Due to work commitments and a general lack of the kind of time needed to record a 45-minute podcast in real time on a frequent basis, I’ve decided to end theLogBook.com’s Doctor Who podcast experiment for now. As is already generally known, the first season will be available on DVD in the U.S. this July (in fact, you can order it in theLogBook.com Store now), complete with full-length commentaries that will make these podcasts rather redundant.

I appreciate everyone who decided to give them a try, and this won’t be the last podcast you hear on theLogBook.com – but the next one will simply have to wait until time permits.

Earl Green
theLogBook.com webmaster / editor-in-chief

NASA scientists think they may have found more evidence of the breakup of a sizeable moon of Saturn, whose debris may now form the planet’s rings. The camera eyes of the unmanned Cassini probe has spotted “moonlets” within the rings, roughly 300 feet in diameter, which have a gravitational effect on surrounding particles and boulder-sized fragments that make up the rings. If you’re wondering if these moonlets will be as carefully counted and chronicled as the rest of Saturn’s moons, think about this – the authors of a paper on the discovery of the moonlets think there may be as many as 10 million of these bodies within Saturn’s rings. Scientists are continuing to look for clues about the formation of Saturn’s rings, as those findings may, in a relatively miniaturized way, also help them learn about the formation of the solar system itself.
Source: NASA / JPL

Richard Dean Anderson is returning to the role of Jack O’Neill on upcoming episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. (Both series’ new seasons premiere in July on the Sci-Fi Channel. Anderson is pencilled in for two Atlantis appearances and three SG-1 appearances, including the 200th episode which, at the time of this writing, is tentatively titled simply 200. A direct sequel to the show’s tongue-in-cheek 100th episode, Wormhole X-Treme!, 200 sees O’Neill return to help his former teammates “assist” in production of a big-screen version of the short-lived Wormhole X-Treme! series (a plot which the producers admit is a wink at the fate of Firefly and Serenity).
Sources: Sci-Fi Channel, Gateworld.net

Despite serious (and popular) competition from authors such as Sharon Osborne and TV chef Jamie Oliver, J.K. Rowling took home the Book Of The Year award for “Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince” from the British Book Awards this week. In the meantime, Rowling says the final tome of Harry’s adventures is “coming along nicely.”

Need your Scorpius fix? Former Farscape foe Wayne Pygram puts in an appearance on the April 12th episode of Lost, titled S.O.S.

Amazon.com has posted an exclusive four-chapter sneak preview of Kevin J. Anderson‘s upcoming SF novel “Of Fire And Night,” the fifth in his Seven Suns series, a full year before the book hits the stores. You can click here to see more.

Our pals at Twin Galaxies, who have been the official record-keepers of world record high scores for arcade and console games since the 1980s, has finally joined forces with the Guinness Book of World Records. To celebrate this doubtlessly record-setting alliance, they’re holding a high-scoring contest on the weekend of April 7th in Pompano Beach, Florida (curiously enough, the same weekend as the CinciClassic convention). You can click here to learn more about the contest.

Last but not least, congratulations to Xena / Battlestar Galactica star Lucy Lawless, who has been inducted into the New Zealand Order of Merit for “services to entertainment and the community.”

Dan Curtis, the writer, director and producer who created the cult classic Dark Shadows, died today. As a writer, he penned the script for the earliest episodes of Dark Shadows, and returned to try to revive the show in prime time in 1990. He also produced the series, as well as serving as a producer on The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler, the two TV movies that launched the late Darren McGavin in the role of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. He also directed Night Strangler, as well as Trilogy Of Terror, the TV miniseries The Winds Of War, and numerous 1970s TV adaptations of such horror classics as Dracula and The Turn Of The Screw. He was diagnosed with a brain tumor late in 2005, and died just weeks after his wife of 54 years passed away. Mr. Curtis was 78.
Sources: Associated Press, IMDb

No pressure here. Two weeks before recording sessions begin on John Ottoman’s orchestral score for this summer’s eagerly anticipated superhero flick Superman Returns, Rhino Records has already scheduled a June 27th CD release date. For those who need a super fix before then, Rhino is releasing a companion album, Sounds Of Superman, on May 23rd, which will be the obligatory “songs from and inspired by…” album that no movie seems to be able to escape these days. According to notes on John Ottoman’s web site, the score will quote music from John Williams’ iconic 1978 Superman score.
Source: Film Music Radio

It looks like David “Angel” Boreanaz will be rolling the Bones for another season; Fox has renewed the show for a second year. Though not strictly SF, Bones stars Boreanaz as an FBI agent who seeks help from an anthropologist to solve his toughest cases. The show has consistently pulled in decent ratings despite being up against the likes of Lost and Survivor, and despite being pre-empted several times recently for extra episodes of Fox’s American Idol.

Speaking of which, UPN – which is mere months away from closing its doors and merging with the WB to form the new CW network – is getting Veronica Mars out of harm’s way…or at least out of American Idol’s. On April 11th, the show goes back to its 9pm ET time slot on Tuesdays, with repeats scheduled for Wednesday. Veronica Mars is being renewed and will be seen on the CW network this fall.

As the Playstation 2 nears its twilight and the PS3 is just around the corner, Sony has only just recently ended production of the venerable Playstation 1. Debuting in Japan in late 1994, Sony’s Playstation made the consumer electronics company a mainstay of the modern video game market, selling over 103 million machines worldwide. The redesigned compact version of the PS1, whose smaller size accomodated such accessories as an add-on LCD monitor for standalone gaming, was introduced in 2000 and remained in production until this year. Sony says that the PS3 will be compatible with PS1 games, just like the PS2, and is still promising an accessory to allow PS1 games to be played on its handheld PSP gaming system.

Director Richard Fleischer, the son of pioneering animator Max Fleischer and nephew of animators Dave and Louis Fleischer, died on Saturday, March 25th. Fleischer directed such seminal SF films as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Fantastic Voyage, Soylent Green and Conan The Destroyer; his non-genre offerings were equally famous at the box office, among them Tora! Tora! Tora!, The Jazz Singer, and the original filmed version of Doctor Dolittle starring Rex Harrison. (Ironically, his big-screen adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues saw Fleischer working for Walt Disney, who considered his father and uncles serious rivals in the animation business.) Mr. Fleischer was 89 years old.
Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, IMDb

Polish-born SF author Stanislaw Lem, the writer of novels such as “Solaris”, “The Star Diaries” and “The Futurological Congress”, has died. A visionary voice in 50s and 60s literary SF, Lem began writing in 1946, but some of his imaginings brought the unwelcome attention of the Communist Party of the day; his first novel, “Hospital Of The Transfiguration,” wasn’t allowed to see print for eight years. His best-known work, “Solaris,” was adapted for the big screen not once but twice: in 1972, director Andrei Tarkovsky tried to turn “Solaris” into Russia’s answer to 2001 (complete with a running time of over two and a half hours), while a 2002 remake starred George Clooney. 27 million copies of his books were sold in over 40 languages. Mr. Lem was 84 years old.
Sources: Associated Press, IMDb, CNN

The classic 2-D fighting genre returns to the Sega CD system for the first time in a decade with the latest homebrew release from Good Deal Games and J2games.com. They’re debuting their new fighting game, Burning Fists: Force Striker, at CinciClassic on April 8th. With single and dual player modes, unique moves, hidden abilities, and eight locales to choose from, Burning Fists looks like a return to the fighting genre that had so many players happily beating each other up in the 90s. Pre-orders are being taken before the show, and copies will be mailed out immediately before CinciClassic itself; at this time, it’s planned only for a limited run of 200 copies. You can pre-order Burning Fists: Force Striker from the gang at Good Deal Games.

It looks like spacewalking is off-limits for the two-man crew of the International Space Station. Even though no walks outside the station were planned until July, even emergency spacewalks have been ruled out after several air-scrubbing lithium hydroxide canisters, which prevent carbon dioxide from building up in the crew’s spacesuits, have gone missing aboard the station. (Similar filters, though on a larger scale, keep the air breathable aboard the station itself, and a similar system is also used on the space shuttle.) There are also concerns about some of the safety hand rails on the exterior of the station, which help weightless astronauts reach their destination when they’re up close and personal with the station’s exterior hull. Identical copies of those rails in training facilities on Earth have begun to show an unusual degradation that has mission planners worried. New lithium hydroxide filters will be flown to the International Space Station next month, along with new crew members; there’s no word on whether there’s a fix for the hand rail issues, or indeed if that problem is occurring at the station itself or only at the Earthbound training facilities.
Source: Reuters

After several delays, BBC 3′s Doctor Who spinoff series Torchwood is nearly ready to go before the cameras. Creator Russell T. Davies (serving as producer of both shows) says that production on the show will finally kick off this May in Cardiff, Wales, with the premiere on BBC 3 currently slated for October of this year. Torchwood stars John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness and Eve Myles as Gwen Cooper, leaders of a covert group that investigates hints of alien activity on Earth; Davies has said that Torchwood will be decidedly more edgy and adult-oriented than the traditionally family-oriented Doctor Who.
Source: Sci-Fi Wire

The nominees for this year’s Hugo Awards, honoring the best in literary, filmed and interactive science fiction, have been announced; the awards will be handed out at the 64th World Science Fiction Convention at L.A. Con IV this August in Anaheim. In the Short Form Dramatic Presentation category, there’s a bit of a shocker – the odds are almost even that the Hugo in that category may be going home in the TARDIS. And the nominees are… (more…)

The gang over at Star Trek: New Voyages have released a couple of new tidbits of video to whet your appetite; one, a short vignette called Center Seat, serves as a kind of mini-episode (and other shorts like it are said to be on the way), but what everyone’s most likely to be drooling over is the first trailer for the D.C. Fontana-written episode To Serve All My Days, starring Walter Koenig as Chekov. Both can be found here.

TVshowsonDVD.com reports that Universal will probably hold off on the release of Battlestar Galactica Season 2.5 until September of this year, to help build anticipation for the new season. (They need help with that after that cliffhanger?) The set will include the last ten episodes of the second season, which recently finished airing in the U.S., as well as an extended edit of the episode Pegasus. In the meantime, La La Land Records has set a June date for the release of the season two soundtrack CD by Bear McCreary.

The upcoming movie adaptation of The Bridge To Terabithia now has a composer; even though she’s contributed songs to movie soundtracks before, this will be bluegrass musician Alison Krauss‘ first shot at scoring an entire movie. Terabithia is being produced by Disney and Walden Media, the same pairing that brought us The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.

Classic Media is planning a September 5th release date for the first ever North American release of Toho Studios’ original, unaltered film Gojira. It’ll be in a two-DVD set along with the Americanized version (which added Raymond Burr in a series of newly-filmed scenes) of Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. As soon as we have pre-ordering information, we’ll let you know.

Last but not least, former Xena co-star Renee O’Connor is the mother of a bouncing baby girl; the actress gave birth to Iris Sura O’Connor on March 19th; according to her official site (Renee’s that is, not the baby’s), the new addition to the family is “7 lbs., 15 oz., and very mellow.”

The European Space Agency may be upgrading the ticket for its upcoming ExoMars robotic Mars rover to first class. Due for launch aboard a Russian rocket in 2011, ExoMars would ride a “carrier” craft into Mars orbit and the rover would then detach aboard its descent module to land on the red planet. The carrier would then slip into Mars orbit and do nothing more, while ExoMars would relay its observations back to Earth via the communications facilities of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite, which recently arrived at Mars itself. ESA’s scientists hope they can convince the agency’s heads to fork over an extra €80 million to convert the carrier into a full-service orbiter (since it’ll already be there). Included in the cost of the carrier-to-orbiter upgrade would be an ESA-built Ariane 5 booster, required to push the heavier orbiter toward Mars. A decision is expected later this year or early in 2007.
Source: BBC News

AtariAge and Scott Huggins have released another outstanding arcade adaptation for the ColecoVision, this time a nifty home version of the Exidy cult classic Spectar. A sequel to Targ, Spectar pits you, in your mobile “Wummel,” against a maze full of lightning-fast enemy vehicles, all of which are more than happy to rev up for a kamikaze ram maneuver the moment you’re in range. (It’s not hard to imagine this game being released for the ColecoVision, as Coleco had licensed numerous Exidy games such as Venture and Mouse Trap during the console’s heyday.) You can order Spectar from AtariAge here.
Source: AtariAge.com