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Traffic is busy in orbit of the red planet these days. In anticipation of the May 25th descent and landing of the Phoenix Mars Lander, NASA has adjusted the orbit of several of its unmanned Mars orbiters to assist Phoenix on its way down. Phoenix, which is a lander but not a mobile rover, was launched in August 2007 and will touch down near the north pole of Mars and conduct studies to see if liquid water can still be found beneath the surface. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey have adjusted their orbital paths to be nearly overhead as Phoenix plunges through the thin Martian atmosphere, and the European Space Agency has also put its Mars Express orbiter on a similar track near Phoenix’s landing site. The three orbiters will listen to and relay Phoenix’s transmissions as it descends through the atmosphere and hurtles toward its landing site, which will not only help guide Phoenix to its landing target, but can also assist Earthbound engineers should something go wrong. Tests were conducted earlier this year with all three orbiters, using signals from the Mars rovers, Opportunity and Spirit.
Sources: NASA / JPL

The broadcast networks have announced their fall schedules for a new season which has proven to be seriously hobbled by the writers’ strike in late 2007 and early 2008. The acclaimed BBC series Life On Mars will be Americanized by David E. Kelley and ABC this fall. The original series concerned a modern-day policeman (John Simm, who also became the Master in the 2007 of Doctor Who) who finds himself stuck in 1973, in more or less the same job, but in a time and a culture to which he almost can’t relate. The original show ran for two seasons on the BBC, and its sequel series, Ashes To Ashes, is still in production. Jason O’Mara stars in Kelley’s adaptation of the original. Staying on ABC’s schedule are Lost, Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone. CBS is also borrowing a series concept from the UK, namely the short-lived Patrick Stewart series Eleventh Hour. Rufus Sewell takes over Stewart’s part; the Americanized version of the show about a government troubleshooter who investigates misuses of science is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. To the anguish of many fans, CBS’ vampire series Moonlight did not win a renewal. NBC is, of course, bringing back Heroes, and Fox has given a second season to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, though that series is apparently adding more cast members to shake things up.
Sources: Variety, Sci-Fi Wire, Hollywood Reporter

Scificollector.co.uk, the exclusive licensees for action figures and toys based on the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood, has released the first images of prototype figures from the first wave, due in August. The first wave consists of Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper, a Weevil creature, and Lisa the Cyberwoman; the only figure whose prototype photo hasn’t been released is Captain Jack. Each figure is scaled to match Character Options’ Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures figures, and comes with a stand, but can be removed from the stand and is fully poseable. At the moment, Scificollector.co.uk is only taking orders for the entire first wave - i.e. you have to order all four figures, and not just one character. The figures will ship in August, around the same time as Character Options hits us with the first classic Doctor Who figures - so it’s no joke when they say that the 21st century is when it all happens. The figures can be ordered here from the UK; there is currently no North American distributor.
Source: Scificollector.co.uk

But is he going to to blow Sylar straight to hell? Former Babylon 5 star Bruce Boxleitner (pictured here in the direct-to-DVD movie Babylon 5: The Lost Tales) is joining the cast for the third season of Heroes, premiering in September on NBC. A TV Guide report says that Boxleitner’s character was originally envisioned as something of a pastiche of Senator John McCain, but that role is being reworked somewhat. He’ll have a recurring role, and it’s not yet known how many episodes he’ll be in. Also joining the cast in season three will be Friday Night Lights’ Brea Grant as a villainous foil for Hiro.

Eureka lightens up. The upcoming third season of Sci-Fi Channel’s hit series Eureka isn’t going to take itself quite so seriously. Though the show will still try to tell a larger story by dropping bread crumbs into each episode for those who are paying attention, the second season’s darker turn in storytelling won’t be so prevalent in the third year. Episodes are expected to be lighter and funnier, with some of the first season’s character dynamics returned to Global Dynamics. Eureka returns to Sci-Fi’s schedule this summer.

NBC and Mezco Toys have announced a new line of plastic Heroes this summer. The new line of action figures will stand around 7″ tall, and will include accessories and “alternate heads” (!). The first wave of five characters from the show will include Claire Bennet, Peter Petrelli, Mohinder Suresh, Hiro Nakamura and Sylar. As soon as ordering information is available, we’ll have the Heroes figures stocked in theLogBook.com Store.
Source: NBC

Intrada Records has done ’80s soundtrack lovers a solid with their latest release, the complete musical score from that classic anti-hacking cautionary tale, WarGames. The CD clocks in at just under 70 minutes with every note of music recorded by composer Arthur B. Rubenstein for the film, including unused alternate versions of a song that eventually became the end credit theme. The music has been freshly remixed from the original studio master tapes, and the CD is limited to a print run of 2,500 copies. You can drop in on our pals at Intrada and order your WarGames tunes today.

The Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition (OVGE) is back in business this year, after taking 2007 off. This year’s event - the fifth OVGE held since 2003 - will be held once again at the Marriott Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, August 9th. Admission will be $3 at the door; exhibitors and vendors will be covering the entire history of video games, from the earliest days to the latest hits. Of course, theLogBook.com webmaster Earl Green will be on hand, with plenty of copies of the Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD (which can also be ordered online here). For more information, click the logo accompanying this story to visit OVGE’s web site.

The late composer Alex North’s rejected musical score for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey is getting a live orchestral tribute at the second Tenerife International Film Music Festival, to be held in the Canary Islands, Spain in late June. Selections from North’s famous rejected score - which many film music scholars have come to hold in higher esteem than the scattershot selection of classical and avant-garde music ultimately used by Kubrick - will be performed by the Tenerife Film Orchestra & Choir in a concert closing out the weeklong festivities, working from North’s own arrangements and handwritten scores, on loan from soundtrack specialty label Varese Sarabande. Two other concerts will be held during the event, highlighting numerous other pieces of film music. 2007’s attendees included composers Don Davis (The Matrix trilogy) and Sean Callery; a list of this year’s guests of honor is still in the works.
Source: SoundtrackNet

CBS Digital, a part of the CBS/Viacom/Paramount empire, announced last week that production has wrapped on their nearly two-year project to “upgrade” the original 1960s Star Trek series to HD standards, including the replacement of model space shots with space scenes created with CGI. All 79 of the original series’ broadcast episodes have now gotten this treatment, as well as the original series pilot, The Cage. The project, which resulted in over 2,000 newly-created scenes, was overseen by former Star Trek: Enterprise post production coordinator Dave Rossi and Michael and Denise Okuda. All of the show’s episodes are expected to air in syndication by August of this year, though The Cage may be held back to early 2009, possibly to coincide with the premiere of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie. Rumors of a similar treatment for Star Trek: The Next Generation are likely to be false, however: the original series was able to get an HD upgrade because it was shot on film and could withstand the scrutiny of HD resolution, while Next Generation was edited and post-produced on videotape, and therefore is very nearly at its maximum possible resolution on standard-definition DVD, meaning that a similar remastering process would force producers to go back to the original negatives and begin the post-production process on all 178 episodes from scratch - which isn’t likely to happen. In the meantime, the complete second season of classic Star Trek will be available in remastered form on standard-definition DVD this August, and you can pre-order it now in theLogBook.com Store.
Source: Trekmovie.com

The follow-up to the first Chronicles Of Narnia film is due in May, and so is its soundtrack. Harry Gregson-Williams follows up on his themes from the first movie and comes up with a few new ones for the second, and though the tracklist hasn’t been announced yet, you can probably count on a few songs as well. The soundtrack from The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian can be ordered now in theLogBook.com Store.

Sci-Fi Channel has signed on the dotted line for new programming either owned or distributed by CBS/Viacom, which will finally bring Star Trek: The Next Generation to Sci-Fi after years of reruns on such outlets as SpikeTV and G4. Also coming to Sci-Fi as a result of the deal will be Highlander: The Series, Mork & Mindy, Charmed and Ghost Whisperer, the latter of which has also been sold to the cable channel WE. TNG reruns have disappeared from its previous cable channels effective immediately as a result. One also wonders if Sci-Fi couldn’t pick up Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for a song, as it too has disappeared from SpikeTV, replaced by Star Trek: Voyager reruns.
Source: Daily Variety

While fans are waiting to see if the sunflower seeds are having any effect following the cancellation of The 4400, they can at least console themselves with the DVD box set of the show’s (apparently) final season. Featuring all 13 episodes of the show’s last season on USA Network, the box set also has some bonus features about the making of the series’ intricate plotlines. You can snatch up your copy of The 4400 Season 4 today in theLogBook.com Store.

The organizers behind the Classic Gaming Expo have announced that the show will be taking another break this year due to difficulties in finding a suitable venue in Las Vegas. According to the organizers’ statement on the show’s web site, that difficulty is “due to the amount of space that we require versus the number of rooms we can fill,” meaning that for the amount of space required by CGE for vendors, guest speakers and the show’s always sizeable selection of vintage arcade machines, it draws a relatively small and specialized crowd. Plans are already afoot for CGE to return instead in 2009.
Source: Classic Gaming Expo

Kevin Kiner, who has scored several films, games and TV shows (including the Leprechaun horror movies, the original computer game Wing Commander and episodes of Stargate SG-1) and collaborated with composer Dennis McCarthy on scores for Star Trek: Enterprise, has been chosen to score both the theatrical debut and the subsequent weekly series of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He has recently been in the studio with a full orchestra to record the music for August’s movie; he has apparently already composed and recorded the music for a dozen of the series episodes, though it’s not known yet if those were also recorded with an orchestra. (Kiner is well-known as a master synthesist capable of coaxing realistic orchestral sounds out of electronic instruments.) There’s no word as yet on whether or not a commercial release of Kiner’s upcoming Star Wars music is in the works, but given the merchandising potential for all things Star Wars, smart money (and Watto’s bookie) says to make room on the CD shelf by the end of the year.
Source: Film Music Magazine

One gamer’s recent trip to a California flea market landed him a batch of cryptically labeled EPROM chips, and now it turns out that those chips contained a wealth of unfinished and prototype games, and even some work-in-progress versions of released games, all for the Atari 2600 and Colecovision consoles. The resulting ROM and BIN files have been made available through his website. The major finds here seem to be a reasonably complete, but never before discovered, Atari 2600 version of Coleco’s Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures In The Park (a game from Coleco’s waning days, based on the company’s next big moneymakers, the Cabbage Patch Kids dolls), and a non-playable demo of a Colecovision game that existed previously only as a rumor, The Sword And The Sorcerer (probably connected to the movie of the same name), and a previously undiscovered Colecovision game called Dragonslayer. (If you don’t want to mess with emulation, we’ve made it easy for you to see these games in action through Phosphor Dot Fossils video: see Cabbage Patch Kids here, or Sword And the Sorcerer here.) Work-in-progress versions of such Colecovision games as Spy Hunter and 2010, along with previously undiscovered development tools for Coleco’s Adam computer, and all of that material has been made freely available as well. No doubt homebrew programmers will be examining these discoveries for quite a while.

Nearly two weeks ago, a Soyuz capsule bringing home departing crewmembers from the International Space Station landed over 200 miles away from its designated landing site - apparently so far that the U.S. Department of Defense, which routinely tracks objects in space, had to let Russian search parties know where the Soyuz had landed. After debriefing the three crewmembers who returned safely to Earth, Russian space officials have admitted that the re-entry of the capsule may have been a close call. It seems that the Soyuz survived entering the atmosphere not heat-shield-first, but hatch-first - not considered a safe way to return to Earth. The crew also reported smoke in the cabin, though this may have been the capsule’s outer hull material burning away under the heat of re-entering the atmosphere. The unusual angle at which the capsule plunged back to Earth also destroyed the communications antenna mounted on the outside of the vehicle. Russian space officials are continuing to examine the heavily damaged Soyuz, which subjected its passengers to eight times Earth’s gravity (when only 5 Gs, which is punishing enough to the human body, is the most severe force expected), and NASA officials are awaiting their findings. NASA is watching the situation closely because Soyuz will be the only means to reach the space station during the years of downtime between the retirement of the space shuttle fleet and the first launch of the Orion program sometime in the next decade.
Source: Associated Press