To make up for yesterday's awful, awful Life On Mars US trailer, here's one for Joss Whedon's new show - action, weirdness, moral questions and Eliza Dushku being hot - much better!

Via IO9, this perfect illustration of why some things just should not be remade. Don't click if allergic to cheese...

Many moons ago, my bro Dave Devereux and I were involved in writing a Star Fleet security manual for a Star Trek fanclub.

Yes I am aware of just how sad that is, thanks.

One of the things we did was to have an intro chastising James Kirk for the way he went through security officers - the now-infamous "redshirts' - on landing duty.
Now, at last, here are the statistics to show just how bad redshirt life expectancy was.

Q: What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen?
Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet's surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders.

Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and Captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks' 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization.

The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).

Here are the statistics:
Red Shirt Death episodes = 18
Episodes with fights = 55
Probability of a fight breaking out = 70%
Kirk "conquest" episodes = 24
Kirk "conquest" + fights = 16
Kirk "conquest" + red shirt casualty= 4
Red shirt death + fight + Kirk "conquest" = 3

(Via Danger Room)

"David Blunkett, the ex-Home Secretary, is to front a TV show called Banged Up With Blunkett.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/26/blunkett_five_docu/
Sadly it seems the title is slightly misleading - Blunkett will not be sent to prison but will oversee a Big Brother type show where off-the-rails teenagers are scared back onto the straight and narrow by Blunkett and some ex-cons.
The short-tempered MP heads up a pseudo parole board which decides what to do with errant youngsters."

Between this and the recent doco series Portillo On Thatcher (and if that's not a perfect description of his best wank fantasy...) there's way to many politicos showing up in light entertainment. Starve 'em of the oxygen of publicity, I say!

Yes, we watched it.

Looks like they've finally worked out what the show is.

It's a comedy. A low-brow, Angel-rip-off queer-friendly comedy about incompetence and sexual harassment. This may work.

But... Ianto described by James Marsters as 'eye-candy'? Nah...

Been around for a few days, but still funny - here's the list of Republican candidates, compared with their closest equivalent Buffy monster:

The GOP Primary Field in Buffy Villains

"...the new Serenity comics series that is due out in March. This three-issue series, Serenity: Better Days, is a step back in time to the early years of the Firefly crew, and the fledgling gang's turbulent attempts to cope with success after they pull off their first successful heist. It features the same creative team as Those Left Behind, with the story by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews, art by Will Conrad, and Adam Hughes providing all three covers this time."

And... Fruity Oaty Bars lunchboxes! 'cos they go so well with a brown coat and all...

...assuming they don't fuck it up totally.

BBC are going to bring back Survivors.
(From the Forbidden Planet blog.)

For my American chums - Survivors is the show Jeremiah wanted to be when it grew up.

In other news... Forbidden Planet has a blog?

A few fun links from my hiatus:

"A multi-national team of biologists has concluded that developmental evolution is deterministic and orderly, rather than random, based on a study of different species of roundworms."
They accomplished this by studying minute vatiations in roundworm vulvas. Imagine the date potential in that profession- "What do you do?" "I study invertebtate cunts. No, wait, come back..."

Carnegie Mellon neuroscientist proposes new theory of brain flexibility
The theory explains how the brain compensates for damage from injuries such as stroke. Nice model, could take in more on other work in neural plasticity.

Brainsturbrator, always a mensh, offers, "10 Ways YOU Can Fight Fascism Around the World" This is good basic survival meme-kit.

I am sure the tale of "Mayor Resigns, Claims Abduction By Satan Worshippers" will run and run...

Technoccult's brief but provoking piece on vaule judgements in occultism - which is not entirely cynical but does offer the now-stolen term for most art in Newage shops, "ooh-ahh pictures", which I think should be more sung than enunciated. In a high, mystic, Stevie Nicks kind of "ooh-aah!!!" stylee.

Latest sign of the End Times - Dog perfume. IdiotToys News is there.

Penultimate End Times sign - Rose back on Doctor Who (for 3 or 4 eps?), official. Click will lead to new DW season spoilers, most of which are rubbish except for the bit about ( REDACTED )

And finally... an elegant expression masculine pain. Not at feminists, loss of jobs or status or even at foofie. At accidentally getting Deep Heat on your bollocks. He wax most elegantly on the subject. Coments display some nice delayed-minimal-responses too.

And I'm spent!

They're doing a US remake of Father Ted.

Arse. Feck.

Ecumenical matter.

Feck.

John Rogers is worth time for many things.

He wrote and produced Global Frequency, which is enough to make hin a demi-god.

He's really funny on a good day, of which he has many.

And today, he's explained the labyrinthine shenanagans involved in selling scripts for TV and movies in a way that is lucid, gives more than enough explanation of the WGA writers strike - and in the comments he cuffs a naive libertarian-Free-Marketeer troll so hard that trollboy's grandchildren will be born rubbing their jaws.

The new show is called "Dollhouse". It's been confirmed for seven episides minimum. (It's on Fox but whattayagonnado?)

Here's how Fox describes it;
"Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse."

Interview with Joss and Eliza at this link

I consider this a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

' Rupert Murdoch's FOX network is planning an American remake of the 1970's British BBC sitcom "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" '

Unlike the article writer, I have no nostalgia about the original. It made me cringe when my parents watched it when I was a kid. The barrage of dreadful impersonators made me squirm more. A US remake will not help this (by the simple principle of "you can't polish a turd"). And I'm sure it'll suck even worse.

The guys responsible for Alias, Lost and the upcoming Star Trek movie prequel/reboot have another iron in the fire. They're pitching it as "X-Files meets Altered States" - and as someone who found the former rarely interesting and adored the latter (and liked Alias but, ahem, lost interest in Lost around when Locke started acting like he'd lost all his IQ points), it'll be interesting to see what happens. Note the comment below about the House-like protagonist, now required in modern US programming...

' Nearly 15 years after "The X-Files" launched, Fox is looking to scare a new generation of viewers with "Fringe," a spooky skein from the minds of J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

Net has made a series commitment to the Warner Bros.-Bad Robot production, which will start off with a two-hour pilot budgeted at more than $10 million. Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci -- the brain trust behind Par's new "Star Trek" feature -- wrote the project on spec and shopped it to nets this week.

Trio will exec produce "Fringe" along with Bryan Burk ("Lost"). A search has begun for a pilot helmer as well as a series showrunner.

"Fringe" mixes elements of "The X-Files" and Paddy Chayefsky's "Altered States" with what Abrams calls "a slight 'Twilight Zone' vibe." It will focus on brilliant but possibly crazy research scientist Walter Bishop, his estranged son and a female FBI agent who brings them together.

Episodes will explore self-contained mysteries of the paranormal, as well as the relationships between the three leads.

"So much of the story is relatable people in extraordinary situations," Abrams said. "The show is definitely a nod to 'Altered States' and 'Scanners' and that whole Michael Crichton/Robin Cook world of medicine and science."

There'll also be an overriding mythology that will come into play from time to time, as well as a healthy dose of humor.

"It does the stuff my favorite TV shows and movies do, which is to combine genres that shouldn't fit together," Abrams said. "It's definitely meant to scare the hell out of you, but it's also meant to make you laugh... It pushes all the buttons of things we loved from our childhood."

Driving the show will be the Walter Bishop character, a larger-than-life figure who bears some resemblance to the titular character in Fox's "House." In the pilot, he's in a mental hospital.

"Imagine that your father is Frankenstein mixed with Albert Einstein," Orci said. "He's someone who has the mental ability to solve so many problems but is so different that communicating with them is almost impossible." '

I suppose anything actually *original*, rather than a smorgasbord of other shows and films, is too much to ask for.

On the one hand...
There's a good chance the BBC will finally make Ripper:
"There's a "solid chance" that Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon will produce a 90-minute TV special featuring the character of Rupert "Ripper" Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) for the BBC."

On the other... this is the kind of shite that gets made for US TV to try and attract those wacky sci-fi fans but still interest the mundanes:

"Fox has picked up the script Drop Dead Diva, a supernatural-tinged legal hour from Josh Berman, Variety reported.

The drama with comedic undertones revolves around an uninspired model-in-training who suddenly dies and finds her soul entering an overweight, less attractive female attorney. Twentieth Century Fox TV is behind the project. "

(Josh Berman, who worked on the pretty good Dead Zone TV show for years, should know better.)

(Both via Scifi.com news)

The latest piece of our TV past to be exhumed and reanimated as a movie is The Sweeney.

The one glimmer of possible sunshine is Jack Regan will be played by Ray Winstone.

(Hey, maybe they'll revive Jason King next. Then have them do a crossover show called Division X...)