Oscar-winning actor Charlton Heston dies at the age of 84. Renowned for a string of tough-guy roles in major big-screen epics that earned him an Academy Award for best actor in 1959’s Ben-Hur, Heston appeared in other blockbusters such as El Cid and The Ten Commandments; genre fans may know him best for two SF films, Soylent Green and the 1968 smash hit Planet Of The Apes. His outspoken political views were on display as much as his acting skills, ranging from marching to Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to serving as president of the National Rifle Association. He had also served as a past president of the Screen Actors’ Guild.
BBC Audio releases the audiobook Who And Me, a memoir by Doctor Who producer/writer/director Barry Letts, who was effectively the showrunner of the Jon Pertwee era. 
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The seventeenth full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-12. Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko take up residence on the ISS for 199 days. Arriving with them on the ISS for a ten-day stay is South Korean astronaut Yi So-Yeon, who returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-11 with the Expedition 16 crew.
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 55th episode of Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. Rick Worthy and Dean Stockwell guest star. (more…)
The 742nd episode of Doctor Who (the 44th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Peter Capaldi and Tracey Childs guest star, and future series star Karen Gillan makes an appearance (though not in the later role of Amy Pond). (more…)
Free Clyde Records releases Joel Goldsmith’s soundtrack from the TV movie Stargate: Ark Of Truth. (more…)
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 56th episode of Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. Richard Hatch and Dean Stockwell guest star. (more…)
The 743rd episode of Doctor Who (the 45th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Tim McInnery (Blackadder) guest stars. (more…)
After four years orbiting the enormous ringed planet Saturn and flying past its dozens of moons, NASA’s unmanned Cassini probe still hasn’t seen it all. The four successful years thus far included releasing the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe to make the first ever landing on the large moon Titan, discovering (and flying through) water geysers over another moon, and exploring other moons that have puzzled scientists since they were first viewed up close in the early 1980s by the Voyager probes. The mission extension – called the Cassini Equinox Mission – gives Cassini an added two-year lease of life, with a $160 million price tag (the mission so far has cost both NASA and ESA a combined total of $3.3 billion).
Epic Records releases an expanded, remastered edition of the Alan Parsons Project‘s 1980 album The Turn Of A Friendly Card, with additional tracks from the original recording sessions. (more…)
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 57th episode of Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. Richard Hatch guest stars. (more…)
Big Finish Productions releases the 12th episode of the new Eighth Doctor Who audio dramas, starring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith. (more…)
The 744th episode of Doctor Who (the 46th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Freema Agyeman, Bernard Cribbins and Christopher Ryan (The Young Ones) guest star in the first appearance of the Sontarans in Doctor Who since 1985. This is the first half of a two-part story. (more…)
Story: Professor Peter Schickele charts the life and career of P. D. Q. Bach, the twenty-first of famed composer Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty children. Professor Schickele covers the three main phases of P. D. Q.’s musical output: the Initial Plunge, the Soused period and, finally, Contrition. He also delves into the legacy of P. D. Q. Bach, those he has influenced (or at least prevented from making the same mistakes) and a history of the rediscovery of the works of this justly underappreciated artist.
Review: The guys of Spinal Tap ain’t got nothin’ on Peter Schickele. In the late 1960’s, Schickele began performing the “lost” works of little-known composer P. D. Q. Bach, described by Schickele as the “oddest of Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty-odd children.” He even adopted a fictional version of himself, Professor Peter Schickele, to differentiate when he is working in the real world from when he is working in P. D. Q.’s. In the years since, he has built up an enormous life story for P. D. Q., which was first set down as a single biography in this book. Also similar to the later Spinal Tap, Schickele portrays P. D. Q. himself, although given the character’s position in history, only through portraits. Schickele is an accomplished musician and composer, having written many award-winning pieces and even several movie scores (including genre work, such as the film Silent Running). All of this is evident in the text of “The Definitive Biography”, a book that any fan of music, classical or otherwise, should read. (more…)
Big Finish Productions releases the 107th Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton. (more…)
Capitol Records releases the album The Conversation by Tim Finn, an album whose songs are performed by a trio of core players (including fellow Split Enz alumni Eddie Rayner and Miles Golding). (more…)
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 
The 745th episode of Doctor Who (the 47th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Freema Agyeman, Bernard Cribbins and Christopher Ryan (The Young Ones) guest star in the first appearance of the Sontarans in Doctor Who since 1985. This is the second half of a two-part story. (more…)
Soundtrack specialty label Intrada releases Arthur B. Rubenstein’s soundtrack from the 1983 “hacking” thriller movie 
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 59th episode of Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. Nana Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) guest stars. (more…)
The 746th episode of Doctor Who (the 48th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Guest star Georgia Moffett really is the Doctor’s daughter (namely, the daughter of former series star Peter Davison). (more…)
8-Bit Weapon releases 
Composer, arranger and orchestrator Alexander Courage, composer of the theme from the original Star Trek, dies at the age of 88. Courage was responsible for writing the iconic main theme as well as the scores for the show’s two pilot episodes. When Star Trek went to series, however, Roddenberry – ahead of the curve on almost every imaginable marketing angle – wrote and published lyrics to Courage’s theme, thereby earning 50% of the profit from any future use of that music, a move which alienated the composer. Due to Star Trek using a library approach to its music, however, Courage’s music resurfaced in almost every episode in some capacity. Courage began orchestrating and arranging for other composers, including John Williams (The Poseidon Adventure, Jurassic Park) and Jerry Goldsmith, who asked Courage to write a few pieces for 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture which utilized the original TV theme.
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 60th episode of Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. Richard Hatch guest stars. (more…)
The 747th episode of Doctor Who (the 49th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Felicity Kendall guest stars. (more…)
The independently-released album Parliament Of Fooles is released by Rubber Universe, a collective of musicians paying tribute to the musical of The Alan Parsons Project without actually covering any of the band’s songs. Project vocalist Eric Woolfson and guitarist Ian Bairnson make guest appearances. (more…)
Director and former actor Joseph Pevney, the man behind the camera for many of the original Star Trek‘s best-remembered segments, dies at the age of 96. A veteran of classic ’60s, ’70s and ’80s television, he also directed numerous episodes of Wagon Train, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Mission: Impossible, The Munsters, Bonanza, and The Incredible Hulk. Before embarking on his directing career in 1950, he also worked as an actor, with his first exposure to showbiz in a 1924 Vaudeville show.
Radio signals from the Martian surface indicating the successful landing of NASA’s unmanned Phoenix probe near the north pole of Mars. (To put this feat in perspective: the past several unmanned probes to land safely on Mars used a “bouncing airbag” approach; the last time a lander actually made it to the surface intact with braking thrusters and landing pads – and no airbags – was in 1976, when NASA’s Viking 1 and 2 landers successfully touched down on the planet.) The first stationary (i.e. non-rover) Mars lander since the Viking probes of the 1970s, Phoenix will stay in one spot to conduct three months of studies. Also like the Vikings, Phoenix has a soil-sampling arm and an on-board laboratory to help it determine the presence of water or water ice in its polar vicinity.
Big Finish Productions releases the 108th Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Colin Baker and Maggie Stables. (more…)
Comedy great Harvey Korman, known for his long run on the Carol Burnett Show and Blazing Saddles, dies at the age of 81. Along with Tim Conway, he was a staple of Burnett’s comedy sketch show, though an attempt to spin that success off into his own series ran aground in 1977. A year later, still a comedy fixture, he racked up his most infamous genre credit: appearing as multiple characters in the almost-trippy Star Wars Holiday Special, including one of the better moments of actual comedy in the show, the “stir whip, stir whip, whip whip, stir!” chef. After appearing in Blazing Saddles, he appeared in several more Mel Brooks films, and did countless TV guest starring gigs.
Sci-Fi Channel airs the 61st episode of Ronald D. Moore’s re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. Richard Hatch and Mark Sheppard guest star. (more…)
The 748th episode of Doctor Who (the 50th since the series’ revival) airs on BBC1. Alex Kingston guest stars as River Song, the character’s first appearance in the series (and her last adventure chronologically). This is the first part of a two-part story. (more…)
Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on the 123rd shuttle flight, a two-week mission to install a major laboratory module to the International Space Station. The pressurized module of Japan’s Kibo laboratory joins the unpressurized section installed on a previous flight, complete with its own robotic arm controlled inside. Aboard Discovery for her 35th flight are Commander Mark Kelly, Pilot Ken Ham, mission specialists Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan and Mike Fossum, and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, who remains on the International Space Station. Station astronaut Garrett Reisman returns to Earth aboard Discovery.
Big Finish Productions releases the 13th episode of the new Eighth Doctor Who audio dramas, starring Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith. (more…)
Robert Justman, who along with Gene Roddenberry shepherded the original Star Trek from an untried pilot to its three years on the air (and came along for the ride with the inception and first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation), dies at the age of 81 from complications associated with Parkinson’s Disease. Originally an assisant director on the rejected pilot episode The Cage, he stuck around to become a producer and one of Roddenberry’s right-hand men. While at Desilu Studios (the makers of the original Star Trek, later bought by Paramount) he also produced the pilot episode of Mission: Impossible; his pre-Trek credits included several episodes of The Outer Limits, numerous Disney Sunday Movies, and The Adventures Of Superman.