I just saw the episode The Doctor's Daughter, which had Georgia Moffett starring as Jenny the daughter (clone) of the Doctor.
Ms. Moffet is the daughter of the 5th Doctor, Peter Davison. (Davison is his stage name, his birth name is Moffatt)
She co-starred with David Tennant, who played the 10th Doctor.In the wake of actor and writer Carrie Fisher’s tragic passing in December, reports about the current Star Wars trilogy have been full of questions and guesses. What exactly should we expect from the popular character of Princess Leia in the remaining two episodes, and how will the film's producers deal with her original actor not being able to complete Leia's plot arc?Of course, this is NOT a categoral statement, and this IS Disney, and the mouse has been seduced by the Dark Side and delights in violating the Prime Directive,† at least since the Eisner days, but it appears that for the immediate future at least, we won't see a CGI Carrie Fisher.
Lucasfilm took the unusual step of confirming one major detail about the series’ future on Friday, announcing that the company does not intend to recreate the actor’s persona using digital means.
Telling fans that “we don’t normally respond to fan or press speculation,” Lucasfilm published a statement at the StarWars.com blog confirming that the Disney-owned company "has no plans to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher’s performance as Princess or General Leia Organa.”
The statement, which also paid tribute to the actor ("[we] will always strive to honor everything [Fisher] gave to Star Wars"), doesn’t specify which projects Lucasfilm’s producers may be referring to. Multiple outlets have reported that Fisher had completed her work acting in the upcoming, untitled eighth episode, and many of those outlets published follow-up reports claiming that the character of Leia Organa had been set to play a major role in Episode IX. Without going into specifics, Lucasfilm’s statement clearly isn’t a retroactive one in terms of claiming that the company would never produce a CGI version of Fisher.
H/t naked capitalismIn his house at R'lyeh, the CthuTurkey 🦃 waits dreaming...— Sean (@OddNMacabre) November 24, 2016
☠️Happy Thanksgiving☠️#TurkeyComaVisions #horror #Cthulhu #Lovecraft pic.twitter.com/L6S1VZNUli
This is awesome.A bunch of sentient lightbulbs and refrigerators uniting to destroy a major infrastructure is cyberpunk as hell. https://t.co/ZjRJM7Rb3T— Søren Ragsdale (@sorenrags) September 27, 2016
For “Star Trek” fans it was like finding a lost Shakespeare play — only to have it snatched away by the playwright’s heirs.F%$# CBS.
Last fall an unused script for the cult 1960s television show turned up after being forgotten for years. Its author, the science-fiction writer Norman Spinrad, announced that it would become an episode of a popular Web series, “Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II,” which features amateur actors in the classic roles of Capt. James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock and other crew members of the starship Enterprise.
But then another player stepped in: CBS, which said it owned the script and blocked a planned Web production of it. Trekkies were appalled. “These executives should be phasered on heavy stun,” said Harmon Fields of Manhattan, who called himself “a ‘Star Trek’ fan of galactic proportions.”
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The story begins in 1967, after Mr. Spinrad wrote an acclaimed episode of the original series, “The Doomsday Machine.” “I did ‘The Doomsday Machine’ fast,” Mr. Spinrad, 71, said by phone from his home in Greenwich Village, “and then they said: ‘We’re in a hole. Can you write something in four days?’ ”
The result was “He Walked Among Us,” which the producers envisioned as a dramatic vehicle for the comedian Milton Berle. His character is a well-meaning but messianic sociologist whose conduct threatens to destroy the planet Jugal. The crew of the Enterprise must remove him without disrupting the normal development of the culture.
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Mr. Spinrad soon donated his sole copy of “He Walked Among Us” and other papers to California State University, Fullerton. With several other drafts of the script, it lay in the archives for decades. Sharon Perry, the university’s archivist and special collections librarian, said she had received only one inquiry about “He Walked Among Us” in her 27 years there.
But in October, at the annual New York City Collectible Paperback and Pulp Fiction Expo, a man seeking Mr. Spinrad’s autograph showed up with a copy of the script, which he said he found at another convention. A few months later Mr. Spinrad began selling the script on Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com, and the producers of “Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II” learned of it.
Based in Ticonderoga, N.Y., “Phase II” is one of numerous fan-generated “Star Trek” Internet series, this one named for “Star Trek Phase II,” Mr. Roddenberry’s failed 1977 attempt to revive his creation for television. This Web series is distinguished by its fidelity to the original’s sets, costumes, props, music and other elements, as well as appearances by some original cast members and new stories by writers like Ms. Fontana.
Over the years CBS gained the television, online and merchandising rights to “Star Trek.” But because the “Phase II” cast and crew make no money from their work, the network usually allows them to indulge their hobby.
Around the time Mr. Spinrad offered “He Walked Among Us” online (confusingly he published an unrelated novel with the same title in 2010) he arranged with the “Phase II” senior executive producer, James Cawley, who also portrays Captain Kirk, to film it. The writer said he was “blown away” by the series and planned to direct the episode himself next fall.
But this month, Mr. Cawley said, CBS asked him in an e-mail to cease and desist. CBS also contacted Mr. Spinrad, who withdrew “He Walked Among Us” from the Internet.
The network said it was now “considering opportunities to offer licensed copies of the work.”
The final painting of the Enterprise model will begin in April, using newly discovered reference photos from our appeal to Trek fans in the fall. The team will also build new nacelle domes with LED lights to mimic the spinning effect seen on television. For reference, they will first build a 1:1 mock-up of the original mechanism, which utilized mirrors, motors, nails, and Christmas lights. Conservator Ariel O’Connor explains, “Although the original nacelle dome lights did not survive, we can replicate the original effect in a way that is safe to install on the model. The LED lights can be programmed to match the original VFX footage while eliminating the burnt-out bulbs, extreme heat, and motor problems that troubled the original lights. It is a wonderful solution to re-light the nacelles while ensuring the model’s safety and longevity.”Needless to say, once they are done, I will seriously get down to the Air and Space museum to get my geek on.
The Enterprise model has been carefully separated into its individual components—saucer section; secondary hull; port and starboard nacelles and pylons; deflector dish array; hangar bay doors; and the bridge. Each section is being meticulously studied to determine its construction and condition and will be documented with visible, ultraviolet, and infrared photography. We completed X-ray photography, with help from our colleagues at the Smithsonian Zoological Park, in spring 2015.
Every few months, rumors arise that the original Star Wars Original Trilogy - as in the one where Han Solo shoots Greedo, not the other way around - is finally coming to Blu-ray, remastered for your HD television. It’s the sort of thing that Star Wars fans the world over have been clamoring for since George Lucas released the Special Edition on DVD back in 2004. Those fans – and just, well, film purists with a general respect for the history of movies – don’t much care for the updated movies and their CGI Jabba the Hutts and CGI musical numbers and ghost Hayden Christensens. They want to see what these movies looked like when they were originally released, matte lines and all, only with a noticeable upgrade in the audio-visual quality. Not too much to ask for, right?I hope that this is true.
Unfortunately, Lucas has famously refused to release remastered versions of the unaltered originals. He’s pretty stuck on the idea that the most recent Special Edition – there’ve been three at this point – is the truest version, the most accurate representation of his vision, and that no other iteration need be released to the public ever again. There was some renewed hope that he might loosen his grip on the movies when he sold Lucasfilm to Disney, but some four years on and there’s been no movement on the matter. At least, not officially, not yet.
Star Wars Original Unaltered Trilogy Coming to Blu-Ray
But there is a new glimmer of hope. John Landis – who directed Animal House, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, and more – was recently at Universal Studios in Orlando to talk about the newly installed Halloween Horror Nights American Werewolf in London maze. When asked whether or not he’d ever considered updating American Werewolf with modern effects a la the Star Wars Special Edition (which is an insane thing to ask because those werewolf effects are amazing and horrifying to this day), he said:First of all, [the studio] wouldn’t let me. George owns his movies, so he can do what he wants … My personal opinion is George hurt his movies by doing what he did. However, George said to me, ‘But they’re my movies.’ I thought, ‘That’s fair.’So you’re probably wondering: “Why would John Landis have any inside information on whether or not Disney was releasing the theatrical editions?” That’s a good question. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just heard this rumor – like we’ve all heard this rumor, time and again - and passed it on as though it were fact. It’s worth noting, however, that Landis and Lucas are close friends. They came up together in the same group of filmmakers. Lucas offered Landis the directing job for Howard the Duck, which Landis wisely passed on. Landis put Lucas in Beverly Hills Cop III, a movie probably just as bad as Howard the Duck. Which means it’s entirely possible that he got his information from a very inside source – George Lucas himself.
Did you know Disney, by the way, is putting out the original Star Wars the way it was? So Disney, they’re like, money on the floor.
The original Star Wars was very consciously following anthropologist's Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. ………In case you are wondering, this was said
The hopeless non-sense spoken by everyone about recent terror attacks miss a single point:
We can minimize attacks, but we can't stop them
.………
Yes we can improve intelligence, control weapons, strike an bases. And a good strategy might improve safety, limit gun crime, prevent radicalization.
But it won't stop it all. As the font of much wisdom pointed out "Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man."
Last night, I watched the Dr. Who episode The Waters of Mars, the episode in which astronauts are infected by evil water that they use on the crops that they are growing.
Today, on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, they were discussing the fact that the astronauts on the space station had just grown crops on the station, and had a salad made from the greens.
I found this somewhat unsettling.
Hope for Republicans there still is. #MayTheFourthBeWithYou #StarWarsDay @StarWars -TW pic.twitter.com/DEqTUQE5gA— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) May 4, 2015 
.@ScottWalker thinks he’s the next Princess Leia, apparently… #MayThe4thBeWithYou #OwnIt https://t.co/UEQO0LIBbU pic.twitter.com/MyyqgrdNrB— NARAL (@NARAL) May 4, 2015 Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut “Star Trek,” died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83.Seriously. If you smoke, stop today.
His wife, Susan Bay Nimoy, confirmed his death, saying the cause was end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Mr. Nimoy announced that he had the disease last year, attributing it to years of smoking, a habit he had given up three decades earlier. He had been hospitalized earlier in the week.
