Hailing Frequencies Issue #299

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I guess I should do something special for the 300th newsletter edition. Hmm. Nothing occurs.

Saw Batman Begins this weekend, and thought it was GREAT!!!!! They could have shaved 30 minutes off the beginning for my part, but the last hour and a half made it for it in spades. The action was terrific and I loved the new Batmobile. The villains were excellent, and despite the fact there were 2, neither overshadowed Batman, as in previous films (which shall remain nameless here). Christian Bale was great as the Dark Night and played a convincing Bruce Wayne. Finally we have an interesting James Gordon. This was the crime-fighting team which we remember from the comics. As it should be, Gordon is every much a partner in Batman's war on crime, as Alfred or Robin. Speaking of Alfred, Michael Caine played a sometimes over-the-top butler, but who doesn't like Michael Caine? Looking forward to more and more sequels from a team who seems to care about the genre!

And speaking of sequels, Director Christopher Nolan has always maintained that his decision to direct the next films in the series depends on box-office for Begins. So how he's saying he's onboard as long as he gets the same crew. Nolan told LACEBY NEWS, "If David [Goyer] is writing it, Christian [Bale] is still Batman, and everyone else is returning [then] me (sic) not returning would be like the only student of a graduating class skipping the big day to wash the car." Nolan wants a break, though, before he goes back to Batman. And the next film won't have Robin, but will probably have the Joker. However, as usual, the girlfriend character (Katie Holmes) won't return so we can some hot new babe or two.

Some guys (I'm guessing it was guys) stole a Dalek robot prop from storage in the UK and actually tried to collect ransom. It may have been a joke. Or a publicity stunt. Or just two really drunken idiots. Whatever. It's back now after the guys called in the location of their too-hot robot.

Okay, one of the lamest "boycotts" in the history of nonviolent protects has to be the Southern Baptists' call to shun the Walt Disney Co. because of their health benefits to the same-sex partners of employees and allowing "gay days" at its theme parks. Eight years later, Disney is richer than ever, and I'm fairly certain Baptists where riding the Matterhorn on the sly. Anyway, the boycott's off now, supposedly in recognition that Disney will soon be producing several movies based on Christian-themed books. You know, as opposed to those full-length animated movies they did last year on The Book of the Dead and the Koran.

Some Baptists who reeeallly hate gays are protesting. But you know what, they can just decide not to go to Disneyland all by themselves. Then, it seems to me, everyone is happy. But what they heck do I know? I'm a sci-fi nerd.

Blackfilm.com has posted some publicity pix and a synopsis of the movie. And check out the trailer.

Ron Perlman, Neal McDonough and Richard Moll will do voice work to the third-person action game, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, says GameSpot. Look for the game this August on the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube systems. Perlman will do Emil Blonsky and the Abomination, McDonough will do Bruce Banner, and Moll (whom I adore as the Ice Beast in Caveman),will do Devil Hulk. Rated "T" for teen; SRP $49.99

Buena Vista Games announced that its racing game, Disney's Herbie: Fully Loaded, is available at retail stores for the Game Boy Advance system, SRP $29.99, rated "E" for everyone. You drive Herbie in a series of races against AI-controlled opponents in 3-D. A real-time mood meter keeps track of Herbie's personality in reaction to the player's results.

Uwe Boll and his Brightlight Pictures will be doing another video-to-film project, an adaptation of Gas Powered Games' Dungeon Siege, script by Doug Taylor, David S. Freeman and Glenn Benest. Good news: Tony Ching (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) will direct the action sequences. He is so cool. Oh, and the story deals with getting revenge on a mean ruler and kicking a lot of asses.

GameSpot also reports an upcoming expansion pack for World of Warcraft, the hit massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

WB also firmly denies the rumor that Elizabeth Hurley will play Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They do agree, however, that the film will go into production early next year.

There's a fairly standard, but fun, video interview up at Barnes & Noble with Jim Dale, from the US version of the Harry Potter audio books, about his voice work and doing characters.

Goblet of Fire's coming to theatres November 18, and Half-Blood Prince will be available July 16. German edition will be released on Oct. 1, 2005. Amazon.de is selling it at 22.50 Euros. Check out the trailer! Check out the deluxe cover version here.

Look for the DVD set July 12, 2005, with 5 discs and 8 Season Six episodes in Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, plus extras:

Philip K. Dick, perhaps most famous for his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (a loose inspiration for Blade Runner), has been made up into -- ha ha! -- a big, interactive, lifelike robot, courtesy of Hanson Robotics, the FedEx Institute of Technology's Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Automation and Robotics Research Institute. Check it out this week at Wired magazine's upcoming NextFest in Chicago June 25-27. Dick would love it.

ROBOT CHICKEN rules! 50%
I saw it. It was okay. 0%
Chicken what? 50%
Horrible. 0%

Yahoo! News reports that Viacom Inc. is dividing into two separately traded companies: CBS Corp. (CBS and UPN television networks, Paramount TV production, book publisher Simon & Schuster, cable network Showtime, Infinity Broadcasting radio and Paramount Parks) and Viacom Inc. (Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment, MTV Networks, BET and Famous Music). As you can, this doesn't define where Star Trek is going to end up in all this, as the franchise includes TV, films, movies, and much more. We'll have to see.

Lou would like to purchase the complete collection of TOS DVDs, preferably all three seasons, but "I will buy only one if you have only one." Anyone out there?

UDaily has a fun quickie with Beau Bridges (General Hank Landry on Stargate SG-1) My fave bit: "Of course we have not only me coming on, but Ben Browder of 'Farscape,' a much-loved sci-fi show. He's doing the young hunk thing...I kind of order him off to the mouth of the dragon."

Disney is going to do this one. Live-action. Lab accident. Adopted by 12-year-old boy. Lots of CGI effects. Heavy merchandising. Jay Polstein and Spyglass Entertainment's Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber & Jonathan Glickman producing, Joe Piscatella and Craig A. Williams scripting. Canada 2006 filming.

Comedy Central is going to The Showbiz Show, with David Spade, a weekly version of his Hollywood Minute skit from SNL that was the only funny thing on SNL for about three years.

This Week's Question: What's the basic premise of the story, "Visit to a Weird Planet"?

Send your answer to scifi@about.com. All correctly answering trivia maniacs will have their names mentioned in the next letter. The first winner gets to make a request, anything they like -- within reason -- for the next "Hailing Frequencies" Issue. Please let me know if you don't want me to post your email address if you win.

Last Week's Question: What piece of Trek techonology relies on the Heisenberg Compensator?

Send in your best caption for the picture below. The best (as in, my favorite) entry will appear in next week's issue.

Honorable Mentions...

"Well, Babe. Have you ever seen a grown farmer naked?" - BTCHONWHLS

"Well, it all started when I saw the words 'Some Pig' written in a spider web..." - Jason

Strangely, Ed never noticed the aliens had taken his wife and replaced her with a cheap substitute.- Alex

"Be very careful. If you decide to break warp one, your dog, too, can turn into a pig. I probably should have adjusted my Heisenberg compensator before I beamed Fido aboard."- Susan

"Listen up, Zeph. The matter/antimater ratio must always be 1:1" - Debra Smith

"It'll never work out for us. I'm Jewish." - sexualuniverse

"I'm sorry, I have some bad news. Your mom's a football." - sexualuniverse

"I know it's painful, but you'll meet someone else." - sexualuniverse

"And he huffed and puffed, but he couldn't blow the brick house down." - sexualuniverse

"I wish I didn't have to break you, but I need all my pennies for bingo." - sexualuniverse

"Let me tell about the time I was behind enemy lines..." - sexualuniverse

This week's topic: The Stargates & Battlestar Galatica are coming back in July. What do you hope happens next season?

Well, if Adama's not dead, I hope he has a near-death experience that snaps him to his senses so he realizes that attempting to depose the President (no matter what stupidity she's committed) was a really dumb idea. I've loved the show so far, but I have two big issues with Lt. Castillo�I mean, Cmdr. Adama. I don't think a really smart, experienced commander lies to the people he's leading by telling everyone he knows where Earth is. I mean, how long can he keep pretending to know where he's going? ("I know the exit's around here somewhere�No, I don't want to stop and ask for directions! Put away that map!") What will the people who've been loyal to him do when he's found out? Second, you think he'd also be smart enough not to attempt a coup d'etat that leaves him without any legal authority to stand on even if it succeeds. A smarter move would have been to publicly threaten resignation, telling everyone he can't work under someone who undercuts his authority. (And make sure he gets the message out that he's the one who saved what's left of human civilization).Public opinion would turn around pretty fast (or at least as fast as the writers could turn it.)

Oh, well. If the world listened to me, we'd probably be in worse shape than we're in anyway. Long live Captain Archer!

In the next season of SG-1 I hope they get back to more exploring planets, meeting new cultures, and discovering and cultivating new aspects of humanity. I find that the best episodes are those that raise moral questions.

Atlantis also needs to begin exploring more planets. The first year was sort of a desperate, "find-a-source-of-energy-and-defeat-the-evil-aliens" season. Now we want to see new worlds with interesting cultures. Also, some explanation behind the Ancients.

Alex

I hope BG & Stargate Atlantis get canceled after two weeks, and Richard Dean Anderson changes his mind and returns to Stargate SG:1. O'Neill gets demoted back to Colonel, the SGC gets General Hammond back in charge, and Teal'c has that plaque on his forehead removed.

I am in complete concurrence on Robot Chicken--genius! Except for the 'trailer' for "The Diary of Anne Frank" starring Hilary Duff... that was WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG! Which of course REALLY made me laugh, so I guess I am going to hell...

ROBOT CHICKEN IS FRAKKING AWESOME!! But the winner is still "The most depressing sketch ever." The BSG bloopers, the Transformer PSA for prostate cancer, the bad guys commuting, and the Peanuts sketch are close, though. And the one where the second graders did the "diorama" with the cowboy, horse, princess, and robot who wind up in a mass orgy if you go fame-by-frame.

There must be as many opinions and theories about Star Trek and it's current status as there are fans. But at the risk of being BORRRING I want to add my two credits worth.

Star Trek was a very "rich" show in that different viewers could get different things from it. But it seems that the makers of the spin offs forgot one essential part of science fiction - science. In Star Trek TOS there was always a scene in which they figured out the problem of the week. Maybe they had to get the Captain back "in phase" or restore a time line or trick an alien bad guy, maybe they were in a meeting on the Enterprise or trapped on a planet, but they figured it out. (In this way, I think Stargate SG1 is actually closer in spirit to TOS than the ST spin offs). Star Trek not only swept away racial discrimination, pollution, poverty, etc. in its positive view of the future. It proclaimed, "We can figure it out". It is not an accident that the most beloved character and "icon" of the series is the logical Mr. Spock and his runner up is the logical Data. This element is missing or much less in the later spin offs, a subtle but important difference. I thought the ST franchaise jumped the shark when Janeway started going on spirit quests. And I was sure when I heard the ENT theme song. I like the song, music and lyrics, but Star Trek is more about discovery and logic than faith.

To continue ranting - about which ST series will be remembered. I can only say that, even though it's sets and effects and some topics are dated, Star Trek TOS is still in a class by itself. No other series or even movie has so, well, transported me. I love Star Wars and Charmed and Battlestar Galatica. I loved X-Files and Third Rock and Quantum Leap. I love, love, LOVE Stargate SG-1. I think the incredible Buffy was arguably the best show ever put on the air. But I come away from all these saying, "That was a really good show". I come away from Star Trek saying, "Beam me up!". Star Trek TOS made me wonder how it got to my tv from the future. And 40 years on, it is still the only show I care enough for to write letters about.

Send me something if you've got something to say. It can be about anything that's on your mind! (Please let me know if you don't want your email address to accompany your name in either contest or for the LTE.)

1 Batman Begins..................................$90,446,984
2 Mr. And Mrs. Smith...........................$106,010,525
3 Herbie: Fully Loaded............................$2,702,433
4 Madagascar....................................$151,314,720
5 Longest Yard, The...........................$135,450,689
6 Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith..........$351,390,871
7 Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl......$26,425,000
8 Perfect Man, The................................$7,628,130
9 Cinderella Man...................................$45,790,460
10 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants........$31,932,731

1. Lost 5.6
2. Desperate Housewives 5.1
3. Joan of Arcadia 2.9
4. Smallville 1.5
5. Charmed 1.3

1. Stargate SG-1 1.6
2. Andromeda 1.2
3. She Spies 1.2
4. The X-Files 1.2
5. Mutant X 1.1
6. Twilight Zone 1.0
7. The Outer Limits 0.9
8. Angel 0.8
9. Buffy 0.8
10. Ripley's 0.8

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
2. Eldest (Inheritance 2)
3. The Da Vinci Code
4. Black Rose (In the Garden)
5. Angels and Demons
6. Dance of Death
7. The Time Traveler's Wife
8. The Five People You Meet in Heaven
9. The Opal Deception (Artemis Fowl 4)
10. The Chronicles of Narnia

1. Star Wars trilogy
2. Phantom of the Opera
3. The Incredibles
4. La Femme Nikita season three
5. Team America: World Police
6. The 4400 season one
7. Firefly complete series
8. Star Wars: Episode I
9. Lost season one
10. Prisoner of Azkaban