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.