Sci-Fi Storm

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine‘s Colm Meaney and Camp‘s Charlotte Nicdao have joined the Syfy mini-series project Childhood’s End.

Meaney will Wainwright, a powerful news organization owner while Nicdao will play zoologist Rachel Osaka.

Childhood’s End follows the peaceful alien invasion of Earth by the mysterious “Overlords,” whose arrival begins decades of apparent utopia under indirect alien rule, at the cost of human identity and culture.

Syfy today announced it is developing a one-hour drama series about a futuristic prison society, 51st State, from Fox 21 Television Studios.

Oscar nominee Craig Borten (Dallas Buyers Club), who sold the pitch to Syfy, will write the pilot. Peter Chernin (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), Katherine Pope (New Girl) and Borten will serve as executive producers.

As 51st State unfolds, the United States, confronting a prison population stretched to the limit, purchases Greenland and converts it into a frontier prison colony with male and female convicts incarcerated together.

Promised conditional freedom, the inmates are driven to the edge of their humanity when that promise, along with others, is broken. Struggling to seize control and exact revenge, reluctant heroes emerge — but what exactly are they fighting for?

John Rhys-Davies, who has graced screens in a variety of genre roles and most famously as Gimli and Treebeard in The Lord Of The Rings, will go back to the fantasy realm as King Eventine, the patriarch in Shannara, MTV’s scripted series based on Terry Brooks’ novel [asin=0345285549]The Elfstones of Shannara[/asin], the second in the series.

The Shannara stories are based hundreds of years in the future in a post-apocalyptic Earth that has reverted to medieval times and in which magic has re-emerged. The most recent book, [asin=0345540700]The High Druid’s Blade[/asin], was release this past July and is the first of a new trilogy, The Defenders of Shannara.

Production is expected to begin next month in New Zealand.

Helix returns on Friday with a brand new location, divergent time periods, and a potential new threat!

At he end of last season, with the arctic base destroyed and Dr. Julia Walker kidnapped, we saw Alan and Peter track her down to Paris a year later, where she appeared to be in charge of the Ilaria Corporation, which is run by 500 immortal humans, of which Julia is one.

But in the Season 2 season premiere we jump in two different directions but the same location – a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest. In one case we see Peter, Sarah and newcomer Dr. Kyle Sommer (Matt Long) investigating possible Narvik infections, and come across a boat where a mysterious pathogen kills all but one of the passengers and leads them to the island, which is inhabited by a cult led by the mysterious Brother Michael (Steven Weber).

Interlaced with this we see Julia also arrive on the same island, some time in the future, where she is captured by someone in a cobbled-together protective suit, while apparently looking for Alan.

Check out the sneak peek below, along with a catch-up of last season’s events – then read on for a discussion with executive producer Steven Maeda and Kyra Sagorsky (Julia Walker) along with Syfy’s Bill McGoldrick about the upcoming season…
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Fox, which has been working on a TV Adaptation of the 2002 Tom Cruise sci-fi movie Minority Report, loosely based on a Philip K. Dick short story, since September, and now they’ve agreed to a pilot commitment, according to TVLine.

The story is about the “PreCrime” department, which stops crimes before they happen through the use of “Precogs”, people with the ability to see visions of the future. The TV adaptation will reportedly follow one of the three Precogs as attempts to lead a normal life despite the constant intrusion of visions.

No casting has taken place yet. West Wing and Franklin & Bash producer Kevin Falls will be executive producer and showrunner; Godzilla scribe Max Borenstein will write and also executive produce.

Next Friday, Syfy’s remake of 12 Monkeys debuts at 9/8c – here is a little preview, and see what we’ve said previously about the show here!

To get you ready, here are the first nine minutes of the show, plus a little behind-the-scenes as well!
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Despite the seemingly mixed chatter regarding Peter Capaldi’s rendition of the Doctor, or the chemistry between him and Jenna Coleman’s Clara, or the complex, confusing plots, Series 8 of Doctor Who proved to be the best yet for BBC America, culminating in a Christmas episode that was the #1 non-sports program in its time slot, but was more than double Matt Smith’s first Christmas episode, at 2.31 million viewers. Overall, Series 8 delivered a little over 2 million viewers on average on Live+3 ratings.

Just posting to let you know that Sci-Fi Storm is still alive and well…the news scene has been exceedingly slow over the holiday break, so I’ve been enjoying some time off myself and working on a variety of other things and just in general relaxing…hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and looking forward to what’s on tap in 2015!