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

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

More Christmas Music Videos (or Music Videos in General)

First up is Paul McCartney's goofy Wonderful Christmastime. Yes, the film quality is that bad and even on the new Rhino collection The McCartney Years, it isn't much better.

Sitting down and watching a lot of the videos on The McCartney Years collection was a lot of fun. From some of the early ones made very cheaply, the simple yet good "Mull of Kintyre", some of the more experimaental ones like "Coming Up", its a neat collection of videos and performances through Paul McCartney's career include extras live his performance of "Let it Be" at Live Aid and his Superbowl halftime performance. Rhino has been doing a lot of good video collections like Peter Gabriel's Play, Devo's The Truth About De-Evolution, and others. There's a lot of music video collections out there, some no longer in print. This link is to a music video on DVD page I've set up on the Magrathea Amazon AStore. There's still a few that have not yet been collected on DVD, such as Kate Bush and Thomas Dolby. Maybe someday they will....

Back to the Christmas Music videos, though, for this one by The Ramones!



And then there's a young Greg Lake with his big Christmas hit...

A Blue Greeting

Create Your Own Video

SFTV Roundup & News Tidbits for December 2007

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

Biggest Shock of the Day!

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

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

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

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

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