Sci-Fi Storm

Starz will air its new take on the King Arthur tale starting April 1st, 2011 at 10PM ET. Camelot, which stars Joseph Fiennes (Flash Forward) as Merlin and Jamie Campbell Bower (The Twilight saga, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows) as King Arthur, is a 10-episode drama show on location in Ireland and will provide a new version of the classic tale. Read on for the press release.

Interestingly, this places it’s debut on the same day that Merlin‘s Series 3 finale should take place on Syfy.

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If you’ve watched both shows, you’ve seen the similarities – not just because of Steven Moffat being in charge of both, but also that you could picture Benedict Cumberbatch as the Doctor playing Sherlock Holmes for fun. So there was the natural question of the possibility of a crossover. But Moffat isn’t amenable to that. In a NY Times interview mostly about the upcoming Doctor Who Christmas special, “A Christmas Carol”, he answers about being asked about the two characters meeting: “I think everyone who’s passing me in the streets is suggesting that at the moment. I think there are problems of doing that, because then you would say that Sherlock Holmes lives in the same world as the Doctor, and there are Daleks and all sorts of things. If a Sherlock Holmes story depends on time travel being impossible, it’s quite hard if he’s a personal friend of the Doctor’s, isn’t it?” All true, but it could work – if the Doctor puts aside the advanced technology and plays along for the adventure. But then, it would be like identical twin Sherlocks solving a mystery…maybe that’s not so good.

Way back in 1985, a comedy skit series called Comedy Break was syndicated. It starred the comedy duo of Mack and Jamie,and supporting players were impressionist Kevin Pollak and Jan Hooks and Marla Frumkin.

Fans of this show, or of Kevin Pollak’s William Shatner as Captain Kirk impesonation, or of 1950s sci fi spoofs, will want to check out the clips on YouTube, or at my blog, Daily Space.

There’s 3 1950s Science Fiction Theatre episodes, with Kevin Pollak as Capt Bill Carter, then three Horror Theatre eps (which are really also SF spoofs) and then an ep of Plan 6 From Outer Space.

1950s Science Fiction Theatre
1950s Horror Movie Theatre

Probably not safe for work – not because of any bad language or anything, but the horrible, horrible singing – but here are Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill giving their rendition (or butchering) of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. Thanks, BBC…I think.

Having actually met and spoken with at an informal level the management at Syfy, I have a new found respect for the tough decisions they have to make.

That doesn’t mean I like the decisions. I can just understand them. I can’t understand why the cast weren’t informed properly, but that’s a different issue.

I keep seeing the same questions – why don’t you take into account digital downloads, DVD sales, etc. The fact is they just don’t count. A network does not make any money on those things – those go to the production company, which is NOT the same as the network. It’s like this:
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Shock is raging across the galaxies as Syfy has canceled Stargate Universe, which just broke out on Twitter via Deadline.com and was confirmed by Syfy. The Twitterverse is going to burn down, methinks…I was liking SGU more and more this season. The final 10 episodes will still be aired next Spring. Given no announcement of another Stargate series, this will end an 8 year unbroken run of Stargate on Syfy, and THIRTEEN years since the debut of Stargate SG-1 on Showtime.

Multi-platform network Ovation will air the entire series of Firefly on its cable network starting January 3rd for a limited run, with three episodes shown a night starting at 8pm ET/5pm PT, and then a marathon on Saturday, January 8th. Read below for the full press release – note that it says 15 episodes, but there are 14 full episodes, one of which is two hours. Ovation is available on DirecTV and Dish networks, and at least most if not all Verizon FiOS systems – check the Ovation web site to see if it is on your cable system.

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Michael Ausiello at Deadline is reporting that Bill Pullman (Independence Day, Revelations) is joining the cast of Torchwood (on the heels of Mekhi Phifer), but in this case he’s the bad guy – Oswald Jones, “a dangerously clever convicted murderer who escapes his lifelong prison sentence on a technicality and quickly becomes a media sensation.” I haven’t seen Pullman draw a bad guy yet, but I can see him as the muted super-intelligent psycho type…

According to Deadline.com, actor Mekhi Phifer (ER, Lie To Me) will join John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) and Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper) as the third lead in the Starz/BBC joint production of Torchwood, now setting up production in the U.S. Phifer will play Rex Matheson, a CIA agent who is ” a fast-tracked high-flyer with a lethal sense of humor who starts to feel his mortality when his life is put in danger.”

SFX Magazine posted some snippets from their upcoming article on Being Human, and talks about some of the upcoming additions to the show in the soon-to-air third series. One of which is a zombie, according to Lenora Crichlow (Annie). “This zombie exposes Annie to all the things she’ll never have again. Often the things that happen in Annie’s adventures really make her realise how in limbo she is, and just how unsettling that can be when you’re looking at that for eternity.”

And as for the werewolf couple of George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan), there is a “major development”, and they will look for help from other werewolves, including a father and son. Blastr speculates that the development could be a baby…