Tag Archives: Science Fiction
New television Sci-Fi round-up for 2005 (part one)
Posted on 30. Sep, 2005
Warning, spoilers ahead. Really enjoying the new US TV season featuring a whole raft of new sci-fi shows and season two returns of other favourites. First, we can't go past mentioning the excellent Battlestar Galactica, easily the best sci-fi in years. Season 2 is panning out very nicely with lots of political intrigue, plots and plenty of Cylon spies in the fleet. The most recent episode (2x10) was the first of a two parter where the colonial fleet comes across the previously thought to be destroyed Battlestar Pegasus where the Admiral seems to have gone a little screwy. I seem to recall a Pegasus related story in the original series, but I can't remember how it panned out. Excellent show anyway, I can't recommend BSG more highly, even if West Wing is more your thing to sci-fi, you'll still like it.
I've been a little late getting into The 4400, the first season was only 5 episodes, but after rushing through it last week in time for Sky One starting into season 2, I'm well into it. The premise of The 4400 is good: 4,400 supposedly alien abductees return with a variety of special powers all aimed at a specific purpose, which turns out to be saving the human race from extinction in the future. It turns out they were taken into the future by humans not aliens and then seeded back into the time-line to perform various tasks with their powers, positions, destiny etc. This leaves room for lots of different stories with 4,400 characters to choose from. I did feel the underlying mystery of the show was revealed to early, but I guess they had to do that to get a second season through otherwise it just looks like another Lost or X-Files where you have to invest a lot of time to see where the multi-season story arcs are going (usually nowhere).
Bones is the new David Boreanz (Angel from Buffy and Angel) series, its basically a rip on CSI and Mulder and Scully, the premise, he an FBI agent and she a expert in analysing skeletons, will get tired very quickly, I couldn't even make it through the pilot. Especially when they bought out the 3D holo imager and apparently reconstructed the person from the bones.. Just lame.
Supernatural is a sort of Buffy, but with two blokes, seems the story is going build around these two fighting evil with long arc of looking for their missing father who also fights evil. Certainly a slick show, it has potential although it could drag and is more aimed at your teen Smallville audience, definitely not for me.
Threshold has potential, although sometimes its a bit cheesy in execution. The premise looks to be an unseen extra terrestrial entity attempting to colonise Earth by rewriting human DNA in its own image. Basically an X-Files without the hidden conspiracies and the FBI replaced with Homeland Security, the new big bad powerful domestic agency appearing in all the US shows since the FBI dropped from prominence recently thanks to Bush driven security paranoia. Interestingly Brannon Bragga (ex Star Trek producer) is behind this and the cast includes Brent Spiner (Data) reprising his mad scientist role from ID4 or Dr Noonien Soong (take your pic).
Lost Season 2 kicked off nicely with them going down the hatch that dominated Locke for a lot of the last season. My theory is that Desmond, the bloke in the hatch is a victim of the numbers like the other bloke and locked himself down there to both study the numbers and also to protect others from circumming to their curse.
Is it wrong to be intrigued by the UK Buffy rip-off Hex? I've only seen one episode, weak script although I need sometime to get into the Hex universe I'd say, but a hot cast with lots of sexual undertones, just what you want in a Brit supernatural drama.
Still a few other genre shows to look at including Ghost Whisperer. Its quite amazing how many X-Filesish show have emerged this season, is the resurgence driven by the success of Lost? Or a sudden trend in trying to grab back the massive X-Files, Buffy and Trek audiences of years past.
Doctor Who is great!
Posted on 26. Mar, 2005
Just watched the first episode of the new series on BBC1. It's a little cheesy, but that's part of fun right? Good stuff. Sure it might not be the next Buffy, but it'll do. Christopher Eccleston was definitely the right choice as the Doctor. Good to see lots of London in the first episode too! :)
Battlestar Galactica continues.. while the rest flounder
Posted on 25. Feb, 2005
Good news from Ron Moore's Blog: "So it's official: we're doing a second season." BSG will have to make up for the disappointment of all the other genre shows, Enterprise has been cancelled unfortunately, Lost is getting bloody boring, Point Pleasant isn't really pulling me in, and Sea of Souls is dull. Doctor Who is getting very close to release, I hope that'll be good. For a while there it looked like the TV execs were really getting sci-fi, but things seem to be going bad again with poorly planned or rushed story arcs, and in the case of Lost, a fantastic build up in the first few episodes that has gone absolultely no where by episode 15.
http://blog.scifi.com/...
Galactica
Posted on 26. Nov, 2004
Finally, some sci-fi worth watching. I love the new Battlestar Galactica series. I've been watching the Sky One episodes in the UK and finally got around to ordering the mini-series shot last year so I could catchup on the back story in this re-make. Okay, so I'm ten months behind there, but I'm kind of glad I was able to jump straight into the TV series without the nervous wait to see if the network decided to pickup the show.
The Cylons are much meaner, the situation for the species more desperate, and the re-jig of the plot where the humans were the actual creators of Cylons who then revolted against there masters is actually very good. The first episode of the TV series where the entire fleet have to make a faster than light (FTL) jump every 33 minutes to avoid getting destroyed by Cylons created a level of tension I haven't felt in a sci-fi show for ages. Full marks, BSG rocks! I hope it goes well beyond the 13 episodes currently ordered.
http://www.scifi.com/...
‘B5′ Creator Pitches ‘Trek’
Posted on 04. Jul, 2004
Berman Talks Enterprise Future
Posted on 12. May, 2004
London Expo Pics
Posted on 19. Oct, 2003
The first two pics are of me with Garrett Wang and Tim Russ from Star Trek Voyager. The third is Mini Me from Austin Powers! The two blondes are Emma Caulfield and Julie Benz from (Buffy and Angel). We met Emma and got her autograph, but they didn't like people taking pictures as it slowed down the line so I don't actually have a picture of her with me (although I could have bought one for 50 quid, no thanks!) The two guys holding microphones are Haldir and Pippin from Lord of The Rings. The two pictures from the left on the bottom row are Deep Throat and The Alien Bounty Hunter from The X-Files, the last guy is of course Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf. The expo was well organised and reasonably priced. The Buffy and Lord of the Rings actresses charged 15 quid an autograph, and signed well over 500 each, not a bad little earner. Follow the link for more pictures including actors from Babylon 5, The Matrix, Buck Rogers, Battle Star Galactica, and Stargate. I stupidly ignored the three Kill Bill actors (Madsen, Carradine and White), not realising they were from the movie!
http://anthonyjhicks.com/...
Collectormania 4 pictures
Posted on 13. Oct, 2003
BBC Cult has some pics from Collectormania 4, held last weekend in Milton Keynes. I wish I'd been able to make this. Ah well, London Expo next week will do just fine.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Collectormania 4
Posted on 04. Oct, 2003
Geez, there's a big sci-fi show on right now at Milton Keynes, guests include: KRISTANNA LOKEN (T3), ELIJAH WOOD (Lord of the Rings), GEORGE TAKEI (Sulu from Star Trek), RENE AUBERJONOIS (Odo from DS9), ROXANN DAWSON (B'Elanna Torres from Voyager), IYARI LIMON (Kennedy from Buffy), ANTHONY HEAD (Giles from Buffy), ROBERT DAVI (Sanchez from JB: License to Kill), HONOR BLACKMAN (Pussy Galore from JB: Goldfinger) and many more. They've extended it to Monday. If I can finish my essay by Sunday evening, I might go!
http://www.collectormania.com/...
London Expo
Posted on 02. Oct, 2003
Hot damn, I know where I'm going to be on the weekend of 18-19th October! Guests include Emma Caulfield, Juliet Landau, Julie Benz, Brian Thompson, Garrett Wang, Tim Russ, Chris Barrie, Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Jerry Hardin and many more. It's like a massive TV1/FOX8 marathon where all these stars of recent Sci-Fi and other classic 80's shows (eg. The A-Team and Buck Rogers!) come out for a bit of Galaxy Quest style celebrity reinforcement! There's also an evening with Amber Benson coming up in London, and Anthony Stewart Head in Peter Pan and The Pirates of Penzance in January! Pity I missed the Angel convention earlier in the year. You've gotta love London.
http://scifishows.com/...
Doctor Who exhibition closing down
Posted on 30. Sep, 2003
Looks like I might need to squeeze a day into my busy study schedule in October to visit the Doctor Who exhibition at Longleat before it closes down on 2nd November. We should have gone weeks ago while we in the Wiltshire area visiting Stonehenge. There's also another Doctor Who Exhibition in Llangollen, North Wales, apparently closing down at the end of the year as well. I doubt we'll make it to North Wales before the end of the year. Pity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Dr Who returns for 40th
Posted on 08. Aug, 2003
After years and years of lobbying by Australian fans, it looks like ABC is re-running all 700 episodes of Dr Who from September! I think I'll have to move back to Australia! Perhaps it's time to invest in a DVD recorder as BBC will never release all 700 episodes on DVD. Thanks for the heads up Graham.
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/...
Dr Who tour of England
Posted on 07. Aug, 2003
5 day tour taking in a number of locations of interest from various Dr Who episodes. Excellent! :)
http://www.discoverbritishislestravel.com/...
Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
Posted on 14. May, 2003
Funny: "And we also know what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having to squeegie the holodeck clean."
http://www.happyfunpundit.com/...
Animatrix Part 4 Released
Posted on 07. May, 2003
"The Second Renaissance part 2: The Genesis of the Matrix: the last cities of mankind, the war with the machines, and humanity's ultimate downfall. An epic guided tour of the Zion archives and the history of the Matrix."
http://www.ausgamers.com/...
Star Wars casting
Posted on 29. Apr, 2003
If you live in Sydney and want to be in the next Star Wars movie, they're calling for extras to register their details.
http://www.maurafay.com.au/...
1 Pixel per meter
Posted on 28. Apr, 2003
Excellent comparision of real-world objects (buildings, ships etc) and sci-fi objects (starships, monsters etc) by size. [via Boing Boing]
http://mirror.wolffelaar.nl/...
The Ultimate Sci-Fi Auction
Posted on 03. Apr, 2003
Lots of expensive original props from various sci-fi movies and shows up for grabs here. Really expensive. [via Boing Boing]
http://search.liveauctions.ebay.com/...
X-Files Season 5
Posted on 09. Dec, 2002
Just finished watching my X-Files Season 5 box set, reaffirming my opinion that X-Files is one of the best shows ever made. There were some classic epsiodes including one written by William Gibson (All Tomorrow's Parties, Neuromancer etc). It's also interesting how many producers and writers from X-Files have also worked on Buffy, Angel and Firefly episodes.
