Martian Outpost

We have been blessed with two new episodes of Battlestar Galactica, but is anyone really that excited? After watching the first two, I ended up deleting them rather than keeping them on my DVR like I usually do. Perhaps it’s just me, but this season seems to be more a soap opera than I remember.

The first episode of season 4 was pretty fun with all the special effects, but soon it turned to snooze. I really don’t care who likes who and the drama involved. And how about those lame sex scenes? If I really wanted to see that I could just turn on some HBO at 1:00 in the morning. I want to see more action, but the sort that results from ships blowing each other up.

The storyline with Starbuck is OK. I can live with that and it could really go somewhere. The storyline with the four silons on Galactica could be really good. That is what I am most excited about. Gaius Baltar should have been killed off sooooo long ago. He annoys me, and making him a religious figure makes it that much worse.

Anyway, enough with my rant. Let’s just hope episode 3 this Friday fares better. What have you guys thought about the season so far?

It’s like a knife being driven through my heart! I just found out that Jericho has been canceled and will not be brought back to CBS for a third season. It is almost as bad as when FireFly was canceled, but not quite. Although there aren’t laser beams or spaceships, I consider anything post-apocalyptic to be great Sci-Fi. Look at Mad Max!

Although the TV show has been officially canceled, it would seem that there may be a second life on cable. According to the Carol Barbee, Executive Producer of the show, it may be back. She is quoted as saying on the SciFi channels official Web site:

Carol Barbee, executive producer of CBS’ canceled post-apocalyptic series Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that talks are ongoing to find the show another home, perhaps on a cable network.

“I can’t really say [much] about specifics, and, … partially, it’s because I’m not the one having those conversations,” Barbee said in an interview on March 24, the eve of the show’s final episode. “[CBS] Paramount [Television, which produces the show,] has been pursing it, and our agents have been into that, so, you know, I am pushing those people and coming up with ideas to have those people pursue.”

She goes on to say:

If Jericho is not picked up for another season by a TV network, Barbee said that she could envision it living on in some other form. “There’s definitely an Internet series to be had, and we always talked about a graphic novel, and … a movie,” Barbee said. “I mean, there are lots of things that I could easily see as a way to continue the story.”

I argue that there is no better cable channel for this show than the SciFi channel. The writer of the article at SciFi.com, Patrick Lee, says:

(Fans wishing to write SCI FI Channel about picking Jericho up should NOT use the scifiwire@scifi.com e-mail address, but rather should send snail mail here: SCI FI Channel, 21st Floor, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112.)

Let’s make sure this show goes on another season! Be sure to write, I know I will.

Even though I am a Yank, I have always been a big fan of the British music scene. My all-time favorite rock band is Depeche Mode. I’m also a big fan of Europop music.

About a year ago I was listening to a song on the radio that I decided I had to buy. I tracked down the artist and discovered it was Starlight by Muse. I then went and purchased the album entitled “Black Holes and Revelations.” I really enjoyed the album. I did some research and discovered that the band wasn’t really “new” and had several previously-released albums.

My wife was kind enough to purchase me the even better (IMHO) album Absolution. I have since purchased Showbiz which is a great album as well. How does this tie into SciFi? I was on YouTube a few days ago and decided to watch some Muse music videos. That is when I came across the video for Sing for Absolution. It is a beautifully produced music video that is SciFi in every respect.

SciFi not only spawns great books, movies, video games and TV, but it also produces some great music. I enjoy sitting down and listening to The Matrix while relaxing or popping in some John Williams “Star Wars” while driving down the road. I have often thought to myself who some of the best composers would be if I had to come up with a list.

I certainly like John Williams. He has written some great music and nobody can forget all the great Star Wars music he wrote. I would have to say that his best album, in my humble opinion, is “The Empire Strikes Back.” This also tops my list of best SciFi movies ever.

Jerry Goldsmith is a genius with his Star Trek themes. Who can’t listen to his music and not imagine soaring through space in the U.S.S. Enterprise? There are many musical geniuses out there.
I could continue this list for some time, but I would like to say that my all-time favorite composer is James Horner. You may know him from the Star Trek II or Willow soundtracks. One album you may not be familiar with, which I think is his best, is the soundtrack to Krull. The London Symphony Orchestra is amazing. I know, Krull could be considered fantasy fiction, but I consider it to be SciFi as well.

I originally purchased the Southern Cross version of Krull in the 1990s. Although a great compilation, it was only one disk and lacked many great scores from the movie. About a year ago I managed to pick up the full two-disk version put out by Super Tracks. This is the most rare and complete version available. I got it at for a steal at $45. Since all versions of the Krull soundtrack are no longer available, it isn’t uncommon to find this album going for over 100 dollars. Can you believe that?

Although you cannot buy the album, you can find torrents for the album. Although I do not condone downloading music through torrents, what can you do in this case? You can also listen to tracks on YouTube. Please listen for yourself. It is great!

It’s dark, a little dreary and one of the most enjoyable Sci-Fi movies made in the 80’s. Blade Runner was released today in all its glory in high definition on Blue Ray and HD DVD. You can pick up a couple different versions of this movie today. You can choose from the five-disk Complete Collector’s Edition or the five-disk Ultimate Collectors Edition.

The Ultimate Edition comes in a replica of Rick Deckard’s briefcase. Also included is a lenticular motion film clip from the original feature, miniature origami unicorn figurine, miniature replica spinner car, and collector’s photographs, as well as a signed personal letter from Sir Ridley Scott.

Those who like Blade Runner almost speak about the movie in a religious reverence. Blade Runner is considered by many to be one of Harrison Fords greatest movies, even topping Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Although that is debatable, you can’t argue the fact that Blade Runner is an absolute necessity for any Sci-Fi library. Ridley Scott regards Blade Runner as his “most complete and personal film.”

This movie also features the actress Sean Young, who many of you may remember as Chani from the 1984 classic Dune. Sean plays the lovely replicant Rachael. Can you believe this movie takes place in 2019, just 11 years away? We have a lot of catching up to do if we are to have replicants in time for 2019! I really enjoy seeing writers’ and directors’ visions of the future, even if it is often now in our past or in the not too distant future.

This will be a short entry, but today a new character was cast for the new Star Trek XI movie. I have already talked about previous cast members in earlier posts, but apparently Captain Christopher Pike, a character from the original Star Trek Pilot and the Menagerie will be in the new Movie. He will be played by Bruce Greenwood.

Although I’ll not dwell on it too much, the writers from the AP that wrote this article weren’t big Star Trek fans. First they say Christopher Pike is the first Star Trek captain when we all know it is Captain Johnathan Archer.  They are probably refering to the first Star Trek captain in chronological order as they appeared on TV.

The second error they make is they say Leonard Nimoy’s  character Spock is the only character to survive the original pilot “The Cage.” Although this is technically true, Majel Barrett, who also starred in The Cage also went on to play Nurse Christine Chapel, Lt. M’Ress (cartoon), Lwaxana Troi, several computer voices and more.

Also of note is that Leonard Nimoy will be making an appearance in the new movie. Unfortunately it looks like William Shatner will not be in the new movie according to CNN.

I haven’t been this excited for a movie in a while. JJ Abrams will be  directing it. Although I am not very familiar with him, he did direct Mission Impossible III which was pretty good.  I hope to see you all there come December 25, 2008.

This isn’t news to anyone in the know, but high definition TVs are flying off the shelves at record rates. As you unpackage your new LCD, plasma or projection high-def television, you’re probably thinking of all the new things you can do with it. You probably want to get the most out of your new television.

Getting high-def cable or satellite isn’t an issue right now. In fact, it is really easy to upgrade or purchase a new receiver for your high-def TV. It looks good and you can begin watching sci-fi TV. Great! But what do you do about your DVD player?

Right now there is a huge format war going on between HD DVD and Blue-Ray DVD. Unfortunately this makes getting the most out of your new high-def TV confusing, especially as to which format you should use.

HD DVD came out before Blue-Ray and got a head start in the format war. With the release of the PlayStation 3, the market was flooded with new Blue-Ray players, allowing Blue-Ray to catch up. Blue-Ray now outsells HD DVD 2:1 according to CNet’s News.com.

In case you didn’t know, Blue-Ray is developed and supported by Sony, the people who brought you Betamax and Mini Disk players. HD DVD is developed and supported by Toshiba, the people who brought you the technology behind the standard-resolution DVD player.

Recently HD DVD saw a spike in sales thanks to the release of Transformers the movie, released by Paramount, who only puts movies out on HD DVD. The most recent Transformers movie has sold over 100,000 HD DVDs, a record for any high-definition video format.

Right now Paramount and Dreamworks exclusively releases movies on HD DVD. Blockbuster will only rent Blue-Ray disks. Confused yet? I’m sure you are. A similar format war almost happened with the standard DVD format. Wikipedia says:

In the early 1990s two high-density optical storage standards were being developed; one was the MultiMedia Compact Disc, backed by Philips and Sony, and the other was the Super Density disc, supported by Toshiba, Time Warner, Matsushita Electric, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, Pioneer, Thomson, and JVC. IBM’s president, Lou Gerstner, acting as a matchmaker, led an effort to unite the two camps behind a single standard, anticipating a repeat of the costly videotape format war between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s.

Philips and Sony abandoned their MultiMedia Compact Disc and fully agreed upon Toshiba’s SuperDensity Disc with only one modification, namely changing to EFMPlus modulation. EFMPlus was chosen as it has a great resilience against disc damage such as scratches and fingerprints. EFMPlus, created by Kees Immink, who also designed EFM, is 6% less efficient than the modulation technique originally used by Toshiba, which resulted in a capacity of 4.7 GB as opposed to the original 5 GB. The result was the DVD specification, finalized for the DVD movie player and DVD-ROM computer applications in December 1995.[1] In May 1997, the DVD Consortium was replaced by the DVD Forum, which is open to all other companies.

Hopefully something will eventually happen to unite the current two HD formats. Until then what should you do?

Like me, you probably already have a few sci-fi movies you like to watch. Perhaps you don’t want to fork out the money to purchase new HD DVD disks. Have you considered DVD upscaling? DVD upscalers can take your current DVDs, and with some processing power, increase the picture quality for your new HD TV.

Wikipedia says this about DVD upscaling:

Upscaling DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) Players are a reasonably cheap way of upscaling standard DVD-Video discs using a video scaler to match the pixel count of the signal to the physical pixel count on a high-definition television or computer monitor, resulting in better detail and color consistency. Standalone DVD players which feature upscaling use either a standard component video or VGA analog cable, or a DVI-D or HDMI digital cable to connect to the high-definition television. Standalone DVD players with component video or VGA output connectors use a digital-to-analog integrated circuit microchip which does the upscaling, while DVD players with DVI-D or HDMI output connectors use a digital-to-digital integrated circuit microchip which does the upscaling. Computer software DVD-Video players like PowerDVD and WinDVD also features upscaling of DVD-Video.

I am considering going with DVD upscaling for video playback until the format wars are over, someone has won or there is a good duel-format player available. DVD upscaling players are widely available and can be purchased at any electronics store as a stand-alone unit. Most DVD upscaling players use an HDMI cable for video output. I have seen these players in action and the picture quality looks very good.

My Xbox 360 can use an optional HD DVD player, at a price of about $179, that will not only play HD DVD disks, but will also upscale existing DVDs. The PlayStation 3 also touts the ability to upscale DVDs as well.

Good luck in your search for the ultimate DVD player and sci-fi movie experience!

If you’re like me, you probably have wide collection of Sci-Fi DVD movies that are sitting around and collecting dust. You may have watched them once and set them to the side. I even have some movies I purchased, intending to watch them, that are still sitting around in shrink wrap.

There are a few things you can do to give your movie an extended life. The first thing I recommend is to do some research on bloopers in the movie. I love to go to the IMDB and look up a movie and read through the “goofs” as they are called. This is a collection of continuity issues, bloopers and other inconsistencies. This can be fun after watching a movie, or when re-watching a movie that has been sitting around.

A good example of this would be Star Wars. That movie, although a favorite, is filled with continuity issues, errors and bloopers. This is to be expected as many movies are filmed out of sequence and editing often causes a lot of these bloopers to make it to the final cut. There are even people hired to watch for continuity issues, but some errors still seem to make it through.

Just look up Star Wars on the IMDB. Under “Fun Stuff” they have a link called goofs. You can find Star Wars ANH goofs here. I have yet to find a movie that doesn’t have goofs and continuity issues. Look up Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn. Its has goofs as well. Although this may take away some of the “magic” of the movie, I find it fun to print out a list of goofs and re-watch the movie.

The second thing I recommend doing is looking for “Easter Eggs.” Easter eggs are bloopers, trivia and other tidbits thrown into a movie on purpose. Sometimes Easter Eggs are simply bonus features on a DVD that are not obvious to the viewer. An example of this would be the Star Wars DVDs releases a few years ago. To access the bloopers reel, you have to go through a few steps. The steps are as follows:

Put the bonus disk from the original trilogy into your DVD player and highlight “Video Games and Stills Galleries.”

Using your DVD remote, type the following numbers followed by the “enter” button:

11 (enter)
3 (enter)
8 (enter)

This will then take you to a bloopers reel with about 4 minutes of bloopers from Star Wars ANH, ESB and ROTJ. Please note that the remote control numbers are 1138. This is a number seen throughout the Star Wars movies and is the name of George Lucas’s film THX 1138. A similar Easter Egg can be found on Star Wars TPM, AOTC and ROTS.

There are several places you can go to find Easter Eggs for your movies. I recommend going to DVDEasterEggs.com or EEggs.com. There are many sites and forums out there discussing DVD Easter Eggs.

Have fun re-watching your sci-fi movies!

I was recently asked what the scariest movie of all time is. There are a lot of good movies out there that would probably belong in the “Scariest Move of All Time” category. I was just reading a “Time” magazine article about the top 25 horror movies of all time. Guess what they put at number 20!?! They have Bambi listed at number 20!

Although I may not agree with their list, I did like their choice for number one horror movie. They have Shaun of the Dead at number one. That is a great movie! They also had a couple of sci-fi movies in their top 25 movies of all time.

Horror movies often have a crossover between horror and sci-fi. Many sci-fi movies have aliens and villains who fall into the “horror” category. One movie they have listed at number six “The Fly” doesn’t really seem like a sci-fi to me, although it does include many scientific elements in it, it ultimately takes place in the present and aims to scare more than anything.

I know taking place in the future doesn’t constitute a sci-fi movie, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. There are several exceptions to the “future” rule for sci-fi movies. Look at the “Terminator” movies. They have several future elements in place, but ultimately it takes place in the present. Technically they take place in the past. Predator is another movie that takes place in the present, but definitely falls under the sci-fi category in my book.

Time Magazine has “Alien” in the number seven position. It certainly warrants a position in the top 25 of all time. That is definitely a sci-fi movie, and one of the best ones out there. The sequel Aliens was just as good if not better. Alien 3 was “so-so.” Alien Resurrection makes up some ground from number 3, but still isn’t as good as the first two.

There are many good sci-fi horror movies out there, so I won’t even try to label any one as the “best” of all time, but I do have a recommendation this Halloween season. One good sci-fi you may want to consider right now, if you are looking for a good scary movie, would be “Event Horizon.” That movie is not only fun to watch, but also has a fun horror them to it.

No matter what movie you ultimately decide to watch this Halloween season, make sure it is a sci-fi movie!

I don’t know how many of you sci-fi gurus out there are fans of Futurama, but I love it! I own all four seasons and have loved it since the beginning. Who else could make the future look so fun!

I was browsing around the net today and discovered that there is a new Futurama movie coming out! It is going to be available on November 27, 2007. I am pre-ordering myself a copy right now!

I also came across a trailer for the new movie and it looks pretty sweet. I can’t wait for some new one-liners from Bender! He and fry are my two favorites on the show.

I think it looks pretty funny! I’ll be sure and write a review on it as soon as I get it. Let me know what you think.

You can get your own copy of the movie at Amazon: Futurama – Bender’s Big Score