Sci-Fi Storm

TV Guide has a Q&A article with Lost creator/producer J.J. Abrams in which he talks a bit about his influences, the upcoming season of Lost, and the upcoming Star Trek movie.

James A. Van Allen, the physicist who lent his names to the belts of radiation that surround the Earth, passed away yesterday at the age of 91. He helped design the instruments that were on the first american satellite, Explorer 1, which discovered the intense radiation belts caused by energetic particles trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field. These would later trouble scientists wondering if man could survive space, and provided fodder for many SF stories…notable the original movie Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where the belts catch fire and threaten to scorch the Earth…

Well, not really. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (better known as NORAD) has announced that they are standing down the facility at Cheyenne Mountain and moving operations to Peterson Air Force Base, while keeping the facility available in a “warm standby” state. The change in likelyhood and manner of attack is the primary reason, so there is no need to continue modernizing and fully manning the facility.

Time to regress…reports are out that not only the long-awaited (and long-lambasted) Star Trek: The Animated Series will be released on DVD in November, but a whole host of other Filmation shows, including a few live-action shows I remember well from my childhood – Ark II, Space Academy (which had Lost in Space‘s Jonathan Harris), and spin-off Jason of Star Command (which had the late James Doohan, who is finally getting to go where few have gone before).

Hot on the heals of this weekend’s news, word comes out that WB has released the first season of Babylon 5 via iTunes, at $1.99/episode, or $39.99 for the season. Find it in the iTunes Movie Store. Also, JMS posted yesterday about his strange trip beyond the veil – into the A-List of Hollywood.

Reports are coming in from the sessions at San Diego Comic Con, and per some newsgroup posts, JMS has announced a few things. WB has asked him to do something with the Babylon 5 franchise, so its been agreed to do something of an anthology series of mini-movies, likely direct-to-DVD but with a network also interested. They will be based on stories that never made it in to the series, but notes have been since been found. In addition: The Rising Stars comic is in development as a series with Sam Raimi; Midnight Nation is being bid on for a movie; Dream Police was pitched to a big studio, and negotiations for JMS to write it are in progress; and a Touchstone series pilot called Borrowed Lives is in the script stage.

Dean Devlin has been speaking with SCI FI Wire about sequels to the 1994 original Stargate movie. Devlin and partner Roland Emmerich, the producers of the original, conceived a trilogy but lost control over the franchise and MGM elected to produce a series instead. They’ve disavowed and refused credit of the series. Now it appears MGM might be willing to move forward with the originally intended trilogy – possibly with Kurt Russell and James Spader, the original stars – but while trying to somehow not step on the mythology established by the series. A tall order, considering the second movie was set to take place 12 years later…

Forbidden Planet, one of the seminal SF feature films and featuring one of the most recognizable pieces of hardware, hasn’t had a decent DVD release yet. Warner Brothers plans to rectify the situation. A new Special Edition release for the film’s 50th anniversary is scheduled to be released on November 14th, with two versions – the standard 2-disc version with film, three documentaries and other shows that feature Robby the Robot, and a Collector’s Edition which comes with a Robby action figure. Links to Amazon for pre-orders hopefully soon.

I’m back from our family vacation. I wasn’t online as much as I expected (really only for a few minutes to check e-mails) and I’m still catching up on things, and trying to find our luggage – the airline (rhymes with US Scareways) screwed up and didn’t load half the luggage on the flight – that’s 8 days of Disney memories somewhere between there and here. It may take a day or two to get back up to speed…

Updates will be sporadic for the next week or so. If there is earth-shattering news, and I have the ability, I will update, but I am in need of some serious R&R, so I’ll see you all next week sometime.