SpaceGypsies

Finally after far too long, Michael Shanks has landed a leading role on a new television series!

I should probably preface this post by reminding those who know and informing those that don’t know that Michael Shanks is my #1 favorite actor. Not only did he play my favorite character on my favorite franchise for over ten years, but I’ve seen him in person more than a few times. Though I certainly don’t know everything – that would be creepy – I like to think I know him as well as any fan can hope to know their favorite celebrity. Not only is he a fantastic actor but he’s a great person. He single handedly made a number of the worst SyFy movies ever made into something worth watching. If you doubt his talent, or worse, you are unfamiliar with his work, all you have to do is watch one episode of Stargate SG-1, “Lifeboat”, with the knowledge that Michael largely developed all those characters himself, creating and practicing at least three different accents with only a week or two weeks of notice before filming.

A regular starring role in a new series is long overdue for Michael. He has been bouncing from one guest role and TV movie to another, with the exception of Red Riding Hood (read my review here), since before the Stargate franchise stalled out. I can’t say how thrilled I am that at last he may have a starring role, and on a show that will hopefully air on a major network so everyone will finally see his talent.

Now for what we know about Michael’s show! Sometimes trailers don’t explain what’s going on very well, but this one kind of does. Check it out!

So to sum it up, Michael plays Chief of Surgery Charlie Harris. His fiancé, played by Erica Durance, is also a doctor. While Erica is known for Smallville, it’s fun to note that she had a guest role on Stargate SG-1 in the seventh season’s “Affinity”, and Erica and Michael did have a couple scenes! In Saving Hope the couple gets in a car accident and Charlie goes into a coma. Suddenly he starts to have an out-of-body experience and discovers that he can wander the hospital unseen. Thankfully we can see him, which is wonderful because that tux? WOW.

After reading comments on GateWorld.net, I have to agree with a few fans who commented that it has a kind of soapy Grey’s Anatomy feel to it. Personally I don’t go for that type of show. Yet to me it reminds me more of CBS’s A Gifted Man, which I would have watched if I could have just found the time. Unfortunately word is that A Gifted Man isn’t going to survive for another season. At the same time, perhaps a more diverse group of viewers have been leaving lots of positive and excited comments about Saving Hope‘s trailer on YouTube. Hopefully this means that there is an eager audience waiting to embrace the show.

To me this plot is interesting, and it does peak my curiosity. One of the things that has me curious though is how long can a show can keep one star in a coma? They are centering the show around the idea that Charlie is a free spirit in the hospital, watching and commenting on the goings on, unseen and unheard, while his body lies in a coma. At some point Charlie either has to wake up and get on with his life, or else his family would eventually have to consider making a hard decision. Either way, your plot has to change, and fast. By the way, if Michael has to die again . . .  I shudder to think!

No matter how things turn out, I for one will be watching Saving Hope because I can’t pass up the chance to support my favorite actor. I hope that more fans of Michael’s work will be willing to step out of their usual genres to give the show a fair chance. After all, how long have we been saying that Michael deserves this? This role definitely suits him. Tune in with me, because no matter what the show is like, you know Michael will make it worth your time!

At last word NBC is interested in Saving Hope. Keep it glued right here for developments!

What do you get when you cross Four Weddings and a Funeral  and Lie with Me, add a dash of obsessive stalker, a pinch of Peter Pan Syndrome, and sprinkle in some Amanda Tapping? You’ve got award-winning filmmaker Katrin Bowen’s long awaited flick Random Acts of Romance.

“Random Acts of Romance is a feature comedy about intense characters in extreme relationship situations–and the crazy and obsessive behaviors that spring from this thing called love. The story is paced like an emotional roller coaster, punctuated by moments of uncomfortably illuminating hilarity as characters confront situations we all identify with.” -RandomActsOfRomance.com

The film boasts a cast of fabulous actors including Robert Moloney (The Odds) as David and Laura Bertram (Andromeda) as Holly, a pair of newlyweds who are supposed to be in love.  Also included are Sonja Bennett (Young People F**cking), as Lynne, David’s secretary with stalker-like tendencies;  Katherine Isabell (Endgame) as Bud, a pot smoking lesbian; Ted Whittall (Once Upon a Time) as Richard, an attractive yet jerk of a millionaire; and Zak Santiago (Amazon Falls, V) as Matt, a man who, despite his age, hasn’t quite made it to adulthood.

So where does Amanda fit in? Amanda is slated to play  Dianne, the wife of Matt. Did we forget to mention they met in college and that Dianne was Matt’s teacher? You can see where this is going… After several years of marriage Matt still thinks he’s in college and it drives Dianne crazy. Despite the fact they communicate by arguing, Matt is determined to show Dianne he still loves her. Of course his methods are described as “reckless, outlandish and 100% illegal.” What could possibly go wrong?

Director Katrin Bowen is best known for her first feature film Amazon Falls, a dramedy about an aging B-movie actress, which has gained a cult following among 20-something women. Amazon Falls earned Bowen the Best Debut Feature Award at the Female Eye Film Festival and the 2011 Artistic Achievement Award from Women in Film.  Amazon Falls premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2010 to rave reviews and went on to win a 2011 Leo Award for Best Female Performance. Not too shabby for her first feature film huh? If you haven’t seen Amazon Falls yet you’re missing out. You can purchase Amazon Falls on Amazon.com.

Random Acts of Romance begins filming January 31st. This is one film we can’t wait to see!

For updates on Random Acts of Romance you can visit them on Twitter at Twitter.com/RandomAORomance or Facebook at Facebook.com/pages/Random-Acts-of-Romance.

If it was possible for an actor to be typecast as a vampire, then Christopher Heyerdahl has pretty much bought the t-shirt. Not that we mind though! After all he is extraordinarily good at playing long-lived psychos with a blood-lust.

 As reported by Deadline and Gateworld.net, Chris has landed a part in HBO’s popular vampire series True Blood.

He will portray Dieter Braun, an ancient, powerful vampire who plays a large part in the intelligence of the Authority and especially enjoys enhanced interrogation. – Deadline

Yeah, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? Chris has proven again and again that he has a knack for this kind of role, first a Wraith on Stargate Atlantis, then Marcus in the Twilight films. True Blood is expected to be a recurring role for Chris, and while Sanctuary fans were puzzled by his long absence in the fourth season, this would seem to indicate that if – or rather when – Sanctuary is given a fifth season, John Druitt will still be missing in action.

The fifth season of True Blood will arrive this summer on HBO.

You can catch Chris right now in Hell on Wheels on AMC.

The SpaceGypsies let out a loud collective squeal when we found out our very own MajorSamFan successfully completed NaNoWriMo! (There may have been a few “happy dances” too!)

What is NaNoWriMo? For those not in the know, it’s National Novel Writing Month and it’s held every November. You begin your novel, from scratch, November 1st and the goal is to have written a 50,000-word novel by midnight, November 30th. That’s right folks, 50,000 words! Of course the NaNoWriMo site offers cool tips, tricks, and forums for its writers. It’s an amazing online community for writers of all abilities.

Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is no easy task folks, not when you have to juggle work and other responsibilities as well. We are incredibly proud of MajorSamFan and the rest of the NaNoWriMo writers for all of their hard work!

Why is it that every time something changes medium, whether it’s from book to the big screen or from TV to the theater, the people in production think they have to sacrifice the original in order to make something big enough to fit? Why do they insist on messing with something that fans already love? Why? Because sadly it works. Or at least they think it does, while taking the original as is would flop. Does anyone else think this is extremely arrogant and shortsighted?

The latest example of this view has just come to light: a Doctor Who movie that will intentionally ignore the current series and its cast. The project is being lead by director David Yates, the director of the last four movies of the Harry Potter series. With BBC’s aid, Yates wants to break Doctor Who down to the fundamentals, which we can only assume includes the Time Lord, the TARDIS, and maybe a companion (though it is far from unprecedented for the Doctor to travel alone). As Yates describes,

“[Doctor Who] needs quite a radical transformation to take it into the bigger arena. …
The notion of the time-travelling Time Lord is such a strong one, because you
can express story and drama in any dimension or time.”

While this method will make the story a lot more accessible for new viewers, it could be a big problem for fans of the TV series. It is fully expected that Matt Smith, Karan Gillian, and Arthur Darvil will not be a part of the production.

Oddly enough, this has been tried with Doctor Who before. In 1966 two Doctor Who films where produced and released on the silver screen. They starred Peter Cushing who is probably best known for his role in Star Wars as Grand Moff Tarkin. First there was Dr. Who and the Daleks, followed later that year by Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. To bring Doctor Who to the big screen – and to the US which had been largely unexposed to the then three year old children’s series – some radical changes were made. The well known theme was abandoned for an annoying and very obviously 60′s inspired tune. The Doctor was no longer an alien, but rather a human scientist whose real name was Dr. Who! He invented a machine that he disguised as a police telephone box. It was accidentally set off in the presence of his two granddaughters, Susan and Barbara, and Ian, Barbara’s boyfriend. They land on Skarro of all places, the home of the Doctor’s number one enemy, the Daleks. Ian is a complete klutz and main provider of comic relief, and the girls don’t scream nearly as much. Also the Doctor is not the irascible old grouch that the fans had come to love, but he was clearly based on William Hartnell’s portrayal in every other trait. There is not an ounce of crabbiness in him, making him very weak and ineffective leader of the expedition. The kicker is that beyond these changes and a slightly faster pace, the plot of the both movies is a complete carbon copy of two stories in the TV series.

It’s difficult to tell if the movies were a hit because try as I might I can’t find much in specifics as far as their gross profits. However, I found one hint. Apparently the plan had been to make three movies, but the second film did not do well enough at the box office. Looking around the fandom today, you have to search pretty hard to find any mention of Peter Cushing’s portrayal of the Doctor. If you go to the BBC’s site for the classic Doctor Who series, you won’t find a single mention of Cushing or his movies. The combination of these factors leads me to believe that Cushing’s movies were by in large dismissed by the fandom.

Thirty years and six regenerations later, a TV movie was developed specifically for a US audience. At that time Doctor Who was known in the US, but arguably not nearly as well as it is today. The series had shown in re-runs on PBS stations, though largely from the Third Doctor, John Pertwee (1970-1974) on because by then the majority of the earlier episodes had been lost. The TV movie tried to pick up where the classic series left off with the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy (1987-1989), but then forced the Doctor to regenerate, introducing Paul McGann as the Eight Doctor, so that the new audience might feel they could identify with him better.  Opinions are mixed on whether or not that actually worked as planned. Sylvester McCoy had his own opinion, which he shared with us at Dragon*Con.

McGann’s Doctor did little to diverge from his predecessors. On the contrary, he was as much the Doctor as any other regeneration. He was his own character, distinct from the previous Doctors, while still being an eccentric and unpredictable scientist at his core, and the Time Lord fans had grown to love. The plot of the movie may have been a bit of a reach, but yet it is an original and developed plot in keeping with the Doctor Who tradition. McGann was never given the chance to play the Doctor again for TV, but the multitude of books and audio novels written for his Doctor lead me to conclude that the fandom has embraced him in a way they could not embrace Peter Cushing.

So, what have we learned from this examination of the previous Doctor Who movies? I think it’s a lesson that all producers should pay attention to. If you have a fanbase for your franchise, cater to it and current fans will follow and bring new fans with them. Ignore your franchise and your production will be left in the dust. David Yate’s new movie flirts dangerously with the latter result. He is proposing to start from scratch, possibly going further than the producer’s behind the 1966 movies did.

“Russell T. Davies and then Steven Moffat have done their own transformations,
which were fantastic, but we have to put that aside and start from scratch.”

Why? Why would you want to take the longest running sci-fi series in history and possibly the BBC’s most profitable property and turn it on its head to make a movie? In all honesty I can’t see a single reason why. It’s true that Davies and Moffat made changes to the franchise, but to be fair they were changes that were set in motion by Paul McGann’s movie, and other changes were required to make the series current. I’ll be the first to admit when the new series began I didn’t like it at all because I was not seeing any connections to the classic series I had grown up with. Since then the series has drawn on those roots a lot more and tied all those years together. If Yates ignores everything that Doctor Who has become, I shudder to think of the results.

Already speculation on who could play the Doctor in this movie can be found on Blastr, and it’s pretty wild! They should add Amanda Tapping to that list since she has expressed a desire to be the first female Doctor! Still, I fear that even the amazing Amanda couldn’t save this project from a slow death and a quick burial in the eyes of fans. I would go and see it for Amanda, but nothing else would draw this lifelong fan to the theater because it just won’t be Doctor Who!

What do you think? Can Who fans withstand yet another attempt to reinvent the Doctor? Will curiosity bring them to the theaters and tempt them to embrace the new Doctor? Or will this new film flop at the box office and be dismissed by fans as yet another blind Hollywood assault on the decades old fandom we hold dear?