Sci-Fi Storm

If you’re my age, you remember pretty much anything made by Sid and Marty Krofft with a special kind of fondness. Forget the hokiness, the bad special effects, the talking hats – you can’t help become a child again when these are on. The latest to get the DVD treatment is Sigmund and the Sea Monsters: The Complete First Season from 1973, starring Johnny Whitaker (Family Affair) and Mark Wickes (Sister Act) and several salads gone wrong – err, “sea monsters”. Read More for part of the press release, and I should have a review soon. Also, I’ve reorganized the Sci-Fi TV Store to create a “Krofft Shows” section and moved “Land of the Lost” there.

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Robert Wise, the Oscar winning director probably best known to SF fans as having directed Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Day The Earth Stood Still, but having directed many hits on various genres such as The Sound of Music and West Side Story, died of heart failure Sept. 14th at the age of 91 – which he just celebrated this past Saturday.

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, authors who both separately and together have produced numerous SF novels and stories, received the Heinlein Awards, presented by the Heinlein Society, for “their lifetime achievements for outstanding published work in hard science fiction or technical writings inspiring the human exploration of space.”

I’ve updated the SF TV Store with several new releases coming out in the coming weeks. Of note:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in Widescreen and Fullscreen versions (9/13);

Andromeda Season 5 Collection 1 (9/20);

Battlestar Galactica Season 1 (9/20);
Farscape Season 2 Collection 3 (Starburst Edition) (10/4);

and the next two Doctor Who releases – “The Claws of Axos” and “City of Death” (11/8) (nothing on an R1 release of the new series). Also, just released this past week was MacGyver Season 3 (there was an error that caused the page to keep saying “Coming Soon” which is now fixed). An official web site for the DVD release is here.

Although Sci-Fi Storm won’t be directly affected, some of the subsidiary sites, like the stores and the beta site (I will get working on it again…I want it done but I’m far off) may be down for some time during the next couple of weeks. I’m putting in larger hard drives into my home server, along with an OS upgrade (Fedora Core 4 from Red Hat 9) and hopefully more memory. I’ve already built it out on a spare box so the drives can just be swapped in – at least that’s the theory – as soon as I have the time. Then later this month I’m also upgrading to Verizon’s FIOS service from DSL which will more than double my upload speed, but it will probably be out for several hours during the upgrade.

tgreco writes “Hey everybody, episode 10 is finally in the can as they say, and can be viewed here

http://www.comerstheseries.com/episode10.html

we tried something a little different with the dialogue sync, so let us know if its better worse or what… if it’s working better, we’ll go back and resync the dialogue on all the episodes

with episode 10, we’ve hit the 2/3 mark in completing the series, so let us know how we’re doing so far

thanks again, and as always
Stay Tuned”

Star Trek: New Voyages, a completely fan-produced video series which continues the original’s 5-year mission, announced that the episode that will begin filming next month, “To Serve All My Days”, will feature Walter Koenig reprising his role as Pavel Chekov – at least sort of, as there is supposed to be some sort of twist. The story is even written by original Trek writer D.C. Fontana, and they have a Teaser poster available.

In 2000, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert (of Evil Dead fame) produced two short-lived, campy, half-hour syndicated TV series – Jack of all Trades, starring Bruce Campbell, and Cleopatra 2525, an unusual amalgamation of various themes into an extremely fast-paced show.

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It’s official – the DVD for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith will be released on November 1st, and like the others include 2 discs with some added features including two new featurettes. Pre-order now from Amazon.com in both Widescreen and Fullscreen, get it at a discount and help us out at the same time…I’m out of a job at the end of the year, so anything helps… 🙁

It’s not our normal fare, but I like to keep some science fact to go along with the fiction. Warner Home Video recently released The IMAX title Space Station, narrated by Tom Cruise. Here is a mini-review, since it doesn’t fit within our normal framework.

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