Yes, next Saturday night we have a new Doctor Who episode, Asylum of the Daleks, on both BBC UK and BBC America. This episode kicks off season 7 of the New Who series, and continues into next year, leading us to the 50th Anniversary Special. The BBC America trailer covers the season, the BBC UK trailer covers the episode, and I will be there to watch it! I am not one of the very limited number of people at the special screening of the episode in New York City tonight, but I don’t feel bad, because neither is Steven Moffat, and it is his show.
The Mars Descent Imager camera, MARDI for short, took a bunch of 1600X1200 pixel resolution pictures during the decent and landing. As usual with things that happen so far away, the bandwidth of the uplink back to Earth was the choke point on our retrieving the sequence, but now we have it. The original capture rate was 5 images per second, but this playback is at 15 frames/second, so it takes noticeably less than the original 7 minutes of terror (watch second video for that one) to play the video back. Use the link to watch the video on YouTube if you want to see it in full 1080P resolution. Thanks to Peta Pixel for the heads up on this one.
Not the original Terry Nation production that ran on the BBC for four seasons beginning in 1978, but according to the Hollywood Reporter, a brand new production made for the Syfy Channel for the US market. You can find a more extensive article about the project at The Guardian, although the facts available remain the same except for the item they consider the director worth mentioning for (the TV show Heroes in the US, the movie Goldeneye in the UK). As depressing as the plotline often was, I enjoyed the original Blake’s 7, and look forward to seeing if it gets the same quality of reboot as Syfy gave Battlestar Galactica.
We are rapidly approaching the 50th anniversary, and everyone is gearing up for it. These trailers really set the tone for the New Who 7th Season, which will lead us up to the celebration. The first by recapping the New Doctor so far, while the second pulls from every Doctor back to the beginning. I just have this to say to Last Whovian: amazing job, and keep up the good work!
2NE1 is my current favorite South Korean band, and even though they keep hitting the top of the charts there is nothing even a little Top40 about them. Their latest song, I Love You, is a lot mellower than their earlier work, so I hope you can appreciate this total change of pace, and their song Lonely is also quite laid back. Just to give you a feel for their range, a few of those tunes; enjoy!
I have been reading about Robot And Frank making the rounds of the Film Fests for a while now, and am excited that it is finally coming to some regular theaters finally! I say some because it is still only in limited release, but at least it is available.