Category: News

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode,The Snowmen.

Surpassed only by the Daleks, the Cybermen are the Doctor’s greatest foes.  So like the former, it was only a matter of time before we would see…

RISE OF THE CYBERMEN / THE AGE OF STEEL by Tom MacRae Directed by Graeme Harper“If you want to know what’s going on…work in the kitchen.”The TARDIS falls out of the time vortex and crashes…in London.  Well, no, not quite, it’s a parallel Earth, one where Zeppelins are an established mode of transportation, and Rose’s dad Pete is not only alive, but one of the most successful businessmen in England.  The Doctor cautions her that this Pete is not her father – there may be another Jackie or even a parallel Rose in this world.  He’s partly right – Pete and Jackie are married, and fighting, but there’s no Rose Tyler.  With the TARDIS recharging, the trio does a bit of investigating.  Pete Tyler has sold his company to John Lumic, owner of Cybus Industries, who make the earbuds that literally everyone wears, a replacement for the smartphone.  Intrigued at anyone with that much influence, The Doctor gives in to Rose’s wishes, and they plan to visit Pete.  Mickey, on the other hand, visits the home of his grandmother, who on their world, raised him but died five years ago, only to learn that here, she’s still alive.  The Mickey, or rather the Rickey of this universe, however, is a freedom fighter against Lumic’s Cybus corporation, which has become so a part of society it makes Apple look like Onkyo.  Lumic has a new process for preserving the human brain and “upgrading” human beings. when the UK President refuses to allow the procedure to be tested, Lumic takes the law into his own hands.  He lures a number of forgotten men into a truck and uses them to create his new humans – Cybermen.

A solid pair of episodes, bringing a classic foe back in a new way. These are not the Cybermen from our universe – they appeared on the planet Mondas, Earth’s twin that shot out of orbit eons ago.  This gives them a chance to re-introduce an old enemy without having to educate the new fans about their history.  Daleks are so endemic to British culture, there was no need to re-introduce them, they could just hit the ground running… or rolling.

As more and more Cybermen appearances have stacked up, there’s been some confusion as to whether we’re still seeing the Cybermen from “Pete’s World”, or the ones from ours. The “C” logo has disappeared from the chest, suggesting we may now be looking at native Cybermen. It’s hoped that Neil Gaiman’s upcoming episode, tentatively titles “Last of the Cybermen” will address this issue.

The episode was inspired by a Big Finish audio adventure, “Spare Parts” by Marc Platt.  While the final script was quite different from the original story, Davies made sure Platt was paid a fee and got a “Thanks to” credit in the episode.

Mickey’s departure is the first voluntary one for a Companion in the new series.  In the old days, willing departure for The Doctor’s friends was the rule – in the new series it’s the exception.  So far only Mickey and Martha Jones were the only ones to leave the TARDIS by their own choice, and in both cases they came back to help again.  Noel Clarke brought Mickey to new places in the episode, finally becoming his own man, both in how he handles himself, and being able to come to terms with his relationship with Rose.  Getting to play a dual role also showed off his breadth as an actor.  We got to see alternate Roses and Petes as well, but not both at the same time.

This story(and an upcoming one that addresses this world again) are a classic example of the TV Tropes about parallel universes, specifically that the alternate version of a main character doesn’t really count.  Rickey dies, but that’s okay, Mickey’s ready to take his place.  Even the Jackie of Pete’s World dies, which sucks for Pete, but since The Doctor has spent the whole episode reminding Rose (and the audience) that “She’s not your mother”, it’s no big deal, just good for a moment of pathos.  And they drive that home by making sure we see “our” Jackie at the end of the episode.  Pete’s the only one we really care about, because “Our” Pete’s already dead.  Besides, the other Jackie was a bitch.

They also do a good job of skewering a trope or two as well – note that when looking for the transmitter controls in the zeppelin bridge, Mickey says he doesn’t know what he’s looking for, and Jake annoyingly comments that maybe it’ll be in a big box with “transmitter control” in big red letters.  Later on, they find it… in a big box with “transmitter control” written on in big red letters.

There was a once-in-a-century storm that delayed the original premiere date. But Lilith will not be denied.

Join poet-violist (and ComicMix contributor) Alexandra Honigsberg, international artist composer-clarinetist Demetrius Spaneas, soprano Christina Rohm, and pianist-conductor James Siranovich at the premiere of Lilith: Mother of Dreams, a chamber opera of the iconic demon goddess. It’s debuting tonight at a historic haunted opera house, Flushing Town Hall.

The Lilith Project is conceived as a modern American suitcase opera, a chamber monodrama: intense, human, universal, compact in form and forces, accessible.

Before there was Eve, there was Lilith: Adam’s first lover, once human, made from the same dust, sensuality’s queen, bride of the Angel of Death, mother of opposing cosmic forces – strong, willful, unstoppable. She rules the storms of the skies and the heart – night owl, holy woman of power. From ancient tales of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, to Greece’s Lamiae and Daughters of Hecate, to Native American lore and Victorian Gothic Horror, Lilith looms large in the minds of men and women when the lights go out and they enter dream time. Some call her demon, vampire, child killer – others mother, lover, elder, friend. But whatever the appellations, she persists in the realms of our imaginations, from holy books and high literature to popular feminist concert series, TV shows, and Japanese anime. Child of Light? Daughter of Darkness? Both? Neither? You decide.

Composer Spaneas is a long-time professional, curator of Cornelia St. Café’s Serial Underground award-winning new music series’ 25th year, and Fullbright Specialist of the State Department’s musical diplomats. Librettist Honigsberg is a veteran violist, award-winning songwriter, long-time published poet, and this year’s winner of the Mayor’s Poetry Prize. Both Rohm and Siranovich have established opera careers all over the US and cities abroad.  Long-time colleagues in many configurations over the years, Lilith marks this creative team’s debut.

There will be a talk by the artists before the performance and then time for questions and answers, afterwards, and a reception to which all are invited. Come as you are, but gala premiere attire, period dress, and other unique finery is encouraged!

The production is fiscally sponsored by Composers Collaborative, Inc. $10 suggested donation/FTH members free, all welcome.

Some familiar names popped up on the Earth Station One Podcast this week.

The ESO crew goes on a journey we’ve been expecting for nine long years! Mike Faber and Michael Gordon, along with fellow ESO podcasters JD (The Delta Quadrant – A Star Trek Voyager Podcast) and Van Allen Plexico (The White Rocket Podcast) review the first chapter of The Hobbit trilogy. Plus, Bobby Nash is on hand to help author Jana Oliver face The Geek Seat. All this and the usual Rants, Raves, Khan Report, and Shout Outs!

You can listen to Earth Station One Episode 142 now at www.esopodcast.com.
Direct link: http://erthstationone.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/earth-station-one-episode-142-playing-riddles-in-the-dark-we-review-the-first-hobbit-film/

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Check out ESO’s new Amazon estore here.

New Pulp Publisher, Airship 27 Productions has unveiled their new website, the Airship 27 Hangar.

PRESS RELEASE:

NEW AIRSHIP 27 HANGAR

After months of hard work, Rob Davis, the Art Director has finished work on the new official Airship 27 Productions website. Titled the Airship 27 Hangar, the site features two all important links.

The first brings visitors to the PDF store where all Airship 27 pulp titles are available for $3 dollars as PDF downloads for their PCs or various e-readers.

The second brings readers to the Airship 27 Print-On-Demand shop at Indy Planet. Indy Planet is a division of Ka-Blam, one of the leading print-on-demand operations in the publishing world today.

“Now our fans can find all books with one click of their mouse button,” Airship 27 Managing Editor-in-Chief Ron Fortier announced. “These new internet shops have allowed us to drop the prices of our product while maintaining the high standard of quality our readers have come to expect from Airship 27 Productions. These steps insure our continued growth with dozens of great new titles now in the planning stages.”

“Expect our first title of 2012 to be released within the next week,” Fortier continued. “Both Rob and me are very, very excited about the future of Airship 27 Productions.”

http://robmdavis.com/Airship27Hangar/airship27hangar.html

After a couple of teaser photos, the BBC has released a shot of the new TARDIS interior, to premiere in the upcoming Christmas episode, The Snowmen.  Featuring a much more sleek design, it’s much  more like the old school sets, that, to quote Arthur Dent, “really looks like a spaceship”.  The TARDIS from the TV movie on has looked more like a bachelor’s apartment, with everything thrown in, and patched up with random bits of junk.  However, in a cut scene from The Doctor’s Wife, It’s explained that the TARDIS console is itself under the aegis of the chameleon circuit.  It’s not made of junk, it’s made out of very high-tech components that look like junk.

The basic design of the control has not changed much.  There’s still a railing around the perimeter, and what looks like a multi-level setup again.  The additional console to the rear is new, but not entirely so.  The Hartnell and Troughton control rooms had panels and console along the back and side walls, which eventually vanished as the control room grew more simple, and action was centered around the main console.

So why does it look all high-tech again?  I have what might be considered a Clever Theory.

If I may take a comment from <a href=”

target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Time Crash literally, this may be the TARDIS’ “default” desktop setting.  This is what an off-the-rack TARDIS looks like inside.

This is the TARDIS of a guy who doesn’t care anymore.

There’s the remotest of possibilities this may not be “the new set”, but just a temporary one, until The Doctor becomes more his old self again.  It looks a bit…simpler, certainly more sparse that the current one.  It may not be intended to be kept long-term.

New companion Jenna-Louise Coleman mentioned liking the new console in an interview with CNN, discussing “these new kind-of rolly balls” which is an out of context statement if you ever heard one, and even lets slip that she gets to fly the TARDIS at one point, tho it’s not made clear if this takes place in the Christmas episode, or further down the line.

Other surprises for the Christmas episode includes news that Ian McKellen will be voicing the titular baddie, although rumors and whispered spoilers suggest he may be voicing another character, one who may carry through as an antagonist through the second half of the season.  The…force behind the snowmen, if you will.

Pro Se Productions, a leading Publisher of New Pulp and Heroic Fiction, announces the release of a FREE online novella featuring a character that debuted from Pro Se in December 2011.

The Adventures of Nicholas Saint, created and written by Tommy Hancock, first appeared as a novella preview in Pro Se Presents #5 (December 2011).  This story takes the legend of Santa Claus and puts a decidedly Pulpy twist on the entire concept.   A long lived pioneer of many disciplines, most notably genetic science, Nicholas Saint protects the world from his outpost hidden on top of the globe.  Known as Santa Claus to generations- how this came about is as yet an untold story, but one Hancock insists will be shared-Saint uses that identity to not only spread charity once a year, but to defend the world from mad scientists, strange villains, eager despots and most notably, the most evil malevolence in the world, one that children all over the world know and adore.

“There are,” Hancock states, “many a riff on Santa and his elves, Mrs. Claus, and so on.   I’ve always wondered, though, what Santa would look like if he were Pulped up and, as much as possible with such a story, he and his were brought into a more realistic setting-as realistic as the world of Hero Pulps can get and still preserve the essence of the legend, anyway.  Everything that we know to be Santa-and even things that we have forgotten that relate to the legend-are built into Nicholas Saint.  The chance to play, also, with another legendary pantheon of sorts- the bad guys of the tale- is a hoot, too.  I think Pulp fans will find much they like within ‘The Adventures of Nicholas Saint’ and we at Pro Se are more than glad to share it with them.”

The debut novella finds Saint and his companions drawn to a small Ohio town, one that ten years earlier was the scene of tragedy and Saint’s greatest personal failure.  Now, seemingly with a second chance, Saint returns to put right what was made wrong before, only to learn that horror and evil he thought vanquished may likely be alive and well and thirsty for his blood.

At least 2,000 words of the novella will be posted at www.pulpmachine.blogspot.com from 12/18/12 through 12/31/12.   Early in 2013, the novella will be collected into a print volume with new material added and published by Pro Se Productions with a newly rendered cover by David L. Russell (A cover that will debut this week on www.pulpmachine.blogspot.com).  As new chapters are posted, the previous chapters will be posted on the NICHOLAS SAINT page at www.pulpmachine.blogspot.com so it can be read from beginning to end as it is posted!

Featuring the cover of Pro Se Presents #5 designed and created by Sean E. Ali, Pro Se Productions gives you- THE ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS SAINT at www.pulpmachine.blogspot.com!

Logo Designed by Perry Constantine

Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.

Kung-Fu Monks, a werewolf, and Queen Victoria.  Rest assured that when someone threatens his friends, The Doctor will fight them…

TOOTH AND CLAW by Russell T Davies Directed by Euros Lyn

“Am I being rude again?”

Aiming for 1979 and an Ian Dury concert, The Doctor lands in 1879, and in Scotland.  The TARDIS lands in the course of Queen Victoria, who is on the way to have the Koh-I-Noor, the prize diamond of the crown jewels, recut.  Quickly presenting his psychic paper, he and Rose join the party as it stops off at Torchwood House, home of Sir Robert MacLeish and his family.  What the royal coterie don’t know is that the house has been taken over by a band of monks who are in possession of a honest to Harry werewolf.  They plan to have the beast bite the Queen, infect her, and through her, take over the nation, and the Empire.  Sir Robert is forced to cooperate as the monks have taken his wife and most of the female house staff hostage, and if he disobeys they will be slaughtered,

It’s revealed that Prince Albert and Sir Robert’s father were friends for years, and shared an affinity for both science and folktales.  Sir Robert’s father had designed what appears to be a massive telescope, but The Doctor quickly notices it’s oddly designed – too many mirrors and prisms.  As the evening proceeds, Sir Robert desperately tries to clue the party to the danger, and over dinner, as he tells the tale of the werewolf that’s been haunting the moors for almost 300 years does the Doctor make the connection.  As the full moon rises overhead, the werewolf begins his transformation, and the monks, posing as the staff, overpower the soldiers.

It turns out that the house has been prepared for this assault.  The library has been warded with the oil of the mistletoe plant, which the werewolf cannot bear to touch.  And the telescope is just the opposite – it’s a light cannon, powered by moonlight, and the Koh-I-Noor is the focusing device.  So with the help of the planning of Prince Albert and Sir Robert’s father, the monster is defeated.  Queen Victoria is happy to have been saved, but is horrified at The Doctor and the life he leads. She banishes The Doctor from England, and founds the Torchwood Institute to study the stars and defend the Empire from its threats… including The Doctor.

As opposed to last season where the arc plot was barely mentioned, just nearly subliminal mentions of the “Bad Wolf” phrase, this season the concept is in plain sight. Torchwood was mentioned as a plot point in The Christmas Invasion, and now we see its inception.  Not a bad start for a word that was nothing more than an anagram to disguise the tapes going back to the BBC.

Of COURSE when The Doctor has to pick a Scottish name, he’s going to pick Jamie McCrimmon. Jamie was a Companion during the Troughton years, and came back for both the twentieth anniversary adventure, and the Colin Baker adventure The Two Doctors.  The other half of the joke is not as obvious to American viewers – “Balamory” is a BBC children’s show set in the titular town, on an island off the coast of Scotland.  And of course, David Tennant is Scots, so we actually hear his proper accent in this episode when The Doctor is “affecting” one.

This is the second time that a diamond was used as the focus of a light weapon, as opposed to a more scientifically accurate ruby.  The Horror of Fang Rock featured a cruse laser cannon made from a lighthouse and a diamond by the fourth Doctor.

That mad crazy Crouching Tiger stunt near the beginning of the episode took a full day to film.  Quite an extravagance for a TV show, but well worth it for the moment.

If you didn’t make it to a theater this weekend to see The Hobbit, you haven’t yet seen the full-length trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness, so let’s take a look now…

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction. As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

Star Trek: Into Darkness brings back Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, and Bruce Greenwood, and adds Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Weller to the cast. It’s written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Damon Lindelof, and directed by J.J. Abrams. The film is scheduled to hit theaters May 17, 2013.

And here’s a quick pic from the film of Quinto, Cumberbatch, and Pine…