Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 4, 2006 in Star Trek
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, Christies is auctioning off over 1,000 items of memorabilia from CBS Television Studios. The auction will happen in New York 5-7 October but the items can be viewed in London from today until 8 August. Highlights include models of the Starship Enterprise, costumes worn by Captain Kirk, Spock and Uhura and a replica of Kirk’s chair (estimate $8,000 to $12,000). There is also stuff from later series – you can bid for Deanna Troi’s mini-dress(estimate $1,500 to $2,500), Captain Picard’s Starfleet uniform or even your own Borg alcove:
A new James Bond novel is being written – 40 years after the superspy’s last outing. The estate of the late 007 author Ian Fleming has commissioned a “well-known and highly respected” writer for the task. The writer’s identity is being kept a closely-guarded secret until publication.
The 15th Bond adventure will be published in May 2008 to mark the cententary of Fleming’s birth. Corinne Turner of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd said: “We are delighted to have secured this particular author who we have had in mind for some time now. “He is the perfect writer for this project and we are greatly looking forward to his take on James Bond, in what we are convinced will be a stunning novel.”
There hasn’t ben a new Bond novel since 1966 when Octopussy and the Living Daylights and were published after Ian Fleming passed away.
I guess the main question is if the new book will be set in the swinging sixties? James Bond and the Cold War go together like Sherlock Holmes and the Victorian era, it would be sad to get away from that.
Sci Fi Channel has picked up the four seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise to premiere on the cable network early this fall. Enterprise, starring Scott Bakula as “Captain Jonathan Archer,” originally aired on UPN from 2001 to 2005, and its 98 produced episodes have been in syndication ever since.
The new venue for Enterprise is part of a package deal between Sci Fi Channel and CBS Paramount Domestic Television that includes multiple made-for-television movies and other series, including Threshold co-starring Brent Spiner (“Data”) and produced by Enterprise co-creator Brannon Braga. Threshold was CBS’ entry in the competitive sci-fi/thriller field last fall, but was pulled from the network after eight episodes. Twelve episodes were shot — all of which have aired overseas — so the Sci Fi deal will give U.S. audiences a chance to see the whole series on TV. (Of course, serious fans can pick up the DVD starting August 22.)
Rumored for many months, there is now confirmation that a new Doctor Who spinoff series starring Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith, from the Tom Baker era) will be put into production:
Sarah Jane Investigates The BBC’s in-house newsletter Ariel today released information suggesting the identity of the second Doctor Who spinoff series that has bee rumored for the past several months, one that will bring back Elisabeth Sladen, who appeared last season in the episode “School Reunion”. Says the item, “CBBC is developing a spin-off series from Doctor Who based on the adventures of investigative journalist Sarah Jane, played by Elizabeth Sladen, and to be written by Russell T Davies. Sladen, who originally played the Doctor’s assistant in 1973, returned for the last series where she was seen vying with young Rose Tyler for the Doctor’s affections.”
What’s cool about this is that so far we’ve only discovered about 200 planets outside our solar system, so my guess is the number of discoveries will only continue to grow over the next century – and maybe just one of those planets will be like Earth:
In recent years, with improving technology, researchers have found a handful of systems that could harbor life-bearing planets, in theory at least. A nearby star called 55 Cancri is one of the leading candidates.
The 55 Cancri system involves three gas giant planets and another world that could be icy or rocky and is about the size of Neptune. The setup is 41 light-years from Earth and about 4.7 billion years old, comparable to our Sun.
Astronomers have said since 2002, when a planet was found at about the same orbital distance from 55 Cancri as Jupiter is from the Sun, that the star had the potential to harbor an Earth-sized world.
