Laura Vandervoort in Riverworld

After working on the remake of "V" Laura Vandervoort, my favourite Supergirl, will be appearing in another SF remake.

Sci Fi has found lead actors for "Riverworld" and "The Phantom," its upcoming movie events that will serve as trials for possible new series.

"Battlestar Galactica" veteran Tahmoh Penikett and "Smallville" supergirl Laura Vandervoort will star in "Riverworld," and Ryan Carnes ("Desperate Housewives") has been cast as the Phantom.

Penikett is best known for playing Helo on "Battlestar." In "Riverworld," he will play war correspondent Matt Ellman, who is killed along with his fiancee (Vandervoort) but awakens in a mysterious world populated by everyone who has lived on Earth.

Source:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i701e5f503331aba04a5ed840f1b14291


I assume that the new Riverworld will be based on the series of novels by Philip Jose Farmer which have the same plot.

I believe there was another Riverworld pilot made a few years ago but it never followed up by a series.

Emma, Persuasion and Our Mutual Friend Penguin TV Tie-ins

I made a few nice finds in a second hand bookshop today. Over the last couple of year's I've been catching up on all the period drama's that I didn't watch when they came out in the 1990s. Usually Penguin books put out a TV tie-in edition and today I found three more for my collection.

First of all here's the 1996 edition of Jane Austen's Emma to tie-in with the version made by ITV. Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong are shown prominently on the cover. The cover also mentions a "making of" book is available. What is nice about this edition is that it contains eight pages of colour cast photos in the middle. No, I'm not scanning them as I don't want to ruin the spine. The cover price was £3.99.



Not far away from that book I spotted a copy of Jane Austen's Persuasion featuring photos of Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds from the 1995 BBC adaptation on the cover. I was prompted to get this version of Persuasion on DVD in 2007 after seeing the excellent Sally Hawkins version. This book does not have photos of the cast inside but was originally on sale for the amazing price of £1.99!

Finally here is the 1998 tie-in edition of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. This book has photos of Anna Friel and Keeley Hawes on the cover. This one also has eight pages of cast photos inside and was on sale for £3.99. Not bad value for 900 pages. I've not seen this adaptation yet but I will be hunting it out on DVD. Unfortunately the spine of this book appears a little sun-faded.

I don't know if anyone else is interested in these sort of books but I thought I'd stick the photos up here for other like-minded people!

Terminator: TSSC Episode 2.18

In this week's episode the death of Riley has repercussions and we see the return of Cromartie, Ellison and Weaver.

"Kendra" is visibly injured after her fight with Riley so she goes to a bar and picks a fight to explain her wounds.

Sarah is packing her stuff for a move while chatting to a neighbour. The neighbour just happens to mention that her boyfriend the cop had to deal with a murder and goes on to describe Riley's distinguishing marks just so Sarah can find out Riley was killed.

Sarah goes to tell John. Finding John with Cameron Sarah tells the machine to leave the room. Cameron steps outside and sees a bid fly away. Summer Glau then gets the funniest line of the episode: "Goodbye bird. There was a 51% chance I wouldn't have killed you."

Sara believes that Cameron killed Riley. John wants to believe she didn't. When Derek gets the news he tells "Kendra". She replies that maybe some "good" can come of it and John will destroy Cameron. Derek is not impressed with her attitude, but he probably agrees.

Sarah discovers Cameron's stash of spare parts and burns them.

Later John goes to look at Riley's body. He sees her wounds and appears to work out that Cameron could not be responsible.

Elsewhere Weaver's little girl wants to play hide-and-seek. Cromartie lures her to his basement room and offers to play. She goes missing. Later Ellison and Weaver have to play a guessing game to find her. Weaver is impressed with what "John Henry" is learning. Ellison is not. After they find the girl in a helicopter on the roof he gives Cromartie a good talking to about placing the girl in danger.

A series of "flashbacks" to 2027 show a mission on the submarine that "Kendra" once mentioned. The "metal" captain uses unorthodox methods to escape attack from a Skynet machine called a Kraken. "Kendra" then realises that they are 300 miles off course.

The captain (called Queeg after the captain in The Caine Mutiny) says he is on a secret mission for John Connor. They are to pick up a package. Eventually they get the package from some other terminators. It is a mysterious metal box. What can be in it?

The episode ends with a "to be continued", but in the "next time" preview we can see a liquid metal T-1000 come out of the mysterious box and attack the crew of the sub. So was it a secret mission for John Connor, or was it a trick by the terminators?

Another good episode, although this one does feel like build-up.

Terminator: TSSC Episode 2.17

Episode 17 already? There can't be many left!

OK, we are back on track with this episode after the oddness of going down the rabbit hole in the "memorial" episode and the "sleep clinic" interlude. This is a strong episode that relies on some character-driven suspense.

The episode opens with Cameron finding a bird in the living room. "What am I going to do with you?" she wonders. She takes the bird outside but her hand malfunctions and crushes it.

Cameron and John work on her arm using spare parts from other endoskeletons.

Sarah wants to get to the bottom of the Riley suicide attempt and visits the foster dad. He mentions her ranting about the world burning and bleached skulls. He suggests that Sarah's gang are not a good influence on Riley. He also mentions talking to a 'guidance counselor'. I bet that was 'Kendra', I thought.

It was indeed. Sarah meets the fake guidance counselor and discusses the Riley situation. 'Kendra' insinuates that uncle Derek was doing bad things in order to get him to leave Sarah's gang.

Back at the house Sarah and John are confronting Riley when a real child services person turns up. Riley goes to hide in the garage. While John displays knowledge of gun permits Cameron enters the garage. "What am I going to do with you?" she wonders. =gulp= "You're John's sister," pleads a worried Riley. We all know better. John enters and gets Riley out before Cameron does anything nasty.

John asks if there is anything Riley wants to tell him because today is the day. She asks him the same thing. They both say no and they part.

Riley goes back to 'Kendra'. She accuses 'Kendra' of wanting her to be killed by Cameron. Eventually they fight. And what a fight scene! Riley gets the upper hand before 'Kendra' shoots her. Riley dies.

You know, I didn't like Riley much to start with but by the end she became one of the most interesting characters. It was never going to end well for her, poor thing!

Cameron tells John that she will eventually malfunction and become unreliable and she gives him a self destruct device to blow up her chip when the time comes. Summer Glau does a good job showing Cameron's increasing erratic nature.

All in all a strong episode with good character moments.

Small Island to wrap in NI

Here's a Small Island production update:

Filming will wrap this week on ‘Small Island’, a new 2 x 90-minute drama produced by Ruby Films for the BBC which has been shooting in Northern Ireland since mid February. The production will move to Jamaica at the end of this week.

Source: http://www.iftn.ie/?act1=record&only=1&aid=73&rid=4281980&tpl=archnews

Sadly Ruth never took me up on my offer to buy her a coffee!

The Rise of the Iron Moon by Stephen Hunt

I've just finished reading The Rise of the Iron Moon, the third in a sequence of novels by Stephen Hunt. Last year I read the previous book, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, and enjoyed it very much.

As before the novel is set in the alternate/far-future steampunk world of the Kingdom of Jackals. Steamman Coppertracks informs a gathering of distinguished scientists that he believes there is life on the red planet of Kaliban but is laughed off stage.

Later it turns out that he was quite right. A comet (the "Iron Moon" of the title) changes course and returns to earth and is used as a base for an invasion. An nearly invincible Army of Shadows attacks and quickly destroys the armed forces in the countries neighbouring Jackals. It's clearly The War of the Worlds time.

Fear not, for the Kingdom of Jackals has the finest fleet of airships in the world. Unfortunately the Army of Shadows makes quick work of the Royal Aerostatical Navy as well.

It's up to Molly Templar, Commodore Black and Coppertracks to come to the rescue, riding a spaceship fired from a cannon to Kaliban where they will get a weapon that can destroy the invading forces....

I enjoyed the book, but I have to admit not as much as Kingdom. Iron Moon seems a little less polished, a little more rushed. In particular the narrative jumps in various places. Just as we are getting to an exciting escape or battle the scene switches to later on and the action is dealt with in a few sentences. Perhaps Kingdom was just too damn good!

Having said that Iron Moon is crammed full of ideas, almost too many for one book. The true identity of the Masters of the Army of Shadows is quite clever. And the author does not hold back from practically wiping whole armies, countries and populations off the map.

Despite my misgivings with this instalment Stephen Hunt is writing some of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time. I look forward to volume four and in the meantime I still have The Court of the Air to read.

Note to publisher, don't dare change the wonderful retro cover designs for these books!

V is for Vandervoort

An interesting little piece of news landed in my inbox this morning. According to http://www.visitorsite.net/ there is to be a new version of 1980s sci-fi series "V". That got me excited to start with, but then I read that Laura Vandervoort is to appear in it.

Now for those of you who don't know Laura played Superman's cousin Kara (aka Supergirl) in season 7 of Smallville. I have to admit that the Nordic blond look is just not my type at all (as you will know from posts about my favourite actresses) yet somehow I got totally captivated by her.

If an episode had no significant Laura/Kara presence I would feal a lingering disappointment for the rest of the evening. Sadly the creators of the show dropped her as a regular character after season 7, although she did make a return guest appearance for one episode in season 8.

I still maintain that a spin-off show about Kara would work. Market research please take note! Just make sure that Laura returns...

Where was I...

Oh, yes, "V". So now I am well pleased with the news of her appearing in "V". As yet I don't know yet if it is a remake or a "next generation" deal. Watch this space.

The old show started off as a mini-series examining if a fascist state could arise in modern-day America, only through the allegorical conceit of lizard people who wanted to steal our water and eat us.

A second mini-series was more action orientated and dispensed with a lot of the gravitas of the original, although it did give us Michael Ironside as mercenary Ham Tyler.

Then a weekly series started. Frankly it wasn't as good, but in the 1980s I didn't care. It had Jane Badler as Visitor lizard lady Diana on my TV. Every week. I had a lot of time for Jane Badler

Maybe she'll come back as a guest lizard...