Female vs Male Sci Fi Fans

It's been slashdotted, so you're probably already aware of this, but apparently in the UK a recent study says that there are more female fans than male fans of tv science fiction.

Actually, that's not as terribly surprising as it sounds -- CONvergence is very gender balanced locally, and while some pockets of fandom are more male dominated than others (local Doctor Who fandom is currently predominately male, for example), over all, it's pretty well mixed.

The Lost Sequence

Wondering about the Lost numerical sequence? (4 8 15 16 23 42)

Doug Shaw has cracked the lost sequence.

Not that it explains anything about the series though.....

Religion and Doctor Who

This is an interesting article looking at the religious issues concerning the new series of Doctor Who. Fascinating stuff.

Doctor Who wins three UK TV awards

How the fortunes of the series have improved in the UK.

And amazingly, it beat out US television series Desperate Housewives as well.

Meanwhile, there's no sign of it getting any US airing....

Because one blog isn't enough...

I've been using bloglines recently as an RSS aggregator. It allows me to read all of my subscriptions from any location, so it's pretty useful. As part of it, it includes it's own blog, and so when I see entries as part of my surfing there that I want to link to, I'm as likely to post it on that service as much as anything else... One good think about that listing is it also contains my blogroll, so you can get a feeling about some of the blogs that I read.

I haven't used it much yet, and I suppose it's more for my own benefit as anything else...

Torchwood

Torchwood is going to be a new science fiction television series, starring John Barrowman as Captain Jack, to air on BBC-3 in the summer of 2006. It will be created by Russell T Davies, the Executive Producer of Doctor Who, and Torchwood will spin off of Doctor Who, having previously been mentioned in the previous series of Doctor Who.

From the independent.

The bbc site for Doctor Who confirms the announcement.

Predicting the future

I realized quite early on that That 70s Show was basically a 1970s remake of Happy Days, so I'm happy to see that other people see that too [from more like this]

Intelliseek's BlogPulse

I wandered across BlogPulse, and it looks like a pretty interesting way to search what's going on in various blogs and the like.

For example, I think this should trend Doctor Who against Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant.

Or how about Doctor Who vs Battlestar Galactica?

(Actually, I don't think this is fair, because Doctor Who gets a lot of false positives as they're both words that are farely common, even if you specifically look for the phrase "Doctor Who", and not just those two words seperately. Though if you look at the data you know that it does spike when there's some sort of news event connected to the series, like when filming started or the last episode aired.]

CONvergence Programming 2006

The CONvergence programming brainstorming meeting -- and our main programming kick off meeting -- will be Saturday, November 19th 2005 at 2:00 PM at the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel. It'll probably be on the 22nd floor, but it should be posted at the hotel.

This meeting is open to anyone interested in suggesting ideas for CONvergence for 2006. It's our most important meeting for the year as far as programming at the convention goes.

CONvergence 2006 will take place July 7-9,2006 at the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel.

For more information, contact programming@convergence-con.org. Also, if you are unable to attend and have ideas, or would like to help with programming for 2005, please e-mail at that address.

The problem with BBC America

This article is quite fascinating. I don't have access to BBC America, and that's basically because there hasn't been any strong reason to buy a network that shows Benny Hill re-runs continually. (I've never liked Benny Hill.)

But would I want a network that aired Spaced (which admittedly wasn't a BBC series, but BBC America is theoretically about the best of all British television, after all) and the new Doctor Who? You bet.

Though admittedly, my understanding is that the problem is that the UK side wants Doctor Who on a station with wider reach than BBC America. Whether or not that's feasible is a completely different question, no matter how brilliant the new series is.