Batman Dead End - great sci-fi moments number eight

I MEANT to put Batman Dead End up ages ago, but kept on forgetting.

Basically a supreme fan film with over two million hits on You Tube, it puts Bats in the middle as Predators and Aliens throw down in Gotham.



It is a beautiful piece of work by Sandy Collara and - while obviously influenced by the artwork of Alex Ross - sets a note perfect version of the Dark Knight that was not surpassed until The Dark Knight came out.

I would also add it is about .... oooh .... infinity better than the Alien vs Predator franchise that has reduced two great film monsters to vomit-inducing shadows of their former selves.

Without the sci-fi monsters, is Batman sci-fi? In my opinion, there are certainly futuristic elements to the Bat - most notably his wonderful toys - but I would say not.

But this is my blog so this is going in anyway.

V reboot looks increasingly doomed

I BLOGGED a while back about why I thought the reboot of V would not be as good as the original.

It seems like the TV execs behind the show are feeling the same way, I am afraid to say.

First off, it went on a production break - supposedly to sort out some creative difficulties over the scripting and bring in Scott Peters as showrunner. When that break was supposed to end (a couple of days ago) it was extended until the middle of October.

Given that the series was due to start on November 3, that cannot be good. It shows a major lack of faith in V before it has even been broadcast.

However, further bad news came when it was announced the network now plans to show V for four weeks and then take it off air, leaving nine episodes in the bag until next year.

Huh?

Now, I am no TV studio expert but it seems to me that with the show on a production break, this is a death knell for its chances.

The studio, according to IO9, says the split is to protect V from the winter Olympics and American Idol. This is hardly a ringing endorsement.

It seems to me that it is being treated in this shabby way because the suits think it is a bag of sanctimonious , coffee house, moralising crap that was doomed from the beginning. (pretty much my original blog post)

Either way, I feel sorry for the people involved in the show and will be amazed if it survives past the first four shows, apart from on DVD.

Your thoughts?

Philip K Dick's Blade Runner letter - 'my life and work is complete'

BLADE RUNNER author Philip K. Dick was undoubtedly a strange cat, but also one of the most wildly creative minds ever to work in the world of science fiction.

As well as his most famous work in Blade Runner, he wrote shedloads of novels and short stories which have also made it onto the screen including Minority Report, Screamers, A Scanner Darkly and Total Recall.

Considering he was best known for exploring dark themes of humanity, reality, totalitarian states, altered perception and paranoia, it is a surprise to see this fantastically enthusiastic letter that Dick wrote to the Blade Runner film production company in 1981, just five months before he died and after watching a short TV report on the film, which had yet to be released.

The letter was brought to my attention by @grahambandage on the fantastic blog Letters of Note and must have been absolutely wonderful to receive.

Dick is effusive in his prise for the film-makers, and modest as to his own role in Blade Runner's creation.

He has also since been proven absolutely right in his assessment of Blade Runner and the impact it would have on contemporary and future culture and fiction.

As I have blogged at elsewhere, the film builds on the tremendously engaging ideas in Dick's novel to become a masterwork.

This letter - which I had never seen before - is a fitting footnote to that process.

Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming - according to Richard Hatch

RICHARD Hatch was one of the best things about new Battlestar Galactica, as the traitorous and ambitious terrorist/politician Tom Zarek.

Although he met an untimely end at the wrong end of a firing squad, he provided a great touchstone to the original series when he played Apollo, as well as adding depth to the ensemble cast.

But if he would've had his way, reborn Battlestar Galactica would have been very different.



The TV Squad dredged up this trailer from the late 1990s showing hatch's Battlestar Vision, which was never picked up.

Called the Second Coming, it is a direct continuation of the 1970s series with Hatch's Apollo now leading the fleet and heading off to find Starbuck.

There are some striking similarities - the Cylons evolving for one, the shape of the ships and the humans making a stand.

I was also delighted to see the Colonial uniforms, as well as cameos by Lorne Greene as Adama and especially John Calicos as Baltar, who remains the one, true Baltar for me, no matter how good James Callis was in the reboot.

Despite the special effects - obviously revealing the tighter than tight budget - it would have been intriguing to see how this would have panned out.

Maybe it is for the best that it didn't though, given the heights Ron Moore's take on Battlestar reached, before dissolving into pseudo religious strangeness at the end.

But hey, with a title of The Second Coming - and a brief glimpse of the god-like aliens I remember from the 1970s - maybe Hatch had the same idea?

Top five Star Wars lightsaber fan films - plus a bonus sixth!

YOU know those pathetic so-called blog posts where the blogger just pulls together some vidoes or pictures with the odd word or two to link them together?

I've seen loads of them lately and I thought ... I could do that too. Why should those guys have it easy?

So, here are five Star Wars lightsaber fan films thrown together from You Tube - some funny, some a bit lame, and some really cool and a tribute to everyone involved.

And all of them make me wonder if the people behind these films get what Star Wars is all about, why doesn't George Lucas anymore? Feel free to link to any other vids you have seen in the comments.

The original .. and still the funniest



Star Wars 90210



Funny stuff



But these guys are the shizzle.



And the Ho Brothers are ever shizzier.



And a bonus pick from an - admittedly brief - ramble through You Tube.

Brian Daley's Han Solo novels remembered - Bollux and all

LIKE virtually everyone of my age, I love Star Wars and have done since I first saw it.

So when young me saw in the late 1970s that a trilogy of Han Solo novels had been brought out, telling of his early adventures, I got my mum to snap them up.

I was not disappointed. Written by American author Brian Daley, Han Solo at Stars' End, Han Solo's Revenge and Han Solo and the Lost Legacy saw Han and Chewie get into scrape after scrape in the Corporate Sector (note, not the established Star Wars universe, as he was not allowed to use any of that in his stories)

While there, they battled against the lethal gunslinger Gallandro (a wonderful character if the books were about nothing else), the Authority and their thuggish police force the Espos, pirate gangs, slavers and other thugs and villains.

Han and Chewie, in the Millenium Falcon of course, were helped a huge cast of characters, but mainly by two robots - Zollux, a service droid, and Blue Max, who lived in a cavity inside his chest.

Fulfilling the R2D2 and C3Po roles, the futuristic-sounding pair were great value and perfectly played off against our heroes as an alternative double act.

So imagine my surprise a few years ago when I was casually glancing through a copy of the Star Wars encyclopedia (geeks do that).

There was not a mention of Zollux, but under B I did find an entry for an antique service droid who accompanied Han Solo on several adventures called .... Bollux!

Yes, you read that right, Bollux. Apparently that word doesn't mean the same in America as it does over here, and was changed for the British edition of the books.

Which brings a whole new meaning to the famous Solo line 'great kid, don't get cocky!'

As funny as that is - and it still makes me laugh out loud - those novels were absolute gold dust for the younger me and introduced some ideas that would influence the films and become central tenets of the Star Wars universe in the future.

Bedrock ideals like the Wookie life debt and tipping the Falcon on its side to squeeze through a canyon would not exist without Daley. Indeed some of the characters and situations drawn up so memorably by him are still referenced in the current collection of Star Wars expanded universe novels.

Brian - who sadly died in 1996 from pancreatic cancer - also captured the essence of Han Solo and Chewbacca perfectly. When you think he was writing after the first film, his Han and Chewie are so well crafted that you expect them to swagger off the page. Hell, as a child I wanted them to because they were exactly as I hoped they would be.

If you haven't read the books, they are well worth a look and if you have, I hope you still follow my lead by travelling back to the Corporate Sector again from time to time.

And if anyone asks why you're reading Star Wars books as a grown man, you can always tell them they are just a load of Bollux.

Chuck creator Scott Rosenbaum to make sci-fi western TV series

Nice work by erica on Deviant Art

WHEN I heard Scott Rosenbaum was making a new TV western set in space, my geek alarm went into overdrive, although I'm not sure why.

The untitled sci-fi series is described as an “epic western with a sci-fi twist.” The story will follow a “gunslinger caught between worlds” with a nod or two to Planet of the Apes.

However, it's not like we've not been here before - Serenity was a western in all but name, Han Solo was a gunslinger, Jonah Hex did it, as did Apollo in the original BSG, and who could forget Battle Beyond the Stars (a Magnificent Seven remake, complete with star of the original Robert Vaughan and ... erm ... John Boy from The Waltons).




Indeed, vast swathes of science fiction can be seen as a directly descended from the American ethos of manifest destiny, heading out into and conquering the mysterious other in a harsh and strange landscape - except with aliens standing in for Indians.

That's your Battlestar Galactica right there, Star Trek too, both of which have already tapped into that tribal urge to explore the vast unknown of the final frontier, with an SF twist. So why the excitement?

For one, I love Chuck in a big way and would be excited to see Rosenbaum's take on this area, given his clear understanding of and love for sci-fi and all things geek. (Although what it means for the under-pressure nerd-herders I'm not sure)

Second, given Firefly's untimely end on TV (even with its big screen redemption) sci-fi westerns can be filed under unfinished business on the small screen. I think that done well, it would be massively popular and entertaining too.

Third, with nothing like this around at the moment, there's a big space cowboy-shaped hole in my TV schedule.

Finally, it's cowboys. In space. With aliens. And probably robot horses. And laser guns and stuff. What's not to love?

First Mute concept art from Duncan Jones's next film

WHEN I interviewed Duncan Jones for the blog earlier this year, he mentioned his next film would be called Mute, set in a future version of Berlin (hopefully, if Moon worked out ok).

Seeing as Moon worked out more than ok, Mute has received the green light. Duncan has now put out some concept art of how the film will look and feel.


Looks good eh - damp, run down, neon-ish, a sexy girl. In our chat (have I mentioned I interviewed him? ;-D) he described Mute as a hard-edged noir thriller, which will be - he hopes - a worthy successor to Blade Runner, one of his favourite films.

Duncan added: "Moon is a very quiet, intimate film about alienation and loneliness. The next film will have a closer spiritual kinship to Blade Runner than anyone else has managed to pull off.

"I really feel I know something about the spirit of BR that no one else gets, and I hope to capture that in my film."

Duncan has already done a man's job with Moon, and looking at this picture below from Blade Runner, he seems to be well on the way with Mute, in looks at least.


Here's hoping he brings some of Moon's sharp character work and storytelling to the party too, mixed with the old Blade Runner magic.

Richard Curtis to write Doctor Who and some Doctor Who sitcoms

ANYONE else out there nervous about Richard Curtis writing for Who?

I was completely blind-sided because if I had a wishlist of guest writers, Mr Curtis would not be on it.

Can he still cut it? I mean, the ending of Blackadder Goes Forth was genius, but that was 20 years ago and new Who routinely scales those heights.

Nowadays we are more used to tripe like Notting Hill, The Ship That Rocked and Love Actually. Twee, middle class, dinner party snooze fests.

I've said before that I have faith in the Moff, so this is filed under the extreme wait and see file.

To help Richard along, he could do worse than look at the #doctorwhositcom thread on Twitter.

Some of them are top class and here is a selection of the best, with links to the people who suggested them.

Graske of the Summer Wine

The Love Boe (that one's mine!)

The Ood Couple (me too)

Ogron All Hours

Steptoe and Sontaron

Drop The Dead Dalek

The UNIT Crowd

Robin's Nestene

Not Going Out of the TARDIS until atmosphere and radiation levels have been checked.

The Autons Family (me too)

Got any more?

Happy Birthday Star Trek - 43 years old today!

IT SEEMS amazing, but Star Trek is 43 years old today.

The Man Trap, the first episode of the show (if you ignore the pilot, and despite being the sixth to be filmed, fact fans) was broadcast on September 8 1966. It dealt with the crew of the USS Enterprise battling a shape-shifting monster that sucked the salt from its victims' bodies.



That first series out of just three that were made between 1966 and 1969 laid the foundation for everything that was to follow with great characters, fantastic story-tellling and at the centre - Kirk, Spock and McCoy.

Despite being an eye-watering 29 episodes long, series one included such classics as The Naked Time (where they all go sex mad), The Enemy Within (good and evil Kirk), Balance of Terror (Romulans, cloaking devices, Run Silent Run Deep type action), The Galileo Seven (crew stranded on planet, under Spock's command), Space Seed (KHAAAANNNNN!!) ... I could go on.

In fact I will - City On The Edge Of Forever was in there too. (Kirk has to watch Joan Collins die to save the galaxy - awesome story that one).

Although if I had to pick a favourite original Star Trek moment, it would be this from series two! Da-da-daa-daa-daa-daa-daa-da-da-da-da!!



Brilliant!!

By series three, the show was on its last legs due to failing studio support and indifferent scheduling, as well as some woeful episodes and miniscule budgets. Here's the proof - absolute rubbish that makes me want to sandpaper my own retinas.





But without them, who knows where we would be today after JJ Abrams' reboot of the franchise?

Here's to 43 more years of boldly going, and - even though he seemingly railed against every later development of Trek - a massive tip of the Scyfilove cap to Gene Roddenberry, the Great Bird of the Galaxy.

Top 10 reasons why District 9 and Neill Blomkamp live up to the hype

TIP of the Scyfilove cap goes to Neill Blomkamp and District 9, which opened this week in the UK.

I had already blogged about its clever marketing campaign, but I saw it during a specially extended lunch hour in Liverpool and it was a great way to spend a Friday afternoon.

I could go on and on about why, but don't want to spoil anything, so I'll keep it quick and easy:

1) The South African cast: no Hollywood stars - or even actors you recognise - kept it real. Should all films have an unknown cast?

2) The Prawns: beautifully designed and realised.

3) The special effects: obviously limited by budget, but rationed to make a massive impact.

4) The faux documentary style of the film-makers.

5) The nods to video games like Halo and Doom in the tech on display - expected from Blomkamp, who was to direct the Halo film before it fell through.

6) Aliens treated as second-class citizens - done before in Alien Nation and the like - but given extra allegorical resonance by the setting in South Africa.

7) The decision to make the leading man sympathetic, but not likeable.

9) More intelligent and thoughtful science fiction - Duncan Jones's Moon is not alone.

That's enough for now - I'll jot something more down in a few days or so, to give people the chance to see it.

Oh, and 10) I got to sneak out of work to go and see it!

What did you think of it?