According to Wales Online, there will be a Torchwood Experience Exhibition opening in July in Cardiff Bay. It is being built by the same folks who created the Doctor Who Exhibitions, the team from Experience. The Cardiff Council is currently reviewing the application for the exhibition, but Who are they fooling; the Torchwood Exhibition would bring serious additional revenue to their city, and in this economic environment that should be a done deal.
Paul did not join the cast of anything, since the movie itself is Paul. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are the main characters, uber-geeks who stop off at area 51 after a visit to Comic-con. When they get to Area 51, they meet Paul, the alien voiced by Seth Rogen, who asks for their help escaping from the government. There are several other great actors on this project, including the just announced Sigourney Weaver. Chicago has seven cons still to go this year, 3 this month alone. This weekend is Torchsong, the Who/Torchwood convention headlined by John Barrowman. Next week is Duckon 18, and finishing the month is ZombieCon. You can see the full list at the Chicago Tribune gallery site, one con per picture. Finally, Borders has started its own SciFi blog, called Bable Clash; it will be interesting to see how it evolves.
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.
I mentioned yesterday that David Tennant will be appearing in several Sarah Jane Chronicles episodes in season 3. What I forgot to mention was they will be airing on BBC America, and that besides the Torchwood episodes coming in July they are bringing the Doctor in-house as well, and will start running the 2009 Who Specials in July according to SF Universe. You can also watch the new Torchwood trailer on BBC America. SFX has posted their new list of Fifty of our favourite SF t-shirts including such gems as Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! (with rubber dinosaurs), Upgrade or be Deleted (with soviet-era Cybermen), and It came out of nowhere (with a time-traveling DeLorian crumpled up against the Tardis). The dangerous part is all 50 shirts have links to the sites where you can buy them. The fun part is this is a listing of the second 50; the top 50 were published in the magazine this month.
According to this BBC announcement, there is more in store for David Tennant’s run as the Doctor. Besides the remaining specials we already knew about, he is signed up for a major part in two episodes of season three of the Sarah Jane Adventures. The new season of SJA starts in September in the UK and will run for 12 episodes. I addition, David has signed on for a series of short animated Who episodes which will also feature the voices of Georgia Moffett, David Warner and Lisa Bowerman. And while he was not directly mentioned, the BBC has confirmed that a movie script is in development for a theatrical Doctor Who treatment. I can’t wait to see it on the big screen! On the small screen, new this week is Mamoru Oshii’s The Sky Crawlers, based on the book series by Mori Hiroshi. Oshii used the same 3D CG animation team involved with his Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence production. Besides the Ghost in the Shell series of movies and TV shows, previous creations of Mamoru Oshii include Urusei Yatsura, Blood: The Last Vampire, Patlabor, and a whole lot more.
At least for this competition, but I have to agree with the majority of results. The poll was put together at Total SciFi, and coming in at number one was the Doctor Who Theme, by Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire. By the first note, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind what the show is; how many theme songs have that power? In second place was the Red Dwarf theme (and did you check out the Terry Pratchett interview about this months Red Dwarf special?), with The X-Files in third. Hot on its heels came Buffy the Vampire Slayer in fourth place, and Star Trek TOS came in at 5. The rest include the 7) Twilight Zone, 8) Battlestar Galactica, 9) Quantum Leap, and 10) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I have no clue how Thunderbirds ended up on the list. Here are a few variations on a theme…