Kiefer Sutherland, best known for the hit TV show 24 - along with excellent feature film roles like Flatliners and Dark City - returns to science fiction territory once more with a new psychic powers TV show called Touch. From the creator/writer of Heroes, Tim Kring, Touch is about an autistic boy who can predict the future. His father, Martin Bohm (Kiefer Sutherland) acts on clues he deciphers from his sons behaviour to save lives and alter events for the good of all. Since Bohm’s son has never spoken, this is no easy task. Bohm is mentored by Professor Arthur Dewitt (Danny Glover) who believes there is more to Jake than meets the eye.
Parallel lives in Awake
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How does this sound as a TV show premise? Police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) regains consciousness following a car accident involving his wife Hannah (Laura Allen) and his son Rex (Dylan Minnette). After the accident, Michael keeps shifting between two alternative realities, one reality where his son is dead and his wife has survived, the other reality where his wife is dead and his son has survived. After a time he starts noticing strange links between the two realities. He wears a different colored rubber band to determine the reality he is in as he tries to work out how to keep both his son and wife alive.
Good news everyone, the animated comedy science fiction TV show Futurama has been renewed for a seventh season. After being revived in 2008 after a five year absence, the sixth season of Futurama has been such a hit that Comedy Central has already signed on the dotted line for more. Futurama stars Philip J. Fry, a pizza delivery boy from New York. On New Year's Eve 1999, he accidentally becomes cryogenically frozen and isn't thawed out until 2999.
Personally I can’t get enough of Ricky Gervais, from The Office, Extras, An Idiot Abroad, his podcasts with Karl Pillkington and Steven Merchant, or just reading his blog, the man is a comic genius (Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant are sensational too!). So when I came across an article in The Hollywood Reporter that revealed he was heading into comic/fantasy territory once more I immediately paid attention. The British comedy writer and performer is developing a TV show called Afterlife with Dexter producer Clyde Phillips. Afterlife is about an atheist who dies and goes to heaven. As an outspoken atheist, I imagine Gervais will have a lot of fun playing with this idea.
America killed Torchwood
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I’ve now watched more than half of the new US Torchwood: Miracle Day, a joint Starz and BBC production, and it’s clear that Torchwood’s fourth season is now officially dead on arrival in the US - which is ironic given that the season’s premise concerns a day when everyone worldwide stops dying. The elements that made the show original and fresh in the UK have largely vanished. Let’s start with the characters. It’s great to see Jack and Gwen return to their pivotal roles, and they perform admirably as usual (although we see a lot less of them), but the rest of the new US cast are seriously bad. You have to wonder what producer/ head writer Russell T. Davis and Starz were thinking.
Doctor Who: Series 6 Part 1, the first half of Doctor Who’s sixth season with the excellent Matt Smith, was released on Blu-ray and DVD 19 July. The two disc box set contains the first 7 episodes, including the sensational opening episode, The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon, The Curse of the Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife, The Rebel Flesh, The Almost People and the half season cliff hanger, A Good Man Goes to War. Amy Pond and Rory, now husband and wife, and the prison inmate River Song from the Doctor's past (or is it future?), are all back for another round. Warner Bros. kindly provided us with a copy to review.
A trailer for the next season of Torchwood, Torchwood: Miracle Day, has hit the web and you can watch it below. The ten part series will be broadcast Friday, 8 July in the US. It's still debateable whether the move to the US, and the US focus of the upcoming series, will be good or bad for Torchwood, but I guess we don't have to wait much longer to find out.
New Doctor Who head writer Steven Moffat wasted no time launching season six in new and unexpected directions. If the first episode The Impossible Astronaut is anything to go by, it's going to be a wild ride. Matt Smith returns in his second season as the Doctor (looking older than ever) along with Amy Pond and Rory, now husband and wife, the prison inmate River Song from the Doctor's future, US President Richard Nixon, and a chilling new memory-eating, suit-wearing villain known as The Silence.
Doctor Who head writer Steven Moffat has written a mini Doctor Who episode for the UK's bi-annual Charity event, Comic Relief. Split into two parts, Time and Space, the short episodes have some great banter between the Doctor, Rory and Amy (particularly about her skirt length!) and make me even more interested in the upcoming Season 6. There's also a great bit where the TARDIS materialises inside itself. While you wait for The Doctor's Season 6, make sure you check it out below.
The next season of Torchwood (Season 4) has been renamed Torchwood: Miracle Day (changed from Torchwood: The New World) and will be broadcast Friday, 8 July in the US. This is a 10 part series, which sees Bill Pullman (most famous I guess for playing the US President in Independence Day) join the cast as the lead villain. Pullman plays Oswald Danes, a former school teacher and convicted child killer.
The BBC is working on a new eight part science fiction television series called Outcasts, about the trials of a group of Earth pioneers setting up a new world on a recently discovered planet. Ben Richards, the man behind the excellent spy drama Spooks (MI5 in the US), as well as The Fixer and Party Animals, is the series creator and head writer.
Christmas is not far off, and as they have done in recent years, this year the BBC will broadcast its Doctor Who Christmas Special. A Christmas Carol is the sixth Doctor Who Christmas Special since Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005. This episode features Welsh singer Katherine Jenkins, actor Michael Gambon (most recently seen in the Harry Potter films), The Bill's Micah Balfour and Pooky Quesnel from East Enders. The eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith, will be joined by his newlywed companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill). For the first time the special will premier on the same day in both the UK and US.
Will Matt Smith become the best Doctor Who? After watching his first season as the 11th Doctor, out now on blu-ray and DVD, I'd say it's a real possibility. It's early days of course. Certainly Smith is a big improvement on David Tennant who was too bubbly and over the top for my liking. This is the first Doctor Who season release on blu-ray and Steven Moffat's first season as lead writer and creative director. The season begins with the Tardis plummeting out of control in The Eleventh Hour and quickly introduces the Doctor's new effervescent companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) as the Doctor attempts to save the world once more (I'm sure he's saved it a couple of hundred times now).
Creator of Torchwood, Russell T. Davies, recently spoke to Collider about Torchwood's fourth season, Torchwood: The New World, which this time round is being produced by the BBC and the US premium cable network Starz. Although he kept the plot of the new ten part series close to his chest, he revealed some more details about the setting, timeline and cast.
Syfy has canceled Battlestar Galactica's spin off show, Caprica, after just one season. According to Variety, five remaining episodes of the first season will air in the first quarter of 2011.
Syfy has green-lit a two hour pilot, Battlestar Galactica: Blood Chrome, that follows a young Commander William Adama as a rookie Viper pilot during the first Cylon war. I imagine with Caprica now history, SyFy is hoping to try once again to repeat Battlestar Galactica's success with another spin off, this time sticking with an already established character.
Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner and Alien, is working with the BBC to adapt Philip K. Dick's iconic novel The Man in the High Castle for television. The Man in the High Castle is Philip K. Dick's most critically acclaimed work, a complex alternate history tale set in a totalitarian America in the 1960s, where the Axis powers, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, defeated the Allies in World War II and went on to divide up the world. North America is under Axis control after they conquered Eurasia and laid waste to Africa.
The BBC is adapting Douglas Adams' detective science fiction/fantasy novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency for the small screen. While Adams is wildly famous for his comic SF series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he also wrote two detective novels, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and started a third novel in the same series, The Salmon of Doubt. While incomplete, The Salmon of Doubt was published after his death along with a collection of other rare material. If you're a fan of detective fiction, science fiction, fantasy or comedy (or all four!) the first two novels are a must read. While not as hysterically funny as some of the earlier Hitchhiker books, their complicated, witty and intelligent plots (and sub plots), along with the quirks of the central character Dirk Gently, are addictive and warrant a second (or third) reading.
It looks like the live-action Star Wars TV show is now on hold, with George Lucas revealing that it's unlikely anyone will see any episodes anytime soon.
The Blake's 7 remake we reported last year is now officially on hold, with an announcement on Blake's 7 website that Sky has decided not to proceed. The series, which was created by Terry Nation, ran on BBC1 between 1978 and 1981. According to the Guardiannewspaper: