dimfuture.net

Following the apparent success of Torchwood (which I’ve yet to see, despite it just having premiered on BBC America), the Doctor Who franchise ventures into more spin-off territory with The Sarah Jane Adventures — a series not about a plucky girl detective tracking down jewel thieves in her cozy little hometown, despite how the title makes it sound.

From scifinews.net:

The new series The Sarah Jane Adventures sees the return of some familiar alien enemies from Doctor Who as the Slitheen are back and out for revenge.

Coming to CBBC on BBC One and CBBC at the end of September 2007, The Sarah Jane Adventures stars one of Doctor Who’s most famous former companions — investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith.

The series is from the same people behind Doctor Who including multi-award winning writer Russell T Davies.

Russell T. Davies’s stint on the first season of Doctor Who was by far my favorite of the new series (he wrote Dalek, my new number one Doctor Who episode ever), so I’m excited to see this… or will be when The Sarah Jane Adventures comes to BBC America, probably sometime in 2010. Sigh.

Here we go with another Thursday news roundup, bringing you yesterday’s news tomorrow! It’s like Early Edition, except Gary’s always too late to save the little girl from getting hit by that freight train, or what have you. I don’t know, I never watched it.

First of all, if you have even the slightest enthusiasm for Babylon 5, feast your eyes on the trailer for the new Babylon 5 Lost Tales DVD. It features an ominous voice-over, some spectacular space battle footage, techno-mage Galen looking mysterious (and, as usual, slightly smug), and Tracy Scoggins bearing a more than passing resemblance to Brian Dennehy. Hopefully the writers have chosen to refrain from cramming her into neon pink Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie (as they did in the deeply unfortunate River of Souls), lest our very souls be blasted into oblivion and forfeit to Yibb-Tstll. Well, anyway. The DVD comes out July 31.

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A few choice bits from around the Internets.

The DVD Babylon 5: Lost Tales is now available for pre-order at Amazon, which fills me with a mixture of anticipation and dread so heady it can barely be described. On one hand, more Babylon 5! On the other hand, the last thing we saw from Babylon 5 was Legend of the Rangers, an incredibly unfortunate outing that nearly made me hate the franchise retroactively. Despite the alarming presence of Tracy Scoggins, I remain stalwartly optimistic about this. The plot, according to questionable Internet palimpsest Wikipedia, goes thus:

Voices in the Dark will be set in 2272. It will feature two linked plotlines viewed separately one after the other but covering the same 72-hour timespan: the first follows ISA President John Sheridan on his way to B5 for a celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the formation of the Interstellar Alliance. During the journey he unexpectedly picks up the Centauri Prince Regent Vintari (third in line to the Centauri Imperial throne) on the edge of Centauri space, and receives a warning from Galen the techno-mage about coming events. The second will feature Colonel (formerly Captain during the series’ run) Lochley on B5 awaiting Sheridan’s arrival, who summons a priest from Earth space to help deal with a mysterious, seemingly supernatural problem.

Yeah, okay. Still encouraged. At least the movie isn’t about Tracy Scoggins… I mean, Captain… I mean Colonel Lochley. Man, it’s not even out yet and I already can’t keep up. If successful, Lost Tales will continue with a second installment, which will feature Michael Garibaldi… now that, I really can’t wait for. Anyway, the DVD comes out on July 31.

Also in the news: Luke Goss, best known as swaggering villain Nomak in the marvelous Blade II, will be appearing in another Del Toro offering, namely Hellboy II:

Luke Goss is rejoining director Guillermo del Toro for Universal Pictures’ Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The movie reunites the first movie’s principals—Ron Perlman as Hellboy, Selma Blair as Liz Sherman and both David Hyde Pierce and Doug Jones as Abe Sapien—for a supernatural action-adventure that sees the world of myth rebelling against humanity, the trade paper reported.

Goss will play Prince Nuada, a ruthless leader who treads the world above and the one below, defying his bloodline to awaken an unstoppable army of creatures. Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola wrote the script. Filming is scheduled to begin in June in Budapest for an Aug. 1, 2008, release.

Goss previously worked with del Toro on Blade II, in which he played the villainous vampire Nomak.

I can only hope that Goss will play some sort of swaggering badass. He swaggers so very, very well. It would be a shame to waste his swaggery talent.

Finally, also according to Sci Fi Wire, Frank Miller’s sci-fi epic Ronin may be coming to the big screen. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve literally been waiting twenty years to see this. I read Ronin just out of high school, and waited breathlessly for the day when it would be made into a movie. I even had a very histrionic false start when someone had told me that there was a movie coming out named Ronin, and that it starred Robert De Niro. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I found out it was just a John Frankenheimer movie about gunning down ice skaters.

Also, look for a new Twelve Days of Dimfuture later today if all goes well!

After a hiatus of a few months, I’ve decided to start dabbling in posting movie news again. I had something of an identity crisis about this a while back, figuring that anyone who wanted sci-fi news could just get it elsewhere. But then I realized that I rather enjoyed posting sci-fi news — so I’m back at it. So here we go!

Sci Fi Wire reports that Flash Gordon is returning to serial television — Smallville-style, apparently.

Eric Johnson (Smallville) has landed the title role in SCI FI Channel’s upcoming original series Flash Gordon, the network announced. The 22-hour series updates the comic-strip franchise and is slated for an August premiere. Johnson will play space-traveling adventurer Gordon, who is joined by companions Dale Arden and Dr. Hans Zarkov. Ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, they find themselves as Earth’s last line of defense against the forces of the merciless dictator Ming.

Peter Hume wrote the first two episodes, which will be directed by Rick Rosenthal (Smallville). Production is to begin May 1 in Vancouver, Canada.

Flash is being produced by Reunion Pictures under an agreement with King Features Syndicate, which owns the franchise. RHI Entertainment’s Robert Halmi Sr. and Robert Halmi Jr. (SCI FI ’s Legend of Earthsea) are executive-producing, with Hume also expected to executive-produce. Matthew O’Connor and Tom Rowe produce.

I’m a big fan of Flash Gordon, but have yet to see a manifestation of Flash in television or movies that wasn’t more or less unbearable. I even rented the animated series with the intention of writing about it — and found I couldn’t. Revisiting such a beloved childhood favorite was simply too exquisitely painful. I’ll be interested to see what Sci-Fi does with the material, although mentioning it and Smallville in the same sentence gives me the horrors.