I FOUND this great clip from a few years ago online last night, but it was so awesome I thought I’d put it up on here.
Mace Windu goes toe to toe with the Droid army and their huge dusty stomping machine – enjoy.
THE original Star Trek crew has been replaced, but the TNG lot still have some miles in them yet.
Indeed, it’s hard to see anyone else in their iconic roles, but it could all have been so different according to a memo unearthed by the always-excellent Letters of Note.
In it, the Star Trek casting team outline the actors and actresses under consideration for each role back in 1987 – and there are some awesomely fantastic names.
Star Trek casting memo
For starters, Captain Picard could have been played by Yaphet Kotto (he would have been awesome) or Roy Thinnes – that’s David Vincent from The Invaders, classic sci-fi from back in the 1960s.
It gets better. Kevin Peter Hall – the Predator himself – was up for the roles of Data and Geordi La Forge, where he was competing against a young actor called Wesley Snipes, as well as the eventual choice, Levar Burton.
It’s for damn sure nobody would have poked fun at Geordi’s visor with Snipes wearing it!
Other interesting names include Jenny Agutter who was in the running for Beverley Crusher and Tim Russ as Geordi, who would later go on from missing out here to Trek success as Tuvok in Voyager.
Denice Crosby was down to play Troi – not Tasha Yar which she would go on to play and then leave just before the show got super-popular. Meanwhile Jonathan Frakes did well to get past the favourite for Riker, Michael O’Gorman.
What might have been, eh? Anyone else you think should have been in the Enterprise crew?
I FEEL strong enough to pull the ears off a Gundark after buying my latest (but not last) piece of Star Wars art!
Called Never Tell Me The Odds, it was one of a series of beautiful pieces by a chap called OKTotally on Etsy.com, aka Andy Helms. Click through to see his other work, on Star Wars and more.
This one pays tribute to the fastest hunk of junk in the Galaxy in The Empire Strikes Back. Thanks to Alison for the heads up, and for being a cool friend.
Never Tell Me The Odds
Arcade Fire
I HAVE always been a fan of clever music videos (I’m looking at you, OK GO) but the latest from Arcade Fire really takes the biscuit.
It is mesmerisingly interactive involving Google Street Views of your childhood home, a writing and drawing tool and about a zillion beautiful touches. I don’t want to say any more because I’m afraid of spoiling it.
If you want to have a go, click here.
To find out more about how the video was made using HTML5, click here.
And if you’re wondering why a science fiction blog is raving about a music video, it’s because stuff like this makes me believe in the future.
I LIKE Neil Gaiman‘s work.
So when I heard he was writing an episode of Doctor Who, I got a bit excited. I’m more excited after seeing this.
Neil Gaiman, Matt Smith, Steven Moffat and director Richard Clark
It’s from the read-through of his Doctor Who script. I like the Halo effect too.
For more information (but not much more), visit his blog.
Steven Moffat, really quite clever
I’M becoming more and more excited about Steven Moffat‘s visionary decision to split the usual 13-episode series of Doctor Who into two next year, and not just because of the ‘game-changing cliffhanger’ the Moff has promised.
To me, the most important thing about his announcement is that the game seems to have changed already.
What do I mean? Simply this – it is not everyone who can solve two seemingly insurmountable problems in one stroke while changing an already brilliant thing for the better, with the elegant simplicity of Alexander cutting through the Gordian knot.
Let me explain.
For Moffat’s first series at the helm of Who, I could practically feel his frustration whenever he was interviewed – firstly at factors outside of his control like the sunny weather or the World Cup, taking potential viewers away.
That inevitably led to ‘Who ratings falling’ stories, regardless of truth, but seemed a fact of life, the way things must always be with new Who and its 13-week run, starting every Easter.
The inspired decision to begin in early summer and then break to autumn with its dark, cold, stay-at-home nights – one the Doctor himself would be proud of – has taken care of that.
But then we had the Beeb playing broadcast bingo with one of their most high-profile brands, changing its start time week after week to support other shows in the schedule (and let’s not forget Nortongate).
Of course, we’ve been here before, with RTD also railing against Who’s start-times being messed with.
The difference this time is that Steven Moffat – as well as ruling the Who roost – has delivered the magnificent Sherlock.
This under-the-radar smash hit has made Moffat the golden boy for BBC drama, with Mrs Moff and Mark Gatiss also seeing their stock rise.
However Moffat’s stock must be so high at Broadcasting House now that even in these times of austerity, I’m sure he has the Director General making his packed lunch for him, before couriering it over.
I’d bet the Who budget has also been increased by the cost of a team of strippers too, to dance while he writes. (If so, expect the Doctor to reveal the Go-Go Swinging Pussycat Dance Club room in the TARDIS this time around. Then we’ll see how sexy Amy really is!)
So when he strolled in and calmly asked the Beeb to completely change the way their flagship programme was broadcast, after five years of nothing but critical and commercial success, they had no choice but to agree given his leverage in the Corporation. And the shorter runs should make a fixed start time much easier to agree too.
Quite apart from my belief that it shows the BBC are treating Who with respect, I also think the change will also make for a more exciting series, or two.
I made a case earlier this year for how Who could develop, including longer episodic structures of three or four episodes per story, instead of two-parters at best.
Now with a six and then seven episode structure – separated by a mid season cliffhanger to beat all mid-season cliffhangers, and including Neil Gaiman‘s story too – I think Moff can really go to town and break the familiar into something new.
What’s more, just think of how he may use that cliffhanger to go some way towards finally answering the Silence Will Fall and River Song mysteries layered throughout the last series.
For instance, it has already been implied that River was jailed for killing the Doctor – how’s that for starters? Even thinking about it now has my geek alarm going.
All in all, it reinforces my belief that Moffat was the perfect choice to look after Doctor Who.
A game-changer indeed, and for the better in every instance.
I HAD the very good fortune to see the Indiana Jones live stunt show at Disney MGM Studios theme park in Florida, and it was awesome.
What’s more my good wife Pam (we had married the day before in Orlando city hall, I wore a cowboy hat, the security guard called me Hombre before frisking me, but that’s another story) managed to suck up to the person on the door, so we were ushered to front row seats.
However I would have given anything to see this show in the flesh – Indy, Princess Leia, Han and Chewie, Boba Fett, Darths Maul and Vader. Disbelief suspended. Cheesy jokes ignored. Enjoyment mode activated.
Thanks to Topless Robot for the heads up.
FOR two and a half years and 400 posts, I’ve blogged on science fiction on Scyfilove.
First on Blogger, then a bit better on Blogger, and then WordPress (with my snazzy theme) I’ve said my piece on anything that caught my eye, and it’s been fun.
In return people have read my words in ever greater numbers, with page views and visits well into the thousands now, for which I will always be grateful.
I even organised a science fiction pub crawl.
But earlier this summer my blogging time dropped to virtually zero. Now I have been away for so long, I’m finding it hard to get back, which has left me scratching my head about what to do next.
I’m laying out my thoughts here to get an idea.
First of all, my boss left at work which means I’ve been promoted, at least temporarily, into a fantastic online job, involving and demanding but rewarding too.
For my blogging , what it means is I have also lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen something and thought I’ll blog on that, only for my new responsibilities to mean I only get to it hours later, by which time everyone and his dog has got there first or I don’t feel like writing anything.
I think this will change as time goes on, but for now, work is taking a lot of my energy and focus (not that it didn’t beforehand, anyone from work reading this! It was just different. Please don’t sack me).
Secondly when I started the blog ages ago, it was just for a laugh. I liked sci-fi and my mate Alison suggested blogging about it, so I did.
Time went on and I learned an awful lot about blogging and blogs, and kicked it up a notch by paying for server space on WordPress – the whole nine yards.
I was still blogging for fun, just more seriously (if that makes sense) and applying a lot of what I learned in my day job, but part of me wondered if writing Scyfilove might open an extra door or two.
It did – I’ve chatted to Robert Englund, Duncan Jones and loads more, and made some great friends. I even got to appear in Doctor Who Confidential (kind of).
But, at the back of my mind, I suppose I always hoped it would lead to something more, maybe even writing for a magazine like SFX or SciFiNow. Unrealistic? Well, I’m an experienced journalist who has a lot of new media skills under his belt too, so it’s not out of the question.
Two years on and I’m still waiting for the call though – or even an opportunity to write a review – so I’m kind of coming to the conclusion it’s not going to happen or I don’t know how to make it happen, and that has sapped some of my motivation to sit down and write a blog post.
That has left me wondering – as I sit before an empty blog screen – how do I shake off this malaise and what do I want to do next?
I still haven’t figured that out, although this is the first proper blog post I’ve written for a while so I guess that is a good start.
Any ideas? (apart from kicking myself up the arse?)
Excited much? The new Bioshock Infinite trailer takes you out of Rapture and into the skies.
Great bit of fishtank tomfoolery to begin with and then up, up and away, albeit with a helping hand from a Big Daddy.
A bit of jiggery-pokery takes you through to the games’s official site, which has this synopsis:
Set in 1912, BioShock Infinite introduces an entirely new narrative and gameplay experience that lifts players out of the familiar confines of Rapture and rockets them to Columbia, an immense city in the sky.
Former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt has been sent to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned in Columbia since childhood. Booker develops a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities.
Throw in buildings kept aloft by hot air balloons, sky-coasters and no doubt the usual blend of magic and extreme violence and I’m in like Flynn – you?
The mind-reading gizmo in action
YES, you read that right. A team of scientists from Northwestern University in America have developed the ability to scan and interpret brain waves to discover the guilty thoughts associated with crime, just like in Minority Report.
However before we all start wearing tinfoil hats to shield our thoughts, they didn’t do this using a trio of weird looking mentalists immersed in goop.
Instead they attached electrodes to student’s scalps. Said students had been given information about a mock terrorist attack on a US city, with the electrodes monitoring a rise in brain wave activity that correlated perfectly with nasty thoughts (I wonder if ‘I hate you for making me wear this stupid hat’ was one of them?)
An amazing achievement to be sure, but I have two observations.
First, I don’t know if the electro hat is the most effective way to fight terrorism, 100% accuracy or not.
And second, look at the size of that ear!! I mean, I’ve seen some big ears in my time, but I bet they had to use a special electro hat for Dumbo to take the test.
Basically, what I’m taking away from this is that terrorists in the future have big ears.
Thanks to Derren Brown for the heads up.
