Ready for Blade Runner overload? Fans of the seminal 1982 SF film, in whatever form, will find something to like about the new 5-DVD Ultimate Collector’s Edition box set, because it includes no fewer than five different iterations of the movie, along with two discs loaded with new documentaries on the making of the movie. The American and international theatrical versions from 1982 are included in fully-restored form, the 1992 director’s cut, the 2007 “final cut”, and a never-before-seen pre-release work-in-progress version with some startling differences from any of the other editions. Commentaries from Ridley Scott and other crewmembers is also included, as well as features covering the music, effects, screen tests, and comparing Blade Runner to the Philip K. Dick story that inspired it. You can grab your own Blade Runner Ultimate Collector’s Edition now from theLogBook.com Store.

As we head into the holiday shopping season, a couple of things are worth noting.

Maybe this is a curmdgeonly decision more in line with my own feelings on the current battle between next-generation DVD formats than it is with any kind of market reality, but for now, I’ve made the decision that theLogBook.com Store will list HD-DVD titles and Blu-Ray titles alongside existing standard-definition DVD releases. In other words, let’s say you go looking for the new HD-DVD remastered first season of classic Star Trek; it won’t have its own separate listing, but is instead included along the existing DVD releases. If you’re looking specifically for next generation formats, simply type “Blu-Ray” or “HD-DVD” into the handy search box in the Store. Depending on what happens between now and next Christmas, this strategy may be re-assessed, but for now it seems like the simplest solution.

Whether you’re looking for hi-def stuff or not, I hope you’ll continue to support the site by doing at least a little bit of your holiday shopping in theLogBook.com Store this year. We don’t get a huge cut of any of the sales, but every little bit helps to keep the site “on the air”. Your support is now more vital than ever, since the site must support itself financially to justify its existence now that my own household has a new mouth to feed. I’ve spent a few days adding new items to the Store that I hope you’ll like, or maybe they’ll lead you to something you like even better; there’ll be periodic announcements of some of these nifty new items here on the news page in the coming month.

Thanks again for all your support, and keep enjoying the site.

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

While we’re all waiting for what looks like it’ll be a very short fourth season of Lost next year (shortened due to the Writers’ Guild Strike), the third season is about to arrive on DVD. Featuring everything from the destruction of the Dharma Initiative to the hope of rescue (and the hint of something worse ahead), the third season on DVD includes featurettes, more tantalizing (or frustrating) hints, and even flashbacks that didn’t appear in the show as first broadcast. You too can get Lost – for a third time – in theLogBook.com Store. You’d think we’d put a map in there at some point, wouldn’t you?

Star Trek: New Voyages and Sanctuary – a web project starring Stargate’s Amanda Tapping – took home the top awards in their respective categories of TV Guide’s 2007 Online Video Awards. New Voyages was nominated in the Best Sci-Fi Webisodes category, where it was up against professionally-produced fare such as Battlestar Galactica and The 4400 web shorts, while Sanctuary beat out popular competition such as Afterworld and Lonelygirl15. NBC’s Heroes Evolution site won the award for Best TV Show Site.
Source: TV Guide

First announced earlier this year, the one-off Star Trek fan film Orphans Of War, featuring cast members from the west coast-based Hidden Frontier series and the U.K.-based Star Trek: Intrepid, is now available for download. Set in the post-Voyager 24th century, the two series have referenced each other before, but their geographically disparate cast members haven’t met on screen before. The new project advances the storylines for both fan-produced series. You can download the episode itself, along with bloopers and other extras, here.

The newest Star Trek video game, Star Trek: Conquest, is now out, allowing players to try their hand at taking control of the Alpha Quadrant via turn-based strategy. As the mind behind the 24th century United Federation of Planets, or one of several other playable races/governments, your job is to marshal your resources, move into enemy space with minimum casualties and maximum return, and basically take over the galaxy in a decidedly un-Roddenberry-esque manner. Star Trek: Conquest is now available for the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation 2 in theLogBook.com Store.

The two-hour Battlestar Galactica epic Razor, chronicling the voyage of the Battlestar Pegasus, is arriving on DVD just days after its broadcast premiere (and a week or two later overseas). The DVD contains all of Sci-Fi Channel’s “Razor Flashback” shorts, as well as commentary and other features, as well as an extended unrated edition of Razor itself. If you’re really sharp, head to theLogBook.com Store to order Razor now.

Verity Lambert, the original producer of Doctor Who when it launched in 1963, has died. When she took the reins of the still-in-development series, she was 28, the youngest BBC producer at that time, and the only female producer at the BBC at the time. Though she frequently butted heads with Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman, including commissioning the first Dalek story over his objections that the show should feature “no bug-eyed monsters,” he ultimately relented and gave her free rein. She remained with the series for a year and a half, going on to produce a string of other shows, including Adam Adamant Lives!, John Cleese’s Clockwise series, and Jonathan Creek. Following stints at the BBC, Thames Television and EMI, she founded her own production company, Cinema Verity, which at various points was again attached to Doctor Who during the abortive attempts to turn the series into a film franchise in the 1980s and early ’90s. BBC News quotes current Doctor Who producer Russell T. Davies as saying, “There are a hundred people in Cardiff working on Doctor Who and millions of viewers, in particular many children, who love the programme that Verity helped create. This is her legacy and we will never forget that.” Ms. Lambert was 71.
Source: BBC News

On the 44th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who, things just aren’t how they used to be aboard the TARDIS. The Doctor (Peter Davison) seems to have lost some of his memories, while Peri (Nicola Bryant) is off to an entirely new life, and so is Erimem (Caroline Morris), who’s now in the business of ruling vast empires and that sort of thing. But what’s really going on? The latest Doctor Who audio adventure, The Mind’s Eye by Colin Brake, has been released by Big Finish Productions. You can stick your finger in The Mind’s Eye after you order a copy from theLogBook.com’s Store.

The Katamari Damacy games live on by rolling onto new platforms, and of course, they’re bringing new Katamari music with them. The music of the Katamari Damacy games has left almost as enduring a legacy as the games themselves, and now there’s a new soundtrack to go with the latest game. Beautiful Katamari Damacy gathers a CD’s worth of infectiously catchy tunes in one place, so you can have Katamari on the brain even while you’re on the roll away from your game system of choice. You can roll your own copy of the latest Katamari soundtrack now in theLogBook.com Store.

Citing it as one of the biggest successes in the young cable network’s history, BBC America has announced that it will premiere the second season of Torchwood on January 26 at 8pm Central time. According to BBC America, this means each episode will air within mere days of its U.K. premiere (even though the U.K. premiere date hasn’t been announced yet). Torchwood’s U.S. premiere in September scored some of BBC America’s biggest ratings ever, and the second season will feature guest appearances by James (Angel/Buffy) Marsters, Alan Dale, and Freema Agyeman as former TARDIS traveler Martha Jones in a three-episode story arc.
Source: BBC America

For U.S. and Canadian fans of classic Doctor Who, just released are two consecutive stories from the Peter Davison era, Time-Flight and Arc Of Infinity. Unique to the original series because they feature, respectively, the abrupt exit and the later return of TARDIS traveler Tegan (Janet Fielding), these two four-parters were released earlier this year in the U.K. as a box set; North American Who viewers can pick and choose however. You can grab Time-Flight and Arc Of Infinity in theLogBook.com Store.

For British fans, Doctor Who’s 44th anniversary is being celebrated later this month with a Dalek DVD invasion. A “Davros” box set is being released, featuring every story to have incorporated the character of Davros, the maniacal genius who created the Daleks. Most of the stories have already been released on DVD – Genesis Of The Daleks, Resurrection Of The Daleks and Revelation Of The Daleks have been available for some time – but the box set features a new 2-DVD edition of the original series’ final Dalek story, Remembrance Of The Daleks starring Sylvester McCoy, as well as the sole unreleased Davros story, Destiny Of The Daleks, for a total of 7 DVDs; an eighth disc includes all of Big Finish’s Davros audio dramas on a single DVD, plus an audio story exclusive to this box set, The Davros Mission. Destiny Of The Daleks is also available separately, and both Destiny and the Davros box set will be available in North America next year. You can bow to the might of Davros in theLogBook.com Store.

Commodore founder and former Atari CEO Jack Tramiel is scheduled to make a rare public appearance at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California on Monday, December 10th. Tramiel will be joining such computer luminaries as Apple’s Steve Wozniak and IBM PC designer William C. Lowe for an event titled “Impact of the Commodore 64: A 25th Anniversary Celebration”. Known for his take-no-prisoners management style in the 1980s at Commodore and later Atari, Tramiel has made few public appearances to discuss his pivotal role in the history of those companies and the computer and video game industries. For more information, please visit the Museum’s web site here.

More casting news has been announced for J.J. Abrams’ big-screen Star Trek, including a casting decision that’s proving to be somewhat controversial among some fans. Winona Ryder has been cast as Spock’s mother Amanda, though it’s uncertain how large a role she’ll play in the film; some fans are still peeling themselves off the ceiling from a Daily Variety misprint that indicated that Spock’s mother in the movie would be Vulcan rather than human. Speaking of peeling themselves off the ceiling, writer Harlan Ellison is apparently taking time off from the picket line to threaten legal action against Paramount after being alerted to rumors that the movie may revisit elements of City On The Edge Of Forever. It’s the second time in as many years that Ellison has made such a threat; there’s no word yet of a response from the studio, which has already commenced filming. For the latest full cast list, click the following link. (more…)

Having aired “remastered”, ready-for-HD episodes of the original Star Trek for over a year now, Paramount is launching this latest iteration of the series on a dual-format DVD, with one side of each disc in standard definition DVD and the other side HD-DVD. Each episode is not only cleaned up for high-def viewing, but many effects shots and matte paintings have been digitally replaced, in some cases bringing them into line visually with the rest of the Trek saga. Please note that this set contains only the “remastered” editions of each episode; all of the classic Trek episodes are available as originally broadcast on standard DVDs. You can pick up the new or original classic Trek’s first season in theLogBook.com Store.

The war with the Daleks reaches a new level of destruction for both sides in the latest installment of Dalek Empire IV: The Fearless, an audio drama told in four single-CD episodes written and directed by Nicholas Briggs (who also provides the Dalek voices both here and in Doctor Who’s new TV adventures). What sacrifices will be made, and will they be enough to turn the tide of battle? Former Doctor Who stars Noel “Mickey” Clarke and Maureen “Vicki” O’Brien take on tough new characters in the latest edition of Big Finish’s audio space opera. You can catch the latest battle of Dalek Empire IV: The Fearless now in theLogBook.com Store.