Old Who revue. As previously mentioned, Sylvester McCoy’s final full Doctor Who story, as well as the final installment of the original Doctor Who series, Survival will arrive on DVD in the UK in mid-April. Also in April, look for the 2006 Doctor Who Christmas special The Runaway Bride, packaged on its own disc with the spectacular Cardiff concert of music from the series and the Doctor Who Confidential episode covering the making of that concert. In late May, Tom Baker fans can go back to the beginning with the first adventure of the fourth Doctor, Robot, while late June will see the somewhat inexplicable release of one of the worst stories in the original series’ history, Timelash, starring Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor, Nicola Bryant as Peri, and guest starring Blake’s 7′s Paul Darrow. (In fairness, it’s worth mentioning that Colin Baker had a shorter reign, story-wise, than even Christopher Eccleston, and the BBC is almost out of fully intact Patrick Troughton stories to release to DVD, so those Doctors’ remaining selections may be both few and far between, and perhaps not the best adventures of their respective eras.) Extras haven’t been announced yet for Robot or Timelash, and North American release dates haven’t been decided for any of the three. (The next major U.S./Canada release will be the wonderful New Beginnings box set in June.) You’ll be able to order all of these titles soon in theLogBook.com Store.

New Horizons hails Europa, gets ready for a nap. En route to Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons unmanned probe is picking up a speed boost from the solar system’s biggest planet – and giving scientists a second chance to explore one of the solar system’s most mysterious moons. When the Galileo probe explored Jupiter and its satellites, its ability to send detailed information back to Earth was crippled by a stuck antenna; now New Horizons is giving Earthbound scientists the look at Europa that Galileo wasn’t able to give them. (Europa is considered one of the most likely candidates among other bodies in the solar system for harboring primitive life, though no man-made visitor has been able to peer beneath its icy crust at what is presumed to be an ocean below.) Launched a year ago, New Horizons is now zooming toward its 2015 appointment with Pluto at over 50,000mph. NASA will put the probe into “hibernation” for the remainder of its journey as soon as its Jupiter observations are complete.

2007 Nebula Award noms crowded. The script category for this year’s Nebula Awards is crowded with fan favorites. Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Howl’s Moving Castle is up against Batman Begins, the Battlestar Galactica episode Unfinished Business, and the Doctor Who episode The Girl In The Fireplace. The winner will be announced during the weekend of May 11th in New York.

Galactica renewed. This is slightly old news, but just in case you missed it too, Sci-Fi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica has been renewed for another season, though it won’t premiere until early 2008, and the network seems to be committing only to 13 episodes for the fourth season. Though details are being kept under wraps, a between-seasons direct-to-DVD Galactica movie is still in the works, possibly bridging some gaps between Galactica and the still-in-development spinoff, Caprica.

Abrams to direct next Trek after all – if Paramount doesn’t get sued over it. J.J. Abrams will direct the eleventh Star Trek movie – still thought to be a “reboot” of the series going back to Kirk and Spock’s Starfleet Academy days – despite rumors that he was going to direct more of his energy toward a film adaptation of Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” novels. As it turns out, both are true – Abrams and Lost cohort Damon Lindelof are working on a “Dark Tower” movie, but Abrams will indeed be behind the camera for the next Trek movie. However, the road to the next Trek may not be that smooth: Harve Bennett, the producer behind the second through fifth Star Trek movies with the original cast, has indicated that he (or his lawyers) may be paying Paramount Pictures a call soon if the rumors of the Starfleet Academy/young Kirk and Spock storyline are accurate. As is generally well known now, Bennett originally pitched a similar script to Paramount for the sixth Star Trek movie, complete with bookend framing sequences with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (Paramount passed on that script and went in a different direction, making Star Trek VI the first movie in nearly a decade that Bennett didn’t produce).

Packrat Video Games has just released a new Odyssey2 cartridge, Puzzle Piece Panic! A game in a very similar vein to that popular falling-puzzle-piece game which shall remain nameless (and made the Game Boy’s fortune), Puzzle Piece Panic! has enhanced Videopac+ graphics (which will probably also show up on the 13 or so Odyssey3 prototype consoles out there) as well as a breakthrough for Magnavox’s 1978 console: polyphonic music (which does not require the Voice module add-on). Written by Ted Szczypiorski, Puzzle Piece Panic! is now available from our pals at Packrat – you can order the game here.

New premiere date. Sci-Fi Channel has announced a new premiere date for the final 10 episodes of Stargate SG-1, and the final 10 episodes of sister series Stargate Atlantis’ third season. Despite earlier announcements pinning the premiere date at April 6th, the current season of both shows will now resume on Friday, April 13th. The new Sci-Fi original series Painkiller Jane will premiere on the same night.

Fourth Doctor’s finale comes to the States. The wonderful Doctor Who DVD box set New Beginnings, consisting of three full stories – The Keeper Of Traken, Logopolis and Castrovalva, each with their own extensive bonus features – will hit North America in June. The three disc box set sees Tom Baker’s Doctor out and presents the first full adventure of Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor. We’re still gawking at a copy of the UK edition of this at theLogBook.com’s home office, and it’s a dandy; we’ll have a DVD review for you soon.

The TARDIS returns to PBS. 40 PBS stations across the U.S. are about to bring Doctor Who back to American public television. Having made its money from licensing the first season to Sci-Fi Channel, the BBC is now offering the Christopher Eccleston episodes to PBS stations across the country, and the broadcast window opens as early as March 1st. It just seems right somehow. There’s no word on whether or not this deal might also bring the classic episodes back to PBS.

Levinhurst lives. Having undergone a label change, retro new-wave outfit Levinhurst (also known as Cindy Levinson and The Cure co-founder Lol Tolhurst) is ready to launch a second album (on a completely different indie label this time). We’ll share the pre-ordering info with you as soon as we get our hands on it.

The eagerly-anticipated premiere of the first installment of the Kirk-era Star Trek fan film series Starship Farragut goes “live” on Friday afternoon. You can download the first full-length episode, The Captaincy, from the official Starship Farragut website. Telling the tale of another Constitution-class ship from the original series’ timeframe, Starship Farragut was shot partially on the meticulously-constructed Star Trek: New Voyages sets, and the two fan series’ crews will make crossover appearances on each other’s series. You can expect a write-up on The Captaincy soon in theLogBook.com’s Fan Film Reviews, but be sure to drop by the Farragut site to take a look at the first installment for yourself. A second episode is already in production.
Source: Starship Farragut

80s arcade icon Q*Bert is on the comeback trail, and this time he’s saying “!@#$*&!” to anyone who thinks he needs a modern makeover. Q*Bert will appear on February 22nd as a downloadable game on the Playstation Network, the PS3′s answer to Xbox Arcade Live. And if you thought the prospect of reaching the top of the high score heap on the coin-op was daunting, Sony promises a worldwide leaderboard with this new version; game play will otherwise be faithful to the original 1983 arcade game. (Those dying to own a real live copy of the game including both updated versions and the original can check theLogBook.com Store.) The new PS3 Q*Bert will only take 20 quarters out of your pockets (about $5 if you’re still doing the math).
Source: Joystiq.com

Sci-Fi Channel has announced that Battlestar Galactica will make it to a fourth season, consisting of 13 episodes, though it’ll be a while before they air – the fourth season likely won’t premiere until January 2008. No major changes of cast or crew have been announced, and production will begin this summer in and around Vancouver.

If you’ve been wondering why Lucy Lawless’ Cylon model was put on hold earlier this season in Galactica, it’s because Lawless has landed a lead role in Football Wives, the Americanized version of the hit British soap Footballers’ Wives. (In this case, part of the translation is a switch from what the rest of the world knows as football – i.e. soccer – to American football.) Gabrielle Union, late of ABC’s short-lived Night Stalker revival, is also in the cast.

Several sources are now claiming that Doctor Who’s third season will kick off in the BBC as early as this March. Sci-Fi Channel has picked up the third season for U.S. broadcast, and this season will see the shortest gap yet between U.K. and U.S. broadcast dates. The third season will see Freema Agyeman taking over the sidekick’s seat aboard the TARDIS as medical student Martha Jones, as well as the return – late in the season – of John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness.

Fans waiting for the return of the Stargate franchise can look for both SG-1 and Atlantis to resume their current seasons on April 6th on Sci-Fi.

In movie news, as is generally well known, Joss Whedon has left the big-screen Wonder Woman project, and now rumors are flying in a number of media outlets that J.J. Abrams is about to bail on Star Trek XI to produce and direct a film based on Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” books. There has been no official confirmation of this, however, nor has Paramount offered any hints as to what would happen to the next Star Trek movie project if Abrams is no longer involved.

Free Fall Associates, the small collective of game programmers who created the classic computer strategy game Archon for Electronic Arts in 1983, are back at work bringing the game up to 21st century specs for a new generation of game machines. Myriad Interactive has brought the game’s creators back together to develop new versions of Archon (though they’re not saying yet which platforms will get the game). Archon, combining chess-inspired strategy with fast-moving battle screens when various pawns and pieces with unique abilities met on the field of battle, was a major hit for EA in the early 80s, published for the Apple II and the Commodore 64 during both computer systems’ heyday.
Source: IGN

A long time coming, next week marks the return of Robotech as the new feature-length movie Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles hits DVD. Featuring the voices of Mark Hamill and Chase Masterson, Shadow Chronicles evolves the Robotech saga even further, but this time with completely original animation picking up the story. A week after the DVD is released, the soundtrack will be available, composed by Scott Glasgow and performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. You can pre-order the Shadow Chronicles DVD and soundtrack now in theLogBook.com Store.

Tapping into the Arcade. More classic console and coin-op games are joining the Xbox Live Arcade service this year; be on the lookout for Paperboy, Root Beer Tapper, Worms and Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night, all of which will be rolled out in 2007. Word has it that those who just can’t wait might just be able to find most of the above in one form or another somewhere in theLogBook.com Store, too – y’know, if you’re so inclined.

Writer P.J. Hammond is signed up for the second season of Torchwood, claiming he’ll be sticking to the supernatural for his upcoming scripts. He’s also revealed that at one point before he started working on the show, BBC rival ITV wanted him to update his 80s cult series Sapphire & Steel to compete with the Doctor and his various spinoffs – until the network suggested a few modernizations too many for his tastes.