Sci-Fi Storm

Since a lot of you (me included) probably at least follow @nerdist of not listen to his podcast, comedian Chris Hardwick – a self-professed Doctor Who fan – will develop an original panel talk show for BBC America based on the Nerdist podcast. The show will cover all things relative to geek culture from LA to London and feature celebrity guests with their own nerd obsessions. Hardwick will executive produce alongside K.P. Anderson and Jay James for Comcast Entertainment Studios.

Also, Hardwick will also host the network’s “Ministry of Laughs” comedy block on Saturday nights, which kicks off on June 18th, and will feature British shows The Inbetweeners, Come Fly With Me, and The Graham Norton Show.

I haven’t heard officially the reason yet, but BBC America will not show the next episode, “The Almost People”, next weekend, instead delaying an an extra week. Most likely due to traditional low ratings on the Memorial Day weekend. This means the U.S. will fall behind a week as the UK will still get their episode as planned. It may not be too bad though – there were only two more episodes in the current schedule, as Series 6 was split into two production sets, and episode 7 will air June 11th before the break. Hopefully when it returns to same-day when the second half returns and we don’t have to endure spoilers from every direction.

While we wait for Torchwood: Miracle Day, we can finally see some footage on the new extended trailer that appeared on Access Hollywood yesterday.

Updated: added a much better trailer…

Ashley Eckstein (the voice of Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: The Clone Wars) is at Disney’s Hollywood Studios gearing up for Star Wars Weekends starting tomorrow, and has made a couple of videos previewing the brand-new version of the Star Tours attraction. You can view one video below, and then an exclusive tour of the new attraction queue is available over at Entertainment Weekly…the new attraction boasts incredible 3D projection, a new variable experience (54 possible variations) and all sorts of new details.

In the meantime, Eckstein’s company, Her Universe, which makes science fiction merchandise targeted at women, in partnership with Syfy (a partnership we reported on in October), will finally unveil a Syfy Gear merchandise line for women at San Diego Comic-Con, which runs July 20th-24th as well as available via Syfy.com and heruniverseshop.com (except for a Comic-Con “exclusive”). Both sides are still tight-lipped about what the merchandise might be…
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Interesting news from Peter Jackson a short time ago – Actor/Comedian Stephen Fry (Kingdom) has joined the cast of The Hobbit, playing the Master of Laketown (Esgaroth).

Also joining are Ryan Gage (Hamlet) as Alfrid, the Master’s civil cervant, apparently an invented role for the movie, and Conan Stevens (True Legend) as the Orc Azog.

Syfy has acquired both seasons (26 episodes) of the hit Canadian supernatural drama Lost Girl from Prodigy Pictures, it was announced today by Thomas Vitale, Executive Vice President, Programming and Original Movies, Syfy. Lost Girl stars supernatural seductress Bo (played by Anna Silk, The Ghost Whisperer), a Succubus (a powerful female entity in folklore) who feeds off sexual energy. Raised by human parents, Bo had no reason to believe she was anything other than the girl next door — until she “drained” her first boyfriend to death.
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Starz Entertainment, which is co-producing the upcoming Torchwood: Miracle Day with BBC Wales and BBC Worlwide, announced the guest star list for the series. In addition to Torchwood alumni John Barrowman, Eve Myles, and Kai Owen and new headliners Mekhi Phifer, Bill Pullman and Alexa Havins, that the 10-episode, hour-long series will also feature an impressive list of guest stars: Wayne Knight (Seinfeld, Jurassic Park), C. Thomas Howell (Southland, The Outsiders), Ernie Hudson (OZ, Ghostbusters), Nana Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), John DeLancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Mare Winningham (Mildred Pierce, George Wallace) and Frances Fisher (Titanic, The Lincoln Lawyer).

Torchwood: Miracle Day will debut in the U.S. on Starz on July 8th at 10pm ET/PT.

Torchwood: Miracle Day begins with a day when nobody dies. The result: a population boom, overnight. With all the extra people, resources are finite. It’s said that in four month’s time, the human race will cease to be viable. But this can’t be a natural occurrence – someone’s got to be behind it. It’s a race against time as C.I.A. agent Rex Matheson investigates a global conspiracy. The answers lie within an old, secret British institute. As Rex keeps asking “What is Torchwood?,” he’s drawn into a world of adventure, and a threat to change what it means to be human, forever.

In a series of tweets from Torchwood: Miracle Day scribe Jane Espenson that I somehow missed (not surprisingly – when you go to lunch and come back to 400-500 tweets, it’s hard to keep up…), she mentioned that there was going to be a web spin-off/companion series titled, Torchwood: Web Of Lies – but at the same time she dropped not-so-subtle hints about who might be on it: “We have faith in Torchwood: Web of Lies. #hint” was one, then “It’s tru; there’s an echo of my past work in #Torchwood: Web of Lies. (I know you already solved my little puzzle, but this is fun.)”

Of course, “Faith”, “Tru”, and “Echo” are all names of a favorite genre actress – Eliza Dushku, who Espenson has worked with before. No confirmations yet, but I can’t believe it is a diversion…we’ll be keeping an eye out, but we’d watch it anyways. (Thanks to Blastr for paying more attention than me 🙂 )

In the next sneak peek clip of an all-new episode of Sanctuary, Magnus is set in World War II and while trying to stay undetected she suddenly comes under fire. She feels it was a set up and the team was betrayed. Nigel shows up with a getaway car to help her flee from the scene, but will she be the only one that makes it out. Watch the clip and tune in on Monday at 10/9c only on Syfy to see if Magnus can get her whole team out alive.
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Blastr has narrowed down from a much larger list a list of the genre shows that were in various stages of development for the upcoming television season on the four major networks that didn’t get pickups. It is a longer list than I expected, but given that a lot of them were “Untitled…project”, I’m guessing they included basic pitches that were confirmed but never went much further.

NBC led with a great many shows with 16, over half of the 30 shows. But The Dark Tower might still see life after some reworking to address cost concerns over the ambitious project, and I don’t see 17th Precinct on the list, but a little research shows that NBC passed on that one as well, in an apparent “either-or” situation against Grimm, which got picked up.