Heroes songtrack out next month. NBC Universal has announced that a soundtrack CD for the hit genre TV series Heroes will be released on March 18th, but if you’re a fan of Wendy & Lisa’s exotic music you may wind up about as frustrated as Mr. Bennet here. The playlist for the CD consists almost entirely of songs hear in the movie, some of them exclusive to this album, but aside from the brief main theme music, there will only be two tracks of underscore here: “Natural Selection” and a suite of music from the episode Homecoming. The artists contributing songs will include Bob Dylan, David Bowie (go figure), Panic! At The Disco, Wilco and the Chemical Brothers. We’ll have the Heroes soundtrack in theLogBook.com Store soon.

Stargate DVD movies to have soundtracks too. Composer Joel Goldsmith recently let Gateworld.net know that there will be soundtrack albums released for both of the upcoming Stargate direct-to-DVD movies, Ark Of Truth and Continuum. Unlike most of the television series, the music for both movies was recorded with a full orchestra. We’ll have the soundtrack for the first movie, Ark Of Truth (scheduled to hit next month on DVD), in theLogBook.com Store as soon as we can; we don’t even know just yet what label it will be on, as Goldsmith has said that the soundtrack release was meant to be “a surprise”.

Back to Gallifrey? We’ve been stating a theory for a long time that the classic Doctor Who stories that make it to DVD have an uncanny knack for predicting what’ll happen on the new show. If that’s the case, then some of this year’s later classic stories are lining up quite curiously – there’s an awful lot of Gallifrey, or at least Time Lords, involved. Colin Baker’s swan song, the often confusing 14-part epic Trial Of A Time Lord – i.e. the entirety of season 23 – is due out sometime later this year (at least in the U.K.) in box set form, while Tom Baker’s final visit to Gallifrey, the Sontaran story The Invasion Of Time (which also saw the departure of Louise Jameson as Leela) will be hitting DVD at some point. Invasion will also be issued as part of an all-Sontaran box set called Bred For War; the rest of the classic series’ Sontaran tales have already been released separately.

The Ulysses Solar Polar probe, a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, has reached the end of its journey after 18 years. Launched in 1990, the unmanned probe was placed in a looping orbit that allowed it to see the north and south poles of the sun; that same orbit would carry Ulysses out as far as Jupiter as well, always above the plane of the ecliptic in which the planets orbit. That same orbit has carried it far enough from the sun’s heat that the probe’s onboard fuel supply has frozen, which, combined with its fading power source, will soon leave it in a deep freeze despite ground controllers’ recent attempts to reheat the fuel. Ulysses was originally designed for a mission duration of five years, and has helped scientists vastly increase their understanding of solar wind.
Source: Associated Press

The sixth Doctor’s (Colin Baker) adventures continue in audio form with the latest Doctor Who audio adventure from Big Finish Productions, and this time the Doctor has a new companion, though longtime listeners will know her very well. Through a freak mishap of time and space, the eighth Doctor’s companion Charley Pollard has now joined his sixth incarnation for a brief time. Their first journey together in the TARDIS takes them to Manchester in 2008, where something sinister is afoot. The latest Doctor Who audio adventure, The Condemned, stars Colin Baker and India Fisher, and it’s available now in theLogbook.com Store.

Craig Charles, the former star of the BBC science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf, hasn’t had to look far to find controversy in his career, and he’s chronicling his many brushes with scandal in his autobiography, “On The Rocks”. In addition to starring as Dave Lister, the last human being left alive three million years in the future, Charles has faced rape charges (ultimately dropped) and, more recently, has been charged with possession of cocaine and gone into rehab. (Needless to say, despite being a cautionary tale, this probably isn’t a book that’s suitable for younger readers, as Charles isn’t known for pulling many punches verbally.) You can pre-order your copy of “On The Rocks” by Craig Charles now from theLogBook.com Store.

Americanized Eleventh Hour has a star. Pre-production is moving ahead on Jerry Bruckheimer’s Americanized version of the short-lived British series Eleventh Hour, with British actor Rufus Sewell now cast in the part of Professor Jacob Hood (as opposed to the U.K. series’ Ian Hood, played by Patrick Stewart). Casting still has yet to be announced by Hood’s prerequisite armed-to-the-teeth female sidekick. The pilot of the U.S. version will be directed by Danny Cannon, who helped to give the CSI franchise its unique look.

Date set for second coming of the Gods.The producers of the all-star Star Trek fan film Of Gods And Men have set a date of March 15th at 5:01pm (i.e. 17:01 in military time – get it?) for the release of the second of three installments. Featuring such stars as Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, Alan Ruckman, Cirroc Lofton and Gary Graham, Gods is directed and co-written by Tim Russ, who also reprises his Star Trek: Voyager role of Tuvok. Click here for our review of the first segment.

So you’re actually trying to tell us that theLogBook.com’s award-winning Phosphor Dot Fossils archive isn’t giving you enough ways to waste time at work yet? Well, hey, you can’t say we don’t listen to you. We’ve just put a new feature into place on the main menu of Phosphor Dot Fossils: Play@PDF online games. So far there are a half-dozen arcade classics available for free play (though if you really feel a need to send me a quarter, or a roll of quarters, you know where to find me), including Pong, Asteroids, Space Invaders and more. We are still working out a few bugs (games that use the up or down arrows may require you to “hold the screen still” with your mouse), but we hope this will have you spending even more time with the Fossils. See? Educational and entertaining. What more could you want? More games will be added as time permits.

The Commodore 64 is – at least in the European market (where the computer has a huge following among retrogaming enthusiasts) – coming to the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console lineup. Some of the games from that best-selling computer system coming to the Wii will include Uridium and International Karate, among others yet to be announced; there’s no word on exactly when the games will be available for European Wii users, or if/when they’ll come to the North American market. The Commodore 64 will be the oldest hardware platform represented in the Virtual Console lineup.
Source: gamesindustry.biz

Sci-Fi Channel has announced a series of staggered April premiere dates for Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who‘s fourth season, and Doctor Who spinoff The Sarah Jane Adventures, all of which will air on Friday nights. Galactica’s fourth and final season will debut on Friday, April 4th at its original time of 10pm eastern, while The Sarah Jane Adventures will open with a one-hour series premiere on Friday, April 11th at 8pm eastern. On Friday, April 18th, one half-hour episode of Sarah Jane will air at 8pm, with Doctor Who’s extended-length season premiere at 8:30pm eastern, and Galactica at 10. After all of this moving around, the schedule calls for two back-to-back episodes of Sarah Jane beginning at 8, an hour of Doctor Who at 9, and Battlestar Galactica at 10. Production has resumed on Galactica following its break during the writers’ strike, and 10-11 episodes of the final season were already in the can at the time that production closed down.
Source: Sci-Fi Channel

U.S. Department of Defense officials have announced that the attempt to shoot down a wayward satellite whose fuel tank was still full of potentially dangerous hydrazine has been successful. A missile without a warhead was fired from a Navy ship west of Hawaii, apparently striking the satellite; officials say that the impact alone will bring the satellite out of its orbit safely, whereas they couldn’t have guaranteed a safe re-entry if atmospheric drag had brought the satellite in later this month. The military reconnaissance satellite was launched in late 2006 and failed almost immediately upon reaching orbit, so its large tank of maneuvering fuel was left untouched, making it a major chemical hazard. The missile was intended to impact the satellite’s fuel tank, but it is not yet known if that degree of precision was achieved. Some debris from the satellite is expected to begin re-entering the atmosphere immediately, while other pieces may take several weeks to fall out of orbit. The incident has been criticized by opponents of space warfare.
Source: Associated Press

It would appear that the next-generation DVD format war has been settled – maybe – by Toshiba calling it a day and giving up on its HD-DVD format. After two years of duking it out with the competing Blu-Ray format introduced by Sony, HD-DVD suffered a quick succession of critical blows in the past few months, as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Netflix and other outlets that sold and rented DVDs abandoned their support of HD-DVD, and numerous studios – chiefly Warner Bros. – sided with Blu-Ray.

This has an immediate impact on genre fans with one upcoming title: the second season of the “remastered” classic Star Trek episodes, featuring new effects sequences at HD resolutions, has been cancelled. The first season was released on hybrid standard-definition DVD/HD-DVD discs, and production of the second season set was well underway when Toshiba made its announcement. As Toshiba was sponsoring the work on the HD-DVD content, the project has been taken off the schedule indefinitely, though it’s likely to resurface in Blu-Ray (or hybrid DVD/Blu-Ray) form at some later date, though it may be delayed several months. Expect a review of the season one set very soon in our DVD Reviews area.

As for how Blu-Ray will be handled in theLogBook.com Store, we’ll be phasing in a new category specifically for Blu-Ray titles. Thus far we haven’t added many specimens of either format to the Store, simply because we were waiting for the dust to settle. We’ve also just finished redesigning the Store, bringing it more in line with the rest of the site’s look and making it easier to navigate to and from the Store to the rest of the site. And fear not – the links to standard-definition DVD titles will be staying put for a long time to come.

The fan-made series Star Trek: New Voyages is undergoing a metamorphosis prior to the anticipated spring release of its next installment. In a surprise announcement, New Voyages has been retitled Star Trek: Phase II – the title usually reserved for a planned-but-never-produced 1970s revival of Star Trek that would have kicked off a Paramount network circa 1977. (It’s likely that, as far as the viewing public knew, the show would once again simply be titled Star Trek; in any case, those plans were scrapped and the story for the pilot episode became the basis of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.) As one might expect from any production picking up the Phase II banner, it has been promised that set and costume designs will begin to consciously evolve toward the look of The Motion Picture (and it is known that the producers acquired several Phase II costumes and other items at the Christie’s Star Trek auction in 2006). The first episode to bear the Phase II name will be Blood & Fire Part I, written and directed by David Gerrold, guest starring Denise Crosby and due to premiere this spring.
Source: Star Trek: Phase II

As retrogaming becomes more widespread as a hobby, so too is retro-reminiscing. Author Rob Strangman’s new book, “Memoirs Of A Virtual Caveman”, recalls his experiences playing and collecting video games from the days of Atari through today, with brief stops along the way to discuss buying import games, among other topics. It’s a different take on the history of gaming, seen through the eyes of how it’s affected the game-playing public as well as the industry at large. “Memoirs Of A Virtual Caveman” can be ordered directly from the author at Lulu.com.

NASA’s deep space probes have a pretty good track record for outlasting their warranty, and the comet-chasing Deep Impact probe, which fired a washing-machine-sized object into a comet in 2005, is no exception. Deep Impact has received new orders to help astronomers seek out planets around other stars, taking advantage of its high-resolution telescopic cameras which can be trained on likely parent stars without an atmosphere in the way. But as with earthbound telescopes, Deep Impact will be looking for variations in the light emanating from other stars – probably caused by its planets passing between the star and the observer. The unmanned probe’s comet-hunting days aren’t over, either; though it’s already used its only impactor, Deep Impact will chase down and fly by Comet Hartley 2 in October, 2010 to make close observations, specifically looking for any water ice that may be part of the comet’s chemical composition. Comet Tempel 1, where Deep Impact made a splash in 2005, is also lined up as the next target of the surviving component of the Stardust space probe in 2011. NASA estimates that “repurposing” space probes that have already been successfully launched can accomplish new science objectives at only 15% of the cost of building and launching new vehicles for that purpose.
Source: Space.com

It turns out that the second season of NBC’s Heroes is over – but the story will continue this fall. NBC announced renewals for several of its shows, including Heroes, in the wake of the Writers’ Guild strike. Though the show’s writers and producers are back at work, the network feels it’s better for them to concentrate their efforts on episodes that won’t air until the fall season, rather than trying to rush new episodes onto the air that would likely hit during the summer months. It’s not known yet if other genre shows such as Lost will follow suit.
Source: NBC

Star Trek fans apparently won’t be getting a Christmas gift from J.J. Abrams anytime soon. The revisitation of the original series era for the big screen has been pushed back to May 8, 2009 by Paramount; however, this is not indicative of any sudden major problems for the movie, as Paramount has pushed many of its major releases for the second half of this year back to 2009. The studio has said that it felt Star Trek had more potential as a summer blockbuster than a holiday movie. (Ironically, this change in the new/old Enterprise’s launch date will have Abrams’ movie premiering just a few months short of the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first movie in the franchise.)
Source: Daily Variety

Wish there was a new Star Wars movie in the theaters? It looks like you’ll get your wish: Lucasfilm is taking the feature-length premiere of the CGI-animated Clone Wars straight to the big screen in August. A premiere date of Friday, August 15 has been set for the Clone Wars movie, set between Episode II and III, and half-hour installments of the animated series will begin airing on Cartoon Network (with secondary runs on TNT) later in the fall. The new Lucasfilm Animation unit in Singapore has reportedly already completed 30 episodes of the series, with more in progress. The series will focus on the characters of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Padme Amidala, while also introducing characters such as Anakin’s own Padawan.
Source: Lucasfilm