Step aside, Luigi. In his next game, Mario is teaming up with Sonic the Hedgehog. Now that Sega’s no longer competing with Nintendo in the hardware business, it’s letting Sonic compete with Mario in an upcoming game, Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Games. Due around Christmas for the Nintendo Wii and DS, the game will pit the two characters against each other for the first time (at least in one game; Sonic appeared in the early 90s as Sega tried to find a way to combat Nintendo’s – and Mario’s – dominance of the home video game market). There’s no word on what other popular characters, if any, will put in an appearance in the Olympic-themed game.
Source: GamesIndustry.biz

This year’s Hugo short-form dramatic presentation category is down to the Toasters, a Timelord, and a team of gate-hopping adventurers from Earth. Doctor Who episodes again account for much of this year’s nominations, with School Reunion, The Girl In The Fireplace (from previous Hugo winner/The Empty Child scribe Steven Moffatt) and Russell T. Davies’ season-ending two-parter Army Of Ghosts / Doomsday up for consideration. Representing Battlestar Galactica‘s last season is Downloaded, and the celebratory Stargate SG-1 episode 200. The winner will be announced at WorldCon 2007, to be held later this year in Japan.
Source: Paul Cornell

The inventor of home video games, Ralph Baer (seen here receiving the National Medal of Technology from President Bush in 2006), is now in the record books. The Smithsonian Museum’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention & Innovation has announced that the Ralph Baer Papers collection is available for researchers. Including autobiographical material, audiovisual documentation and the copious engineering notes for which Baer is famous, the Baer Papers chronicle his invention of the first home video game unit in the late 1960s, predating the appearance of the first arcade game or the first home console game, which was based on Baer’s work. The first working prototype of his hardware, known as the Brown Box, has also been donated to the collection. Some of the material has already appeared in Baer’s published autobiography, “Videogames: In The Beginning”, which is available from theLogBook.com Store.
Sources: Leonard Herman, The Smithsonian Museum

Stargate fan site Gateworld.net is reporting that the third Stargate TV series, tentatively titled Stargate Universe, could come together very soon, with MGM’s TV distribution arm working to assemble financing for an early 2008 debut. No casting has been announced, but it has been revealed that the new show, while set in the same “universe” as SG-1 and Atlantis, will not rely so heavily on those shows’ continuity. The use of the stargate’s ninth chevron, whose function has remained a mystery through 10 years of the TV series to date, will be a key part of the plotline. There’s no word on whether Stargate Universe will air on the Sci-Fi Channel or through another venue.
Source: Gateworld.net

Been missing your Chakotay fix? Fear not, Star Trek: Voyager’s Robert Beltran is back in front of the cameras this week, guest starring on this Wednesday’s episode of Medium. In an episode involving a possessed woman who apparently needs to get out for a little more exorcise, Beltran is playing the part of a priest (though we’ll admit that we don’t know if he’s the old priest or the young priest); also guest starring are Kate Levering, Gina Phillips and Mimi Kennedy. Medium airs Wednesday nights on NBC.
Source: NBC

Composer Herman Stein, whose music has graced countless films since the early 1950s (often going uncredited), died on March 15th. Prior to his film music career, he had already established himself as a jazz composer in the ’40s, a passion that he shared with some of his best friends, including one Rod Serling. Much of his music wound up in films thanks to its including in oft-reused music libraries, and some of the more prominent genre films to feature his music included Abbott And Costello Go To Mars, It Came From Outer Space, Creature From The Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, and The Thing That Couldn’t Die (in other words, his music should be quite familiar to MSTies). Mr. Stein was 91.
Sources: Film Score Monthly, IMDb

The Traveling Wilburys, whose two all-star CDs have become sought-after collectors’ items, are making a comeback of sorts. June will see the re-release of both Volume 1 and Volume 3, featuring Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and the late George Harrison (equally late bandmate Roy Orbison died shortly after Volume 1 hit the charts). Along with the two CDs, which have been out of print for over a decade, a DVD will be included, featuring five of the group’s music videos and a half-hour documentary piece. Each CD will also contain bonus tracks: Volume 1 will feature the previously unreleased songs “Maxine” and “Like A Ship”, while Volume 3 adds “Runaway” and the hard-to-find charity single “Nobody’s Child” to its tracklist. You can pre-order the return of the Traveling Wilburys now from theLogBook.com Store.

More of the Doctor’s companions are getting to tell their own stories. Big Finish Productions’ new range of audio dramas, Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles, consists of a single CD featuring one former TARDIS sidekick (and usually at least one guest actor) relating an original story from past eras of the show. The Companion Chronicles CDs are more akin to audiobooks than the full-cast productions usually released by Big Finish, but the concept has won enough approval that a second batch of four stories is already in the works. Available now are Fear Of The Daleks (featuring Wendy Padbury as Zoe with Nicholas Briggs as the voice of the Daleks), The Blue Tooth (an early Pertwee-era story retold by Caroline Johns as Liz Shaw, and featuring the Cybermen), and The Beautiful People (featuring Lalla Ward in an original fourth Doctor-era story). You can order the Companion Chronicles now from theLogBook.com Store.

Sci-Fi Channel has announced that it’s boosting the order for Battlestar Galactica‘s fourth season to 22 episodes, including a late 2007 broadcast window for a direct-to-DVD movie that’s said to involve the Pegasus’ flight from the Cylons, set before the wayward battlestar caught up with Adama’s fleet. There has been widespread speculation in fan circles that an increase to 20+ episodes would mean that Sci-Fi is handing the show’s producers additional episodes to wrap up the expensive series, but the network has not commented on that one way or another. The finale of Galactica’s third season airs this coming Sunday, and will run ten minutes longer than usual, for those setting their recording devices.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

Despite what some observers have said is a major drop in its ratings this season, Lost has gotten the go-ahead for a fourth season from ABC. It may also be the show coming down its home stretch, if the creative minds behind all of those plot twists have their way: the network was surprised last year when Lost’s executive producers stated that they would prefer to wrap up the show’s plot threads with only a partial fifth season, which they claimed was all that would be needed to tie off the individual characters’ stories and solve the show’s mysteries. There’s no word on how ABC will divide up the season – the current season’s six-episode starting run, followed by a long gap and the rerun-free stretch of episodes presently airing, may not have proven popular with the viewing public.
Sources: Sci-Fi Wire, The Futon Critic

RDA to return ASAP for SG-1 DVD. O’Neill is back on the case, as Richard Dean Anderson returns for Continuum, the second Stargate SG-1 direct-to-DVD movie currently in production. Anderson and his castmates are shooting scenes in the Arctic Circle itself, with the cooperation of the U.S. Navy’s Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station. Studio shooting for both Continuum and the first direct-to-DVD SG-1 movie, Ark Of Truth, will take place in May at Vancouver. Both movies will arrive on DVD this fall, though a broadcast window on the Sci-Fi Channel hasn’t been ruled out.

The Doctor returns this month. The BBC has made it official: the third season of the new Doctor Who will kick off on Saturday, March 31st at 7pm on BBC One. The premiere episode, Smith & Jones, is written by Russell T. Davies and introduces Freema Agyeman as the Doctor’s new traveling companion, Martha Jones. Also, filming is expected to commence in April on the first full season of the Doctor Who spinoff aimed at the younger segment of the audience, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

New Voyages goes below decks. The Star Trek fan film series New Voyages is adding more big-name participants to upcoming episodes, including the return of writer D.C. Fontana and special effects by Ron Thornton of Babylon 5 fame, and it’s also launching its own spinoff series. Star Trek: First Voyages, whose premiere date has not yet been revealed, will also take place on the Kirk-era Enterprise, but it will focus on the lives of junior officers such as Ensign Peter Kirk (to be introduced on New Voyages in David Gerrold’s upcoming Blood And Fire) and Lt. Xon, a character originally created by Gene Roddenberry for the aborted 1970s series Star Trek: Phase II, among others. Naturally taking place on the same ship, First Voyages will utilize the same sets and uniforms as New Voyages, and a certain amount of crossover is expected. First Voyages was created by James Cawley and Carlos Pedrazza (formerly of the epic fan film series Star Trek: Hidden Frontier).

With just two minutes to go before an attempted launch, the second Falcon 1 rocket aborted its own liftoff automatically. A representative for Space Exploration Technologies, the company behind the privately-owned Falcon 1, says that a communications problem caused the reusable rocket’s on-board computer to scrub its own launch. An attempt to launch the first Falcon 1 rocket from a Pacific atoll in 2006 ended in a fireball when a fuel leak blew up both the rocket and its payload, a satellite being launched for the U.S. Air Force Academy. SpaceX, founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, is designing the Falcon boosters as a low-cost alternative (well, relatively low-cost: a Falcon 1 rocket can boost 1,200 pounds of payload into orbit for just over a mere $6 million) to booking a launch with NASA. The demonstration flight that was scrubbed Tuesday carried only two small experiments rather than a paid-for payload.
Source: Associated Press

Bill Panzer, the producer behind the Highlander movie franchise and its spinoff TV series, died on March 18th, 2007. He produced all of the Highlander movies to date (including the upcoming Highlander: The Source), as well as serving as the executive producer on both of the live-action TV series and one animated spinoff. His other production credits include The Osterman Weekend, Steel and St. Helens, and he also pitched in on the scriptwriting duties for Highlander II, Highlander III and Highlander: Endgame. At the time of his death, he was still working on The Source and an upcoming anime version of the saga, Highlander: The Search For Vengeance.
Sources: IMDb, Adrian Paul’s Official Web Site

In an interview with Doctor Who producer/head writer Russell T. Davies in the Sunday Telegraph, it has been revealed that the revived show has been given the thumbs-up for a fourth season, as well as a 2007 Christmas special. The BBC hasn’t officially confirmed or denied this report, but it seems like Davies should know if anyone does. The article also, however, mentions that Davies is now becoming restless to move on to new TV writing challenges, though he thinks Doctor Who (and presumably its spinoffs, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures) will thrive without him.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk

Mere days after it seemed like we were talking about the last ELO remasters being available, another classic ’70s supergroup is remastering its back catalogue with bonus tracks, restored original album art, unreleased material and expanded liner notes. Now available for pre-order is almost the entire Alan Parsons Project collection; the band’s whole collection of 1976-1987 albums is being remastered and re-released this year with plenty of extra goodies. The first wave, arriving next week, consists of the classic albums Eye In The Sky (1981) and I, Robot (1977), each with bonus tracks and rough mixes, and the lesser-known 1984 album Vulture Culture, with not one but two versions of the previously unreleased track “No Answers, Only Questions.” You can pre-order these first three remastered albums, as well as almost all of the future releases (pre-order info for Tales Of Mystery And Imagination is still forthcoming) right now in theLogBook.com Store.