Red Dwarf ran its new special 3-episode series, Back to Earth, and it became available on DVD at the start of this week… in the UK. It was supposed to be a world-wide release according to a posting before the original air date (since modified), but Amazon doesn’t know that quite yet. But that’s OK, because there is more good news! At the Better Than Life Con last weekend in Bedford, Cat, Kochanski, and Kryten all confirmed that the ratings for Dave TV (renamed Lister TV for the event) blew the doors off of the BBC ratings for the same time slot. As a result, an entirely new 6 episode season of Red Dwarf is in negotiations. Anything that gets us new Red Dwarf is a good thing!
There is a sneak peek available for Stargate Universe, which looks just like they have been watching a LOT of the new Battlestar Galactica. If you missed the full extended Torchwood trailer for Children of Earth, here it is thanks to a heads-up from Cat at Fancy Fembot. Be sure to check out (or better yet, join in) her podcast at Sci-Fi Party Line; watch your favorite TV show, then call in to talk about it.
AMC has remade that 60s cult classic The Prisoner. It will start airing in the US in November, and you can get more information here.
Thanks to this Underwire article we finally have the dates for this years Torchwood: Children of Earth run, as well as the airing of the first Doctor Who special: July 20th. That is the day BBC America goes HD, and they are going to max out the Sci-Fi to celebrate. Torchwood runs Monday through Friday of that week, airing each episode just a few hours after it shows for the first time in the UK. Then on Saturday the 25th they will show the season 3 finale of Primeval, followed by the series premier of Being Human. They finish up their first week as a Hi-Def channel on Sunday with the Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead special. I just may have to rewire my TV to use the HD input for this one. IO9 are running a SciFi Sims Contest which looks like fun but seems just a bit recursive to me. Create your best science fiction still image, scene, or movie using the Sims software environment and submit them by June 9th. The winner gets a copy of The Sims 3 package and $250 online cash equivalent.
The latest issue of Sky and Telescope hit the stands a few days ago, with all the usual goodies and one not so usual. The cover article is called Uncovering Mars’s Secret Past, and to go with it they include a nifty little DVD with over 500 images and videos from the Mars Rovers cameras. You can also buy the Mars DVD separately, but for fifty cents more you get the July volume of the magazine along with the free DVD. The disk was put together by Dr Jim Bell, Lead Scientist for the Mars Rover’s panoramic cameras. NASA is building its own cloud environment, called Nebulous (I can’t prove it, but I suspect pun intended). This is for outreach and education, amongst other things, and is compatible with the Amazon web services platform.
The folks at Couch Potato TV run a report each week called Sci-Fi Saturday, and this weeks report goes into detail on a number of new shows coming out this fall. For keeping track of existing shows to see who is and is not getting renewed, EW has the Fall TV Cheat Sheet, while IGN is running the Endangered Series List.