SpaceGypsies

Last Sunday brought the long awaited and highly anticipated return of the PBS Mystery series Sherlock to the US. Lucky UK fans feasted their eyes on Series Two several months ago. Sherlock is a highly entertaining modernization of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where Victorian era ideals and technology make way for the 21st century. It can be enjoyed by both fans of the books, previous shows set in the Victorian era, and viewers who have no prior experience with Sherlock Holmes. As someone who grew up watching Jeremy Brett and has recently made a project out of reading the mysteries but is far from actually accomplishing it, I feel I have a mixed perspective on the subject.

WARNING: If you are familiar with the Sherlock Holmes mystery ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, this review will not entirely spoil the plot for you, nor will it give away the ending, but it will reveal the modern twists that were added in Sherlock. Reader beware!

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For years Stargate fans have known and loved his work. Without him, Stargate may never have become the memorable franchise that it is. Now the man who took the amazing and helped elevate it to the astounding is gone. Composer Joel Goldsmith died yesterday, April 29th, at the age of 54.

Joel composed the music for all 334 episodes of the three series of the Stargate franchise, plus the two SG-1 DVD movies. Joel was the one to take the original Stargate theme by David Arnold and adapt it into the SG-1 theme we all love. He collaborated with his famous father Jerry Goldsmith to create the score for Star Trek: First Contact in 1996. He was nominated for two other Emmy Awards, including his music for the SG-1 Season One episode “The Nox” and the Atlantis Season Two episode “Grace Under Pressure.”

When I saw the news yesterday I was indescribably sad. I never had the opportunity to meet him. I suspect very few fans ever got that chance. The closest I ever came was by ordering a copy of the Stargate Continuum soundtrack from his website, and for a few extra dollars he signed the CD booklet. It has always had a special spot in my collection of memorabilia.

Joel’s work has had an effect on so many fans. How many of us have scrambled to get to the TV as soon as we hear our favorite title theme? How many of us proud geeks can identify each theme that Joel created, from the Goa’uld’s chanting theme to the airy chords of the Ancient’s theme? In the years since Stargate Continuum was released I have often seen fans commenting on how well the first piece, ‘A Day in the SGC’, captures the very essence of the series. If anything more ever comes out of the Stargate franchise, the composer will have a very high standard to strive for.

To following up on my original review and report, there have been some new developments regarding Michael Shanks’ new series, Saving Hope. The date has been set, so everyone should mark their calendars and set reminders to tune in to NBC on June 7th!

But wait, it gets better! The man who swore to fans that he would never join the growing ranks of celebrities (and his own wife) on Twitter has finally gone and done it! The @MichaelShanks profile, previously held by the Michael Shanks Online website team, has been handed over to the man himself! If you have never had the chance to meet Michael I recommend you pull up his Twitter feed, look for the tweet on March 19th when the account was handed over, and read from there. Reading as he fields questions, chats with fans, and interacts with other Stargate names like David Hewlett and James “Bam Bam” Bamford is the next best thing to seeing him at a convention Q&A!

Of course a big reason for Michael’s unexpected tweeting frenzy is to help spread the word for Saving Hope, so make sure you tweet using #savinghope and follow him for pictures from the set and the very latest news! If you haven’t seen the beautiful trailer for saving hope, check it out now!

The 18th book in Fandemonium’s arsenal of Stargate SG-1 novels is out. Written by Sabine C. Bauer, Transitions falls shockingly short.

Sabine Bauer is not a newbie to the Stargate franchise. Her first novel, Trail by Fire, was the first Stargate book Fandemonium ever published, and I decided right then and there that I really liked her work. Later she wrote Survival of the Fittest, another fantastic SG-1 story, and then she took on Atlantis with Mirror Mirror. Trial by Fire was very accurate as far as the franchise canon goes. It is set in season seven and does very well at playing into Daniel’s return from Ascension and Jack’s previous encounter with our friend Baal. After having endured the work of American authors who didn’t know their Jaffa from their Tok’ra, I adored Bauer’s well researched and original story, and my favorite original character of all time. It is truly worthy of it’s own review, which I promise I will get to.

Mirror Mirror was a little different from Trial by Fire as far as plot style. It is in some ways psychological test of the characters. The characters encounter a device that fractures time, spitting each character off though all the potenial forks in the road that they could have taken. For instance, we see what could have happened to Elizabeth Weir if, after waking to rotate the ZPMs, the statis chamber wouldn’t work again and she is left alone in a sleeping city as seen in ‘Before I Sleep’. While it is a season two story and I am not as well trained in Atlantis canon as some fans I know, I didn’t find any obvious errors and I really enjoyed the book.

Survival of the Fittest is definitely the meatiest of Bauer’s first three books. I really enjoyed the depth of the story, and it is still among my favorite books of the novel series. However, it has a canyon-sized plot hole. According to events that the characters mention, the main antagonist, the ever annoying Colonel Simons, should have been in jail along side his pet Goa’uld. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a way for Bauer to have sidestepped this gaping hole and still keep all of her puzzle pieces. It was a real shame but I forgave her and I highly recommend the book.

Transitions, however . . . . I think that Bauer bit off much more than she could chew. Transitions is an SG-1/Atlantis crossover novel, and it is the first of its kind. Sonny Whitelaw and Elizabeth Christensen wrote Blood Ties, which is basically an Atlantis novel that includes Daniel Jackson. (I highly recommend it!) Transitions however is a true two full cast crossover. This made reading fun but not in a good way. Every time something huge happened on Earth with SG-1, the next chapter would send you to Atlantis until another cliffhanger chapter sent you back. In most stories this works really well, but in Transitions, the related events taking place between Earth and Atlantis took much too long to come together despite the prologue that attempted to provide the trigger event for the whole book.

I was so excited about this book when I first started hearing about it because it is the first book to bring back Cassandra Fraiser, the adopted daughter of the late lamented Dr. Janet Fraiser. Fans only saw Cassie three times during the course of the series, but it is a widely held belief that she is an integral part of SG-1′s life outside of Cheyanne Mountain. I became a lot more skeptical when I realized that the book would also be a crossover. I mean, that’s a lot to cram into 341 pages. It is a truly daunting task, which is no doubt why no one has tried it before! Plus, I really feel that Cassie should have been on the cover of this book!

Sometimes the devil is in the details, but for Transitions the devil is in the timing. The story is set right after SG-1′s season 8 concluded. The Goa’uld are decimated and declawed, the Replicators have been destroyed, Brigadier General Jack O’Neill has been offered another promotion and a position in Washington, Daniel Jackson is packing to go to Atlantis, Teal’c is on Dakara helping to establish the new Jaffa nation, and Sam Carter is trying to figure out what she is going to do next without her team. This is a perfectly fertile place for this novel, and it does a really good job of filling in that gap of time before season nine when the show returned and for fans, it was a nightmare without explanation. Not only does it show how we got there, but it also goes a long way to explain why Sam chose to lead R&D because Cassie was going through a “tough time.” Unfortunately filling in that gap is the only thing this story does well. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official! NBC has picked up Michael Shanks’ new series, Saving Hope! According to Gateworld.net, NBC has ordered thirteen episodes. This sadly has become a standard for new series rather than a twenty episode season, and it may indicate that NBC has its qualms about the potential of the show. I am equally skeptical that NBC is going to give Saving Hope a fair chance to prove itself. They don’t exactly have an exemplary track record with fans, thanks to the SyFy Channel.

In Saving Hope, Shanks’ character of Dr. Charlie Harris become a patient in his own hospital. While his body is stuck in a coma, Harris’s spirit wanders the halls where his fiancée and fellow surgeon, Alex Reid (Erica Durance), also works. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet you should really click play below!

Saving Hope will premiere this Summer on NBC, and at the same time it will also air on CTV in Canada. The exact date has not been released, but we can expect NBC to start running promotional ads soon.

Want to read more about why you should tune in to Saving Hope this Summer? Check out my first reaction to the series in my review here!