New Doctor Who Arrives on BBC America in April

BBC America announced today that the new era of the BBC’s iconic BAFTA-winning drama, “Doctor Who,” will make its U.S. premiere on Saturday, April 17, 2010, soon after the UK broadcast.

“Doctor Who,” BBC America’s highest rated series ever, continues its tradition of rebooting with new lead actors and creative team. Matt Smith debuts as the new, Eleventh incarnation of the famous Time Lord alongside a new traveling companion, the enigmatic Amy Pond (Karen Gillan).

“Britain has a tradition of reinventing its iconic characters, like James Bond and Sherlock Holmes – and Doctor Who. In introducing the Eleventh Doctor, writer Steven Moffat is opening the show to a whole new audience, while serving fans with an exciting mix of inter galactic, time travelling adventures. We can’t wait to meet his new Doctor!” comments Richard De Croce, Senior Vice President Programming, BBC America.

Read more about it on ComingSoon.net

Damon Wants a Girlfriend! Damon Wants a Girlfriend!

Is Damon Salvatore capable of love with a (gulp!)…. human being?

According to Vampire Diaries producer Julie Plec, the answer is yes. Slowly. Eventually. She recently told Entertainment Weekly:

“We’ll see Damon start to look at Elena as more than just his brother’s girlfriend or the doppelganger to the love of his life. He’ll start to love and understand her as a human being, which is ironic because Damon could typically give a s–t about anything involving humanity. It’s some good stuff.”

Source

Are you looking forward to the US debut of Doctor Who?

I’ve been wondering if Damon has feelings for Elena, especially now that he knows Katherine never cared for him. What do you think? What direction might it go if/when Damon develops feelings for Elena?

TV Watchtower: When Sci-Fi TV Shows Fall Beneath The Guillotine

By Tiffany Vogt at Airlock Alpha

While shows like “Dollhouse,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “Stargate SG-1,” and “Stargate: Atlantis” and even “Lost” are given the opportunity to conclude their series with some semblance of a storyline wrap-up, more frequently networks just unceremoniously yank sci-fi shows off the air without the dignity of a proper send-off or good-bye – “Firefly” being perhaps one of the more glaring examples.

With Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” airing its final episode last month, this is a perfect time to analyze how sci-fi shows are treated by the networks when their time has come. Fortunately, with “Dollhouse,” Joss was given advance notice that Fox was not going to pick up the back nine episodes of the second season, and it allowed him the opportunity to wrap up the series.

That was unlike when Fox abruptly canceled “Firefly” a mere eight years before, which ended with Fox airing “Firefly’s” two-hour pilot as its swan song, a maneuver that still has fans scratching their heads in bewilderment. I mean who airs the two-hour pilot after a show has been canceled? It’s like rubbing it in the fans’ faces that a terrific show was forever gone.

Read More here

Will Steven Spielberg Save Science Fiction Television?

By Meredith Woerner at io9

Spielberg is ready to redeem the struggling genre of science fiction on television. His third genre TV show, Nine Lives, might be airing on NBC, and we think Spielberg could be the TV savior we’ve been hoping for.

Spielberg created Nine Lives for the Syfy Channel but it never saw the light of day. The 12-hour miniseries brings back Spielberg’s collaborator Les Bohem, who was a writer on Taken. The series was supposed to be centered on people who seek out near-death situations in order to reunite with dead loved ones. But the project never happened.

But the trades are now reporting that NBC is interested in bringing back this series, if Bohem updates the script.

Read More here

New trailer for Doctor Who highlights Matt Smith’s Time Lord

by Patrick Lee at Sci Fi Wire

BBC America has posted a teaser trailer for the upcoming new episodes of Doctor Who, featuring Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor and Karen Gillan as his new companion, which you can view below.

It’s not a series of clips from the episodes, but rather a kind of homage to past episodes and, especially, villains, such as the stone angels from the 2007 episode “Blink,” which happens to have been written by Steven Moffat, Doctor Who’s new show runner.

Read More here

From Vicki to Zoe: The Evolution of Robot Daughters on Television

Teresa Jusino at Tor

On Caprica, Zoe Graystone has become infinitely more compelling now that she exists only as an avatar. While we recognize Daniel and Amanda Graystone’s pain having lost their only daughter, we can’t help but be more fascinated by Avatar Zoe, who experiences life for the first time, despite memories that tell her otherwise, in the body of a seven-foot robot. Zoe is a well-written character and benefits from an intelligent performance by Alessandra Torresani. However, both the writers of Caprica and Ms. Torresani owe a great debt to another jewel in the science-fiction television crown.

I refer, of course, to Small Wonder.

Caprica wasn’t the first sci-fi show to center around a family with a robot daughter, and there are several similarities between it and its 1980s predecessor.

Read More here

I think Sci Fi shows are always judged more harshly than normal shows, and less well handled by the network (at least at Fox). Any show will fail if you don’t market it well or to the right audience, or if you change the time slot often, or the day of the week it’s on. I hope that with all of the sci fi movies doing so well lately it will give sci fi shows more opportunity.

What do you think of the Doctor Who trailer? Are you a fan of Caprica?

Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein Heads to the Big Screen

screencrave.com: It starts with the vampires, followed by the werewolves, then it’s Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, and his buddy the Mummy. These constant remakes of classic horror characters won’t stop, and the latest revamp will come courtesy of horror writer Dean Koontz and his take on the Frankenstein monster. Are you excited?

According to Variety, Ralph Winter and Terry Botwick are developing a modern take on the Frankenstein story using the Koontz series as its source material. The story takes place in present day New Orleans and will have the doctor as a socially affluent businessman and his creation Deucalion as his loyal companion. The duo will be tracked down by a pair of detectives who are investigating a murder and run into Deucalion and several other “engineered humans.”

More here

Green Lantern’s villain speaks! What about that big head?

scifiwire.com: Despite rave reviews for his turn in his latest film An Education, Peter Sarsgaard hasn’t gotten a big head—yet. That may change, literally, when the actor goes before the cameras in March in the role of Green Lantern’s villainous Hector Hammond, the infamous massively domed telepath with the tiny, withered body.

Sarsgaard’s excited to wrap his brain around the role. “It’s something completely different for me and something that I’ve not done before,” he told us at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where he received a Cinema Vanguard Award. “I imagine that if I’d done 10 of them I wouldn’t be as excited as I am, but it’s not the kind of thing that I normally do. It feels expansive to me. It feels like shackles being taken off instead of being put on. I just feel like I can do anything with this role.”

More here

Luc Besson Spurs Another Futuristic Jailbreak. But Will There Be Parkour In Space?

io9.com: The Luc Besson-produced District 13: Ultimatum just opened in the United States, but he’s already in pre-production on another prison-break movie, this time set in space in the future. Plus he’s producing an English-language District 13 remake. Spoilers ahead…

Section 8 takes place in a prison orbiting 50 miles above the Earth, which houses 500 of the world’s most dangerous criminals. Not only are these wrongdoers kept in orbit, they’re also kept asleep by sophisticated technology - until they suddenly all wake up. The movie is co-written by Besson and directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather.

They hope to begin shooting this spring or summer. The film will be St. Leger and Mather’s full-length directorial debut, but they already made a splash with the digital short film Prey Alone (pictured above), about a manhunt with a surprising twist.

For more and videos  here

How do you feel about more remakes being done? Do you think they should stay the way they are? Any remake you hated being done of you favorite movie?

I would really like to see some of those sci-fi properties done into movies, like Farscape. That would be a good way to know what happened. They also mentioned good TV shows like Doctor Who, which in my opinion David Tennant does a good job as. What do you think? Do they deserve a movie?

It is exciting to hear that they’ll start filming Green Lantern soon in March! And we’re finally getting more news from the actors, it’s a movie I can’t wait to see, especially how they’ll handle the special effects for the ring Are you a Green Lantern fan?

By Annalee Newitz at io9: Neil Gaiman Confirms That He’s Written An Upcoming Episode Of Doctor Who

At last addressing the long-bubbling rumor that he would be writing for Doctor Who, award-winning author Neil Gaiman has confirmed that he’s penned an episode for the second season with new Doctor Matt Smith. He even shared the working title.

Gaiman announced this fangasm-worthy news via venerable British SF magazine SFX:

“As anyone who’s read my blog knows, I’m a big fan of a certain long-running British SF TV series. One that started watching — from behind the sofa — when I was three. And while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode.”

Read More here

by Glenn Diaz at Buddy TV: Is ‘Caprica’ Becoming Too Soapy?

If Caprica co-creator Ron Moore were to be asked, the unequivocal answer would be yes, because that was that intention in the first place.

Three episodes into the Battlestar Galactica prequel, human drama may have had a longer share of the spotlight than robots and overtly futuristic stuff on Caprica, but that’s kind of the direction it was headed for, adds Moore, to differentiate it from Battlestar.
“It was kind of important to David Eick and I that the show not be about just another Battlestar or yet another war series, but to really be different on a fundamental level to what Battlestar was,” he says.

On the most recent episode of Caprica, we finally got an explanation as to why in the world did Amanda Graystone crucify her daughter Zoe in front of the whole (grieving) world. And the reason is, well, it just came out.

Read More here

By Kathie Huddleston at Sci Fi Wire: Why Michael Shanks thinks Stargate SG-1 is history

It looks like Stargate SG-1 may finally be dead, at least according to star Michael Shanks, who played Dr. Daniel Jackson on the series, which ran for 10 seasons and spurred two DVD movies in 2008 and two Syfy spinoff series.

“Given the amount of time lag that’s gone on between us doing the movies, I suspect that we might be very far away from, if ever, doing another DVD movie. This might be the closing of the book on that particular [chapter of the] franchise,” said Shanks, whom we caught up with while he was promoting his guest-starring role as Hawkman in The CW’s two-hour film Smallville: Absolute Justice.

“Never say never. It’s always a possibility. But I think everybody’s moving on to a certain point, and with the new show doing well, everybody’s focusing their attention on that. The SG-1 idea is somewhat on the back burner, which is a little bit unfortunate, because I think one more story would have been a great way to bring Rick (Richard Dean Anderson) back in and really go there. But you know, business is business.”

Read More here

By Graeme McMillan at io9: Does Lost’s New Code Spell Out The End?

Love Lost but bored by the numbers? A new code has been released online that claims to explain the end of the series . . . if you make the right choices. Potential spoilers!

The code appeared on the Twitter of Lost site Dark UFO on Friday:

626110432547f398491fad32d6add11b #lost http://goo.gl/YaGj

followed by the explanation, “Crack that code and you’ll know the end of LOST ”

Read More here

I hope that there’s another Stargate SG1 Movie. Stargate Universe just isn’t the same. And I think the Doctor Who episode by Neil Gaiman will be awesome. He wrote an episode of Babylon 5 too, and that was a good one.

What do you think of the Lost code? Do you watch Caprica?

This week’s edition centers once again ‘Time Travel’. As you have seen, OBS is a huge fan of traveling thru time, so we have been giving  you our Must-See Time Travel movies, Top 5/10 Time Traveling TV Shows & Books, and much more. So now we want to know out of all those amazing movies, book, and shows..which of those infamous travelers is your favorite?!

 Marty Mcfly - Back to the Future movies

Billy Pilgrim – Slaughter House 5  

 Henry DeTamble – Time Traveler’s Wife

George Taylor – Planet of the Apes

Bill & Ted – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Ash – Army of Darkness

         Evan Treborn – The Butterfly Effect

 Doug Carlin – Deja Vu

The Doctor – Doctor Who

Dr. Sam Beckett – Quantum Leap

Hiro Nakamura & Peter Petrelli – Heroes

Desmond Hume – LOST

If you would like to discuss this more, and give your reasons why you choose who you did, please come join the fun debate on the OBS Forums.

You can VOTE right here on the News Blog, just look to your right >> and under “POLLS” is the question along with the answers, just click one and view the results!!

Also check back with OBS every Wednesday, and get to answer the “Poll of Week”!!

Want to view the results of our previous polls, like who was named the “Which is your favorite Mythical Character?” “ Who is your favorite Author?” or “Who is your favorite Vampire” ? You can check them out HERE

Lost’s Time Travel Pedigree

io9.com

Here are 6 time-travel stories that are part of Lost’s time travel pedigree.

Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut

The Gist:

In this World War 2 story, Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. This soldier finds that his brain is traveling wildly between different points in his life. His consciousness is wildly swinging from moments as distant as his death, his childhood, and his days as a confused soldier during the firebombing of Dresden. But all of these moments add up to a picture of Billy Pilgrim as a person.

The Lost Connection:

The first connection is obvious. In the 4th season of Lost, Desmond starts experiencing exactly this effect. In fact, his first bout with his unstuck mind brings him to his days in the military, an obvious nod to the Vonnegut novel.

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
Primer
“By His Bootstraps,” by Robert Heinlein
Groundhog Day
Doctor Who

More here

Q&A: ‘Lost’ producers discuss emotional final season

THR: How would you describe this season in terms of its, say, tone? What is it like compared to past seasons?

Cuse: We feel tonally it’s most similar to the first season of the show. We’re employing a different narrative device, which we feel is creating some emotional and heartfelt stories, and we want the audience to have a chance in the final season to remember the entire history of the show. So we have actors coming back like Dominic [Monaghan] and Ian [Sommerhalder]. We’re hoping to achieve a circularity of the entire journey so the ending is reminiscent of the beginning.

THR: Is there any one character’s story line that you think particularly emotionally resonates this season?

Cuse: Jack and Locke have always been at the center of the show, that dilemma of faith vs. reason, and the conflict between those two characters has been there since the beginning. It’s very exciting to bring that relationship to its conclusion, and we can’t really be any less vague about that.

More here

Great time travel pedigree. Have you read the books mentioned? or see the movies and/or tv shows? If so, how do you think they relate to Lost?

Lindlehoff and Cuse are so damn funny. I appreciate how in tune they are with fans. We do need a satisfying ending in relation to all our favorite characters. Lost has taken us on an amazing journey with so many plot twists and mysteries, it makes my head spin. I haven’t always understood what was going on, but I was always fascinated and addicted every step of the way. I’m sad it will be ending but this season will kick ass, I’m sure of it.

What do you think of the interview?