Sci-Fi Storm

Martha Jones (played by Freema Agyeman) will return to the Doctor later in the upcoming 4th Series, and so will an even older acquaintance of the Doctor’s – the Sontarans. First seen with the 1973 story “The Time Warrior”, the bulbous warriors will have to face the Doctor, Jones, and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate, having taking the permanent companion role from Agyeman). Playing the head of the Sontarans is Christopher Ryan (Young Ones).

Joss Whedon is teaming up again with actress Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy/Angel) for a new series to be produced by Fox TV called Dollhouse. It centers around Echo (Dushku), who is one of several secret agents programmed with a personality, abilities, memories – everything they need for their mission. After the mission – everything is erased (leaving them with no personality or memories) and they return to the “Dollhouse”, where they await their next programming. Echo starts to develop some self awareness, which impacts her ability to perform her missions. Currently Fox has ordered 7 episodes, and production could begin as early as Spring.

NBC has chosen to put Heroes: Origins – the short spinoff series that would fill the hole during the normal season’s hiatus – on hold indefinitely…and the impending writer’s strike is one of the factors in the decision. Also mentioned was losing several key staff members, the critics issues with this season’s storyline, and disappointing ratings so far.

Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin-Soo Kwon in Lost, was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in Hawaii (where Lost is filmed). Could this mean Jin faces a gruesome fate? The three actors who had previous legal issues in Hawaii – Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Watros, and Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje – all saw their characters killed off shortly afterwards.

Only a handful of episodes into the 4th Season, Stargate Atlantis has already been renewed for a 5th season, with production to start early next year. The 4th Season premiere brought in 2 million viewers.

For this year’s Children in Need special for the BBC, that is written by Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat, that will bring Peter Davison (the Fifth Doctor) and David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) together. The scene is called “Time Crash” and will air during the BBC fundraising on November 16th.

In an announcement of sorts, George Lucas says he’s “just begun work” on the live-action TV series, but still doesn’t lay down a title. He does give a couple of details though – it won’t involve characters you know. “The Skywalkers aren’t in it, and it’s about minor characters. It has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or any of those people. It’s completely different. But it’s a good idea, and it’s going to be a lot of fun to do.”

Fox has already pushed the new series New Amsterdam, about a cop who is immortal, from fall to midseason, and now off the schedule completely, without having aired an episode. Seven episodes are in the can, but apparently the midseason schedule is pretty full, and it wants time to evaluate. Alas, this never bodes well for a show…

The SCI FI Channel has announced another 13 episode season of the original series Eureka. The show, about a hidden town with the smartest people on Earth running their experiments which always seem to go wrong, has an enjoyable comedic bent to it, but for some reason SFC limits it to 13-episode runs.

NBC Universal, whose initials perhaps should mean “Nothing But Clones”, announced the next re-imagining of an old series – Knight Rider. After the success of Transformers (for which they’ve already announced a preliminary release date of June 26th, 2009 for the sequel), NBC wants Doug Liman (The O.C.) to come up with a new version of the 1980s David Hasselhoff vehicle (literally). No word on actors at this point, but they are planning a two-hour backdoor pilot, and wish to explore the “evil car” aspect more. Makes me think that the cars may have some other-worldly origin, instead of just technology.