And at 26, he is the youngest actor ever to play the Doctor. Yesterday the BBC named Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor Who. Andrew Pettie of the Telegraph has some ideas about why this is a good move for the Beeb, and while the reactions at places like SciFi Heaven range the gamut, I find this promising. The actor has played in the Phillip Pullman screen renderings of The Shadow in The North and The Ruby in the Smoke, as well as showing up in an episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl; all with Who veteran Billie Piper. He has also worked with Moffatt on a few previous projects, so the new season should be fairly interesting.
The other day I mention the tune on SciFi Songs called Grasping for the Wind (The Linkup Meme Song), a song filled with SF review blog names. What I didn’t know at the time (for someone who lives in the future I can be awfully slow about some things) was that this was the name of the blog built by John Ottinger that put together the entire project. The list is getting huge, and continues to grow. To help you with sorting through it, the Crotchety Old Fan Reviews the Review Blogs, complete with links to each conveniently placed next to its review. I knew there was a reason I liked the internet, and thanks to Sheila at Wands and Worlds for making me aware of what I was missing. As Holly said in Red Dwarf (Queeg, episode 5 of season 2) “I may be slow, but I get there in the end”. BTW, did you know the Red Dwarf team was putting together some new specials?
The two deep voices of ’70s and ’80s SciFi in the UK, Tom Baker and Brian Blessed, are together at last. OK, it’s only for a cell-phone add series, not new audio Doctor Who adventures, but it is still fun. I even got a chuckle out of the fact they called him Tom Jones on the download page. Thanks to io9 for pointing that story out. There is also a new tune at SciFi Songs: Grasping for the Wind (The Linkup Meme Song), which names some of the best SF blogs online. If you haven’t been there before, be sure to check out the previous 13 songs as well.
In England, a SciFi fan sparked a bomb scare when police responded to a report of a man with a crossbow. When they got to the fans house they called in the bomb squad, afraid that the things they didn’t recognize might go boom. There is a new Watchmen trailer on Myspace. It gives a bit of the story for those who haven’t read the book, and looks really good. But that may be all the Watchmen we get for a while, as Fox fights to delay its release, once again proving Fox hates science fiction.
Movies this time instead of TV; John Scalzi has a nice double list of 2009 movies; the double part is one list of movies he is looking forward to, one he isn’t. IO9 has an interesting new-years post, which they call the greatest and wrongest spoilers of 2008. You have to appreciate someone willing to tell tales on themselves like that.
Happy new year! John Scalzi is hoping for some original SciFi movies for the new year, but right now the pickings look slim. There are some TV series returning in 2009, including Battlestar Galactica, The Eleventh Hour, Fringe, Lost, and Burn Notice. I am a bit surprised that Fox hasn’t killed Fringe yet, and keep hoping that Dollhouse actually makes it to the air.