Michael Sheard

Michael Sheard, who appeared in several of the best Doctor Who stories, including Pyramids of Mars and Remembrance of the Daleks, and was memorable as Admiral Ozzel in the best Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, passed away recently.

But he was also a really friendly, full of life individual. He had been a guest of honor at CONvergence twice, and he endeared himself to our entire community, and I know from many of the other tributes I've seen that he'd done the same sort of thing all over, and he'll definitely be missed.

Local Stuff

I'm watching The League of Gentlemen tonight, and one of the tricky things about a series like this is keeping track of all of the various characters played by the same three actors, but moving from one scene to another. So this character index is pretty useful, though they do have some spoilers for later epsiodes.

Request Doctor Who!

There aren't many places for American Doctor Who fans to demonstrate their support for the new series at the current time -- but putting your e-mail address at amazon.com is one of the places where you can.

Doctor Who Podcast

I'm listening to a new podcast about Doctor Who at the Gallifreyan Embassy called Podshock. It's thankfully does have contributions from both the US and the UK, which balances things somewhat.

Gary Russell Interview

Here's an interesting interview with Gary Russell, who is the main creative force behind the Big Finish Doctor Who audios....

It's a really interesting look at the consequences the new series has had for classic series properties like the audios. (And I imagine the lack of any American distribution as yet puts everything in limbo here -- especially since Doctor Who magazine and the ninth Doctor novels get distribution, and British SF magazines like Starburst and SFX get pretty reasonable distribution.

Though I think one thing that everyone has to remember is that this sort of delay has always been the case -- I first encountered the Fifth Doctor by reading The Tides of Time in Doctor Who Monthly, and for almost every British show I can think of, there's usually at least a year delay until it gets some sort of American distribution.

Can't Stop The Signal

We're only a couple of weeks away until Serenity opens, but here is a pretty cool lego Serenity to look at while you're waiting!

And now...

I'm watching a little bit of At Last the 1948 Show and Do Not Adjust Your Set, two pre-Monty Python series that have recently come out on DVD. It's an interesting bit of British comedy history, really...

They really don't make television series like these anymore -- there's something about how even more recent British comedies like League of Gentlemen or Little Britain have a polish that older series just don't have...

However, here in the middle of the USA we have the Minnesota Fringe Festival going on right now, and that certainly doesn't have polish...

Joss Interview

An interesting Joss Whedon interview, as part of the leadup for >Serenity. There's also a bunch of things about various other movies...