Asked by MTV about the possibility of returning to the show he's literally just left, Tennant said,

Who knows? There's no immediate plans. I'd probably have to move away and let the dust settle and let the new team get established and all that. But there is a bit of a tradition of The Doctor meeting his former selves... It happened with me when Peter Davison, who I watched when I was growing up, suddenly came back and did a scene with us, which was a real thrill for me. [It was] very disorienting, to be faced with this guy who you watched as a kid in the gear - and there he was, in my TARDIS now. It was very odd.

For Tennant's final (for now) Who appearance, "The End Of Time, Pt. 2" airs tomorrow on BBC America. And it'll feature an exclusive five-minute goodbye message from Tennant after the episode airs.

David Tennant On His 'Doctor Who' Mementoes... And When He'll Be Back For A Cameo! [MTV Movies Blog]

The Local Fluff, more properly known as the Local Interstellar Cloud, is a wispy band of particles through which our solar system is slowly moving. The solar system entered the cloud anywhere between 44,000 to 150,000 years ago, and scientists estimate we will not leave it for another 10,000 to 20,000 years. Although it's not technically part of the solar system, the Local Fluff is the last distinct region Voyagers 1 and 2 will pass through before they leave the heliosheath and enter interstellar space.

A recent article from Discovery News charts the recent developments in the exploration of this interstellar cloud. Astronomers had hoped the Voyager probes might be able to shed some light on the Local Fluff's existence, as by all rights it shouldn't exist:

Approximately 10 million years ago, a supernova cluster detonated nearby, generating a huge bubble of million-degree gas. Researchers have been very confused as to why the Local Fluff remains intact; it should have been blown away by the ferocious supernovae exhaust long ago.

It would be like expecting a wisp of cigarette smoke to retain its structure in the middle of a tornado; some kind of force would need to be surrounding (or intertwined through) the smoke helping it resist being dispersed. In the case of the wispy Local Fluff, a magnetic field may be helping.

Although scientists had not seriously considered the possibility of magnetized interstellar clouds, the theory does essentially explain all the current problems with the existence of such clouds. This appears to be the rare case where new astronomical data actually answers a cosmic question instead of raising five new ones:

"Voyager data show that the Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected — between 4 and 5 microgauss," said Merav Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University and lead author of research published in Nature on Dec. 24. "This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction."
....
However, the Voyagers aren't inside the Fluff yet, how can they measure the cloud's magnetic field strength? By measuring the size of the heliosphere (which is maintained by the outward magnetic pressure of the sun's magnetic field), the probes have been able to deduce how much inward magnetic pressure is pushing down on the heliosphere. This inward pressure is being caused by the Local Fluff, so its magnetic field can be indirectly measured.

Although the current data obviously only applies to the Local Interstellar Cloud, Opher suspects other clouds elsewhere in the galaxy are similarly magnetized. This potentially means that our solar system has passed through other magnetized clouds in its past, or will again in its future as it orbits the center of the galaxy. This magnetization can affect the size of the heliosphere that encircles the solar system.

The potentially serious effect of a decrease in the heliosphere's size is an increase in bombardment by cosmic rays. A particularly magnetized cloud might allow an unusual amount of cosmic rays to enter the inner solar systems. This could affect the Earth's atmosphere, and it could greatly increase the risk of space exploration to astronauts who would be unprotected from the bombardment of these rays.

[Discovery News]

Space Battleship Yamato, known in the U.S. as Star Blazers, was a total classic of our youth, featuring a massive spaceship built into the ruins of the World War II battleship Yamato. It's off to outer space to save us from the evil forces of Iscandar.

The animated version, known as Uchū Senkan Yamato: Fukkatsu Hen, was originally scheduled to come out December 12 in Japan, but it doesn't sound like it actually came out. But we're hopeful we get to see this live-action version in 2010, as promised. According to Anime News Network, Takashi Yamazaki, director of Returner, is handling the film. And pop star Takuya Kimura (Howl from Howl's Moving Castle) plays the lead role, Sasumu Kodai. The main female lead, Yuki, is more of an action hero than in the 1970s version, and two characters who were male in the original will now be female.

Let's just hope Desslok/Desslar brings the blue-skinned purring menace, or there's going to be some unpleasantness. [Anime Vice]

In a recent interview with the L.A. Times, Blomkamp made it quite clear that he wants nothing to do with $100 million budgets and major studio releases. The reason for this, he explains, is that he wants to be able to tell his own stories in his own way, and that just isn't possible when such massive amounts of money are involved. He cites this overwhelming need for studios to protect their investment as the main reason why almost all science fiction films are either adaptations, sequels, or reboots.

Blomkamp's observations weren't limited to the purely financial. He also delved into how these considerations affect the creative side of science fiction movies:

I think about this a lot – a hell of a lot actually – and how it plays out within the genre of scifi and horror. This concept of "Where does that fiction [in its source material form] come from?" If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from. But go back and look at something like [Joe Haldeman's 1974 novel] "The Forever War" – that is very much rooted in his experience in Vietnam, that's where the stimulation comes from. And that's my goal, really, is not to draw from other films in terms of the overall inspiration and stimuli. You can in terms of design and tone and stuff, certainly, but not in terms of the idea and the genesis of that idea.

In terms of his own future making movies, Blomkamp reflected on his process promoting District 9 as a template for what he hopes to achieve next time. Since District 9 cost relatively little to make, it didn't need to attract a particularly wide audience for it to be a financial success; the fact that it did become something of a minor mainstream hit was just a nice bonus. Blomkamp felt fairly comfortable that the film would do all right financially after it enjoyed such a positive reception at Comic Con. As long as his movies can keep finding an audience with genre fans, he feels confident he can keep making movies for the foreseeable future.

Blomkamp concluded the first part of the interview with his thoughts on what he was trying to say in District 9 and whether he feels audiences understood his messages:

For the most part, "District 9" is absolute popcorn. It's absolute fluff compared to how serious those real-life topics are. The topics in the film are on my mind all the time and they're very interesting to me. The bottom line is "District 9" touches on 1% of those topics in terms of how severe they could be portrayed, and I knew that when I made it. But people got the messages. Xenophobia, racism allegories – they got all of it. I don't think the film was misunderstood. Not everybody loved it. Nigerians weren't happy. They were pissed. And I suppose that's fair enough because I directly named them and they don't come off well in the film. But that was part of the whole satirical nature of the film. And that conflict, well, that's a South African thing.

The rest of the interview will be published on the L.A. Times blog in the near future.

[Hero Complex]

It's the moment people have been waiting for since August, finally ending any speculation that something would stop Disney buying up the most successful comic publisher in the western world (Although, as we said at the time, we're not sure if Disney really cared so much about the comics as much as everything that comes - and doesn't come - with it).

The sale comes at an interesting time for Marvel, who are not only ramping up movie production (Thor starts filming this month, Captain America is alleged to start in July, and Iron Man 2 is released this May) but also spending the first four months of 2010 closing out a line-wide storyline that's been running for more than half a decade before launching into a new status quo called "The Heroic Age" that'll reunite the core Avengers for the first time since 2005 and end the various long-running feuds keeping them apart - which sounds just like the kind of iconic, easy to market concept that their new owners would approve of. Most worries about Disney "changing" Marvel or dictating content seem to have been quelled by this point, but nonetheless, it'll be interesting to see if the Marvel of 2011 is an easier fit in the Happiest Place On Earth than the current one...

Image by ElDelgado

Top 10 Greatest Mentally Ill Superheroes. You don't have to be crazy to put on a shiny costume and battle evil - but it doesn't hurt. Here's our list of the ten most awesomely insane superheroes. Ever.

The Greatest Inventions Nikola Tesla Never Created Inventor Nikola Tesla invented the radio, experimented with wireless electricity, and designed a death ray. In science fiction, his work goes even further. We list Tesla's greatest fictional inventions and the facts behind the fiction.

The 15 Dumbest Superhero Retcons Of All Time Superheroes can escape almost any trap... except for 50 years' worth of backstory that's dated, self-contradictory or gets in the way of a story. So what do you do? Reach for the retcon! Here are 15 examples of retcon fail.

The Most Badass Female Space Pilots Of All Time Some of the hottest hot-shot pilots in space opera are women. It's a longstanding tradition in science fiction to show women taking the controls of starships, space fighters and star-cruisers, and here are our favorite badass female cockpit jockeys.

10 Greatest Science Fiction TV Show Endings Ever With Battlestar Galactica rocking to an end, the show's producers promise a bravura conclusion that will knock our socks off. But it's got some stiff competition - here are science fiction television's greatest endings. Spoilers!

When the Future Expires - A Timeline Putting an expiration date on the future is risky. Take the Terminator franchise: The all-important "Judgment Day" — originally set in the "near future" of 1997 — has been pushed back twice already. Here's a timeline of future scenarios past their sell-by dates - and a few that will curdle soon.

Kick-Ass Scenes That Are In Trailers, But Aren't In The Movies Check out this Star Trek TV spot — notice something that wasn't in the movie? That's right: around 0:15, there's baby Spock, complete with teeny Vulcan ears! Why do studios throw cool scenes into trailers, then cut them out of the final movies? Here's a list.

Sex Robots Who Kill: Is Anything Deadlier? As soon as we have convincing(ish) androids and gynoids, we'll create pleasure-droids. And soon after that, those sex-machines will use their super-powerful thigh muscles to try and kill us. Here are 15 examples of the sexy robot death that awaits you in the future.

10 Reasons Not to Bring Someone Back from the Dead When you've got amazing technologies or strong magical powers, death doesn't have to have the final word. But is bringing the dead back to life always a good idea? We look the reasons it's better to say no to resurrection.

What Will Today's Cities Look Like in the Future? What will the New Yorks, Londons, and Tokyos of tomorrow look like? Will they be technological Edens, grim dystopias, or entirely obliterated? We look at science fiction's take on the future of today's cities to gauge our urban future.

The Los Angeles Times reports that starting in 2010 Paramount, which hasn't officially announced their plans, will use $2 million of its current budget to finance 20 "micro-budget" films a year. Sounds great, right? Well, almost.

There are a few hiccups in Paramount's plan. The studio won't spend any of its allocated money on completed films shown at festivals or markets. Rather they'll buy scripts from screenwriters and create these low-budget flicks in-house. We can only hope they'll still spend cash from other departments to buy festival finds — Paranormal Activity, after all, was a film shown at several festivals before it was picked up by Paramount.

The other drag: Whatever films Paramount does make, may not actually make it to audiences. Instead, they'll act as pilots for new filmmakers who can gauge interest before then remaking the film with a bigger budget. Um, isn't the brilliance of low-budget horrors like Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project that without the budget for expensive special effects, their screenwriters and directors were forced to come up with creative ways to convince their audiences that something horrifying was happening in front of their eyes?

Movies that do make the cut, and don't require a larger budget revision, will be digitally uploaded to a limited number of theaters. "Some of the micro-budgeted movies could be released in just a handful of midnight screenings to gauge audience interest before a wider (and costlier) national release," the LA Times writes.

Here's an idea. Ditch the theater screening and team up with Netflix or iTunes to release your films there. If you get a significant number of streams, then release it in theaters. Heck, do this with all the films completed under the division. Your pilots can be seen by the largest and most diverse focus group there is, the world wide web. The future of film is all about crowd-sourcing.

Paramount to launch micro-budget movie division [Los Angeles Times]

Publisher L. Blunt "Bluejack" Jackson announced that the IROSF is closing up shop with its February issue, but they're not giving up on helping to find the future of publishing:

What we learned with IROSF and Aeon Speculative Fiction was that neither traditional nor community-driven economic models met our needs, and that the complexity of managing a distributed volunteer pool burned people out, despite a steady increase in revenue and readership. Our plan is to use this knowledge, and the ready availability of new distribution channels, to create the kind of environment that would have empowered the editors to achieve the success that IROSF's superb content always deserved.

[Locus]

There are really two ways in which to evaluate a Doctor's final story. First, you can consider the quality of the story itself, particularly in how well it sums up that particular Doctor's run on the program. Second, you can take a look at the regeneration itself, both in terms of the final scene itself and how the rest of the story builds toward it. So let's run through the previous regeneration stories and take a look at both of these aspects before getting into the tricky business of ranking which was best.

1st Doctor to 2nd Doctor: "The Tenth Planet"

The Story:

It's difficult to separate the story of "The Tenth Planet" from its overwhelming historical importance. The story not only featured the first regeneration (or, as it was then known, "renewal"), but it also introduced the Cybermen. This is the first of the so-called "base under siege" stories that dominated the next three years of Doctor Who. It also comes from an era of Doctor Who that is almost entirely lost; it is the only story in the show's fourth season from which more than half of its episodes survive intact. Sadly, the final episode is the one that has gone missing, meaning it's impossible to appreciate the regeneration in its full, original context.

Still, once you look past all of that, there is a very solid, at times excellent story waiting to be discovered. The Cybermen have possibly been more intimidating in other stories, but they have never been creepier than they are here, with their cloth faces and disturbingly singsong voices. More so than in later appearances, writers Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis really get to heart of what a completely logical race would be like, as the Cybermen try to destroy the Earth with chilling detachment.

Somewhat uniquely, the Doctor knows about the Cybermen before they appear, suggesting he has had prior contact with them. Considering he had never heard of the Daleks before his first encounter with them, this represented a rather sizable shift in his knowledge of the cosmos. Although parts of the story rely on some staggeringly bad science — the idea of a twin planet to Earth wandering through space is pretty much completely bonkers — the plot at the heart of "The Tenth Planet" is about as gripping and tense as early Doctor Who could be.

The Regeneration:

Again, it's kind of hard to look past the larger importance of this first regeneration. After all, if the producers hadn't come up with a way to continue the series after illness forced William Hartnell to leave the show, Doctor Who would have come to an end in 1966, lingering on only as a mostly forgotten curiosity. That said, "The Tenth Planet" does a good job of building up to this final scene, as the Doctor grows progressively weaker over the course of the serial. Unfortunately, this was partially because Hartnell was too sick to appear in episode three, which forced a hasty rewrite to work around his sudden absence. Even so, this does set up a rather appropriate arc for the Doctor in the story, as he is quite clearly in decaying health in the story's final episode.

Since the footage of the regeneration itself has thankfully survived, we can evaluate it from a special effects perspective. Honestly, it's astounding just how well the production team pulled off the change from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton, particularly considering how often far simpler effects defeated them. Doctor Who was made for shockingly little money and in shockingly little time in the sixties, but director Derek Martinus insisted they take the time to ensure they made the regeneration as well as possible. At that, they certainly succeeded.

2nd Doctor to 3rd Doctor: "The War Games"

The Story:

With the 12-part serial "The Dalek Masterplan" all but lost to history, the ten episodes of "The War Games" represent Doctor Who at its most epic. Expanded from its original, more standard six-part length when another story fell through (a common problem in Patrick Troughton's final season on the program), writers Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks were forced to pull out all the stops to make the second Doctor's farewell story worthy of its insane length. And, somehow, they just about pull it off.

The Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe find themselves in what looks like a World War I battlefield, which was instantly one of the darkest, scariest places the series had visited up to that point. The situation gets far grimmer as it becomes clear that larger forces are at work. Unnamed aliens have kidnapped soldiers from throughout Earth's history so that they might take part in massive, deadly war simulations. The ultimate goal is to create an invincible fighting force that will conquer the entire universe. And they're doing it with the technical advice of the War Chief, who reveals himself to be another Time Lord.

"The War Games" works as well as it does because it constantly expands the story's scope, with at least four or five potential big bads revealed to be mere subordinates of even scarier villains. Most classic series Doctor Who stories tend to be padded, and "The War Games" is certainly no exception, as the Doctor gets captured and recaptured a few too many times. But Patrick Troughton is obviously having the time of his life in his swansong, and he gives it even more of his all than usual, which tends to paper over any of the story's deficiencies or redundancies. "The War Games" is a massive, epic tale... and one that I've watched in a single sitting on more than one occasion.

The Regeneration:

Well, technically speaking, there isn't a regeneration. (Doubly technically speaking, the term "regeneration" wasn't even coined until the third Doctor's departure.) The next Doctor had not yet been cast, and the only thing the show's producers knew was that neither Patrick Troughton nor his costars were coming back. Indeed, there wasn't any certainty that Doctor Who would return at all. As such, the tenth and final episode of "The War Games" is radically different from what preceded it, as it dramatically alters the Doctor's place in the universe.

It does this both by introducing the godlike Time Lords, providing a fleeting glimpse of the society the Doctor had fled, and by exiling the Doctor to Earth. The latter was far more important to the show's survival, as it provided the production team a blueprint to cut costs and establish a format that would restore the series's dwindling popularity. However, the former is more interesting to us, as it began establishing the conventions that still affect the series forty years later.

For instance, it is established here that Time Lords have some control over what they regenerate into, although the Doctor is almost always too busy dying an agonizing death to put much thought into this. (The Master had more success with this when he chose to become young and strong again in "Utopia.") The absolute control that the Time Lords wield is also something that the series has returned to again and again, and indeed it looks like that is one of the crucial ideas in "The End of Time."

Anyway, although we never actually got to see the 2nd Doctor turn into the 3rd Doctor, it probably shouldn't be forgotten that "The War Games" does end with the Time Lords essentially putting this incarnation of the Doctor to death. Not too many series had the guts to execute their protagonist in a season finale. The sheer audacity of it all has got to earn this regeneration a few points, even if it never technically happened.

3rd Doctor to 4th Doctor: "Planet of the Spiders"

The Story:

"Planet of the Spiders" is sort of a mash-up of a bunch of different types of Third Doctor stories. There's an investigation of mysterious happenings in a seemingly peaceful location in rural England, there are a bunch of humans struggling to free themselves from oppression on an alien planet, there is a mild alien invasion, and there's a big action sequence. There is also a lot interest in Eastern mysticism. If nothing else, the story manages to touch upon just about everything iconic about Jon Pertwee's tenure as the Doctor, with the tragic exception of the Master. (Roger Delgado, who originated the role, had died earlier that year in a car crash.)

The actual plot amounts to little more than a bunch of different groups trying and failing to get their hands on a blue crystal that can grant its possessor extraordinary mental powers. Since there isn't a lot more for the story to accomplish from a narrative perspective, this leads to some incredibly padded sequences. The most infamous of these is a car chase that takes up the bulk of the second episode and is, considering one of the characters involved can teleport, entirely unnecessary. This is hardly the only part of the story that seems unnecessary; indeed, entire characters seem to have been created for no other reason than to chew up time in a story that is stretched over six episodes.

What's probably most interesting about this story is that pretty much everything that happens is the Doctor's fault, and he can only resolve the essential conflict by sacrificing himself. He has to be pushed in this direction by his old Time Lord mentor K'Anpo, and the fact that the Doctor is not immediately willing to accept the fate he has created for himself lends the story a tragic quality. Thematically, "Planet of the Spiders" throws around a ton of great ideas and is a fitting end for the Third Doctor. It's a shame then that the story these ideas are built around is so threadbare.

The Regeneration:

More than perhaps any other regeneration, this scene really plays like the Doctor's death. Indeed, the Doctor comes about as close to death here as he ever has, considering K'Anpo has to show up to instigate the regeneration process. Leaving the precise mechanics of it all aside, Jon Pertwee's final moments as the Doctor are quite moving, and Elisabeth Sladen's despair as Sarah Jane Smith really complements the intense emotions of the scene. The actual physical change from Pertwee to Tom Baker is almost an afterthought, and that seems entirely appropriate. "Planet of the Spiders" is more about death than regeneration anyway; the Doctor is just lucky that he gets to come back.

4th Doctor to 5th Doctor: "Logopolis"

The Story:

Tom Baker's final season as the Doctor began as something of a creative resurgence after an increasingly silly year with Douglas Adams as script editor. "The Leisure Hive" and the E-Space Trilogy offered more serious, thoughtful science fiction stories that echoed Baker's early years on Doctor Who. As such, it's a real disappointment that his era limped to such a disastrous conclusion with two tedious, nonsensical stories that accomplished little more than bringing back the Master.

Following on from the boring if inoffensive "Keeper of Traken", "Logopolis" proves an utterly unworthy finale for the classic series's most iconic Doctor. The plot, such as it is, involves the recently revived Master attempting to do something dastardly to the verbal mathematicians of Logopolis, who stave off entropy by doing a lot of really complicated math. I would explain further, but that's about as clear as "Logopolis" makes it.

The Master's original plan never really becomes clear, but it ultimately involves holding the entire universe to ransom. He does this by broadcasting a message from a radio telescope in England, which is about seven different shades of insane. (I mean, even if you ignore the fact that his message, which required a pretty much instant reply because the heat death of the universe was close at hand, would take years to reach even the closest solar systems, there's still the question of how the entire universe was supposed to coordinate a reply to his demands.) The Doctor stops him, but not before a good portion of the universe is wiped out and, more importantly, he falls off the telescope, starting his regeneration.

Basically, "Logopolis" is the 1981 version of a typical Russell T. Davies finale. It involves the return of an iconic villain, the stakes are incomprehensibly massive, it throws around a lot of big ideas that don't really make sense, and the plot doesn't stand up to any great scrutiny. Unfortunately, without the snappy pacing and flashy direction of the new series, it's a lot harder to get lost in the spectacle of it all, making the fatal flaws of "Logopolis" pretty much impossible to ignore.

The Regeneration:

(Note: The good stuff starts around the 2:10 mark.)

Thankfully, the regeneration is one of the two or three bits of "Logopolis" that sort of works. Although the story's attempts to create a melancholy, funereal tone contribute to its general sluggishness, it does pay off with a big regeneration scene that feels appropriately built up. A mysterious white figure, referred to as The Watcher, appears throughout the four episodes of "Logopolis", and he is revealed here to be a projection of the Doctor's future. It doesn't really make any more sense than anything else, but it's a neat idea that makes the Doctor's death seem more intrinsic to the story than it otherwise might.

We also see an appropriately big rundown of all the major villains and companions of the fourth Doctor's tenure. Admittedly, it's not the best edited montage I've ever seen, and there's a hell of a drinking game to be had from the amount of times people say the word "Doctor" in the final two minutes, but it all ends in a moment of quiet dignity from Tom Baker. The regeneration itself is handled well enough, although I would have liked to see Tom Baker actually turn into Peter Davision without the Watcher crammed in between. In any event, the regeneration is far from perfect, but it's a work of brilliance compared to everything that comes before it.

5th Doctor to 6th Doctor: "The Caves of Androzani"

The Story:

I hope you all like superlatives, because "The Caves of Androzani" is my choice for best Doctor Who story of all time, bar none. I realize that's a slightly unorthodox opinion (I can actually feel my critical respectability slipping away), but Doctor Who super-writer Robert Holmes was never better than he is here. He constructs a fully-realized society using just a few sets, one location, and a ton of brilliant little details. He makes everybody in the story a complete bastard without any of it seeming gratuitous or nasty, something that all too often tripped up Doctor Who in the eighties.This is one of the few times Doctor Who actually feels Shakespearean in its scope, though that might just be because the villainous Trau Morgus keeps making asides to the cameras.

He also constructs a story that moves inexorably towards the Doctor's regeneration, something that director Graeme Harper picks up on perfectly. Every single cliffhanger finds the Doctor seemingly facing certain death (the end of episode 3 is maybe the tensest cliffhanger in the history of the series). Every male character in the story dies, the Doctor very much included. Indeed, the Doctor dooms himself in the first few minutes of episode one, as he idly touches the poisonous spectrox that will destroy his body.

What always amazes me is how contained a story "The Caves of Androzani" is. The stakes in the story don't really extend beyond a petty local squabble over a precious material, and the Doctor is too busy trying to save Peri to ever really get involved. But almost because of all that, everything that happens here seems so much more important than, say, "Logopolis." Throughout, the Doctor is fighting for Peri's life at the expense of his own, and Peter Davison makes it clear that the Doctor is fighting harder than he ever has before to save his friend.

The Regeneration:

Graeme Harper's bravura direction extends to the regeneration scene. As he explained in the DVD commentary, his approach to the regeneration was influenced by the crescendo in "A Day in the Life", and this idea of starting small and building to a huge conclusion is very much in evidence. The idea of bringing back old companions (plus the Master) owes a debt to "Logopolis", but it's far better executed here. Instead of a bunch of old clips of various villains and companions saying the word "Doctor", they actually brought back the original actors to record new lines that sum up their relationship with the Doctor. Their disembodied heads then revolve and intermingle, until the Master interrupts them all with a demand that the Doctor finally die.

There are only a couple problems with the scene. I have to admit, part of the thrill of a regeneration is actually getting to see one Doctor turn into another, and we don't get that here. Also, the Sixth Doctor is maybe just a little too flippantly dismissive of his predecessor in his closing lines. Still, there might be a common explanation for both of these issues. There's a sense here that the show is trying to create a definitive, clean break between the eras, as it sends the Fifth Doctor off in style and introduces the Sixth Doctor with a bang. All of which would have worked great, if only the next story wasn't the utterly disastrous "The Twin Dilemma."

6th Doctor to 7th Doctor: The first thirty seconds of "Time and the Rani" and possibly the novel Spiral Scratch

The Story:

And so begins a long run of Doctors not getting their own proper regeneration stories. For Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann, it was because the series was canceled (or, if we're being technical, not picked up) before they could regenerate. Colin Baker, on the other hand, had the inglorious distinction of being the only Doctor ever fired from the role, as he was (unfairly) blamed for the show's declining quality and popularity. Executive producer John Nathan-Turner offered him the opportunity to return at the start of the next season for a regeneration story. Understandably, he refused, which meant the show had to somehow pull off a regeneration without one of the two required Doctors. (But more on that in a moment.)

Perhaps the only circumstances worse than those of Colin Baker's departure from Doctor Who were those of his Doctor's regeneration. Based on what we see in the opening minute of the seventh Doctor's debut adventure, "Time and the Rani", one can only assume the sixth Doctor died from a bump on the head. Gary Russell, Doctor Who's resident fixer of minor continuity problems, took it upon himself to offer a more dignified death for the sixth Doctor in his novel Spiral Scratch. The book suggests that the Doctor actually died from intense blasts of chronon energy while attempting to save the entire multiverse. Hey, it beats a bump on the head.

The Regeneration:

Ooh boy. When people talk about Doctor Who hitting rock bottom in the eighties, I'd nominate this minute as the show at its absolute worst. Crappy space effects accompanied by horrifically cheesy music? Check. Shockingly inept direction and daft camera movies? Check and check. Indefensible artistic choices? Oh, that's a big check. I mean, the TARDIS crashes on a rainbow. I think. Honestly, I'm not sure my mind can really process what I just saw.

Oh, and then there's the regeneration itself, which features the world's best Colin Baker impersonator subbing in for the absent Sixth Doctor. That's right, folks: it's Sylvester McCoy in a big blond wig! With an opening like that, you just know you're in for something special. I think anyone who has seen "Time and the Rani" can back me up on that one. I honestly can't believe the Doctor Who production staff thought this was preferable to just skipping the regeneration. After all, no one has ever criticized Spearhead from Space for not featuring five seconds of Jon Pertwee in a Patrick Troughton wig. And if anyone has, I'll fight them myself.

7th Doctor to 8th Doctor: "Doctor Who: The Movie"

The Story:

Much like "Time and the Rani", the 1996 TV movie is really more an introduction to the eighth Doctor than a farewell to the seventh, but at least here Sylvester McCoy is given a proper chance to pass the torch onto Paul McGann. As I'm one of the dozen or so people who really likes the TV movie (and there goes the last shred of my critical respectability), I'll spare you my epic defense of its misunderstood brilliance and just focus on how it treats the seventh Doctor.

This treatment is, on balance, just OK. Although Sylvester McCoy is one of the more limited actors to play the Doctor, he can be great when he plays to his strengths, and the TV movie really doesn't ask him to do very much. He does do a good job getting across just how impossibly old the Doctor is, and there is a weariness to his performance that suggests he somehow senses the end is near. It would have been nice if he got more than three lines, but what's there is rather good.

The Regeneration:

Director Geoffrey Sax and writer Matthew Jacobs really love their symbolism. In an artistic decision that is either totally awesome or unspeakably cliched (or both, maybe), they juxtapose the regeneration with a classic scene from the 1930 version of Frankenstein where the monster is first given life. (We also later see the Eighth Doctor wander into a room full of broken mirrors. Because he doesn't know who he is, you see.) This regeneration is notable, because it really suggests how horrific the process is, as the mostly dead Seventh Doctor writhes in pain as his entire body rearranges into its new form. Unfortunately, the actual, final change is a bit anticlimactic. I'll have to deduct points for that.

8th Doctor to 9th Doctor: Who knows?

Since Russell T. Davies (wisely) began the revived series with Christopher Eccleston already in place as the Ninth Doctor, we still don't have any definitive idea as to the fate of the Eighth Doctor. Though there's a slight chance the second part of "The End of Time" might shed some light on the subject, this will likely remain unexplained for the foreseeable future. The closest thing I've ever found to an official word on the subject — and this takes a hell of a lot of digging to uncover — can be found buried deep within the archives of the old tie-in website "Who Is Doctor Who?", which was the first of a bunch of quickie websites the BBC created to promote the first series of new Doctor Who. If you click through to the "Sightings" page on the original incarnation of the website, you'll find this nugget:

Steven Hudson
I saw him a couple a years ago outside a new building development in Totters Lane, East London. The guy seemed really confused and keep muttering, "They're all gone, I'm the only one left". The man was either a complete loon or was drunk. Looking back I think he was probably drunk as he looked as if he'd been to a fancy dress party. He was wearing some old Edwardian outfit, not a leather jacket.

So, if I may add 2 and 2 together to make 100, this obviously means the eighth Doctor regenerated right at the end of the Time War, in which he wiped out Daleks and Time Lords alike, and then the ninth Doctor went to Totters Lane in 2003 — exactly forty Earth years after his adventures began in that very same location! — to try and get his bearings while still wearing his predecessor's clothes. Obviously. Or we can just file all that away as massively non-canonical and move on.

9th Doctor to 10th Doctor: "Bad Wolf"/"Parting of the Ways"

The Story:

I've warmed to this story considerably since the first time I watched it. Like I suggested earlier, this is pretty much the 2005 version of "Logopolis", and the big difference is that it moves just fast enough and is just gleefully crazy enough to make me look past its sometimes sizable faults. I already went over my list of what worked and what didn't in a recent post, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much.

If I might add one point to the earlier critique, it's that I'm not sure how well "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways" works as the Ninth Doctor's farewell episode. It's still a bit of a mess trying to figure out exactly what happened when with Christopher Eccleston's decision to leave Doctor Who, so I'm uncertain whether the story was originally intended to serve as his swansong. (I don't believe it was, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.) As such, there's a bit of a sense that the regeneration is bolted onto the rest of the story.

Considering the entire first series is built around the predestination of the words "Bad Wolf", you might think it would have been possible to drop a few more hints of the Doctor's fate. There might have been an opportunity for the Doctor to consider his own mortality and how it is different from those of his human allies. It's actually a bit weird that the Doctor regenerates after an entire episode of expecting certain death at the hands of the Daleks. Thematically, it doesn't quite line up. And, if nothing else, it would have been nice if the ninth Doctor's final appearance didn't begin with a Big Brother homage. Oh well.

The Regeneration:

I'm not sure why I feel like using this particular word, but the Ninth Doctor's regeneration is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. It's certainly remarkable how well the show pulled off the first regeneration back in 1966, but here you can really see how impressive a regeneration of a proper budget can look. Although the regeneration in the TV movie captured something of the body horror of the process, "Parting of the Ways" really brings out the kind of explosive energy such a process would surely involve.

The actual visual transformation from Christopher Eccleston into David Tennant looks spectacular, and Tennant gets across exactly what the Tenth Doctor is all about in just a few short lines. (I'd actually argue he didn't recapture that performance until late in series two, but that's another issue for another time.) But this regeneration is really about Christopher Eccleston. Although he starts out babbling and overly manic - an understandable fault, considering he's dying — he excels once he shifts into his more serious goodbye to Rose. He really nails the bittersweet emotions of saying goodbye when he's not really going away at all. Much as I'm a classic series Who fan at heart, I've got to admit it - this is probably the best regeneration.

10th Doctor to 10th Doctor: "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End"

The Story:

It's Dalek Armageddon once again, and it's going to take every single person the Tenth Doctor has ever met to save the day. In the midst of all this insanity, Rose Tyler and the Doctor are pining after each other, desperate for a reunion. After a bunch of near-misses, the two finally find each other on an abandoned London road. Well, not quite abandoned, as a Dalek lurks around the corner.

Yes, at long last, the Daleks finally manage to do something the Cybermen, the Master, some poison, a bump on the head, and the American medical system had already accomplished: force the Doctor to regenerate! (Well, I guess they kind of did that in "Parting of the Ways" too. But here they actually exterminated him!)

The Regeneration:

I really don't like that Russell T. Davies pulled a psych-out regeneration. (I believe that's the technical term.) I would say that it wasn't all that tense, considering I knew David Tennant was already filming that year's Christmas Special and thus would definitely be staying on, but I suppose not everyone scoured the Internet for spoilers as much as I did. (And even those who did weren't necessarily convinced this meant he wasn't regenerating — the Outpost Gallifrey boards were even awash with theories even more half-baked than usual.) So maybe it really was the "biggest cliffhanger ever" to some viewers.

Still, it just seems a bit cheap to me to use regeneration like this. I try to avoid acting too much like an insufferable old-school fan, but I kind of think you should only use regeneration when a Doctor is actually leaving. Beyond the fact that the Doctor's explanation of what just happened is cloyingly cute and requires David Tennant to vomit up exposition at an alarming rate, it also does no favors for the eventual Eleventh Doctor (who we will of course be meeting very, very soon). Perhaps I'm just being paranoid on Matt Smith's behalf, but it seems a bit unfair for the Tenth Doctor to actually ask why he would ever want to change. It's a question I rather wish had never been placed in viewers' minds.

So now, with all that out of the way, here's my incredibly authorative and entirely inarguable ranking of both the regenerations and the stories that preceded them. I should note that, for the stories, I'm only considering the Doctors that got proper regeneration stories, and I can't in good conscience count the first minute of "Time and the Rani" or the opening of the TV movie.

Ranking the Regenerations

10. 6th to 7th, "Time and the Rani"
9. The unseen 8th to 9th regeneration
8. 10th to 10th, "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End"
7. 2nd to 3rd, "The War Games"
6. 7th to 8th, "Doctor Who: The Movie"
5. 4th to 5th, "Logopolis"
4. 1st to 2nd, "The Tenth Planet"
3. 3rd to 4th, "Planet of the Spiders"
2. 5th to 6th, "The Caves of Androzani"
1. 9th to 10th, "Bad Wolf"/"Parting of the Ways"

Ranking the Stories

7. "Logopolis"
6. "The Stolen Planet"/"Journey's End"
5. "Planet of the Spiders"
4. "The Tenth Planet"
3. "Bad Wolf"/"Parting of the Ways"
2. "The War Games"
1. "Caves of Androzani"

Where will "The End of Time" ultimately rank? After a very shaky first episode, it's got a lot of work to do to be considered alongside the classics on these lists. Still, hope, not unlike the Doctor himself, springs eternal...

A team of psychologists at the University of Hertfordshire, led by Richard Wiseman, asked hundreds of people about their New Years Resolutions and discovered that 78% of those who made them failed at keeping them. The reason? Wiseman explains:

Many of the most successful techniques involve making a plan and helping yourself stick to it... If you do it on the spur of the moment, it probably doesn't mean that much to you and you won't give it your all. Failing to achieve your ambitions is often psychologically harmful because it can rob people of a sense of self control.

The way to succeed, Wisemen advises, is to think small: Break your bigger ambition into smaller, more obtainable goals, reward yourself when you fulfill them, and keep measuring success both for yourself and others. Or just give up and stay the same. It's worked for us.

New year's resolutions doomed to failure, say psychologists [Guardian.co.uk]

As if paragliding while snapping shots wasn't dangerous enough, Kowalski chooses to do so in the dead of winter. "I focus on aerial pictures of winter because they are so rare," he told the Telegraph. "There are many obstacles that get in the way: snow at the take-off, no wind, and sometimes the lens freezes within 20 minutes of take-off –- if your fingers haven't frozen to the point of being numb first."

Kowalski, who has been paragliding for 15 years and competes in international races, brought his camera along for the ride 10 years ago.

"The paragliding pilot is in absolute control over the speed, and the precise angle of the shot," he explained to the Telegraph. "You can also get a lot closer to the ground so the quality of the pictures, and the framing, is often better than if you are relying on an aeroplane pilot to manoeuvre you."

His collection of winter aerials is currently on view at the Baltic Restaurant in London until February 9th.

Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski
Image: Kacper Kowalski

Paraglider's rare winter photographs go on display in London [The Telegraph]

I was first introduced to Scott Eagle's work many years ago when he sent me his portfolio while I was publishing The Silver Web. Needless to say, I was blown away by his artistic visions and started working with him. Since then, we've worked together on many projects and his art continues to amaze me. (He even did the artwork for our Ketubah - I am sure it is the most unusual and fantastical Ketubah ever).

Scott's work has appeared in many well-known publications such as The New York Times and The Oxford American. He teaches at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC and has had dozens of gallery showings around the world. Let's take a trip into his imagination.

For more about Scott, please visit his website at ScottEagle.com

I know I should not have gone swimming with those nasty gashes on my legs (and if you look close you will see the tornado - a recurring theme in a lot of Scott's work).

Not so innocent....At first glance it seems like such a peaceful scene with beautiful birds flying around. But then you look closer and there is all kinds of weirdness and creepiness. And that large flower almost looks like a tornado.

I am lucky enough to have the original hanging in my living room. It was used as the cover art for Jeff' short story collection Secret Life.

Is this what heaven looks like? For Scott, perhaps. More visuals of tornadoes and a strange creature that is holding the captured man.

This is the Tooth Fairy. She's working her way above ground, slowly but surely. But first, she needs to grab those eggs. The eggs need protection, the kind of protection only she can give. Surely.

Spaceman (or deep sea diver?). In strange surroundings (for a change). A falling man - a recurring theme in much of Scott's work. Makes you wonder. If you hit bottom when falling in a dream, do you really die? Of course it is hard to tell if he's falling or if he was pushed. Either way, I don't think the spaceman can help him.

Madonna & Fish - Scott has an entire series of paintings that play with the idea of the Madonna holding a fish. In this one we're dealing with a lot more than the fish. We also see what could be the Tree of Life at the top of the hill. And if you look very close, you can see someone riding on horseback.

The title of this piece is Pollen. A person's head is surrounded by the vines of a plant - another not-so-friendly flower. But this one has a person inside of it. So instead of the plant growing out of the body, a human is nurtured. Or....could it be a falling man? And I just can't take my eyes off the mouth. What IS that?

Another falling dream...We see two of Scott's signature tropes; a falling person and a tornado. There is also a connection between the boy and the world he lives in as his leg comes out of the water. One of the tornadoes sems to be alive and looking down at the boy and the destruction it has caused. The house could be bleeding.

Scott calls this piece Iceberg. I call it The Horned Man. I haven't yet decided whether or not he is evil. But he certainly has some wacky eyes on him.

It is possible that there is an entire world inside him. Almost like a new galaxy in one of his horns. Star-like....And behind him a planet on fire. Or maybe it's just sunspots or aurora borealis. Anyway, I have always thought this guy was kinda cool.

The Situation. When my husband wrote the novella The Situation in 2007 he sent it to Scott, who immediately had all kinds of images in his head and started drawing. Later it was published by PS Publishing as single volume with Scott's artwork as a wraparound cover.

This is the front cover of the book (the original piece is very large) and you can see the Company in the background.

The Situation - Back cover. This story is about an office worker with a boss from hell. The world of the Company he works for is strange indeed and the employees there make weird bio-engineered items for school-children. In addition to the boss from hell, this cubicle warrior must also deal with back-stabbing co-workers, weird HR personnel and other nasty characters. Not sure if it is safer in the buidling or out.

Inspired by true events - 'nuff said.

Ok, this is is a bit more in-your-face. But even with such an obvious horrific image you can see all kinds of details in this piece. Scott likes to do things in layers and in this one you can see the textures. I love how he uses the fish image in so many ways - sinister and innocent.

Another piece I really love. It's titled Grrr, which makes me think it is some kind of creature that is growling. And again, more fish imagery. You can also see the detial of the frame. Scott makes many of the frames for his art and the frames are works of art as well.

This one is called The Silver Thread. Signature tornado and also a bird. However, this bird looks like it has scales or something. So is it a reptile or a bird?

I adore this one. Scott calls it Muse 2. You can see how something like this could inspire you. But what exactly would it inspire? Again, the richness of the textures and the layers are evident here. He likes to play with this whole good/evil concept and he borrows much of his own inspiration from the flora and fauna around him.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year.

There are many ways to go from desolate to despotic, but there are a few you'll see again and again in the annals of science fiction and fantasy.

Kings From The Pigsty

A classic scenario you find in fantasies and epics is the story of a humble person who rises to the top of his or her civilization. One of the best of the lot is assistant pig-keeper Taran in Lloyd Alexander's young adult series Chronicles of Prydain. Taran literally rises from the muck of the pigsty to become the king of all the land. Similar tales occur in Gene Wolfe's series The Book of the New Sun, in which a lowly, backwoods torturer rises up to become Autarch on an Earth that is slowly dying as the sun loses its power. In Piers Anthony's series Bio of a Space Tyrant a young man named Hope Hubris begins life as an oppressed refugee and eventually becomes Tyrant of Jupiter. And of course Riddick in the Chronicles of Riddick series goes from being a blind prisoner to ruler of the awesomely-named Necromongers.

These stories are not to be confused with the tales of lowly young people who become rulers from Star Wars or even the various tales of King Arthur. In those stories, we have a person of high birth who has been hidden or mistakenly brought low. Their journeys take them back to a pre-ordained "rightful place." That's very different from somebody like Taran or Hope Hubris, who have to earn and claw their way to the top.

I Came With Few Resources From Another World But I Still Rule Yours

Unlike Sully in Avatar, the heroes in stories like these come from other worlds without awesome technologies or giant squadrons of troops and scientists. John Carter, from Edgar Rice Burroughs' famous Mars series, is suddenly and inexplicably transported to Barsoom (AKA Mars). Despite language and cultural barriers, he still manages to become a great leader among the decaying advanced civilizations of the red planet. With just a sword and a few naked Martian ladies, he conquers all. Flash Gordon, like John Carter, is a product of the early twentieth century. He's somehow transported to the planet Mongo, and swashbuckles his way to the top of Mongo society using just his wits and his fists.

The main character in the first few novels of John Norman's bondage-happy Chronicles of Gor series is the nerdy but sword-mastery professor Tarl Cabot, who finds himself transported alone and without resources to the savage world of Gor. And yet he still manages to conquer! You can see the same scenario repeated in the original Stargate flick, where a small band of humans find themselves stranded on an alien world ruled by an advanced spacefaring race. Somehow the nerdy professor and his military pals manage to join up with the local population and bring down the ruling alien just by using their human pluckiness.

A Damaged Mind Shall Lead Them

Sometimes the lowly person is not an alien (or human among aliens), but instead a damaged human who somehow winds up becoming the leader of so-called normal humans. This is nowhere more evident than in Octavia Butler's superlative novel Mind of My Mind (part of her Wild Seed series), where Beverly Hills is taken over by a group of schizophrenics who live in the ghettos of Los Angeles. Turns out that these schizophrenics are actually powerful psychics, whose abilities have driven them mad - until a woman comes along whose psychic power is to organize their thoughts and help them channel their powers. Now they can control the minds of everybody who is rich or powerful, and bend them to their collective will.

On a less serious note, the fantasy of Forrest Gump (it is a fantasy, albeit one without dragons) is that a mentally disabled guy can become a powerful national leader and hero. And then there's the movie Idiocracy, where morons from the present day wake up in a future world where the media have dumbed everybody down so much that even the stupidest people of today are like geniuses.

Out Of The Past And Into The Driver's Seat

Speaking of idiots from the present day who conquer the future, let us contemplate the wonder that is the 1980s TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. An astronaut/football player from the twentieth century is hurled 500 years into the future, and somehow manages to become the most important guy ever even though all his mores and abilities are completely outdated and superseded by everyone around him. Maybe it's just because he looks so awesome in those skintight white pants that people of the future favor.

In The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson, a band of English knights manage to hijack a spaceship and go on to conquer an intergalactic civilization despite their medieval ways. And in the movie version of Battlefield Earth (based on the book by L. Ron "Scientology" Hubbard), humans who have regressed to a pre-technological state manage to outwit and crush their alien slave-drivers, a group of hyper-technological aliens led by John Travolta.

Where Animals Rule

Though humans have ruled over all other animals on the planet ruthlessly for millennia, the other creatures' day will come. And that's exactly what happens in Battle for the Planet of the Apes, when the uplifted ape Caesar has led his enslaved simian brethren to victory over the humans. Eventually he decides to start enslaving humans the way they once did him.

A gentler version of this tale comes in Pixar's animated flick Ratatouille, where a lowly rat turns out to be the greatest chef in France - better than any human. At first he hides his rat nature by directing humans to cook for him, but eventually he comes out as a rat chef and is accepted by even the harshest of food critics.

Hulk has always been treated like an animal by humans, and that's why SHIELD decides to blast him into space so that they can be rid of the green menace. In the amazing Planet Hulk series by Greg Pak, however, Hulk finds himself on a planet called Sakaar where his brutal, animalistic nature makes him the greatest hero its people have ever known. He leads a group of oppressed aliens to victory over their cruel leaders, becomes King, and even takes a super-strong alien babe as his bride.

There are echoes of the "animals rise up" story in David Brin's two Uplift series, as well as in Poul Anderson's Slave Ship and Grant Morrison's comic We3. But in those stories, the animals don't wind up as great leaders of the humans who once enslaved them - they wind up as equals, possibly, or escape from slavery. But they don't really conquer.

Using Technology They Shall Rise

The main character in Iain M. Banks novel Matter, part of his Culture Series, is from a pre-industrial society that treats women like chattel. Luckily, she's adopted by a member of the Culture and rises to become one of the deadliest and most powerful members of Special Circumstances, an elite CIA-esque group whose job it is to affect the outcome of wars and other events on pre-technological worlds. She gets souped up with all kinds tech augmentation, and goes mega-ninja. Eventually she saves not just her own civilization, but all the other civilizations that live with it in a massive "nested world" created by aliens.

Another character who uses technology to become master of a civilization more advanced than his own is the videogame fiend in 1980s schlockfest The Last Starfighter. Turns out the videogame he's been pounding on is actually a test to become a member of an elite starfighting force that will beat back some evil aliens in another part of the galaxy. The master of the videogame is the master of the galaxy!

Neal Stephenson's terrific novel The Diamond Age follows the adventures of a street kid who accidentally finds the most powerful technology of her age: An artificially intelligent "educational primer" that teaches leadership as well as knowledge. Eventually she rises up out of the slums to lead a "mouse army" of other, similarly-educated girls, who may take over the world. And in Linda Nagata's novel The Bohr Maker, a prostitute who lives in a squat discovers a powerful form of nanotechnology, the Bohr Maker of the book's title, and uses it to completely transform the world. The developing world becomes the superdeveloped world overnight, while the so-called developed world finds itself in the ashcan of history.

Thanks to the HC and the humans of Twitter for ideas!

[via RealUFOs]

Oobject has a roundup of photos of real abandoned planes that are begging to be sets of yet another mysterious island creature feature.

Here are a few we think we've seen before.

And this may as well be the cockpit Jack and Kate climb into only to come face to face with the smoke monster.
Image: The Digital Mirage
This surely is the heroin hijacker poor Boone crawled into before it came tumbling down.
Image: RoadTransport.com
Image: Maam
This Japanese Fighter Jet looks more like an X-Wing Starfighter than something from our galaxy.
Image: tallshipstales.de

The premise behind Demons, which aired in the UK on ITV earlier in the year, is much the same as Buffy — cute teenager finds out they have an innate ability to battle evil while balancing school, dating, and driving tests (the latter not so well).

In this version the cute teenager is a boy, but like Buffy, Luke Rutherford, played by Christian Cooke (a Gossip Girl clone) has a mentor who teaches him the ways of demon slaying. Rupert Galvin, played by Philip Glenister of UK's Life on Mars, is a sarcastic American, often referred to as the "colonial". He unfortunately is a bit of a drag on the show as he tries too hard to channel CSI: Miami's David Caruso — and well, no one should do that, not even Caruso himself.

Rupert, who was Luke's dead father's demon fighting sidekick, comes back to town to let Luke know that he's the real-life great-great grandson of Abraham Van Helsing. Yes, the Van Helsing made famous as a vampire hunter in Bram Stoker's Dracula. As a Van Helsing, Luke inherits the task of protecting the regular world from the supernatural evils of the underworld.

In the first episode, we get a glimpse of who these goblins are, and the introduction is stellar. First up is Gladiolus Thrip, a sleazy bounty hunter who wears an engraved beak on his nose and has a bit of a Twin Peaks air to him. Best part: He's played by Mackenzie Crook, Gareth from the UK's The Office. The transformation from geek to beast is worth watching the first episode in itself.

By the second episode we learn that Luke and his crew, which includes his mentor, his mortal non-girlfriend, and a hot blind opera singer who has visions, are in charge of solving every strange occurrence in Luke's Sunnydale — London.

Production quality is decent, though some of the special effects can be a bit cheesy. As with most genre television productions, makeup and costume effects beat out the show's CG. The writing is up to par with Whedon, with witty banter between characters that runs the gamut between dark ages humor to painful teen sexual tension and sarcasm.

Is it a bit too similar to Buffy? Sure. But it's not a total replica. It's more like an extension of its predecessor. Or maybe an alternate, male, Buffyverse. Either way, it's entertaining enough that you can forgive it for ripping off the basic premise.

Demons premieres Saturday, January 2 at 10 PM on BBC America.

Dark Horse describes the fourth and final installment of the series: Think that a third-world civil war is messy? How about an off-world civil war? Caught in the middle of a blood feud between rival Predator clans in an east African war zone, private military contractor Thorpe barely makes it back to base with his hide intact after a pitched firefight with a squad of extraterrestrial marauders. But clean sheets and hot chow will provide cold comfort once the alien killers and their lethal technology track Thorpe down, and he has precious little time to marshal the Graham Directive Security crew for a desperate defense. They might have had a chance had they not lost their most potent ally, a lone rival Predator warrior, but now Thorpe and the GDS soldiers are out of options and out of time as they prepare to make their stand-their last stand. A new series, Aliens vs. Predator, launches in January.

The Government Manual for New Superheroes by Matthew David Brozik and Jacob Sager Weinstein: When you decide to become a superhero, there are some basics that you need to attend to. What should your superhero name be? How do you go about making a costume? Where can you find your very own Fortress of Solitude? Should you start out as a sidekick, or try joining a super team? This manual covers all those important topics in the life of a neophyte superhero, and ensures that you won't suffer too much embarrassment in your early days of fighting crime.

Batman/Superman/Spider-Man Training Manuals: From the folks who brought us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Ultimate Training Manuals help you tailor your superhero training by modeling it on a particular costumed crimefighter. The Batman Handbook teaches you such all-important skills as throwing a grappling hook, disarming a gunman, withstanding hypnosis, and surviving a poisonous gas attack. The Superman Handbook helps you leap tall structures in a single bound (by pole vaulting, not flying), how to rescue victims from anything from a runaway car to a burning building to quicksand, and how to treat victims of electrocution and radiation. The Spider-Man Handbook teaches you to develop your spider sense, build your own webslingers, survive a fall from a tall building, and live off a superhero's meager income.

The Action Hero's/Heroine's Handbook: Joe Borgenicht co-wrote these indispensable guides for any aspiring action star — with David Borgenicht for action heroes and with Jennifer Worick for action heroines. Despite the titles, their advice isn't entirely gender-specific. The Action Hero's Handbook explains how to take a bullet, wrangle a great white shark, and perform the Vulcan nerve pinch. The Action Heroine's Handbook has some female-specific advice — how to win a high-speed chase in high heels and a bustier, how to give birth under pressure — but also offers tips on fending off the undead, profiling serial killers, and outrunning fireballs.

The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook: Extreme Edition by Joshua Piven: Like other Worst-Case Scenario books, this volume is more focused on the emergencies and disasters you'll encounter in your life as a superhero. Thwart animal and vampire attacks, free your leg from a bear trap, and survive pandemics, all with this handy guide.

Don't Try This at Home by Hunter S. Fulghum: If you need advice on something a bit more ambitious — say, breaking into Area 51, sinking a submarine, forming an independent nation, or capturing the Loch Ness Monster — Fulgham has your back. He lays out the supplies and the steps you'll need to accomplish even the most bizarre and over-the-top super tasks.

How to Be a Superhero by Barry Neville: If, instead of going the Batman route, you've suddenly awaken to find you have superpowers, this might be the book for you. It aims to help you understand your new power — be it flight, magical abilities, or super-strength — as well as choosing an archenemy and polishing you superhero resume. Think you might actually be evil? There's a chapter on that, too.

Wisdom from the Batcave: How to Live a Super, Heroic Life by Cary A. Friedman: Sort of a self-help guide for superheroes and the people who want to emulate them, this book focuses more on the internal life of costumed hero. Written by a rabbi, it explores the values of self-esteem, willpower, hard work, and anticipating consequences that have made Batman such a successful crimefighter — and can help you on your superheroic quest as well.

Supervillains and Philosophy by Ben Dyer: Sure, you could opt for the similar book on superheroes and philosophy, but it's always good to understand your enemy. These essays will help you understand what drives your supervillainous foes — and why people sometimes root for them.

Kick-Ass by Mark Millar: Obviously this is a work of fiction rather than an actual guide, but Kick-Ass does provide some object lessons on what not to do when starting out as a superhero. For example, do not go after a pair of carjackers when you have no plan and no physical training. And it's probably not a good idea to waltz into a gangbanger's den and tell him off. After all, you won't always have a foul-mouthed preteen swooping in to save your ass.

We're used to science fiction always getting the snub when it comes to trophies. We've endured Battlestar Galactica's many snubs. But sadly for those involved in Moon, they're not even getting a chance to get nominated where they deserve — I personally think Sam Rockwell deserves a nom for best actor. According to Duncan Jones twitter:

"We've knocked heads. they have chosen the films they are backing & we are not in their plans."

"they say it costs too much for our little film as they would need to be water-marked copies as our DVD isn't out yet in the US."

Which means that plenty of Academy Members won't be seeing Moon and won't be able to vote on it. Remember Moon had a very small "select cities" release. And if you haven't seen it by now, tough shit. This is why screeners need to be sent out to the proper people. But, alas it doesn't seem to be in the cards for Moon. Times are hard, we understand, but it's times like these when people should rally around something that is genuinely great. So what can you do? Sign this petition for Rockwell's nomination, which Neil Gaiman and Jon Favreau have already lent their names out to — and tell people about the film.

If Rockwell and/or Jones receive the nominations they deserve, it could mean more opportunities for everybody who wants to create thought-provoking science fiction on the big screen.

[Via Film School Rejects]