a block of Ghost Hunters with The Haunted on Wednesday nights (The Monday Enterprise/Ani-Monday blocks air on Oct 22nd, but are pre-empted on Oct 29th). This all culminates in a six hour live episode of Ghost Hunters starting a 9 pm ET on Wednesday, October 31.

SFTV Catchup

2007-08-19T11:50:00.000-06:00

A few various things from the last week to catch up with....

SciFi Channel Roundup Jane Cancelled, Flash Debut So-So, Fall dates for BG: Razor and Atlantis, NBC repurposing

The SciFi Channel announced that they will not be renewing Painkiller Jane for a second season due to low ratings. They will continue to run the series through the season finale in September.

The debut of Flash Gordon on August 10th did a 1.5 household rating and around 2.1 million viewers. This was the highest debut for a new series in 2007 for SciFi, which was slightly better than when the Dresden Files debuted with a 1.4 rating back in January.

SciFi also announced some airdates for their fall shows.

Stargate Atlantis returns on September 28th for its fourth season, airing at 10 pm ET/PT and will run pretty much straight through until the mid-season finale on December 7th.

The Battlestar Galactica special "Razor" will air on Saturday, November 24th. Leading up to the broadcast will be the "Razor" minisoded that will air during Flash Gordon starting in October.

Ghost Hunters will resume its third season on Wednesday, Sept 26th and will also have its second Halloween special that will air from 11 pm to 5 am ET/PT on October 31 and will be broadcast live from one of the most haunted places in America, Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville, Kentucky. Being paired up with Ghost Hunters on Wednesdays, will be the 2002 UPN series, Haunted, starring Matthew Fox, who seems to have done better with his next series, Lost. UPN pulled the series after seven episodes, leaving six episodes unaired.

SciFi looks to be planning to repurpose NBC's Journeyman, Bionic Woman and Chuck, but do not appear to have Heroes on their schedule. The last week of September shows Journeyman airing at 7 pm on Thursday with The Bionic Woman at 7 pm on Friday. On Sunday night, they have Chuck scheduled at 11 pm with Journeyman at 12 midnight. Once Doctor Who ends its run in the 8 pm Friday time slot, it may be that one of the NBC shows will take over that time slot on Oct 11th.

SciFi also last week dropped their two hour block of Tru Calling on Tuesday nights, replacing it with one episode of Dead Like Me and a repeat of a Eureka episode. That is how the schedule looks through the end of September.

Canadian TV Updates

I've found a website, TV Eh?, that is specifically about Canadian TV shows, networks and news. It looks like things will be getting a bit busier this fall for SF TV on Canadian channels, which may include some things airing before they do in the US.

Blood Ties - The series will debut this week on CityTV in Canada, with different times depending on where you are watching City TV. The show will also air on Space this fall, at 9 pm Fridays starting September 14th.

Masters of Science Fiction - Space will also air Masters of Science Fiction beginning November 4th, planning to air all six episodes.

The Day of Reckoning, or Not.

2007-08-10T18:15:00.000-06:00

There's several things of importance happening today or have happened in the past...

First up, Stardust!

The movie adapation of Stardust, the illustrated novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, is released to theatres today. There's been a lot of preview screenings including the one I attended in San Diego during ComicCon and there's been various reviews posted online, the majority of them positive ones. Our local papers, The Phoenix New Times and The Arizona Republic had less favorable reviews, showing that they just don't get it at times.

I enjoyed the movie and plan to see it again this weekend. Neil Gaiman has asked that fans go see it during opening weekend to show your support for good movies, especially ones with a Neil Gaiman connection. What would be really neat is for it to beat Rush Hour 3 in Box office, which likely isn't going to happen since RH3 is probably opening in four times as many screens as Stardust, but if Stardust gets a good per screen average, that will be a good thing.

Yes, there are differences from the book, in part to expand the story a bit more and make it more cinematic. Neil Gaiman is happy with how it turned out and describes the differences as akin to Earth-1 versus Earth-2 versions (or is it Earth 42 or so with the new DC Multiverse, but I digress...). Despite the tone of the movie trailers produced by Paramount, the movie is more than just an action adventure, with a good deal of magic, romance and humour (spelled the British way).

Next Up - Flash Gordon ?!~
As anyone who has watched anything on the SciFi Channel of late knows, today is the debut of the new Flash Gordon TV series. I have not had the opportunity to see the pilot in advance to pass judgement on it myself, but this roll call of critics reviews collected by Hercules of Ain't It Cool News definitely leads me to believe it is going to be the train wreck I was expecting. First of all, when SciFi announced back in January (completely out of the blue), that they were making a Flash Gordon series to debut in July of this year, I had my doubts they could pull it off. At the time of the announcement and even a few weeks afterwards, it was apparent that they didn't even have a concept on how to remake it or had any casting. When the casting was announced of Eric Johnson as Flash, it definitely wasn't anything to get many fans excited (Lana Lang's jock boyfriend from Smallville?) and the rest of the cast are pretty much standard spot-the-Canuck actors we've seen turn up on a lot of Canadian produced TV shows. When they finally admitted who was running the show, Peter Hume (Charmed, South Beach), there was yet another big yawn. When the biggest news about the start of filming was that they were able to reuse sets from the Tin Man miniseries to represent Ming's palace on Mongo, it was apparent they were stretching to find something to try to get people's interest up. Then, when we started to get actual information on their take on modernizing the show, expectations were lowered even more (no rockets, just a wormhole/rift to travel between Earth and Mongo, Ming is a blonde Canadian with no real apparent alienness - who knows, maybe it will work), and with seeing actual clips form the show, it looks pretty much standard made in Vancouver show. SciFi has been struggling with their first run dramas, Battlestar Galactica and the Stargates have all declined in the ratings, Painkiller Jane has hardly made their top ten for the week, likely averaging about half what Galactica and the Stargates were getting in the ratings, The one show that held some promise and had halfway decent ratings during its 12 week run, The Dresden Files, Scifi seemed to disown it and only just recently admitted they had no plans to renew the show. This after stringing fans along for months without anything more than a "no decision has been made" response. I expect there will be some curiosity tune-in for Flash Gordon tonight, but I will be surprised if it manages to hang on to much of a loyal audience.

August 10th Birthdays and other Happenings

Famous people born on August 10th include Claudia Christian (of Babylon 5 fame and apparently isn't enough of a celebrity anymore to make the "Celebrity Birthdays" list in the papers today), Rosanna Arquette, Antonio Banderas, Kate O'Mara (Dynasty and Doctor Who's The Rani) and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. It is also my birthday, number 50 (ack!). It is also the date that the Babylon 5 pilot started filming in 1992, and the date I first visited the Babylon 5 set in 1995. I also use this date as an annual request for donations to help support SFTV.org. Amazon.com gift certificates or paypal donations can be sent to leewsftv@yahoo.com .

NeilCon, or the Neil Gaiman Subset of ComicCon International 2007

2007-08-08T23:35:00.000-06:00

As I've seen mentioned a few times, the San Diego Comic Con International is so big that you basically need to decide what convention you want to make for yourself. This year, I elected to make my Comic Con experience focus on Neil Gaiman. I didn't see everything he was one, but made it a point to catch his spotlight panel and two of the three movie presentations he was part of at the Horton Plaza theatre.

First off, a somewhat organized report on the screenings:
One of the highlights of this year's Comic Con International were some special screenings arranged for three movies based on Neil Gaiman works. First up was one for Beowulf, for which a screening was held on Wednesday night with Neil Gaiman and co-screenwriter Roger Avary. With it happening on Wednesday night, there was confusion about who could actually get in to see it, though. The people at the Paramount booth either didn't know about it, claimed it was for press only, or later claimed it didn't actually happen. It did happen and Paramount did screen a taping of it on Thursday afternoon a couple of times. I was not able to make any of those screenings, but did see Gaiman and Avary talk about the movie in the big Paramount presentation on Thursday afternoon in Hall H. Gaiman first took the stage to talk about Stardust with screenwriter Jane Goldman, showing an extended clip from the film. When they were done with that segment, Neil walked off stage as he had been told to do, and then came back on stage with Roger Avary. You can see video from those panels on Youtube. First the Stardust segment with Jane Goldman and then the Beowulf panel with Roger Avary.

Thursday night was a preview screening of Stardust, with Neil Gaiman and Jane Goldman introducing the movie and holding a short Q&A session afterwards. For this screening, there were 50 VIP passes made available via the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for which those who sprung for it got a limited print by Charles Vess (1 of 50) signed by Gaiman and Vess, a set of the Stardust frangrances by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and a VIP ticket to the screening. Paramount also handed out passes at their booth, having them snatched up very quickly by fans eager to see the movie early. Of course, they handed out more passes than there were seats and those who arrived late weren't able to get in. Having sprung for the CBLDF VIP package, I was able to bypass the line outside and take a seat in the reserved section.

As it grew nearer to the start of the Stardust screening, the theatre filled up and sitting down the aisle from me was Charles Vess and, I assume, some other people involved with the movie. Neil and Jane were introduced and did a short introduction for the film and then did a Q&A session afterwards. I'll be posting a detailed review of the movie later this week, but I quite enjoyed it and the audience gave Neil and Jane a standing ovation as they went back to the front of the stage for the Q&A session. As Neil had indicated onstage earlier in the day, the movie is different from the book in such a way as to describe the book as the Earth-1 version of the story while the movie is the Earth-2 version. The story was restructured a bit so that we actually met up with Tristan Thorne much earlier in the movie and he has a much quicker journey to where the star has landed. When asked about the role of Captain Shakespeare and if it was expanded for the movie because the signed up Robert DeNiro, Goldman indicated that the role had been expanded as part of creating the movie script and that it grew a bit more when DeNiro was brought on board. Gaiman talked about when he visited the set and was able to walk around on the full size flying ship set. He recounted that he put a flying ship in the story because he thought it would be neat to have Charles Vess draw a flying ship as part of the illustrations. It took him a few minutes to write it, and probably a few hours for Charles to draw it. When he was standing on the set that took workers two months to build and several million dollars, he started to feel a bit guilty about it, though. For those wondering why it is Tristan Thorne in the movie while in the original book it was Tristran Thorn, Gaiman said that when director Matthew Vaughn was getting things written down, he referenced a British paperback edition of Stardust that had the character name as Tristan Thorne on back of the book and once Michael had it written down that way, it stuck. Thus probably perpetuating the Earth-1 vs. Earth-2 analogy.

During the Rogue/Focus pictures panel in Hall H on Saturday, Neil Gaiman once again took the stage, this time with director Henry Selick to talk about the stop motion 3D animated movie based on Gaiman's Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus Poll, and Bram Stoker award winning story Coraline. They formally announced a special screening that night with passes being handed out at the Rogue Focus pictures booth later that afternoon. I managed to get by the booth and get a pass, although it appeared that the passes that were more popular were those for a preview screening of Balls of Fury. I imagine that people who were in Hall H that heard about it didn't want to leave the hall to get a pass for fear they would not be able to get back in and those who might have wanted to see it didn't even know it was happening. Those of us who were able to check Neil's blog knew that something was happening and were able to figure it out.

After packing my stuff up from the J. Michael Straczynski spotlight, I caught the comiccon shuttle bus up to the Horton Plaza and found a relatively short line of fans lined up for the screening. I was early enough to have time to get something to eat and relax a bit before heading back to my place in line, seeing that it had grown a bit while I was away. They did have a couple of posters on display outside of the theatre and it was a fairly relaxed crowd when they started to let us in. As expected, they were checking bags and purses to prevent anyone from taping the presentation. They were relatively nice about it compared to other screenings I've been to and since most people had come directly from the convention, they still had their cameras. I was allowed to keep my camera by removing the memory card and putting it in my pocket. After the screening, I was able to take a couple of pictures (really dark, though) of Neil and Henry signing the posters they handed out.

The crowd was a mixture of Gaiman fans (a couple of girls dressed up as Death and Delirium), industry types and Gaiman's family (his daughter Maddy and son Mike) as well as his assistants who had been watching over him all weekend. Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick sat down in the front of the theatre and started with showing various test footage of each of the major characters including Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), her Mother and the Other Mother (both voiced by Teri Hatcher), her rubbernecked Father (voiced by John Hodgman), the obese Miss Forcible and top-heavy Miss Spink (voiced by Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, respectively). Selick noted that French and Saunders had originally been cast with the other roles (French as Miss Spink and Saunders as Miss Forcible) but that when they were doing readings, something seemed to be missing. When they had them switch parts, it really clicked and that is how it has ended up. The look of the character design in the movie is different from the Dave McKean illustrations in the original book and were primarily developed by visual designer Tadehiro Uesugi. We saw test footage of characters walking and moving as well as some test footage with syncing the faces up to the dialogue. In most footage there was still a line below most characters foreheads that is part of the physical puppet. Selick indicated that they planned to remove those for the final film as well as the visible support beams needed for some characters. Gaiman indicated he kindof liked that lines on the face and hope they stay in. I guess we'll find out when the movie is released next year how it ends up. After concluding showing us the test footage, they asked us to put on our 3D glasses and screened a mostly completed section of the film lasting about ten minutes that showed Coraline discovering the door between her house and the Other house and ending with the discovery of the Other Mother with her noticeable difference from her real mother. The 3D is more subtle in the real world and is more noticeable in the Other world. The footage looked very good and the look of the film is really outstanding visually. Selick said that when they decided to do it in 3D, they redesigned and rebuilt some of the sets to make it work better in 3D and it really did look good. It think this will set a new standard for stop motion animation and will be worth catching by viewers of all ages.

After the screening was done, Gaiman and Selick took a few more questions and then it was announced that those with pieces of paper stuck under their seats with stars on them would be getting a special poster made for this event and that Gaiman and Selick would sign. They were numbered and on thicker paper and look really neat.

The rest of Neil Con
In addition to the offsite screenings and appearances on the panels in Hall H, Neil was quite busy the rest of the time. He did one full public signing up in the autograph area on Friday where they did a random ticket drawing for people to be able to be in the line. They had several hundred people filling up about four bays trying to get the few tickets that were available, for which I was not one of the few to get them. That wasn't the only signing opportunity, though. Neil also did a couple of signings on Thursday and Friday for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund where for new or renewal memberships, you were able to get an item signed. Also for the CBLDF, they did a special poster of his poem "Instructions", illustrated by Brian and Wendy Froud, that originally was going to be a signing at the Imaginosis booth where Brian and Wendy were most of the weekend. Realizing the demand for Neil, they made it a ticketed drawing with a notice in the daily paper about it. The mention didn't specify it also required purchasing the poster (with proceeds going to the CBLDF). WIth the late notice, there was a much smaller crowd for the drawing and most people that wanted the ticket were able to get one. During this signing is when Claudia Christian stopped by to tell Neil how much she liked his work.

Neil also made an appearance at the CBLDF Auction (or was supposed to) and also presented at the Eisner Awards on Friday night. It was here that his co-presenter, Jonathan Ross, decided they should re-enact the Madonna/Britney Spears kiss for the audience. It was near the end of a long ceremony and you can see what happened here on YouTube.

Neil's spotlight panel on Friday was well attended and Comic Book Resources has a very good report on it. Neil did cause a bit of a stir during the panel when he removed his leather jacket!
During the panel, Neil's assistant also handed out sample t-shirts from the Neverwear venture.
There's also a few bits of video from this panel online on YouTube. Panel opening, Scary Trousers, ComicCon's Early years & Charles Vess, Imagination, Scandanavian Death Metal.

The other panel Neil did was on Sunday in a Jack Kirby Tribute panel with Mark Evanier, Erik Larsen, Darwyn Cooke, and Mike Royer. This was the panel Neil was most looking forward to doing and CBR has a report on the panel.

Following the Kirby panel, Neil was off and running up to Los Angeles for the star studded premier of Stardust in Hollywood. Photos on IMDB from the premiere can be found here, starting with Neil in the slideshow. Charles Vess also reported on the premiere on his blog with a report and a photo of him and Neil together. (Note that at the time I posted this, the greenmanpress site appeared to not be responding. Possibly overloaded due to Neil having linked to it on his journal).

You can also look back on Neil Gaiman's online journal for his thoughts on Comic Con including a couple of videos from his daughter, Maddy. While waiting in line and in the audience for these events, a lot of people were surprised to hear about the other things happening, all of which they would have known about if they'd read Neil's blog before the con.

I think that about does it for this entry.

SFTV Roundup & News Tidbits

2007-08-05T16:38:00.000-06:00

Taking a break from the Comic Con stuff to update a few things in the SFTV world.

SFTV Schedule Files Updated - The SFTV Schedule files have been updated as of August 4th with current schedule info for upcoming shows. Use the links on the right hand side of the SFTV Blog.

Dresden Files Not Renewed - After what seemed like a long time of "No Decision Has Been Made" responses from the SciFi Channel, they did finally confirm that they have not renewed The Dresden Files for a second season. Reports such as this one by TV Guide's Matt Roush indicate SciFi's costs were higher than they could justify even though the show did comparable ratings to Battlestar Galactica and almost double what Painkiller Jane has been getting. The people running Dresden City have some additional information including a post from Robert Wolfe. Efforts are continuing to get Lionsgate to try to find another home for the series, but indications are they were waiting for SciFi to officially cancel the show and may not have any other potential outlets in mind. The Dresden Files DVD set comes out this week, so if sales are good, Lionheart could look into other possibilities including a direct to DVD release somewhere down the road. In the meantime, the Dresden Files books are still selling strong and Jim Butcher is still planning on continuing the series through 20 books and possibly more. I really think if SciFi had given the show more of a chance, it would have picked up additional viewers, but they seem to be putting a lot of their eggs into the new Flash Gordon series starting this week which there doesn't appear to be real high expectations for from the fan community.

Masters of Science Fiction debuts on ABC - The long awaited Masters of Science Fiction debuts on ABC last night in the 10 pm Saturday time slot. No word yet on how the ratings were but it is unlikely we will see more than the four bought by ANC and the two additional ones produced. The do have a MoSF Blog on TV Guide's web site and the producers have a very good Official Masters of Science Fiction web site with lots of info about the series including the episodes ABC is not airing. ABC has a basic information page on their web site and don't appear to be offering any online episode viewing. As I've indicated before, the show had a lot of promise but I think them going with ABC pretty much killed any likelyhood this will do well enough to be an ongoing series.

Doctor Who Rumors Squelched - One of the British tabloid papers had indicated that at the end of Series Four for the new Doctor Who, David Tennant would be leaving and be replaced by James Nesbitt, currently starring in the BBC series Jekyll with Steven Moffat taking over as showrunner. Moffat posted a message on Outpost Gallifrey stating "The James Nesbitt story is a total fabrication. Made up. A fantasy. Just a guy sitting at a desk and just inventing stuff.I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm getting embarrassed for the deeply wonderful Jimmy Nesbitt. So tell everyone please, cos it's getting very silly. Steven Moffat".

FOX Pushes Back New Amsterdam to Midseason - FOX announced schedule changes this week that took their new series New Amsterdam off of the schedule, pushing it back to mid-season. Also debuting on FOX in mid-season will be The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Pratchett's Colour of Magic filming, Hogfather to debut in US on Ion. Currently filming in the UK is a new miniseries based on Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, the book that introduced Pratchett's Discworld series. It will air on Sky One in the UK this fall. Sean Astin is Twoflower, the first Discworld tourist, David Jason is the wizzard Rincewind, Tim Curry is Trymon, and Christopher Lee is doing the voice of Death. The Hogfather miniseries produced last year for Sky One will be airing in the US on Ion TV as part of the RHI Weekend movie package. The producers are looking to first distribute The Colour of Magic as a movie first. This past week, a group of fans got to be extras in a crowd scene. Be on the lookout for some reports on the filming....

Lee

Comic Con Links, Reports, Videos and More

2007-08-05T12:28:00.000-06:00

I've been looking around the net to find all the various sites that covered this year's Comic Con, including some video feeds and such. Here's a summary (with some updates to come as I find other stuff).

Newsarama.com has a big index to all of their reports, obviously focusing on comics and comics related media stuff.

On the Newsarama blog, they have a post with a lot of links as well.

IGN.com has a Comic Con Index for all of their reports.

SciFi Channel had a special Comic Con area for reports as well. They also had a bunch of reports on SciFi Wire (but no index, you'll have to page through the news items).

Of course, G4 TV did a live broadcast from the show and has a lot of video clips availble to view on their Comic Con area.

Comic Book Resources did a lot of reporting but don't have an index that I can see.

Some of their reports include:

More of their panel reports can be found on the Comic Reel archive pages for August and July. They also had several photo reports, this is linked to #4 with links to their three previous ones including in the report (with a fifth one promised).

The Futon Critic did live blogs of most of the TV panels at Comic Con.

Kryptonsite had some special reports on Smallville from Comic Con, including bits from the press conference. First was a report on the Smallville panel, then interview bits with the producers and Erica Durance, and then with Supergirl, Laura Vandervoort.

Check back for updates to this post as I find more places to link to.....

Lee

More Comic Con Pics - Superheroes and more

2007-08-05T11:30:00.000-06:00

Here's some more pictures from ComicCon, mostly superhero & celebrity themed

First up, one of the press events I made it to was the Who Wants to Be a Superhero? event, that had Stan Lee, the first season's winner Feedback, and two of this year's contestants, Hygena and Hyperstrike. I got to do short interviews with Stan, Hygena and Hyperstrike, which I will have up later.

The TV Guide Channel was also in the room interviewing everyone.

Hygena and Hyperstrike. Hygena got the idea for her character at last year's Comic Con when she noticed how messy it was and thought it would be neat to have a Super Hero to clean up after the other superheroes. Hyperstrike changed his character from the one he auditioned with since SciFi gets the rights to the characters and he uses that persona as part of the circus act he does.

The top three from last year, Feedback, Fat Momma and Major Victory were also on hand, signing autographs and getting photos taken in the autograph area.

I also made it for part of the Ghost Whisperer press conference that had star Jennifer Love Hewitt on hand along with Executive producers Ian Sanders, Kim Moses and P.K. Simonds. Hewitt wasn't doing any panels at ComicCon, but did do a signing at the Inkworks booth. At the same time as her signing, Marvel was unveiling the Iron Man costume with Jon Favreau, which caused near gridlock around those booths at the time. The room for the Ghost Whisperer press conference wasn't really set up for picture taking, so right in the middle of the Superhero press event next door, they brought Jennifer into the room, stood her against the ComicCon backdrop for a quick photo op (about 15 seconds!) and then whisked her out of the room to head down for the signing. This was right in the middle of TV Guide interview Stan Lee.

J. Michael Straczynski was on hand to promote the Babylon 5: The Lost Tales DVD release and also did a spotlight panel as well as several comics panels and a couple of autograph sessions. When I caught up with him on Sunday at his signing, he admitted he was pretty exhausted and had only gotten about an hour and half to shop in the dealer's room.

At Neil Gaiman's signing on Saturday, Babylon 5 star Claudia Christian came up to say hi to Neil, wanting to let him know how much she liked his work. That's a somewhat bemnused Brian Froud in the background. More on Neil to come in a subsequent blog post.

During the Paramount panel on Thursday, J.J. Abrams and company announced casting for Spock for the Star Trek movie, with Zachary Quintos (Sylar on Heroes) announced to be playing Spock.

Additionally, they also announced the Leonard Nimoy would be playing Spock as well and brought him out. Nimoy indicated he thought that it was a very good script and that the casting choice made was "Logical". See the Trek part of the panel online at IFC.com

Paramount also had a live video feed from the set of Indiana Jones IV with Spielberg, Ford and other cast including announcing that Karen Allen would be returning as Marion Ravenwood. The video can be seen on the official Indiana Jones website. Copies on You Tube have been removed.

NBC had a booth for Heroes, set up like Iassac's loft with paintings including the big bomb blast on the floor. During exhibitor hours, the place was packed as the cheeleaders handed out various goodies including comics, temporary tattos, and tickets for a drawing for a Heroes lunch
box. Look for all of those items on Ebay now!

I took some photos one day before the hall was opened to the public.
Here's the floor painting.

A look inside.

A display of props on the outside of the booth.

ComicCon Report of sorts

2007-08-04T00:27:00.000-06:00

Here's a report with pictures of some of the stuff at ComicCon 2007. I'll have some reports on specific events later. (As I've discovered trying to put a bunch of pictures into a blogger post is a pain...)

A panoramic view of the exhibit hall from the mezzanine on preview night...

Stargate Atlantis water on sale at the concession stands.

Fans getting their head shaved so they can get a Stargate symbol spray painted on the back of their head!

And now, A parade of buses..

Stargate Atlantis buses

Stargate: The Ark of Truth

With an autograph on the back of the bus, it appears.

Spaceballs: The Animated Series

Species: The Awakening

The bus driver insisted that I take a picture of her as well.

Her name tag was Ralph Kramden....

The War Games Bus

There was also a bus for Dead Like Me: The Resurrection, but I never got a picture of that one...

That takes care of the Stargates and Buses for now.

There were also a group of Stargate fans posing for a picture as well.

Comic Con - The Weekend of Neil and more

2007-07-29T01:53:00.000-06:00

I'm having some issues uploading images here tonight and I kindof want to get some sleep, so I'll post a few random tidbits from the last couple of days.... (Likely to be updated with some pictures at some point).

J.J. Abrams wearing an infocom t-shirt (woohoo Zork!)

Overhead as I was getting on the escalator going down from the Mezzanine from a mom to her 10 year old son "I am not your pack horse!"

Watching Claudia Christian go up to Neil Gaiman and tell him how much she likes his work and Neil giving Claudia a hug (with Brian Froud looking on somewhat bewildered).

Being accused by J. Michael Straczynski of doing unnatural things with his cat, Buddy... (that's what I get for shouting out "How's buddy doing?" when he asked for a quick question from the audience in his spotlight panel).

Getting to see a preview of the 3D stop motion animation being done for the movie based on Neil Gaiman's Coraline by Henry Selick and getting a signed posted afterwards.

Realizing that my room number, 1602, also had a Neil Gaiman connection (the Marvel series he did a couple of years ago).

Getting a chance to chat with Stan Lee one on one.

Having to choose between way too many things going on at the same time. Although realizing that in order to get into either the Heroes or Galactica panel on Saturday would have required several extra hours of waiting in line, made some decisions easier.

Being sent on secret mission by Peter David (after getting a bunch of stuff signed by him and J.K. Woodward, his artist on the IDW Fallen Angel series)

Realizing that I missed seeing Neil get Snogged by Jonathan Ross at the Eisners (I had gone out with friends to get some real food), thus not having completely stalked Neil all weekend (I missed out on the Beowulf presentation as well due in part to the clueless Paramount booth people).

Being amazed at the people willing to get their head shaved and a Stargate Chevron painted on the back of their heads. I probably need a haircut, but not like that!

Being additionally amused by all the buses with Stargate, Spaceballs Animated, and Dead Like Me ads on them (the Dead Like Me direct to DVD movie was a big surprise since nothing has been announced prior to the con)

Getting to see the new Spock and the original Spock together on stage.

Pointing out to a couple wandering by the autograph line who the authors were and the husband realizing that he went to high school with Harry Turtledove and hadn't seen him for many years.

Having a conversation with someone dressed up as The Question on the down escalator discussing what DC has done with the character in 52.

Having my usual random encounter with Marc Scott Zicree. He was in the Straczynski spotlight panel on Saturday and was in the crush of people around Straczynsk after the panel. I would have stuck around and chatted but wanted to get to the Coraline screening...

That's it for now...

For all sorts of news on the movie and TV side of things at ComicCon, check out The Futon Critics panel blogs and Ain't It Cool News has a lot of reports. I don't yet see any there for the Coraline screening, though...

Lee

ComicCon Thursday

2007-07-27T01:56:00.000-06:00

I just got back from the preview screening of Stardust with Neil Gaiman and Jane Goldman introducing the movie and doing a short Q&A afterward. I really enjoyed it and will have a more detailed writeup later. As Neil has been explaining, it is like the book, but is different from the book, but is still very good. Like the book is the Earth 1 version of the story and the movie is the Earth 2 version of the story. Definitely worth checking out in the theatre. If it does well it will help to ensure more movies based on Neil's work get made.

A few news tidibits from today.

Sylar is Spock and Spock is Spock
At the Paramount panel today, J.J. Abrams announced that Zachary Quintos (Sylar on Heroes) was playing Spock in the new Star Trek movie and brought him out on stage. After playing with the audience a bit, they then announced that Leonard Nimoy would also be playing Spock and brought him out on stage as well. Full reports can likely be found on Ain't It Cool News and elsewhere.

Dead Like Me reunion movie. According to the reps at the MGM booth, the Dead Like Me DVD movie will bring back the entire cast except for Mandy Pantikin. Replacing him (not sure if it is as a new character or the same character) is Henry Ian Cusick (Desmond on Lost).

Straczynski gets a new project green-lighted?
I caught up with J. Michael Straczynski at his signing this afternoon. While he was in the middle of signing my books and comics, he got a phone call. The call was to inform him that some project had gotten the go ahead and Joe was very pleased to hear that and had a big smile on his face. He confirmed it was good news and also indicated he couldn't say anything about it yet. Maybe we'll get some hints from him tomorrow? (actually later today.)

Lee

ComicCon is Here!

2007-07-26T00:43:00.000-06:00

Comic Con International started tonight with Preview Night, with definitely the biggest turnout for preview night I've seen. Tons of people are trying to get to that special booth for a freebie or exclusive or tickets to a screening. There was definitely more stuff going on this preview night with lots of signings at the comics booths and more of the exhibitors doing the exclusives and freebies. I spent most of the night checking booths, grabbing some exclusives and freebies and trying to track down signing information for some of the booths. I did get a chance to chat with some of the artists on hand including Charles Vess, Brian Froud and Kinuko Y. Craft and got some stuff signed by Warren Ellis. I'm glad I did the CBLDF VIP package for the Stardust screening. When Paramount handed out regular passes they were gone in just a couple of minutes.

Biggest bag award goes to Warner Bros for their gigantic Smallville/Doomsday bags.

MGM has buses decorated with stuff for their shows, including this one for Stargate SG-1.

Other busses have ads for Dead Like Me promoting a new direct to DVD movie that I hadn't heard anything about.

Lee

A New Blog Post - Catching up and Getting Ready

2007-07-23T00:12:00.000-06:00

Lots of things going on right now, almost too many to keep track of as I get ready to head out for ComicCon International. Let's take on the TCA Press Tour and related developments in this post....

TCA Press tour - The annual Television Critics Association press tour has been going on, starting off with cable and going into the networks. You can look at the blogs of a lot of critics by following the links from the TV Critics.org web site. Others worth checking out in total include:

Michael Ausiello of TV Guide, who's been doing live blogs from the network presentations (I've linked to the July Archives which gets you easy access to most of his reports).

Matt Roush of TV Guide (again, July archive)

Zap2it.com's reports & blogs

Maureen Ryan's reports from the Chicago Tribune
Mixed in with her TCA reports are some interviews and such:
Ron Moore on Battlestar Galactica's Razor
Bionic Woman panel report
Torchwood panel and John Barrowman interview

SciFi made several announcements, with associated press releases (with links to the press releases)

SciFi.com Online content to include Farscape webisodes
Followup reports have indicated the deal for the Farscape webisodes had just been made and they don't know yet which actors will be involved.

Galactica Razor preview minisodes online and on the channel and other development news
Essentially stuff filmed for Razor that was trimmed from the final broadcast version. More details on Maureen Ryan's report. Also in the SciFi press release is info on shows and miniseries in development including a modern day take on The Odyssey with Ben Browder and Andrew Prowse (Farscape director). Other shows include UFO Hunters from the people who brought you Ghost Hunters.

SciFi Wire has a lot of reports and interviews that have likely come from the TCA sessions. Best way to look at them is to check out the Television and SciFi Channel categories.

A few miscelleaneaous notes on SF TV oriented news and info...

Flash Gordon Pilot now 90 minutes - According to the SciFi Schedulebot, the originally announced two-hour debut of Flash Gordon is now 90 minutes.

Doctor Who Ratings Soft for return. - The SciFi ratings report today on SciFi Wire shows that the debut of Doctor Who did a .9 household rating, which is a bit lower than the run for series two in the spring. Enterpise's Monday night airings are still doing well. Notice that, as has been the case, Painkiller Jane failed to make the top ten, garnering less than a .8 household rating.

Top Ten SciFi Channel Shows

Bruce Almighty 1.4
ECW 1.2
Final Destination 2 1.0
Star Trek Enterprise 1.0
Doctor Who 0.9
Death Valley 0.9
Twilight Zone 0.9
Freddy vs. Jason 0.8
Cabin Fever 0.8
Final Destination 0.8

Source: Nielsen Galaxy Report, 7/2/07 -- 7/8/07

lee

Emma & Will on the Road & Westercon Toast

2007-07-12T22:26:00.001-06:00

Emma Bull & Will Shetterly started a three week road trip/signing tour at the Poisoned Pen tonight. Both have new books out, Territory for Emma and Gospel of the Knife for Will. Emma sang a few songs and each read a bit from their new novels and then answered some questions. Will talked about how he did this book in a different point of view than most books, which has put some people off of it. He does have it currently available online to read if you want to try it out first (Will is a real pixel-stained technopeasant web scab). Emma talked about how Steven Brust got her interested in Tombstone by dragging them to the movie when it was originally out. Will pointed out that she did a lot of research on the book and the real life events depicted in Territory are probably more accurate than most other accounts that have been publised or dramatized. As always, they were fun to chat with and after they were done they did a bit of looking around the store and picked up a couple of books (which usually happens at the Poisoned Pen for some reason). They will be heading up the West Coast and into Canada over the next few weeks, so try to catch them if they come your way.

Finally, getting my camera hooked up to the computer meant that I also can share this picture from WesterCon 2007 in San Mateo of Toast! (Actually Toastmaster Jay Lake and artist/filmaker/author Frank Wu (wearing the Toast costume) . Jay's new book, Mainspring, has just been released, and he and Frank have recently collaborated on Greetings From Lake Wu.

2007-07-10T23:16:00.000-06:00

Its been busy these past few weeks, between moving, unpacking, Westercon, unpacking, catching up on various stuff and getting ready for San Diego ComicCon.

For some reason, I can't put anything into the title for this post....

Westercon in San Francisco was not an overly busy convention or overly crowded. Most of the panels I participated on were sparsely attended, including one with Tad Williams and Tom Galloway where we talked about the DC Universe's recent big events and upheavals and how Tad's work on Aquaman fit into the whole scheme of things. I did get to do a SF TV preview which on Sunday night which was probably the largest crowd of any of the panels I did. One panel where the panelists and the audience were about equal numbers was one about "If I ran a TV network" with Derek McCaw of Fanboy Planet. We talked about a wide range of subjects, not just necessarily much related to the actual topic of the panel.

Also at the Westercon, the Phoenix in 2009 bid for the 2009 Westercon was victorious in the site selection voting. It is FiestaCon and will be held over July 4th weekend in 2009 in Tempe, Arizona.

The latest updates for the SFTV Schedules is now up, including a list of the SFTV oriented panels at the San Diego Comic Con. I'll be there based out of the Arizona SF Conventions table on the Mezzanine where we will be promoting upcoming Arizona SF conventions including the Westercon. Stop by and say hi and pick up a SFTV.org badge ribbon (while they last).

Lee

More Moving, Dresden renewal "dicey", Westercon

2007-06-21T00:30:00.000-06:00

Did I mention how moving when it is 110 degrees out is not a lot of fun....

Dresden Files Renewal "dicey".
According to a post by Robert Wolfe on Exisle.net, things are looking "dicey" about a Dresden Files renewal. Apparently SciFi's market research is telling them people don't want more of the show. Obviously the market research is not asking the people who watch the show, read the books and want to see more of it. Short of bombarding Bonnie Hammer with foam skulls of miniature hockey sticks, there is a "Dear Bonnie" thread on SciFi.com's message board. I really think SciFi is making a mistake if they dump the show, but apparently they think they've got a big hit in the Flash Gordon remake. Maybe it getting ratings comparable to Painkiller Jane's (a .7 or .8) will give NBCU reason to relieve Bonnie of SciFi?

WesterCon 60 Next Week
Coming up the first weekend in July is WesterCon 60 in San Mateo, CA. I'll be there doing some panels and also promoting the Leprecon, Inc. WesterCon 62 bid. If I can find them, I'll have my SFTV.org ribbons to hand out as well. I'm not currently scheduled for a SF Tube Talk panel, but that could change. I will be on a panel about Heroes and one about DC Comics with Tad Williams, though.

Lee

SFTV Updates, Misc Stuff, renewal campaigns

2007-06-11T00:21:00.001-06:00

What do you do with boxes of videotapes recorded off air and even off satellite that are now taking up much less space on DVDS? With bulk trash day coming up and with getting ready to move, you get a big stack of storage boxes piled up out front! As the stack has grown, some people have looked at the boxes and at least one has disappeared. I noticed they also looked in a box that was mostly Beta tapes and passed on them.

In going through the tapes I have found a few things that I need to put onto DVD since who knows if they will ever be commerically released. Of course, things like convention panel footage needs to get transferred as well. I'm also working on getting some of my LPs transferred to digital form making use of a Ion USB turntable I got for Christmas. Using Wikipedia is a good reference to figure out which things I have on LP that are not on CD (or only available as expensive imports). Things like the B52s cover of a Yoko Ono song only available on the initial pressings of the Whammy LP, or the rock version of Thomas Dolby's Radio Silence. Of course, there's the various re-mixed versions of songs on some of the 12 inch singles I have. As far as I know, the version of Doctoring the TARDIS on the Ford Timelord picture disc is the same as on the CD I have. I also found out that the Buckingham Nicks LP is available to download online since it has never been made available on CD, either.

Needless to say, SFTV updates have gotten a bit delayed, but I do have an updated SFTV Season to Date list available now. The Upcoming SFTV list should be updated in the next day or two.

I did my part on supporting a renewal for The Dresden Files. Still no word on a pickup or non-pickup. Hopefully when Robert Wolfe returns from his vacation (following a short stint working on The 4400, he might have some news on the Jim Butcher forums.

Fans got CBS to pick up Jericho for a mid-season run so Veronica Mars fans are essentially buying up every Mars bar they can find in the US and sending them to The CW. Mars bars are no longer sold in the US, so they are buying up imported bars or sending Snickers Almond bars as well as marshmallows. If it comes to it, maybe Dresden Files fans can start sending hockey sticks, drum sticks or skulls to the SciFi Channel.

Lee

UFP SciFi Jeopardy

2007-06-10T22:52:00.000-06:00

UFP SciFi Jeopardy Game Board (from LepreCon 33).

A discussion has been going on the SMOFs email list about trivia games at science fiction conventions and I wanted to have a visual to go with my post....

Lee

Paul Cornell's New Who Kudos

2007-05-29T22:31:00.001-06:00

Paul Cornell's New Who Gets Rave Reviews

This past weekend in the UK saw the debut of part one of a two part Doctor Who episode (Human Nature/Family of Blood) written by Paul Cornell. His first season episode Father's Day was one of the three Doctor Who episodes nominated for a Hugo award last year. This time, reviewers and fans alike are touting the first half of the two parter as the best episode of the new Doctor Who series ever (that's all three seasons, not just this year). Congrats to Paul for the kudos. The two-parter is actually an adaptation of his original Doctor Who New Adventures novel published in 1995! Paul's original novel British Summertime has just been released in the US by MonkeyBrain Books and he just completed the Wisdom miniseries for Marvel. He's got more stuff in the works from Marvel (what it is specifically he isn't saying yet) and he's also writing an episode for series 2 of Primeval. Let's hope that Russell T. Davies has him lined up for another episode or two of Doctor Who next season. You can read Paul's reports on the episode on Paul Cornell's House of Awkwardness. He's also a fun guy to hang around with at a convention.