9.30.05 - 10.7.05
HELLO
And here's the three hundred and twelfth edition of "Hailing Frequencies."
If you want to be notified when this newsletter is updated, email me to be put on my "notification" list.
Sorry about the lack of new stuff. I'm working hard at my "other" job!
4400
Variety reports that the USA Network has renewed The 4400 for a third season, with thirteen episodes. The show's ratings have been slightly down from the first season, but solid enough to make it the summer's number-one cable show among adults aged 18-49. Billy Campbell, Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie are all expected to return, but there are some interesting rumors out there about new characters.
ANOTHER " BEST SCI-FI" LIST
Yes, it's another list, this time by The Boston Globe, of the "Top 50 Sci-Fi Shows," and it's another round of seemingly arbitrary ordering with no explanation of criteria for some really odd choices. It also mixes up sci-fi with fantasy and has each show listed on a a separate page so the site can rack up 50 hits per nerd. I wish it were better done, but each show gets a picture and a short, non-insightful blurb.
And, seriously, Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn't as good as Wonder Woman? Futurama isn't as good as My Favorite Martian? DS9 doesn't even make the list?
Still, the top five -- Star Trek TOS, The New Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek TNG, The X-Files & Bablyon 5 -- are generally better than the bottom five -- That Was Then, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Wild, Wild West, & Earth, Final Conflict.
EUREKA
SCI FI Channel has ordered thirteen one-hour episodes of Eureka, with Colin Ferguson, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Greg Germann, Joe Morton, Debrah Farentino, Maury Chaykin, Matt Frewer (yes, Max Headroom himself) and Jordan Hinson as seemingly ordinary people in a small town who are actually scientific geniuses assembled by the government to conduct top-secret research.
Well, actually, Ferguson is a federal marshall who wrecks his car while passing through. Soon, he learns Eureka is one weird-ass place.
FIREFLY/SERENITY
Paul Davidson at IGN talks with Joss Whedon not only about what kind of money it will take from Serenity to make a sequel, but also what kind of sequel it would be: movie or TV series? Whedon's figure: "I think I heard something like fifty million domestic or eighty million worldwide...would set some wheels in motion." And while TV is better suited to Whedon's "style of storytelling," he has less control over a TV show than a film. TV is "a hard, hard business and I felt unwelcome in the landscape on TV. The medium as a storytelling means to me is completely unique and delightful. I'd just want to go back to TV with enough armor on that when they start shooting at me, I live. It's up to a bunch of other people. I'd like to do a sequel but if they say they'd rather do a television show I'd consider that. I want to keep telling stories with them."
There is at last a soundtrack for Firefly, though it's not on CD. Download it instead from Fox Music for $9.99. Playing time is just over forty minutes, and you have to register with the site and pay with a credit card.
Serenity opens today.
GAMING
Look for Namco Hometek's Warhammer®: Mark of Chaos™ in late 2006 for the PC. Epic battles, vast and intricate landscapes, customizable units and maps, and a variety of play modes and multiplayer options. It's set a year after the Great War, when the brutal Chaos armies swept across the Empire lands. Many fierce battles still rage across the Old World. Portions of the defeated Chaos armies have retreated to the distant Northern Wastes, while others have fallen to hostile groups. Among these tribes, new Champions rise up in an effort to reunite the Chaos forces, yet eventually all fail. None can match the power of their fallen leader, Asavar Kul. (Guess whom you get to play?)
HARRY POTTER
Warner Bros. hasn't confirmed it, but a perfect piece of casting may have been made for Dolores Umbridge in Order of the Phoenix: Imelda Staunton (the Nurse in Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Charlotte Palmer in Sense and Sensibility (1995).
HBO's "First Look" at the making of Goblet of Fire debuts Monday, November 7th at 9:45 PM ET, with a running time of thirteen minutes.
The New York Goblet of Fire premiere will be at the Ziegfeld Theater, not RCMH.
Well, now we know Harry wears his glasses in the bath.
Goblet of Fire opens Nov. 18. Watch the trailer at IGNFilmForce or here. LeakyCauldron has some high-rez pix.
POINT PLEASANT
Well, as promised a while ago, here's some more information on the DVD box set for a show nobody liked but me.
The Complete Series DVD Collection debuts October 25, 2005 from Fox Home Entertainment. The collection features all 13 episodes, including 5 unaired episodes. The supernatural series starred Elisabeth Harnois, Samuel Page, Richard Burgi (!), Grant Show and Dina Meyers.
SRP $39.98US/$54.98 Canada. All episodes are compiled onto three dual-layered discs in widescreen (1.78:1). Each episode is presented with English Dolby Surround 5.1 with the option of English, Spanish and French subtitles. 585 minutes
Disc OneNIGHT STALKER
Episodes:
Pilot
Human Nature
Who’s Your Daddy?
The Lonely Hunter
Last DanceDisc Two
Episodes:
Secrets and Lies
Unraveling
Swimming with Boyd
Waking the DeadDisc Three
Episodes:
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Choked
Missing
Mother’s Day
Family Style
I used to watch Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) pretty faithfully. There were some lame episodes, and some really creepy ones -- especially one where this woman gets scalded to death in the shower. Egggghhh. And it's a pretty good idea for a series. You could even call it a fore-runner of The X-Files.
So it's not surprising that the remake Night Stalker, on ABC will be structured more like a "conspiracy" show than the original "exploration" show. Exec. Producer Frank Spotnitz told SCI FI Wire that he has "all the answers" to the hidden mysteries the series will uncover: "I had to write them all down for the network [laughs]. I had to prove that to them before they picked up the series. All the important questions in the show have already been asked in that pilot, and the life of the show -- however many years I'm fortunate enough to do this -- will be devoted to getting deeper into those questions, rather than raising new ones."
Spotnitz also lauds the "new look" of the show: "There actually is a brand-new camera for some of the season's pilot, called Genesis by Panavision, that no one had ever used before...[The camera is] great, because it picks up very, very low levels of light. So you don't have to have any artificial lighting at all. You can see way off. Like you're filming the city at night, and you can see way down the street. You can see clouds in the night sky, which on film, the sky is just black at night."
RATINGS
CBS's Ghost Whisperer got 11.4 million and a 2.9 rating. Threshold got 9 million viewers and a 2.6 rating for its premiere (though the second episode did a bit better).
SCI FI's total day ratings for the third quarter saw an 11 percent increase in viewers aged 25-54, a 12 percent increase in those aged 18-49 and a 12 percent increase in those aged 18-34 over the same quarter a year ago.
Stargate SG-1's mid-season cliffhanger and a new episode of Battlestar Galactica were the top two cable entertainment programs among adults aged 25-54 that night. A week later, the mid-season cliffhanger of Battlestar Galactica got 2.3 million viewers and became the top entertainment program on cable for the night among viewers aged 25-54.
SPIDER-MAN 3
Dunst is quoted at Zap2It and reveals that Thomas Haden Church will be playing Sandman and Topher Grace will be Venom, as rumors have been saying. Dunst hasn't read the script for the third movie, but filming starts in January, and Dunst does know that "There's a lot that they're trying to fit into this one."
Look for spiderwebs in the theatres May 2007.
STAR TREK
Here's a new calendar with something other than the same old thing. The Star Trek : Ships of the Line 2006 Wall Calendar features fourteen original CGI images of Trek star ships presented in horizontal format with an unobtrusive calendar grid. Artists includes Doug Drexler and NX-01 designer John Eaves.
TrekToday as a good "retro review" of Tomorrow is Yesterday.
Close your eyes, rock back in your chair, bump around a little, and listen to live coverage of the Las Vegas Star Trek Monorail . If you're also a Simpsons fan, this will really be great.
STAR WARS
Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith comes out on two-disc DVD November 1 in a two-disc set with a host of features & featurettes. There are also deleted scenes, such as one showing Yoda's arriving on the swamp planet of Dagobah. You can see pix of some of these scenes at AintItCool. There's a new audio commentary from George Lucas and members of the movie's crew.
Also out on November 1, THQ Inc. & Lucasfilm will give the world a Star Wars game for mobile phones, Star Wars Battlefront Mobile, because teenagers just aren't geeky enough. Exclusively for Cingular, the multiplayer game lets players join either the Confederacy of Independent Systems or the Grand Army of the Republic in the Clone Wars, or choose an allegiance between the Rebel Alliance and the evil Galactic Empire in the Galactic Civil Wars. In real-time that tiny phone screen will have a large-scale territorial combat system in which players can choose from two complete campaigns with more than 75 playable levels. Players can also track the progress of their character and faction in-game using the comprehensive ranking and award systems.
WALLACE & GROMIT
Creator Nick Park told SCI FI Wire that Gromit -- gasp -- was originally a cat, but "when I was molding him, I found out it was simply easier to make a dog." Even when Gromit got the right species, however, Park didn't quite have a handle on the character and gave him "a Scooby-Doo kind of voice." Finally, the dog worked best with no voice (or mouth): "'He became more intelligent that way, and it became more of a dog-and-man relationship,'" Park said in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the characters' first full-length movie, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, screened."
This movie also comes with a game (sold separately), where free-roaming gameplay allows players explore the game's world with one Wallace, Gromit, or Hutchwhile aiming the Bungun at various bits to turn them into weapons. The plot of film weaves through the play as players solve the problems of the Giant Vegetable Competition. Their mission takes them from the seaside to suburbia as they venture out at night to confront the beast responsible for the vegetable-based carnage. SRP $39.99. Rated E for Everyone.
FeaturesThe movie comes out October 7.
*Play as Gromit, Wallace, and Hutch and swap between the three on the fly to use their unique skills
*A wide variety gadgets, including the Electric Screwdriver, Bunny Hopper, and Were-rabbit Decoy
*Watch the village's pesky critters turn into ferocious Were-beasts as day ends and night begins!
*Fully Interactive Environments with all kinds of gadgets to create hilarious mayhem!
NEWS BITS
Don Adams passed away Sunday at age 82.
INSANE TREK TRIVIA
This Week's Question: Explain when and where we heard about these ships: Yorktown, Intrepid, and Crazy Horse.
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: Which Star Trek actor has officially qualified as a bronze-level international Latin ballroom dancer?
Answer: Linda Park
First winner
Claudia
Claudia asks: How are you doing?
I'm very well. My family has taken me in and we're getting along quite well. ::knock wood::
ow's your area of NO? Was it hit hard?
It didn't flood in my zip code. It looks like a lot of my neighbors have severe roof damage. My house looks okay in the pictures I've seen, though my backyard fence blew down and some windows may have broken.
How's your cat doing?
She's great, though I wish she would stop hissing at my neices. She has managed to find Mother's most expensive piece of furniture and claim it as her own.
Second winner
Patty
Third winner
Izzy
Fourth winner
Susan
Fifth winner
evay
CAPTION CONTEST
Send in your best caption for the picture below. The best (as in, my favorite) entry will appear in next week's issue.
[Insert caption here.]
THIS WEEK'S WINNER:
"Things look bad for the next season of The Swan…" - Raymond
Honorable Mentions...
"Stop whining. I still have to pierce the other ear." - sexualuniverse
"Mercifully, Julia's scene from the first Star Trek slash movie was cut." - BTCHONWHLS
"He only meant to feel her pah, but he got his fake nails caught in her deshara." - Raymond
"Naughty, naughty, Clarice. I told you to buy a nice Cianti.” - Raymond
"Penn and Teller cause more casualties at the San Diego Comic Con with their "Upside-down Carrot Routine.’" - Raymond
"Comic Book Guy finally got a date. Pity he couldn’t find a live one.” - Raymond
"Y'know, from this angle, you’d hardly notice it. Really." - Raymond
"Then he told her the DS9 Panda joke. The night was over." - Raymond
"It's called the 'Vedek Neck Pinch.'" - Debra Smith
"LETTERS TO THE EDITOR"
This week's topic: Have recent events with Katrina and Rita affected your enjoyment of disaster-oriented sci-fi? Or is there no connection there for you?
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Nope. You?
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Next week's topic: Is Lost rockin', or what?
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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.)
TOP MOVIES FROM THE NUMBERS
1 Flightplan........................$31,106,279
2 The Corpse Bride..............$23,154,852
3 Just Like Heaven...............$32,296,103
4 Lord of War.....................$19,180,484
5 Exorcism of Emily Rose.......$64,121,743
6 The 40-Year-old Virgin.......$98,285,733
7 Roll Bounce.......................$8,647,867
8 The Constant Gardener......$28,437,000
9 The Transporter 2............$40,600,286
10 An Unfinished Life.............$6,379,000
TOP SF/F NETWORK SHOWS, NGR, 9.5 - 9.11
1. Medium 3.7
2. Lost 3.4
3. Smallville 1.5
4. Charmed 1.1
TOP SF/F SYNDICATED SHOWS, NGR, 8.29 -9.4
1. Stargate SG-1 1.4
2. The X-Files 1.2
3. Andromeda 1.2
4. Angel 1.1
5. Buffy 1.1
6. Mutant X 1.1
7. She Spies 1.1
8. The Outer Limits 1.0
8. Sabrina 0.7
10. The Twilight Zone 0.7
TOP SCI-FI/FANTASY BOOKS, Amazon - 9.23.05
1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
2. A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Outlander 6)
3. Eldest (Inheritance 2)
4. Knife of Dreams (Wheel of Time 11)
5. The Historian
6. The Da Vinci Code
7. Narnia box set
8. Anansi Boys
9. Son of a Witch
TOP SCI-FI/FANTASY DVDS, Amazon - 9.20.05
1. Star Wars: Episode III
2. Lost season one
3. Desperate Housewives season one
4. Batman Begins
5. Battlestar Galactica season one
6. Stargate SG-1 season eight
7. Smallville season four
8. Firefly complete series
9. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
10. Cinderella platinum edition
HAILING FREQUENCIES CLOSED
Visit the "Hailing Frequencies" Archive
http://scifi.about.com/blhailarchive.htm
Julia Houston
Sci-Fi/Fantasy Guide @ About.com
scifi@about.com
