News: April 2006 Archives
Via Sci Fi Wire the SciFi channel have announced Caprica, a spin off from Battlestar Galactica.
Key facts:
- It's set on Caprica half a century before the events of Battlestar Galactica.
A breakthrough in robotics is about to occur, creating the first living robot: a Cylon.
It follows lives of two families, the Graystones and the Adamas.
It's a Science Fiction Dallas!. Sounds cool though.
Star Wars fan film extroidanaire Return of Pink Five, Vol. 1 is online now, and it made me chuckle.
The BBC has just put live a prototype of it's entire catalogue. It's very cool. (Here's the developers blog)
Of course the first thing I did was search forprogrammes classified as science fiction (genre). You get this nice sparkline...
Where the start is 1930 and the end is 2006. Looks like there was a big dip around the year 2000, wonder why.
For each episode it contains loads of details such as broadcast history, contributors, description and so on. Here's the page for the Doctor Who episode Rose as an example. Each page also has an RDF feed so you can subscribe to updates. Awesome.
"a 26-part comedy-fantasy series set in outer space, and will be a mixture of live action and CGI."
Blimey. Three Doctor Who series on the go....
Imagine the fun that the web guys must have had making
Via SFSignal, John Joseph Adams reviews Doctor Who, the first three episodes of the new incarnation (not sure how to describe the seasons, is that season 1? Or season 27?).
Anyway, JJA hates it. He's never seen Doctor Who before. He's clearly wrong. (As is anyone else who doesn't like it, no room for discussion).
I think that many viewers in the US have misaligned expectations. It's family entertainment, aimed at kids and their dads (although apparently women are now watching with David Tennant as the Doctor). And it's wonderful.
Better can that Doctor Who pastiche story I was going to send to F&SF then ;-)
It's amazing how much publicity the BBC is putting out for Doctor Who. There are trailers on TV. Trailers on the web. TARDISODES on your mobile phone. Trailers on radio, and not just Radio 1 as you would expect but also Radio 4, which are at opposite ends of the spectrum. There are interviews with David Tennant everywhere. John Barrowman has been presenting This Morning all week. BBC3 has been reshowing the last series. Totally Doctor Who has started on CBBC. Newspapers have articles. Magazines have articles.
It's everywhere.
And the first episode is tomorrow.
CBBC now has Totally Doctor Who listed for this Friday at 6.30pm. Although it's a kid show they may be interesting Doctor Who stuff on it. For example Blue Peter has traditionally had interviews with the actors and SFX guys, and I imagine this show will have more in that vein. (I'm trying to supply you with excuses to watch it if you don't have kids!)
UPDATE
The first showing is on Thursday at 5pm.
Last night's Doctor Who Confidential (not yet online), shown on BBC3 as part of their Doctor Who night, was a look back at the first series of the rebooted Doctor Who. It contained interviews with all the main protaganists, Russell T Davies, producers, directors, actors etc. There was a lot of footage reshown from the last year's series, but also a smattering of teasers from the coming series.
My favourite of which was a clip from the K9 episode. Very funny. Can't remember it verbatim, but it was something like.
Doctor: "Mickey you stay in the car with K9. And don't forget to open the window."
Mickey: "He's a robot dog, why does he need the window open?"
Doctor: "I meant for you."
All in all the news series looks great, and David Tennant looks brilliant. Roll on Saturday.
Also we got to see some production sketches from Torchwood, and some talk about how it will be more adult, Earth based and allow different settings to be utilised.
It's Eastercon this coming weekend, up in Glasgow. I'm not going but I'll be watching Technorati, Google and Flickr for commentary.
The full programme for Alt-Fiction is online now, and I just bought a ticket!
It's on Saturday 6th May, in Derby (that's in the middle of England if you don't live in the UK). It includes three parallel tracks and includes authors such as Richard Morgan, James Lovegrove and Justina Robson in a combination of workshops, discussions, readings and Q&A sessions. Check out the full schedule.
Outpost Gallifrey has all the times and dates for Doctor Who and related shows. The headline?
Doctor Who 7.15pm, Saturday 15 April, BBC One
And in the mean time BBC3 are reshowing the first series, two every night starting from 7pm. Watched the first two last night and enjoyed them even more than the last time.
SFX have a transcript of a very funny Q&A with David Tennant and Billie Piper about the new season of Doctor Who. You can feel the chemistry between them just from the words.
The trailers for the new season of Doctor Who are online and showing all over BBC1.
On top of that the first TARDISODE is online! Even better if you have a new fangled groovy phone, it's available straight to your mobile. It's a 46 second trailer for the first episode about New Earth, shot as an infomercial. What a cool idea.
