Thursday, February 04, 2010

Lost - Oceanic Flight 815, the original and the alternate time line, side by side. Loved the start of the new season. Although alternate universes have been hinted at - like with Desmond - this is the first full-fledged one we've been presented with. I'm not sure they should have introduced another mystery to the Lost story, but hope springs eternal - or at least seasonally - that they know where they're going.

Labels: sci-fi, TV, youtube goodness

23:32 bone daddy

Saturday, January 02, 2010

BoneDaddy's Top Ten Shows of the Decade I'm king of the late lists.

10) Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. No one talks about this anymore, but for a while it was as funny as anything on TV. Laughing at it or laughing with it? Either way, you're laughing.

9) 24. Yes, it's a stupid show. Anyone who uses it as an excuse for Bush-era torture is simply an idiot. I got sick of the torture before most. Before it went off the rails, this show was fun, comic book entertainment. TV needs more action, bad accents and wives with amnesia.

8) World Series of Poker. Like everything else on this list, ESPN's heavily edited broadcast of the WSOP Main Event entertained, amused and informed. Nothing else on this list, however, made me money. Respect must be paid. Also, somewhere along the line I started liking Norman Chad. As former Bear Stearns exec Steve Beglieter made a raise - "That's a big bet! Especially in this economy!"

7) Freaks & Geeks. Has an Outsiders-esque cast of future stars. There's a lot of regret in TV geek circles that this show did not last beyond one season, but I'm not sure it needed to do more than it already had. (Technically, this show started in 1999, but most of the shows aired in 2000 and I suspect more people have seen it on DVD in the past decade than saw it broadcast so here it is.)

6) The Office. When I heard they were remaking the brilliant British show I thought, that's stupid. When I heard they cast Steve Carrell I thought, that's brilliant. And it is.

5) Friday Night Lights. Up and down seasons two and three keep this show from landing higher on the list. The first season was pitch perfect. Mr and Mrs Coach get the well deserved acting kudos and Taylor Kitsch sets the hearts a-swooning. For me, Zach Gilford as QB2 Matt Saracen is the heart and soul of the show.

4) Mad Men. The show has such great depth it takes me three pages to say anything about it. Sometimes commentary over at Pandagon, or from Mrs. BoneDaddy, or from Tony Kornheiser on the BS Report will make me re-think scenes in completely different ways because there are many valid ways to read this show. Also, it's one of those shows that just hit on a great cast top to bottom.

3) Lost. This could flip with #2 if it sticks the landing. It's also possible that it could plummet completely off the list if it squanders and sputters to a meandering nonsense ending. Scares me to type that, but it's true. Lost could finish as the longest Twilight Zone episode ever. That could be a great compliment. On the other hand, some of those Twilight Zone episodes aren't actually as good as we remember. (Please stick the landing ...)

2) Arrested Development. One of the best comedy casts of all time combined with the best comedy writing on TV. How good was this show? The jokes you only catch the second time around are better than the jokes other shows labor to set up and announce with a laugh track.

1) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I believe you could study modern U.S. presidents through the comedians who best lampooned them. Nixon through Herblock, Reagan through Doonesbury. Clinton through This Modern World. The best comedy about the W tragedy, and often the best commentary and even the best reporting of the time, came from The Daily Show. One thing the top 7 shows here have in common is great supporting casts. The Daily Show correspondents - going back to the time Ed Helms, Steve Carrell and Steven Colbert worked together and without missing a beat to today's Aasif Mandvi, John Oliver and Larry Wilmore - created some of the best moments on the show. I would buy a "This Week In God" DVD in a second and a "Daily Show news of the 2000s" even faster.

Honorable Mention/Haven't Seen Enough Yet/Cop Out Section: 30 Rock, Dexter (only on season 2), Sportscenter, The Wire (I'm guaranteed to love this show so I haven't watched any until I can devote the time to devouring the whole series, odd as that sounds), Battlestar Galactica (someone should pass a law separating new religions, mythologies and prophecies from TV science fiction. Just stop it.) and The Colbert Report.

Labels: Bush, Lists, poker, sci-fi, TV

09:57 bone daddy

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Mal-feasance: A Little Fun on the Firefly Set

Labels: sci-fi, TV, youtube goodness

17:00 cdogzilla

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Never Saw Or Even Heard Of It But Liking:


Not breaking into the Top Ten or anything.  Still, irritating me that there was a sci-fi show I never even heard of, with Ron Livingston, that was totally off my radar.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

11:06 cdogzilla

How Dollhouse Got in the Top Ten



It's on hulu.com.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

07:46 cdogzilla

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Non-Random Book, Non-Random Passage #2
For the last twenty plus years, Kim Stanley Robinson has been my favorite writer. Prior to that, it was either Robert A. Heinlein or Mark Twain. I already hit Twain in the random series, so I'll pick a Heinlein passage to take me back to the those heady high-school days when reasonably bright (I'll be haughty here and put myself in that category) kids' brains are soaking up knowledge like sponges, awash in destabilizing hormones, and still, for having ten or more years of schooling, remarkably empty.

Heinlein is like crack for teen geeks with a sci-fi bent. All that machismo, science, solipsism, and wacky libertarianism: Danger, Will Robinson! I shudder to think some of the stuff I thought back then, but I still treasure these old books, and there are lots of them. The juveniles, the classics, and even the ones near the end where (To Sail Beyond the Sunset, I'm looking at you) things were just getting plain weird.

Since Starship Troopers is first Heinlein that leaps to mind, I've got go with Major Reid and Johnny Rico in History and Moral Philosopy class.

"Are a thousand unreleased prisoners sufficient reason to start or resume a war? Bear in mind that millions of innocent people may die, almost certainly will die, if war is started or resumed."

I didn't hesitate. "Yes, sir! More than enough reason."

"'More than enough.' Very well, is one prisoner unreleased by the enemy, enough reason to start or resume a war?"

I hesitated. I knew the M.I. answer -- but I didn't think that was the one he wanted. He said sharply, "Come, come, Mister! We have an upper limit of one thousand; I invited you to consider a lower limit of one. But you can't pay a promissory note which reads 'somewhere between one and one thousand pounds' -- and starting a war is much more serious than paying a trifle of money. Wouldn't it be criminal to endanger a country -- two countries, in fact -- to save one man? Especially as he may not deserve it? Or may die in the meantime? Thousands of people get killed every day in accidents ... so why hesitate over one man? Answer! Answer yes, or answer no -- you're holding up the class."

He got my goat. I gave him the cap trooper's answer. "Yes, sir!"

"'Yes' what?"

"It doesn't matter if it's a thousand -- or just one, sir. You fight."

"Aha! The number of prisoners is irrelevant. Good. Now prove your answer."

I was stuck. I knew it was the right answer. But I didn't know why. He kept hounding me. "Speak up, Mr. Rico. This is an exact science. You have made a mathematical statement; you must give proof. Someone may claim that you have asserted, by analogy, that one potato is worth the same price, no more, no less, as a thousand potatoes. No?"

"No, sir!"

"Why not? Prove it."

"Men are not potatoes."

What I still enjoy in Heinlein is captured here.  What I outgrew is as well.  He's very directly challenging his reader to tackle questions of ethics and morality.  And he's strident about it.  All those italics and exclamation points, I didn't add those.  I don't mind that so much, sure it's a bit florid but I think that's a great approach to go after a young reader.  Pose the questions, demand an answer, then demand a justification.  The problem is he's sloppy.  Where he has Reid say they've established an "upper limit" of one thousand, no, that's not what they did at all.  That's saying up to one thousand prisoners are enough to go to war over, more than that is not sufficient reason.  I know what he was trying to say but you can't have a character say they're being held to mathematical standards of proof and morality is an exact science and be so careless with your words.  The whole situation is the kind of overwrought there's-a-terrorist-who-knows-where-the-bomb-is-do-you-torture-him-for-the-information scenario.  Obviously, a nation should not just forget about a P.O.W. still behind enemy lines.  But, neither do we need to suppose that immediately after the last signature is on the armistice document, the presence of P.O.W.s behind enemy lines means lobbing a nuke or immediately picking the rifles back up.  (Demand their safety, work out the logistics of their return, explain the consequences of failure to comply or discuss in good faith, then act accordingly.)  At heart, Reid and Rico are right, you risk more than one life to gain the release of a prisoner -- if need be -- because saying, "Well, it's just one prisoner, screw him," would clearly be wrong.  Just like torture is wrong.   The problem is Heinlein's bluster obscures the real process of how you reason through a dilemma like the one discussed.

I'm glad I read Heinlein when I was young, I'm not sure I could stomach him now if I hadn't.  I'm glad because even though the prose and ideology are dodgier than I realized as a teen, the lesson that it's important to get to the right answer, that you arrive at it by reasoning, that there is a science to answering the hard questions (no appeals to mumbo-jumbo and mystical bullshit) -- as long as a kid comes away with that, that kid's going in the right direction.  I hope my kids read this stuff when they get older.  I also hope they don't stop with Heinlein.

And, I never did outgrow Twain.

Labels: Books, sci-fi

05:28 cdogzilla

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Deals: 11/23/2009 - 11/23/2009 - Publishers Weekly:
"Orbit Signs Robinson

Orbit's Tim Holman inked Kim Stanley Robinson to a world English rights, three-book deal, with the first title in the agreement, 2312, slated to drop in 2012. Holman, v-p and publisher of the Hachette sci-fi/fantasy imprint, brokered the deal with agent Ralph Vicinanza. Robinson, who's won various genre awards including the Hugo and the Nebula, is best known for his Mars trilogy, published in the 1990s by Bantam's Spectra imprint. In the new novel, set 300 years in the future, human beings have fled Earth in favor of new homes within the solar system."

Labels: Books, sci-fi

21:18 cdogzilla

Saturday, November 07, 2009

in which a fairly major secret is made secret no more - WWdN: In Exile

Labels: movies, sci-fi

00:56 cdogzilla

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Random Book, Random Passage #9
Old School Pulp Sci-Fi time.  Check out the cover on Andre Norton's Witch World, wouldja?

(Mine is actually the 1963 Ace first edition that retailed for 40˘)  I'm actually a little worried that opening it again may crack the spine but here's a bit from page 58:

"When a potter creates a vase he lays clay upon the wheel and molds it with the skill of his hands to match the plan which is in his brain. Clay is a product of the earth, but that which changes its shape is the product of intelligence and training. It is in my mind that someone - or something - has gathered up that which is a part of the sea, of the air, and has molded it into another shape to serve a purpose."

I never read any of the other books in the Witch World series, Norton's style is a bit stilted for my taste. But I dig that Blue Falcon with a Hair Dryer cover. I don't know much about Norton but a quick look up in The Anatomy of Wonder informs me she was a childrens librarian, so I like her for that.

Labels: Books, sci-fi

22:14 cdogzilla

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Star Trek - Internet Trailer | SPIKE: Not awesome cut footage of Klingons from the DVD of J.J. Abrams's Star Trek.

Labels: sci-fi

20:06 cdogzilla

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Random Book, Random Passage #5
Randomness brought me to The Year's Best Science Fiction 1984 this time. It's got Lucius Shepard (twice), Kim Stanley Robinson, Gene Wolfe, Robert Silverberg, John Varley, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, it's quite a collection. But my random page puts us in Dozois's Introduction. Random giveth and random taketh away. Still, he writes:

So instead I'll limit myself to commenting on the novels that I did read this year, I was most impressed by Neuromancer, William Gibson (Ace Special); The Wild Shore, Kim Stanley Robinson (Ace Special); The Man Who Melted, Jack Dann (Bluejay Books); Them Bones, Howard Waldrop (Ace Special); Green Eyes, Lucius Shepard (Ace Special); Frontera, Lewis Shiner (Baen Books); The Man in the Tree, Damon Knight (Berkley); Heechee Rendezvous, Frederik Pohl (Del Rey); Across the Sea of Suns, Gregory Benford (Timescape); Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand, Samuel R. Delaney (Bantam)...

I'll stop there even though several more outstanding novels follow in his list (Icehenge and Job: A Comedy of Justice not the least of them).  Many of the books Dozois lists are classics, and are sitting on shelves in front of me, waiting for the randomizer to select them.  How about they eye for talent whoever did the selecting for the Ace Specials had, eh?  My Ace Special editions of The Wild Shore (signed) and Green Eyes are prized possessions.  (I sure hope my kids like to read sci-fi when they get a little older, I can't wait to share these with them.)  A little further down the page where Dozois discuss the small press, it brings a smile to my face to see how he acknowledged Zeising for publishing novels by Gene Wolfe and PKD.  

Labels: Books, sci-fi

13:12 cdogzilla

Monday, October 12, 2009

Captain Mal Reynolds Returns to Television! | FIREFLYFANS.NET: Well, it's not *really* Mal but I'll be watching for it.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

18:08 cdogzilla

Thursday, October 08, 2009

“World War Z” May Be Moving Forward : Slice of SciFi: The director and writer (of the first draft at least) sound like good choices.

Labels: movies, sci-fi

15:31 cdogzilla

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Sam Raimi is going to give Yetis the District 9 treatment: "

One of the prerogatives of being a blockbuster director/producer is that you can shepherd new talent, as Lord of the Rings' Peter Jackson nurtured South African director Neill Blomkamp and his hit sci-fi action drama District 9 this summer.

Spider-Man's Sam Raimi is now taking a similar route by sponsoring a newbie British director named Corin Hardy and producing his proposed supernatural horror movie Refuge, about a remote town terrorized by a Yeti, the mythological creature native to the mountains of the Himalayas. (That's 'abominable snowman' to you.)"

Labels: cryptozoology, movies, sci-fi

06:44 cdogzilla

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Science fiction author hits out at Booker judges |Books |guardian.co.uk:
"Kim Stanley Robinson, one of science fiction's contemporary greats, accuses the Booker prize judges of ignorance"

Sadly, I haven't read the winners or his suggestions for who should have won. But now that I know, I can take the list to Lazy Lion tomorrow when I collect my $10 gift cert won for getting their Twitter trivia question right.

"He believes this year's prize should go to Adam Roberts's science fiction comedy, Yellow Blue Tibia, which didn't even make the longlist. In 2005, when John Banville took the Booker for The Sea, he believes that Geoff Ryman's Air should have won; in 2004 – when Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty won – it should have gone to Gwyneth Jones's Life, and in 1997, the year of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Signs of Life by M John Harrison should have triumphed."

Labels: Books, sci-fi

00:08 cdogzilla

Saturday, August 29, 2009

12 weird sci-fi statues you can buy for your garden: "Your typical garden gnome might be good enough for some people, but not for those of us here at SCI FI Wire. We need something a little more exciting on our lawns, something that makes more of a statement, something a bit more ... well ... sci-fi!

So when we saw the cement Yodas (above) that a savvy shopper spotted for sale this week in Raleigh, N.C., we realized just what we needed to liven up the yard. Here are some dinosaur, zombie and alien sculptures that will have you forgetting about bird baths forever."

----------------
Now playing: Misfits - The Haunting
via FoxyTunes

Labels: local flavor, sci-fi

10:44 cdogzilla

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Blogtor Who: That's an intensely blue new Tardis exterior. Not sure the Prof. Jones looks totally suits Mr. Smith, but I'm not put off by any of the pix linked here. Just feeling really, really old. It's one thing when almost all the baseball players on your favorite team are younger than you but when Doctor Who is not only younger than you, he looks like he could be your offspring, that's a kick in the head.

Labels: doctor who, sci-fi, TV

18:52 cdogzilla

Sunday, July 05, 2009

It Doesn't Have To Be Right...: Sexy Sci-Fi: Heaving Bosom Sci-FI is too often missed in sub-genre lists. I dig the similarity to the similarly pulpy crime novel covers of the 50s-60s.

Labels: Books, Lists, sci-fi, shadowboner

15:09 cdogzilla

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Transformers 2 gets worst reviews of the year. Didn't see that coming.

Labels: movies, sci-fi

15:33 bone daddy

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Science fiction's vital contribution to the life of English | Books | guardian.co.uk: "If you measure the health of literature by its impact on language, than [sic] there's no genre in better condition than SF"

Labels: Books, sci-fi

14:15 cdogzilla

Thursday, May 21, 2009

A Mystery-y-ish-y Word Trend: The -Y Suffix Has Gone Bananas
When I saw the headline, I knew the article was going to reference Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Labels: sci-fi, words

14:59 cdogzilla

Friday, May 08, 2009

Dollhouse season finale in about 10 minutes. This is the left bookend of "awesome sci-fi weekend". Right bookend is going to be Star Trek at the IMAX on Monday.

Labels: movies, sci-fi, TV

20:54 cdogzilla

Saturday, May 02, 2009

'Dollhouse' exclusive: Alpha breaks his silence! | Dollhouse | Ausiello Files | EW.com: Dollhouse was excellent again last night. Although, the whole Echo subplot felt a little forced (don't think too hard about the why and how of it) but thematically it tied in nicely.
Big Spoiler Alert -- stop here if you DVR'd and - like me - didn't already know the casting surprise. Tudyk (Wash!) was outstanding as undercover Alpha. I'm not really a fan of Dushku and frankly wish Tudyk were the series lead. I don't suppose there's any chance the series finale could kill off Echo or free Caroline and we could have a new lead if/when renewal happens?

Labels: sci-fi, TV

18:23 cdogzilla

Shatner Watches Trek Trailer for First Time: http://tini.us/theshat (Not sure I'll use tini.us again. To allow for commenting on the link, you have to go through their homepage, find the link, then go back to leave comment -- seems like a lot of work.)

Labels: movies, sci-fi

17:00 cdogzilla

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Chabon Hired for “John Carter” Script : Slice of SciFi
Seems like an odd match, but apparently he's a fan fulfilling a lifelong dream.

Labels: movies, sci-fi

17:35 cdogzilla

Friday, April 10, 2009

Zombies mash-up author receives rumored $575,000 for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter | SCI FI Wire

Labels: Books, sci-fi

16:04 cdogzilla

Thursday, March 26, 2009

The 411? Fourth Doctor rumored to be appearing with the Eleventh: Daily Express | Will Tom return? I'd love to see it. Tom's previously expressed an interest in the playing the Master, but I don't think that will fly. It'd have to be something like a splintered timeline Doctor -- there are any number of ways it could be sci-fied up, really. In any event, it would be awesome.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

12:53 cdogzilla

Monday, February 23, 2009

"Fun fact: Jeri Ryan [Seven of Nine] dumped her husband [Jack Ryan] to be with [Trek Producer Brannon] Braga, which led to the divorce filing that destroyed her husband's Illinois senate candidacy -- paving the way for Obama to become a senator [by easily defeating Alan Keyes], and then president. Thanks, Brannon Braga!" Star Trek Voyager saved the country.

Labels: Obama, sci-fi, TV

18:39 HD

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Labels: 2009, movies, sci-fi

18:22 cdogzilla

Saturday, October 04, 2008

What makes me return from blogging hiatus? I wish I could tell you it was something insightful or highbrow but it's justthe possibility of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars coming to TV. As a movie it seemed like it would be desperately cramped so I like the idea of a TV series and since I'm (yeah, just now) getting into Mad Men I don't have a problem with AMC either.

Labels: Books, sci-fi, TV

16:45 bone daddy

Monday, May 12, 2008

Left Lost?
Uh oh. So the producers of Lost have added an hour to each of the next two seasons, which will be the final seasons of the show. I'm glad about this. It suggests they know exactly the story they are telling. Lost can end as one of the greatest shows of all time if they stick the landing.

But in that same article, Damon Lindelof says, ""David Chase set a great example when he went off to Paris after 'The Sopranos' ending, which is great because all these people are going to be asking, 'What does it mean? What is it?' ... The fact that there's no one really around to answer that question, it forces people to come up with what they think it means. We can guarantee our show will not end with a cut to black, it will be more clear than that."

Better be. If Lost ends and I have to supply the answers, I may not watch a serialized drama ever again. Don't hold the Sopranos ending up as any kind of a positive model. Geez.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

10:10 bone daddy

Friday, March 21, 2008

Lucius in Stride
Lucius Shepard's Hugo Nominated short story, "Stars Seen Through Stone." The intrusion of other realities into troubled relationships is Shepard's meat and potatoes. I like this as a relatively upbeat alternate version of his recent short novel, "Softspoken."

Labels: Books, sci-fi

10:57 cdogzilla

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke dies.
And so the last of the triumvirate of early sci-fi giants, along with Heinlein and Asimov, is gone. Phil Dick once said that every time someone used a robot that thought it was human he should get paid. For Clarke, it's every time a giant spaceship hovers over a city and people gather together to look up in awe and fear. Childhood's End is a legitimate classic. The stories stay with me more. "The Star" and "Nine Billion Names of God" are perfect, mind-blowing constructions. R.I.P.

Clarke is eulogized at Salon.

Labels: Books, obit, sci-fi

23:31 bone daddy

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Lost Time
I've never become a part of the giant Lost community online. I don't want to know spoilers and couldn't care less who fan nation thinks is cuter. I've also been avoiding most theories since I hope the show itself will be the best prestige. Yet, I couldn't resist peeking at this theory and this similarly time-centric theory.

Yeah, probably something like that. But what about the four toes? (Links via PopCandy.)

Labels: sci-fi, science, TV

08:24 bone daddy

Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Sarah Conner Chronicles has been good enough to keep me watching for a few more shows, certainly helped by the fact that there's nothing else on right about now. I still think the whole thing went downhill when someone decided they should have good terminators to fight the bad terminators. And Summer Glau may be miscast. Her out of place waif who kicks ass reminds me of her Firefly character. (I know, someone who doesn't like Firefly or T2. Unleash the fanboys!)

My favorite part was a bit of unintentional comedy in the first hour when Sarah shields herself from the terminator's hail of bullets with a reclining chair! It gave off the little squib explosions and everything. They recognized how goofy this was because in the next scene there's a throwaway line - obviously added later - about Kevlar in the chair. See? It all makes sense. You think if the chair were absorbing the force of the bullets it might have, you know, rocked or something. Still I won't write it off just yet.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

12:19 bone daddy

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Heinlein's Star Fading?
I keep rereading Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and some of the "juveniles" (Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Citizen of the Galaxy & Podkayne of Mars) every year or two and I still think he's miles better than Asimov or Clarke. Still, I haven't even thought of going back to Stranger in a Strange Land, Friday, To Sail Beyond the Sunset (any of the Lazarus Long novels, actually) and -- long separated from the wild libertarian to fascist swings of my teenage years -- I don't have much stomach for his "hairy-chested" prose, as this LA Times piece dubs it. (Nice synchronicity, btw, with Mark over at Cheek nominating R.A.H. for membership in the Manly Writers Corps.)

Also in the LA Times is a list of fave sci-fi novels of 2007 that'll make it's way to my library hold list.

Update: Heinlein's (manly) optimism in an essay on thisibelieve.org -- he's popping up everywhere these days as his Centenary year winds down.

(via SF Signal)

Labels: Books, Lists, sci-fi, shadowboner

16:28 cdogzilla

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Davison and Tennant
Brilliant short from the annual Children in Need Special last night. Check it out before Youtube realizes it's there.

Labels: doctor who, sci-fi, TV, youtube goodness

09:23 cdogzilla

Monday, October 08, 2007

Ridley Scott Has Finally Created the Blade Runner He Always Imagined. No more voice-over. The new cut is playing for two weeks in a great huge classic theater in NYC.

Labels: movies, sci-fi

20:56 HD

Friday, September 21, 2007

Fanboy Gushing
Just finished watching Doctor Who's finest hour. I thought the same thing last week, and the week before, and the week before that. But this week, oh man. Spoilers are everywhere and nearly unavoidable, but skip the next paragraph if you don't already know what made this week special.

Derek Jacobi was brilliant, absolutely perfect ... what a genius way to bring the Master back. (And the new guy looks like he'll do just fine.) The drums, the voices from the past, they really did this right. Wow. And we get the dope on Capt. Jack, and the hand in the jar (of course!), and it all ties back to the end of Season 1 and Torchwood (sort of)and the classic series, while managing to stand alone as a great episode. More wow.

HD, if you haven't seen this yet, when the Series 3 DVD comes out, I'd actually consider asking the missus if I could fly up to NYC, or fly you down to NC (yeah, I'll be down there Oct 1st) for, if nothing else, a mini-marathon of the last 4 episodes and next week's conclusion to this one.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

22:30 cdogzilla

Monday, August 20, 2007

Outpost Gallifrey: Doctor Who RSS News Feed: "McCoy claimed that Fifth Doctor Peter Davison is due to return for Series 4 in a Multi-Doctor episode."

While I'm surprised they'd go all the way back to the Fifth Doctor when McGann (8), and probably McCoy (7), wouldn't be so obviously older than when they played the Doctor, and in their cases because McGann was a one-0ff and Sly got to walk off the role, their older appearance could be explained, where with Davison we saw his Doctor from beginning to end and there's no getting around the fact that he's aged. That said, I hope the rumor is true.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

11:03 cdogzilla

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Christian Metal Band or Star Trek episode? A quiz.

Labels: music, sci-fi, TV

10:40 bone daddy

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Chewbacca impersonator accused of assaulting Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Question: is there an instrument sensitive enough to measure the amount of dignity lost?

Labels: crime, movies, sci-fi

08:35 bone daddy

Sunday, July 08, 2007

The Doctor Is In
The House Next Door: Doctor Who, Season Three, Eps. 0 and 1: "The Runaway Bride" and "Smith and Jones"

Labels: sci-fi, TV

15:52 cdogzilla

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Family Guy Does Star Wars
"Only one thing to do ... you still got that bag I gave you?" And the Leslie Nielsen cameo is brilliant.
via MeFi

Labels: sci-fi, TV, youtube goodness

16:10 cdogzilla

Saturday, May 05, 2007

I happen to be re-reading Cat's Cradle, for obvious reasons. A lot of it is coming back to me and I'm enjoying it, probably not as much as when I was nineteen, but still. Certain books should be read by young people and certain books, say Moby Dick, are probably best enjoyed when you're older. I'm coming across a lot of great quotes - even better than his "15 Best", such as:

"The highest possible form of treason," said Minton, "is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do."

Also:

I could carve a better man out of a banana.

Labels: Books, sci-fi

11:33 bone daddy

Saturday, April 21, 2007

KSR's Next
Stan reveals in a Locus interview that he's working on another historical novel ...

I've sold a book about the birth of science called The Galileans. It will have a science fiction element, but a strongly historical narrative as well. I researched the subject when I was writing The Years of Rice and Salt, which includes an alternative scientific revolution. Having done that, I thought, 'Well, what actually happened is fascinating.' So this new book is constellated about the figure of Galileo. Because he was famously put on trial by the Pope, he's still a good way to discuss the relationship between science and religion, and how those two can be reconciled (or not).

He also recommends a historical novelist I've never heard of: Cecelia Holland. If he thinks she's one of our greatest novelists, I'm intrigued.

Labels: Books, sci-fi, science

21:07 cdogzilla

Saturday, April 14, 2007

A Philip K. Dick scholar blogs at Total Dick-Head.

Labels: Books, sci-fi

13:47 HD

Saturday, January 06, 2007

New Tenant in the Tardis?
There are an awful lot of articles saying rumors that Tennant is leaving Doctor Who after Season 3/29 aren't true but until today I hadn't seen any mention of new casting. Rumors are what they are so I take it cum grano salis that Jason Statham (imdb) is next up as the Doctor.

Probably not worth commenting on a rumor so unlikely, Statham's film career may not have been boosted by Crank but I find it hard to believe he's looking for series tv work, yet I can't help but wonder what he'd do with the role. He was brilliant in Lock, Stock , Snatch, and proved he is a legit action star in The Transporter. But, while the Doctor is supposed to be a master of Venusian karate, action is hardly the show's calling card. I'd imagine he'd have to play the role more Turkish than Frank Martin, which wouldn't be a bad thing.

Still, I hope Tennant sticks around a few more seasons. The Doctor doesn't have enough regenerations for the role to be revolving door.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

16:14 cdogzilla

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Doctor Hero?

Casting rumor has Christopher Eccleston joining Heroes next year. It's hard to see him taking what would have to be small supporting role in an already crowded cast though.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

09:31 cdogzilla

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Battlestar Galacticons: A close look at the right's scary affinity for sci-fi foreign policy punditry.

Labels: Conservative Goons, sci-fi

18:19 HD

Friday, September 15, 2006

The Pluckiest Companion
Sarah Jane Smith to get her own Who spin-off. Too much of a good thing, what with Torchwood and the K-9 shows also coming soon? Nah. I guess it's to Sladen's benefit the Rose spin-off didn't come together.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

20:25 cdogzilla

Sunday, September 03, 2006

Trek Again
I posted to the proof of concept earlier, now it looks like the full on digital enhancement of the original Star Trek series is coming back, as soon as September 16th, to broadcast syndication.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

13:39 cdogzilla

Monday, July 03, 2006

The unaired pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a different Willow and slated for a half hour. Xander's the only one who seems already at home.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

23:21 bone daddy

Friday, June 23, 2006

Instead of Rebooting, Refurbishing
A MeFi-er points out some original Trek with new CGI. Not bad.

Labels: sci-fi, TV

20:59 cdogzilla

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Death Star
Funny. "I'll tell everyone what a whiney b!tch you were about Padamomay, or Panda Bear, or whatever the hell her name is." Like Palpitation, or Palomine, or whatever his name is, is one to talk!

Labels: sci-fi

14:52 cdogzilla

I Wasn't the Only One Thinking Reboot
I've blogged a couple times about how I feel the best thing for the Star Trek franchise would be a reboot ... unbeknownst to me, at least one pretty big name was thinking along the same lines -- J. Michael Stracyznski wanted to create a Universe B and reset the mythology.

Here's the post on Zabel's (Stracyznski's collaborator) blog with a link to the treatment. One strength of the treatment is that it has a clear vision for limited series, just as I had proposed, with a five year mission and each season being one year of that mission. My thinking was to cherry pick and remake the best episodes, which is an element in this vision, but they have the idea of the Enterprise crew seeking out advanced race that seeded the universe being the driving story arch, which I feel is too remniscent of Stargate (although there's plenty of precedent in the Star Trek universe for this already as well) and detracts from the pioneer spirt that made the original so compelling. The universe as frontier, as wild, untamed nature is so much more engaging than the universe as the garden of an advanced race, at least to my thinking.

Labels: sci-fi

09:24 cdogzilla

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Dread Reckoning, all about Richard Matheson's great novel I Am Legend, possibly spends too much time talking about Romero's zombie movies, but is still a decent read and might jazz you up to read or re-read the book. It also reminds you that a big-time movie is coming down the pipe starring Will Smith. Is it me, or should I Am Legend maybe not be a big budget, quip-tastic summer movie? Smith is still better than the original lead, the Governator.

Labels: Books, sci-fi

23:08 bone daddy

Tuesday, April 11, 2000

The next Star Trek television series might be Star Trek: Birth of the Federation.

Labels: sci-fi

16:15 N