Month: August 2006

The BBC’s in-house newsletter apparently has revealed that a second spin-off of Doctor Who is being launched. The first, Torchwood, starts this Fall, and is aimed at adults. The new series will be aimed at kids, and is being done by CBBC (the children’s channel):

“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.”

Outpost Gallifrey (my source for Doctor Who news — VERY reliable) has heard from a variety of sources that the working title of the show is Sarah Jane Investigates.

Sidney Blumenthal has an article in today’s Salon.com about how the current situation in Israel and Lebanon is being exacerbated by a power struggle within our own government. By secretly providing NSA intelligence to Israel and undermining the hapless Condi Rice, hardline NeoCons in the Bush administration are trying to widen the Middle East conflict to Iran and Syria, over the objections of more informed and sane traditional Republicans.

Personally, I relish the thought of in-fighting in the administration — sooner or later, somebody will get burned, and they’ll decide to take down the whole house of cards, motivated either by revenge, or by covering their own ass. It happened with Nixon’s administration — nothing would have really come of Watergate if people hadn’t started talking (because they were covering their asses, and felt burned by the administration). With a bit of providence, maybe the same thing will happen this time, too.

‘s posting YouTube links of several performances of The Who got me thinking of using the site as a nostalgia machine, so I did a quick search.

Watch and remember:

Jason of Star Command Intro –70s live-action Saturday Morning SF show.

Space Academy Intro –Another one, from the same studio (Filmation). I’ve actually got episodes of this on VHS, from when they were re-broadcast on Sci-Fi Channel.

Isis! — More Filmation live-action, apparently coming to DVD next year. I bought a VHS tape of episodes at a convention….we watched them. They’re really awful, but I still get a twinge of early-sexual-thought shivers when I see her in the Isis outfit. Can’t help it.

Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle — Late 70s cartoon from (you guessed it) Filmation. I *LOVED* this show — mostly because it is the only adaptation of Tarzan that I’ve ever seen which actually stays pretty close to the books, with all of the pulp elements (lost cities, talking Mangani apes, etc.).

Flash Gordon cartoon intro — Again, Filmation — I couldn’t find anything but this, which is the Spanish version (oddly), but the animation is as good as I remembered it. It’s out on DVD now, and cheap. I need to order it.