This is it! Big week for new shows! Starting with Chuck, Heroes, and Journeyman on NBC Monday.

A big week for VCR/DVR programming. Over a dozen new or returning sci-fi shows start this week. First up are Chuck, Heroes, and Journeyman, all on NBC.

Missed Eureka on Sci Fi Tuesday

Did you know you can watch full episodes of Eureka and other Sci Fi Channel shows online at scifi.com? I just got Superman vs. Doomsday in the mail that day and was watching it and forgot all about the new Eureka episode. So I went to scifi.com to look at the schedule and see when it was going to be repeated. I found this link instead : Missed an episode? Didn't know you could do that.

Disturbing rumor about Battlestar

It's all over the web, so rather than add my own two cents, I'll just link to one of the reports I found. Whether you believe the rumor or not, you should this item about Sci Fi Channel programming to be interesting.

Last "Masters of Science Fiction" last Saturday

The last of the four episodes (well, three, if you live in the greater Houston broadcast area and had the second episode preempted by a preseason football game) of the series was shown over the weekend. There are actually six episodes, but ABC decided to show only four.

For those of you in the Houston area who missed the episode "The Awakening," here are some clips from You Tube:

CLIP 1:




CLIP 2:

Torchwood on BBCA has American influence

Read the article on Sci Fi Wire. Says some good things about Buffy and other U.S. shows. Also sounds a little more hard-edged and adult than Doctor Who made by the same group.

Preliminary schedule for Stargate Atlantis

At GateWorld Looks like they are going to run the season straight through rather that take breaks for three or four or six months at a time. Also has episodes descriptions that may or may not be spoilers.

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

(Should this be on the Movie Pages?)

Watched the DVD over the weekend. It's funny that Sheridan calls the Minbari minimalists when he sees the spartan meeting room where he gave his interview. Both stories on the DVD were minimalist (or done in a minimalist style). They had a minimum number of main characters returning from the TV series (two). They had long scenes of dialog with little or no action. The sets were simple, green-screened, or totally bare (Sheridan's interview). I don't know if this was done on purpose for artistic effect or because of budget constraints. I don't have enough information to make a judgement either way. I haven't watched all the extras yet; maybe Straczynski explains it in one of them. I get the feeling that people expecting to see spaceship battles and special effects action might be disappointed.

It harks back to the original Star Trek series and even The Twilight Zone. They both had limited budgets for sets, props, and special effects which, even back then, made them look simple and amateurish. You had to look past the production values and look at the stories, for they were about the conflict and interaction between the characters which is the basis for all good science fiction.

It's the same with The Lost Tales. If you ignore the CGI and the sets, you could drop these two "episodes" into appropriate places in the story arcs of the original series. They had the same feel and content of original episodes. The characters were true to their development in the series. They showed us the same internal and external conflicts they experienced as we watched them grow and evolve the first time through.

(I just wish there had been more!)