A group of European scientists believes that images of the equatorial regions of Mars, sent back by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, may indicate the presence of a large body of water ice frozen just beneath the planet’s surface. Recent stereoscopic photos of Mars’ Elysium region revealed surface features that resemble large, cracked bodies of ice from Earth’s polar regions; photos from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor have confirmed the unusual terrain. Mars Express will deploy an instrument package specially designed to find subsurface frozen water by radar detection later this year, and European and British scientists are already earmarking Elysium for a potential landing mission in the future.
Source: BBC News

Pre-production has come to an end on the planned feature film Babylon 5: The Memory Of Shadows after the movie’s producers were unable to line up financing. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski reports that the producers who optioned the rights from him for a B5 movie and commissioned the script have failed to find the necessary financial backing to start production, nor is it expected that The Memory Of Shadows will be revived in the future. The movie rights have reverted, per his contract with Warner Bros., to Straczynski himself instead of the studio. But Straczynski still predicts that Babylon 5 will hit the big screen someday; in a recent Usenet posting, he said, “When that day comes, as the rights-holder, I will make darned sure that it’s done right, because I’d rather have no B5 movie than one that doesn’t live up to what fans and I myself would want to see.”
Source: Usenet (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated)

As we noted last week, Sci-Fi Channel has renewed its new version of Battlestar Galactica for a second season. Now, Sci-Fi has announced that the entire cast will be returning for the second season, which will consist of 20 episodes (as opposed to the first season’s 13 shows). Also, Sci-Fi is going into production on the new shows immediately to get them ready to premiere this summer. (This isn’t a surprise for the production team, however – as noted in our January 17th edition, executive producer Ronald D. Moore and his writers were told to get the next round of stories ready ahead of time.) Galactica has rocketed to the top of the ratings among Sci-Fi’s original series, earning critical acclaim in the process. (We here at theLogBook.com might as well put our cards on the table and say that this show is almost a unanimous favorite among the staff here, so we think this is pretty nifty news.) The first season is still airing Friday nights at 9pm central on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

Setting their sights a little bit higher than placing a newspaper ad, fans of Star Trek: Enterprise are attempting to do something almost unprecedented. They’re attempting to raise $32 million from fans around the world to single-handedly sponsor the production of a fifth year of the show. In a statement on the web site TrekUnited.com, a statement from movement founder Tim Brazeal claims that Paramount is willing to discuss a completely fan-funded season, provided the movement can show that it’s serious about raising the money. This isn’t an entirely new idea – in 1985, when BBC 1 controller (and, as of 2004, newly appointed BBC chairman) Michael Grade cancelled Doctor Who, a fan movement arose, offering to raise the money to produce the show’s 23rd season, though the BBC refused to accept any offer of funding from the fans. As of February 26th, TrekUnited.com had raised nearly $55,000.
Source: TrekUnited.com, Zap2it

You may not be Yoda, but if you want to lead the Republic’s clone commandos into battle, and happen to have a PC or an Xbox, this is the next best thing. Your job in Star Wars: Republic Commando is to lead a three-man squad of the Republic’s finest right into enemy territory, in a story that bridges Episodes II and III. And if you’re playing online via Xbox Live, there are death match and team death match options too – everything you need to frag your friends. Republic Commando is now available from the extensive game section of theLogBook.com’s Star Wars Store.

Formerly known as OKGE (which is where we had a real blast in 2003 and 2004), the Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition is scheduled at an earlier date this year, making it one of the first gaming expos on the 2005 calendar. The event will be held on Saturday, June 18th at the Marriott Southern Hills in Tulsa (the same as last year’s venue), with games galore, trading and sales, and plenty of fun from the latest modern console titles all the way back to the earlier home video games (which you can once again count on seeing at the Phosphor Dot Fossils booth this year). For more information, visit the OVGE web site at the link below.

Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition

He’s already wowed classic gaming fans for his inventive repurposing of chunky classic hardware into portable form, and now Ben Heckendorn is offering this knowledge to the masses. (Having seen some of Ben’s handiwork in person, I have to say it’s very impressive stuff.) In his new book “Hacking Video Game Consoles: Turn Your Old Video Game Systems Into Awesome New Portables”, Heckendorn offers step-by-step instructions on how to craft portable versions of everything from the Atari 2600 to the NES to the Sony Playstation, with concise descriptions of exactly what hardware you’ll need, and how it all goes together. For those with access to machinists’ tools, there are sections on how to make the final product look really fancy. “Hacking Video Game Consoles” is now available through theLogBook.com.

“Hacking Video Game Consoles” by Ben Heckendorn –

Cloud Ten Pictures has begun principal photography of the third feature film in the Left Behind franchise based on the popular series of Christian SF novels. Left Behind III: World War III is now shooting in and around Toronto, with the original cast of the first two movies. The first scenes filmed, however, involve guest stars Charles Martin Smith (The Untouchables, Starman) and Louis Gossett Jr., the latter in the pivotal role of U.S. President Gerald Fitzhugh. (It appears that, as the second movie only brought the story three quarters of the way through the second novel, “Tribulation Force”, this third movie will pick up where it left off and complete that story.) Craig Baxley (Kingdom Hospital, Rose Red, Storm Of The Century) is directing the movie. No release date has been set yet, though the production team is aiming for later this year.
Source: Cloud Ten Pictures

NASA is sticking to a window of May 15 through June 3 for the first space shuttle launch since the Columbia disaster, with a second launch window opening for another flight on July 12. Discovery is set for the first launch, to be commanded by Eileen Collins on a visit to the International Space Station. Atlantis is being readied for the July launch window as part of a new NASA protocol that will see shuttles prepped for launch in parallel in the event of damage that would prevent the first shuttle from landing safely; the crew of the damaged shuttle would await pickup at the space station. This mission will also see tests for three different methods of repairing the heat shield tiles, but no methods for fixing the leading edge of the shuttle’s wings – the location of the damage that doomed Columbia – will be ready for Discovery’s flight. The May launch will also see a focus on preventing external tank debris from damaging the shuttle in the first place, as well as new methods, including radar detection, for spotting both the debris and any resulting damage. Assuming Discovery’s safe return, Atlantis will still launch in July for another mission to the space station.
Sources: NASA, CNN

Would Irwin Allen have loved this or what? NASA recently launched an orbiting observatory called Swift to spot gamma ray bursts, and boy, did it find ‘em. Astronomers report that on December 27th, a burst of energy emanating from a star 50,000 light years away washed over the Earth and moon, igniting aurorae in Earth’s atmosphere (a phenomenon usually caused by the energy from our own sun, never mind someone else’s); Swift’s detectors were actually overloaded by the burst. Granted, the point of origin wasn’t just any old star – SGR 1806-20 is a “super magnetic neutron star,” or a “magnetar” for short. If it had blown its stack from only 10 light years away, all life on Earth might have been wiped out. Not to worry, however – scientists say that there are no stars like it within a dangerous proximity to Earth. It’s estimated that the burst carried the equivalent of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy, probably the biggest explosion observed by humans since the supernova observed by Johannes Kepler in 1604. SGR 1806-20 is believed to be the core remnant of a collapsed star, and it’s estimated to now be only 20 kilometers in diameter.
Source: BBC News

Despite fan efforts to find a new home or a last-minute reprieve, it appears that Star Trek: Enterprise‘s mission won’t be extended beyond its fourth season. Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski launched, and a day later retracted, an appeal to fans to write to Paramount to insist that the franchise be relaunched according to a pitch he wrote last year with Bryce Zabel. (Straczynski explained that the retraction was due to his commitment to another project that had just been offered to him, and that sources within Paramount have confirmed that the Star Trek franchise will be taking at least a two or three year break.) According to at least one report, despite a Los Angeles Times ad placed by a group of avid Enterprise fans, Sci-Fi Channel is not interested in salvaging Enterprise, nor is Paramount interested in producing any further episodes for any broadcast outlet. (If you’re interested in ordering it, though, at least on DVD, mosey on down to theLogBook.com’s Enterprise Store, where pre-orders are now being taken for the first season in the U.S. and Canada.)
Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, StudioBriefing, Usenet (rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated)

There’s also plenty of Doctor Who – old and new – waiting for audio fans. The release of Big Finish’s latest audio story – a Peter Davison six-parter (but on only two CDs) called The Game featuring Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and guest starring Hartnell-era TARDIS veteran William Russell – is just around the corner. And if you’re looking to fill in some gaps in your classic Who vocabulary, the long-lost Patrick Troughton adventure The Underwater Menace is also available as a two CD set from the BBC’s archives. You can order both of them now from theLogBook.com’s Doctor Who Store.

The Sci-Fi Channel has renewed its new version of Battlestar Galactica for another season, based on the ratings of the first season’s episodes so far. There’s no additional word on how many episodes will make up the season (both 13 and 20 episodes have been mentioned), or if there will be any changes to the cast or crew.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

Though no one’s really come out and answered the question “Will Richard Dean Anderson be back at all for the ninth season?”, recent casting announcements from the Sci-Fi Channel seem to imply that he won’t. On Stargate SG-1, the SGC itself will have a new commander in the form of Beau Bridges, joining the cast as General Hank Landry. (In story terms, General O’Neill will be promoted to oversee the “Department of Homeworld Security,” which is where General Hammond was promoted when Don S. Davis left the show as a regular.) Lou Gossett, Jr. will also join the cast on a recurring basis, as an ambition Jaffa competing with Teal’c for political power over the Jaffa. On Stargate Atlantis, X-Files veteran Mitch Pileggi signs on for the second season as a “hard-nosed colonel” who doesn’t exactly see eye-to-eye with the series’ established regulars. The new seasons of both shows begin filming next month, and will premiere this summer.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

It appears that the first-ever DVD audio commentary for a Star Trek TV series will be heard on the May release of Star Trek: Enterprise‘s first season. Rick Berman and Brannon Braga will talk viewers through the series pilot, Broken Bow, while Michael and Denise Okuda provide subtitle text commentaries on The Andorian Incident and Vox Sola. Featurettes will include focuses on Captain Archer and Admiral Forrest (and the actors who played them), the gestation of the show, as well as – in a first – a selection of deleted scenes and bloopers. The first season of Enterprise arrives on DVD in May, with the other three seasons following through the rest of the year. You can pre-order the DVDs now from theLogBook.com’s Star Trek: Enterprise Store.
Source: StarTrek.com

With a new TV series imminent, the emphasis on Doctor Who merchandising is shifting firmly to the ninth Doctor’s era. Panini Publishing has expanded Doctor Who Magazine and given it a makeover in line with the new series’ logo and look, and the BBC has announced that a new toy license for the show has been granted to Character Options, with radio-control Daleks and a replica of the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver due for October of this year. And additionally, the covers of the first three ninth Doctor novels have been leaked, with a completely new look (though it’s unknown if this look will be carried through to fiction featuring past Doctors; some sources say that “classic Who” material will still bear the logo of the 1996 TV movie, which was itself an update of the logo from Jon Pertwee’s era). The new books are also said to be aimed more at the show’s anticipated young adult audience than either the previous BBC Books or Virgin novels. All three books, as well as subscriptions to Doctor Who Magazine, can be pre-ordered from theLogBook.com’s Doctor Who Store.