Sci-Fi Storm

It’s still a month away for the return of some of our favorite Syfy shows (4 months for Warehouse 13 – but here is something a little extra to tide you overBeing Human‘s Sam Witwer (Aidan), Lost Girl‘s Ksenia Solo (Kenzie) Warehouse 13‘s Saul Rubinek (Artie) answer questions from Facebook!
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Time to add another holiday movie to our SF actor holiday movie list – this Sunday at 8/7c on Hallmark is Help For The Holidays, which stars everyone’s favorite best-looking Terminator (Sorry, Guv…) and Serenity inhabitant Summer Glau. From the description:

Although she loves Christmas, Santa’s elf Christine (Summer Glau) wonders if there could be more to life than making toys in the North Pole. When Santa receives an emergency wish from a little boy in Los Angeles, he puts Christine on a special assignment, sending her to L.A. to give the VanCamp family—mom Sara (Eva La Rue), dad Scott (Dan Gauthier), and their two kids Ally (Izabela Vidovic) and Will (Mason Cook)—a holiday wake-up call. Will Christine fail her assignment and be sent back to the North Pole for good, or will the VanCamps come to their senses about the meaning of Christmas?

Profiles in History, the auction house featured on Syfy’s Hollywood Treasure and responsible for some of the biggest genre-related auctions, has a special online-only auction tomorrow at 2PM ET/11AM PT.

From the announcement: “Welcome to our first Internet-only online animation auction! The 500 animation cels presented in this auction are from 1990s Marvel animated series broadcast on Fox. One of the most popular animated series of the ’90s, the X-Men series, was the longest-running Marvel Comics-based TV show. Keeping in the tradition of the original comic book story lines, these cels were based on Jim Lee’s character designs. Each is an original hand-painted cel with an original hand-painted background. These cels were acquired in 2010 directly from Marvel Entertainment and were hand picked to represent the strongest and most memorable images of the archive. In the past few years, similar cels have sold publicly at auction for up to $1,500, with the average sales being in the $500 to $600 range. In addition to X-Men are cels from Fantastic Four (1994), Iron Man (1994) and The Incredible Hulk (1996) animated series. We hope you enjoy this auction. The plan is to have similar online-only auctions throughout the year!”

You can download the PDF catalog here.

Enjoy…and the final episodes are just a week away!

In episode 7, waylaid by a ferocious storm, Adama, Coker and Becca reluctantly follow their eccentric savior, marine recon sergeant Xander Toth (John Pyper Ferguson), to shelter in an abandoned ski lodge. Adama and Coker finally find some common ground and secrets about Becca’s mysterious mission are revealed.

In episode 8, the tentative safety of the ski lodge is abruptly shattered as Cylons breach Toth’s defenses. With Becca and Toth nowhere to be found, Adama and Coker face off against their deadly robotic pursuers. Becca makes a horrifying discovery about the Cylons’ agenda on Djerba.
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CBS has given a 13 episode order – straight to series – for drama Under The Dome, to be produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television and based on a novel by Stephen King, in which a small New England town suddenly finds itself cut off from the rest of the world by a dome, and must learn to survive in post-apocalyptic conditions while trying to discover where they dome came from, and why.

Neal Baer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit) will act as showrunner, with Niels Arden Oplev (Unforgettable) directing the lead episode.

If this sounds familiar, we reported on this over a year ago, when the project was set up at Showtime. Apparently the project was stalled there, so Amblin asked for it to be released and CBS picked it up in turnaround.

Marking the significant expansion of its popular reality programming, Syfy today announced it is greenlighting three new series: Ghost Mine, Stranded and Notorious Hauntings. This slate builds upon Syfy’s popular paranormal reality programming block led by Ghost Hunters, Paranormal Witness and Haunted Collector.

In making the announcement, Mark Stern, President, Original Content for Syfy and Co-head, Original Content for Universal Cable Productions, said: “Each of these series takes a known and successful formula and turns it on its head. Whether it is eclectic gold miners in the midst of paranormal activity, paranormal enthusiasts self-documenting the most haunted locations in America, or investigators researching and examining history’s most notorious criminals and legends in the world’s most haunted locations, these shows celebrate imagination while further strengthening Syfy’s successful reality brand.”
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Happy Birthday, Syfy! On Monday, December 10 at 9PM (ET/PT), the Channel will celebrate two decades of award-winning, imaginative entertainment programming during the star-studded Syfy 20th Anniversary Special.

From iconic series such as Farscape, Battlestar Galactica and Warehouse 13 to Ghost Hunters, Face Off and the upcoming transmedia experience Defiance, the special will look back on Syfy’s launch and evolution, and ahead to the future through the personal, behind-the-scenes insights of the creative talent themselves.

Said Dave Howe, President, Syfy & Chiller: “For 20 years, Syfy has been the leader in visionary and provocative entertainment programming. In this celebratory special, the extraordinary talent at the heart of the powerful Syfy brand will talk exclusively about the lasting impact Syfy has had on the media landscape for the last two decades.”
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Tonight is the fall finale for NBC’s Revolution – and if you’ve missed anything, get caught up right here with this 3 minute recap of the the series so far with executive producers Eric Kripke and J.J Abrams – and they promise that tonight’s big episode will change everything you thought you knew about the show!

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I miss Robot Wars and BattleBots – the shows that brought exciting clashes between remotely controlled devices of destruction (and occasionally self-destruction) to TV. But seldom did they take on any sort of anthropomorphic form like in Real Steel – most were squat devices on wheels with spinning hammers or pneumatic spatulas.

Well, now Syfy has taken a step towards real fighting robots with Robot Combat League, a weekly series hosted by the WWE’s Chris Jericho and will feature eight-feet tall, state-of-the-art humanoid robots controlled by human “robo-jockeys”, competing tournament-style. The show will debut on February 26th at 10pm ET.

The idea of robots in battle has captured the imagination for generations. Now, through ground-breaking engineering, the fusion of a human’s fighting spirit with a powerful robotic machine built for destruction has become a reality. This extraordinary new series will feature twelve teams consisting of a fighter (a “robo-jockey”) and a robotics engineer (a “robo-tech”) from myriad backgrounds including a race car driver, an Olympic athlete, a National Guard helicopter pilot along with a mix of professional fighters and software engineers. Each team is paired with its own unique robot and will fight in a first-of-its kind competition using a high-tech exo-suit that translates their movements to their robot. Each fight consists of three rounds of intense action, with the winning team advancing in the competition.
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Found out through the official twitter account – the BBC has announced that Merlin will not return for a sixth series, with the fifth series currently airing in the U.K. and starting in the U.S. in January.

Star Colin Morgan said, “I know this is the end, and I know this is goodbye, but thank you for being there on the journey with us.” Co-star Katie McGrath added, “It’s completely the right time to draw our telling of the story to a close.”

The BBC Media Centre also has a release, with an interview with Colin Morgan talking about the final series.

Update: Word is that Shine TV and FreemantleMedia Enterprises are in the early stages of exploring spin-offs within the universe established by Merlin, but creators Johnny Capps and Julian Murphy have announced they are departing Shine TV to form their own company.