The prelude to the animated spinoff series Tron Uprising airs on Disney XD. Originally devised as ten mini-episode teasers, Beck’s Beginning is recognized as a strong enough story in its own right to serve as a full episode-length pilot. Elijah Wood and Bruce Boxleitner star as the voices of Beck and Tron. 
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Syfy airs the 70th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000) guest stars.
SpaceX launches its second Dragon unmanned cargo vehicle, this time as the first privately-owned spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Carrying only supplies, equipment and experiments, the Dragon capsule carries out a program of closing to within a certain distance of the station and then slowly approaches until it is close enough to be grabbed by the station’s remote manipulator arm and attached to a docking port under the station crew’s control. The Expedition 31 astronauts aboard the station report that the interior of the capsule has a “new car smell” that is quite noticeable when compared to the atmosphere aboard the station. Over the course of a week, fresh cargo is unloaded into the station from the Dragon capsule, and cargo intended for return to Earth is loaded into the capsule. NASA is satisfied with the results and contracts SpaceX to begin routine cargo flights via Dragon later in the year.
Big Finish Productions releases the fifth Doctor Who audio drama in its Fourth Doctor Adventures range, starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. (more…)
Big Finish Productions releases the 160th Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Mark Strickson. (more…)
Syfy airs the 71st episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000) guest stars.
Caroline John, who joined the cast of Doctor Who for only a single season (also the show’s first season in color), accompanying incoming third Doctor Jon Pertwee as the Doctor’s scientific assistant Liz Shaw, dies at the age of 72 due to complications from cancer. Despite her brief connection to the series, Caroline John has remained associated with Doctor Who, from reprising the role of Liz Shaw repeatedly for Big Finish Productions, to making a cameo appearance in 1983’s The Five Doctors, to reviving Liz as the head of a secret scientific think tank in the fan-made PROBE video series of the 1990s.
theLogBook.com releases its first book, VWORP!1 by Earl Green. Spanning nearly 400 pages, the book covers Doctor Who on TV from 1963 through 2011, with an emphasis on story threads that hold “classic” Who (1963-1989) and “new” Who (2005-present) together. The book makes its “live” debut at the 2012 Oklahoma Video Gaming Exhibition (OVGE) in Tulsa a few days later; an ebook version is released at a later date.
The first episode of the animated spinoff series Tron Uprising airs on Disney XD. Elijah Wood and Bruce Boxleitner star as the voices of Beck and Tron. (more…)
Syfy airs the 72nd episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000) guest stars.
The second episode of the animated spinoff series Tron Uprising airs on Disney XD. Elijah Wood and Bruce Boxleitner star as the voices of Beck and Tron. (more…)
China launches its fourth manned space mission, Shenzhou 9, on the first manned flight to the small space station Tiangong-1. The crew consists of Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang, and the first female space traveler from China, Liu Yang. Automated docking at Tiangong-1 has been rehearsed by ground controllers during the unmanned Shenzhou 8 mission, but this mission requires both automatic and manual dockings to be carried out. The crew will spend a total of 13 days in space.
The three-person crew of Chinese space vehicle Shenzhou 9 successfully achieves an automated docking at Tiangong-1, China’s first space station. The crew spends a total of six days aboard the station, described by the Chinese government as an orbital laboratory, before undocking and then successfully attempt a manual docking maneuver. The nature of the crew’s work during its stay aboard Tiangong-1 is not revealed.
Syfy airs the 73rd episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000) and Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation) guest star.
The third episode of the animated spinoff series Tron Uprising airs on Disney XD. Elijah Wood and Bruce Boxleitner star as the voices of Beck and Tron. (more…)
British supergroup Producers (whose full-time members have all racked up music production credits with their own acts and other artists) release their debut album, Made In Basing Street. (more…)
Syfy airs the 74th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000) and Tembi Locke (Sliders) guest star.
Big Finish Productions releases the sixth Doctor Who audio drama in its Fourth Doctor Adventures range, starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. (more…)
Big Finish Productions releases the 161st Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Mark Strickson. (more…)
Soundtrack specialty label La-La Land Records releases a long-awaited 3-CD set featuring – for the first time – the entirety of Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Including spin-off singles (such as Shaun Cassidy’s infamous vocal version of the Ilia theme), unused music from an early draft of the score, and extensive liner notes, half of the set’s limited print run of 10,000 copies sells out within days, forcing the label to ask customers to wait for the rest of the copies to arrive at their warehouse. (more…)
Syfy airs the 75th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000) and Tembi Locke (Sliders) guest star.
Syfy airs the 76th episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000), Tembi Locke (Sliders), and Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation) guest star.
Part of the 32nd full-time crew of the International Space Station lifts off from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard Soyuz TMA-05M. Yuri Malenchenko, Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide take up residence on the ISS for 127 days, becoming part of the Expedition 32/33 crews. All three return to Earth in November 2012 aboard the same vehicle.
Syfy airs the 77th and final episode of the science fiction series Eureka, starring Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Joe Morton. Matt Frewer (Max Headroom), Debrah Farentino (Earth 2), James Callis (Battlestar Galactica), Felicia Day (Mystery Science Theater 3000), Tembi Locke (Sliders), Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: The Next Generation), and Grant Imahara (Mythbusters) guest star in the series finale.
Having already been donated to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in 1985, Space Shuttle Enterprise, a test vehicle not built to spaceflight specs, is removed from the custom-made hangar at the Smithsonian and prepared for re-gifting. With NASA donating the space-flown shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian, Enterprise will now become a major display at New York City’s Intrepid Museum, based on the retired aircraft carrier U.S.S. Intrepid. For the first time in nearly 20 years, Enterprise is loaded onto one of the modified Boeing 747s from which it made its in-atmosphere test flights in 1977 and is transported to New York.
Big Finish Productions releases the 162nd Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, and Philip Olivier. (more…)
Actress Mary Tamm, who appeared in a single (but very high-profile) season of Doctor Who as the first incarnation of the Time Lady Romana, dies at the age of 62 after a battle with cancer. Having revived her version of the Romana character in recent years for Big Finish Productions’ Doctor Who audio stories (and the spinoff series Gallifrey), Tamm has remained popular with fans and has also recently completed her autobiography. Several days later, mere hours after delivering a eulogy at her memorial service, her husband of 34 years, Marcus Ringrose, also dies of a heart attack.
The fan-made internet series Star Trek Continues releases its first short vignette, an additional scene intended to follow the original series’ final episode, Turnabout Intruder. (more…)
Surviving a previously untested landing method involving a rocket-firing sky crane, NASA’s Curiosity rover (or, more formally, the Mars Science Laboratory) lands safely on Mars, at the base of a mountain near Gale Crater. The first images from the surface arrive within seconds of landing, confirming the safe delivery of NASA’s latest mobile Mars explorer. The landing is especially suspenseful due to the “seven minutes of terror” – the one-way time for a signal to reach Earth from Mars – and the fact that the entire reentry and landing procedure takes 14 minutes.
The internet-based fan film Star Trek: Phase II releases a short vignette episode, Going Boldly, introducing the series’ new Captain Kirk, actor Brian Gross. (more…)
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Big Finish Productions releases the 163rd Doctor Who audio drama in its main monthly range, starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, and Philip Olivier. (more…)
35 years after its departure from Earth, NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe registers major changes in its environment, including a large spike in radiation readings believed to indicate the presence of interstellar cosmic radiation. Some scientists claim that these changes in Voyager 1’s surroundings meet the expected criteria for space beyond the influence of Earth’s sun, making Voyager 1 the first man-made craft to reach interstellar space; others, including former Voyager project scientists, disagree with that assessment. Voyager 1 has no further planetary stops, and is expected to pass within two light years of the star Gliese 445 in 40,000 years.
American astronaut – and the first human being to walk on the surface of the moon – Neil Armstrong dies at the age of 82. On July 20th, 1969, he took the “giant leap” onto another world that instantly made him perhaps the most famous citizen of the 20th century – moreso than the Beatles, more than Hitler or Churchill, more than any actor. That century will be defined by the exploration of the moon forever, and as many men walked on its surface, Armstrong’s will be the name that is forever associated with that exploration.
The first of a series of Doctor Who shorts, starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, and Arthur Darvill, is made available on the BBC Red Button service. Five shorts in total are made available on a daily basis as a build-up to Asylum Of The Daleks. (more…)