Sci-Fi Storm

The U.S.S. Discovery will get to fly on…CBS All Access has renewed Star Trek: Discovery for a second season. The first season so far as broken all subscription records for the streaming service, following the crew of the Starfleet ship while one crew member seeks to understand herself.

Six episodes have been released so far, with three more to go before taking a break, and the final six to be released starting in January.

Jodie Whittaker will not be flying in the TARDIS alone this coming season, of course, and now we know who will be on board with her.

Bradley Walsh (Coronation Street, Law & Order: UK), Tosin Cole (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Hollyoaks), and Mandip Gill (Hollyoaks, Doctors) will all be joining the Doctor when Whittaker takes over the role. No backgrounds were given to the characters except their names: Graham, Ryan and Yasmin, respectively.

Also joining the cast but not pictured is Sharon D. Clarke (Holby City), in an unnamed role.

Actor John Dunsworth, best known for his role as the trailer park manager Jim Lahey in the Canadian series Trailer Park Boys and my readers would remember him as Dave Teagues in Haven, passed away yesterday according to his daughter Susan.

pic.twitter.com/7H1KkEOsiR

— Sarah Dunsworth (@SarahDunsworth) October 16, 2017

Dunsworth was a big part of the Nova Scotia acting community, where he was born.

His fellow Haven stars posted about him:
(continue reading…)

Actor Roy Dotrice passed away peacefully today at the age of 94 in his London home surrounded by his three daughters, grandchildren and great grandson, his family confirmed in a statement.

Probably most know recently for playing Hallyne the Pyromancer in a couple episodes of Game of Thrones in 2012, his acting career spans many years on stage, small and large screen, and he won a Tony Award in 2000 for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role in A Moon for the Misbegotten, and held the Guinness World Record in 2004 for most voiced characters in an audio book for his reading of A Song of Ice and Fire. He was also awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008.

Dotrice was no stranger to genre roles either. He was originally set to play Grand Maester Pycelle in Games of Thrones but withdrew for medical reasons (the role went to Julian Glover.) He made two memorable guest appearances in Space: 1999 as Commissioner Simmonds, which sticks in my head for the horrible death he (presumably) suffered. He also had a starring role in the Beauty and the Beast series in the 80s. He had other guest appearances in Babylon 5, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (as Zeus, no less!), Earth 2, and Sliders among many, many roles. He also had a starring role in one of my favorite Olympics-based movies as the Russian skating coach Anton Pamchenko in The Cutting Edge.

Dotrice was married to his wife, actress Kay Dotrice, for just short of 60 years when she passed away in 2007. His three daughters were also actresses – Michele Dotrice (Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em), Karen Dotrice (best known as the young Jane Banks in Mary Poppins), and Yvette Dotrice (Crossroads).

It’s almost Halloween…everything turns Upside Down on the 27th…

Stargate Command, the new online home for all things Stargate, announced that Ellie Gall (A Midsummer’s Nightmare) will take on the starring role of the young Catherine Langford in the upcoming event series Stargate Origins.

Those familiar with the franchise will remember that Langford was present with her parents when the Stargate was unearthed in Egypt and spent her life trying to decipher it and make it work, which she was unable to do until helped by Daniel Jackson (James Spader in the film, Michael Shanks in Stargate SG-1). The series will follow her as she attempts to unlock the secrets of the Stargate. I suspect there may be some canon-bending involved…

Connor Trinneer (Star Trek: Enterprise), who had a recurring role in Stargate Atlantis, will return to the franchise to play Catherine’s father, Professor Paul Langford.

New York Comic Con is dropping lots of trailers, teasers and sneak peeks – here are a bunch for your perusal!

Justice League

Replicas

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

Marvel’s The Runaways

Check out the full trailer for Happy!, starring Christopher Meloni and Patton Oswalt – the show premieres on December 6th on Syfy!

The Walking Dead‘s Robert Kirkman and his Skybound Entertainment has optioned the rights to Frederik Pohl’s 1977 novel [asin=0345475836]Gateway[/asin] for development as a television series.

Gateway is about humanity’s discovery of a space station (dubbed Gateway by the humans) in a hollowed out asteroid, left behind a mysterious long-vanished alien civilization called the Heechee, and food miner Robinette Stetley Broadhead, who leaves Earth after winning the lottery to seek out a better life. It is the first novel in the Heechee saga, comprised of 6 books, and it won the 1977 Nebula and 1978 Hugo and Locus awards, as well as the 1978 John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Gateway has passed through several hands recently. In 2014, Entertainment One Television and De Laurentiis Co. had optioned the novel for television, and then a year later Syfy announced that it had placed the novel on its own development slate, with Entertainment One Television and Universal Cable Productions teaming up, and David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) and Josh Pate (Falling Skies) executive producing.

While it isn’t an order for new episodes, Futurama fans can still rejoice! And just maybe down the road…SYFY today announced that it has acquired the hit animated series Futurama from Twentieth Television in a multi-year, non-exclusive deal that includes all 140 HD episodes of the series. Futurama will make its SYFY debut in a special weekend stunt beginning Saturday, November 11, with the series airing regularly in primetime on Mondays and Tuesdays from 8PM-2AM ET/PT and on Saturday mornings from 8-11AM ET/PT.

The Futurama acquisition comes as SYFY continues to aggressively expand its genre programming following its summer 2017 brand reboot. Futurama – the first fully animated series in SYFY’s rebooted lineup – will join a growing roster of ambitious scripted and unscripted originals and high profile acquired series and movies that reflect the rich depth of the genre.

“We’re continuing to invest heavily to give our passionate fans the very best in genre programming, and I can think of no better addition to SYFY’s lineup than one of my personal favorites, Futurama,” said Chris McCumber, President, Entertainment Networks (USA and SYFY) for NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment.

First airing on FOX from 1999-2003, Futurama was brought back in 2007 with four direct-to-DVD movies that subsequently aired as 30-minute episodes on Comedy Central. Based on their success, Comedy Central ordered new seasons of the series which debuted in June 2010. Over the course of its storied run, Futurama has earned six Emmy Awards®–including two for Outstanding Animated Program, seven Annie Awards, two Environmental Media Awards and two Writers Guild of America Awards.

Futurama, created by Matt Groening, developed by Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, is produced by The Curiosity Company in association with 20th Century Fox Television.

In addition to current acclaimed series like The Expanse, The Magicians and Channel Zero, upcoming SYFY originals include the December 6 premiere of Happy!, an out-there graphic novel adaptation starring Christopher Meloni and featuring the voice of Patton Oswalt as the animated title character – and the highly anticipated Superman prequel Krypton (2018). SYFY is also currently developing several notable properties, including pilot orders for an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s space opera novella Nightflyers and a reboot of the 1990 cult classic Tremors.