Author Archive

Now that Thanksgiving has passed, I feel that I can talk about Christmas (retailers and radio stations start way too early. This bugs me as a big fan of Thanksgiving).

I love having a Geek Wife.  Not only am I married to someone who understand me, she also introduces me to more geek items that I wasn’t aware of.  She introduced me to the website that NORAD set up to track Santa Clause on Christmas Eve.    http://www.noradsanta.org/

NORAD tracking Santa just off the North American coast in 2007

It has now become a tradition on December 24th (Just as the International Date line crosses over to December 25th) to visit the website and keep an eye on where Santa has visited.  The website will update every five minutes with different reports and videos on where Santa has been.  At the time that Santa is scheduled to pass over our place, my wife would run past the kids bedrooms (they would be tucked in by that time) playing the Christmas bells (luckily we would already have the presents under the tree).

Most of this mirrors Squishy’s comments, but I thought I’d add some of my own.

How to handle traffic on the freeway.

My wife and I had a date night so we took the opportunity to go see the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. As with previous James Bond movies, the title came from Ian Fleming. It was the title of a short story in Fleming’s James Bond short story book “For your eyes only.” As with previous title uses, elements of the short story were not used in the movie.

Quantum of Solace picks up right where Casino Royale left off. So I would highly recommend re-watching that movie before staring QoS. If you had any doubt if this was an action flick, that was disproven in the first minutes of the movie. James Bond having to take a lot of matters into his own hands reminded me of License to Kill and Die Another Day. I also enjoyed the Goldfinger tribute when one of the Bond Girls is killed and left for Bond to find.

My name is.....

Why are geeks interested in the James Bond movies?

Duh!!

1- Girls

2- Gadgets

3- Guns

4- Spanish Inquisition (whoops, sorry I didn’t expect that)

5- Style

James Bond is a badass.  He’s a badass that has kewl toys, gets the girls and blows up a lot of things in style.  One moment Sean Connery has a duck on his head swimming through the water, the next he’s in a tuxedo.   And that tuxedo probably has more devices imbedded in it than my cell phone.

Doctor Who makes an announcement.

Rumors have been flying fast and furious.  David Tennant, our current resident Time Lord, took some time away from the show to work with the Royal Shakespear Company (with Patrick Stewart).  Usually when something like this happens on a BBC production, the actors are moving on.  Yes after much deliberation, David announced that he would be leaving the TARDIS when the scheduled Doctor Who specials have been completed.

This sucks.  But it is official as you can see here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7698539.stm

With the article was an interview with David about his decision to leave.  As I was watching it David mentioned how excited he was to see how they would do the regeneration scene.  The BBC literally gets to kill the main character of a hit show and have the show continue.  The regeneration scene was originally conceived when William Hartnel (the first Doctor) decided to leave the show.  The script writer, Gerry Davis, proposed that the alien doctor could have the ability to die and return with a new body.  This would allow them to continue the show with a younger actor in the lead role.  Recasting kept the show fresh and allowed it to continue for 40 years.

As a fan of a lot of Sci-Fi shows, I end up joining various fan clubs. Of course I run the USS Ticonderoga fan club for Star Trek. I’ve been involved in various clubs for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Firefly and others. One of these is the Visitors Fifth Column, a fan club of the various V mini-series and television series. Today the leader of the local chapter directed me towards a Variety report announcing that ABC would be producing a re-image of the V story. Warner Brothers TV will be producing the show.

Did you miss me?

Scott Peters, the co-creator and executive producer of the USA series The 4400, will be writing the new adaptation. Peters has also written for The Outer Limits and Highlander. He has also directed for The 4400 and Jericho.

Moving sucks. One of the bad things about moving is that by the end of the day no one wants to cook. So we checked out the postal spam and discovered that Arby’s had sent out a new batch of coupons. Hmm….Five for $5.00 on Arby’s Melts. That will cover the bulk of dinner. But we still need sides and something for a finicky daughter. She loves the mozzarella sticks. What’s this? Arby’s has a new sidekick item: Mac & Cheezers. With a coupon we buy one sidekick item (mozzarella sticks) and we get a serving of the new Mac & Cheezers for free. Sounds like a plan.

As we are sitting there eating our meal, the little squirrel comes out of the wheel in my head and smacks the back of my brain. “Hey you’ve been looking for an article idea for Stolen Droids, do a review of this new food item.” He says. Good idea I tell the squirrel before I use Klingon pain sticks to get him back in the wheel and make him start spinning faster than ever.

Lots of good things happened last weekend at Mountain-Con IV. Lot of things also need to be improved (as with any volunteer run organization). But let me show you the best thing that happened to me over the weekend.

The Artist Guest of Honor was David Reddick. David draws the Garfield comic strip for newspapers (yes he is authorized) but his fun job is drawing several Star Trek themed comics. One is called The Trek Life.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/features/treklife.html

The main character for this series is a Trek Obsessed fan named Carl. A lot of people have compared me to this character. Ok more than a lot of you. When I heard that David was coming, I wanted to commission this piece of artwork from him.

The new television shows for Fall 2008 network season are almost here.   Amid the cesspools known as ‘reality’ tv, cop show copy-cats and lame sitcoms we can usually find nuggets of interesting television.  Here are some of the shows that I feel would be of interest to fellow geeks with some of my comments for you to rip apart.  With some of the schedule conflicts, I can only thank the gods for DVR service.  All times posted are Eastern.
Think a show is missing from this list?  Remember that several shows have Mid-season premiers such as Lost (ABC), Reaper (CW), 24 (Fox) and Merlin (new show, NBC) .

I’m also interested in hearing what other geeks are looking forward to.

On a crusade....

Mondays:
8:00pm Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles (Fox)- Returning show starts on September 8th.  I will be watching this show again.  I really didn’t think this would make good episodic television, but I found myself watching each week.

New Red Dwarf episode from the BBC?  Could it be true?

The PBS station in Steattle, KCTS 9 hosted Robert Llewellyn (aka Kryten) for a 20th Anniversary Celebration of Red Dwarf on Sunday, August 24th.  To advertise the event Robert recorded a special promo seen here:

http://www.kcts9.org/video/red-dwarf-robert-llewellyn-coming-seattle

On this video he states that he has some special news about the future of the show and that he was saving it for his visit.

Fans watched the show and posted a report on the official Robert Llewellyn message boards.  Here is that link:

http://llewtube.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=841

At KCTS Robert announced that BBC Worldwide has commisioned a 1 hour episode of Red Dwarf.  The script is in the final stages now and should be filming in October of 2008.  He wouldn’t provide any details on the plot.

So far my search has only turned up these two items.  As I come accross more information, I’ll post it here.

[Editor's Note: TardisCaptain, has been attending conventions since the late eighties from Seattle to Los Angels to Oklahoma and all points in-between. This includes General SF conventions, gaming cons, charity cons, LAN expos and of course Star Trek cons. He has volunteered at various local conventions including Conduit, LTUE and Mountain-Con. He was the ConChair of Mountain-Con I, II and III and is still a trustee for Mountain-Con.]

Attending a convention is a rare treat. There is usually a large buzz of fans wanting to meet their favorite author or actor. Other fans are excited because they have the opportunity to share their fandom. Merchants have brought rare and unusual items to the dealers’ room. Games have been prepared by Game Masters, LARP Judges and LAN coordinators. Costumers have spent thousands of dollars and thousands of man-hours preparing costumes. Artists have submitted images of their imagination to the art-show or film festival. All of these fans have brought something to contribute to the excitement of a convention. All for one glorious geek-fest-filled three days.