Sci-Fi Storm

In anticipation of the the release of the Blu-ray [sfs=1121]Lord Of The Rings Trilogy Extended Edition[/sfs] on June 28th, Warner Home Video is having a “Middle-earth Midnight Madness” event starting at noon on June 27th at Best Buy’s West Los Angeles location, 11301 W. Pico Boulevard, which will include a costume contest, cast members, and more…and the winner of the costume contest can win an awesome prize, a VIP “Tour of Middle-earth” – an all-expense-paid trip to New Zealand (Auckland, Wellington, Queenstown), courtesy of Air New Zealand and Weta Workshop. Read below for the full press release.

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Deadline is reporting that Benedict Cumberbatch, who stars as the title character in Steven Moffat’s BAFTA-winning retelling of Sherlock and is already lending his voice to the character of the Necromancer (a.k.a. Sauron) in The Hobbit, will play a second role in the films with a tad more physical presence – he will also portray the dragon Smaug via motion capture. Cumberbatch has been very busy as of late, with supporting roles in the upcoming Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and War Horse films, and an expected second series of Sherlock also on the horizon.

Also announced today is the casting of the role of Bard, which has gone to Luke Evans, who previously played Apollo in the recent Clash of the Titans and will play Aramis in the upcoming The Three Musketeers and Zeus in The Immortals.

Just a reminder: the new TNT series Falling Skies debuts this Sunday at 9PM ET/8PM CT, and then will air at 10PM ET each Sunday after that.

If you want a quick glimpse of what to expect from the show, read out “First Look” article from May.

Need a Stargate to finish off your living room? Military uniforms? A Stargate Command chair? Well, now’s your chance – at least if you can be at Bridge Studios in Burnaby, BC, Canada this Friday and Saturday. Liquidator Maynards is is conducting a liquidation sale of assets associated with the Stargate franchise. It doesn’t appear that you can purchase anything online, however :(.

Eureka is returning on July 11th on Syfy, and if you follow the right people on Twitter, you know that Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton are reprising their previous guest roles over multiple-episode arcs – since they tweeted incessantly about it 🙂 (just kidding guys…love your tweets!). Each will appear in a 7-episode arc.

Felicia Day (Web series The Guild, Red) plays Dr. Holly Marten, a quirky Department of Defense visitor to Eureka tasked with evaluating eager candidates for a special mission that has been given to Global Dynamics and will pit the town’s scientists against one another. Day’s story arc will begin July 18th.
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In the next sneak peek clip of the season finale of Sanctuary. In the aftermath of destruction, the team faces an even bigger threat – guest starring WWE’s Edge. Will wants to know who started all the chaos and is led to a tent where the guys who stirred the destruction are located. A whole slew of abnormals are being reminded by guest star Edge to remember that once a Praxian, always a Praxian. Will and the team know they have to get to the bottom of this quickly before it gets worse. Be sure to watch the clip and tune in for the finale on Monday at 10/9c only on Syfy!
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So although the BBC has confirmed that Matt Smith will return as the Doctor for 14 more full episodes of Doctor Who, BBC journalist Lizo Mzimba is tweeting that amid some confusion at a conference where BBC One controller Danny Cohen was speaking and remarked that there wouldn’t be a “full” series of Doctor Who in 2012. Apparently he made a comment that show runner and writer Steven Moffat was busy with the next Sherlock series, which wasn’t meant to be serious, but apparently the BBC is having to follow up on the comment and is saying that the next series will be split up between 2012 and 2013 – but no idea on how and when at this point.

So it looks like there will be a long wait for our next fix, after this year’s Christmas special.

A bit of the “I Toldja!” – in an interview with producer Rick McCallum for czechposition.com, he confirmed that there only have 50 “third draft” scripts for the live action Star Wars series, not 50 hours “in the can” as was so widely reported, but we seriously doubted…but he also gave a lot more information about the show than we’ve gotten so far.

The article primarily dealt with how the Czech Republic may for into plans to produce the series – the country is a developing hotbed for TV and movie productions due to costs and locations available. And some of the Lucas and McCallum produced “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” was shot in the capital of Prague, as was most of Red Tails, a Lucasfilm production about the Tuskegee Airmen that will be released next January. And it looks like this Star Wars series may got shot there as well – but don’t go buying your airline tickets yet.

“The TV series is on hold, but that has nothing to do with the Czech Republic; it has to do with [the episodes being] so ambitious,” McCallum told Czech Position. “We have 50 hours of third-draft scripts, but the problem we have is there is a lot of digital animation; we don’t have the technology yet to be able to do them at a price that is safe for television. Since we would be financing them, it would be suicide for us to do this [now]. So we are going to wait three or four years.” And perhaps even more distressing is that even then, he thinks it might be impossible. “Network television and cable television as we know it are completely imploding, so we’re not really sure that in five years’ time we can release a dramatic one-hour episode because it is all reality TV now,” he added.

But we get a hint of the plot. “Basically, it is like The Godfather; it’s the Empire slowly building up its power base around the galaxy, what happens in Coruscant, which is the major capital, and it’s [about] a group of underground bosses who live there and control drugs, prostitution,” McCallum said.

Well, at least we have an idea of what we may never see…

So, now that the world knows who River Song is – at least if you’ve seen “A Good Man Goes To War” – here is a bit of the director’s commentary from the scene we’ve been waiting for for years. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: This shows that scene in tandem with the director, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, be sure to watch it FIRST.

I can tell you in general that Steven Moffat is an evil genius though. Part of what is happening has been an idea of his for 16 years – a line River says stems almost word for word from a UseNet post he made in 1995…and the episode teases a number of times at some of the theories that have popped up over who River is…
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Here are a few more clips about what powers might make you one of the Alphas…
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