SciFi Weekend: Doctor Who Return Date; William Shatner Interview; Blakes 7 Actress Dies; Evangeline Lilly on the Lost Finale; A Historian on Why Science Fiction Is Important

We finally have an announcement of a return date for Doctor Who, Sunday, October 7. I don’t know about viewing habits in the UK, but the change to Sunday could help ratings here in the United States. For years I have been downloading Doctor Who shortly after it airs in the UK instead of waiting to watch late on Saturday evening. BBC American plans to air the first episode of Doctor Who this season at the same time it airs in the UK, followed by a repeat showing in the evening. Subsequent weeks I guess I’ll be back to downloading.

With the change to Sunday I might have to reconsider how SciFi Weekend is posted. The post was initially called SciFi Friday, with the subsequent move to the weekends (generally Sunday) helpful for covering Friday night shows. I have been reviewing new episodes of Doctor Who on Sundays, the day following their release. Sunday releases create a problem with this schedule, as I ran into last year with my weekly reviews of the first season of Star Trek: Discovery not being posted until a week after the show aired.

Jodie Whittaker literally breaks the glass ceiling in the trailer:

Despite the point made in this promo, Chris Chibnall says that the gender change is barely mentioned in the opening episode, with the Doctor more concerned with surviving. The title of the episode will be The Woman Who Fell to Earth, sounding like it picks up where the last season ended. Chris Chibnall recommends:

New Doctor, new home. Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is about to burst into Sunday nights – and make the end of the weekend so much more exciting. Get everybody’s homework done, sort out your Monday clothes, then grab some special Sunday night popcorn, and settle down with all of the family for Sunday night adventures across space and time. (Also, move the sofa away from the wall so parents can hide behind it during the scary bits). The Thirteenth Doctor is falling from the sky and it’s going to be a blast.”

According to Syfy Wire, Doctor Who director Jamie Childs said  that ’80s-era Spielberg served as an inspiration for the upcoming episodes in an interview with Empire Magazine.Executive producer Dan Strevens said the new season will be like Forrest Gump. “It’s a box of chocolates of a series. There’s something different in every episode.”

BBC America will be rebroadcasting every episode of Doctor Who since the reboot. This will take place over thirteen days, beginning on September 25 at 6 am.

TrekMovie.com interviewed William Shatner, who has a new memoir out entitled, Live Long and… What I Might Have Learned Along The Way. Some excerpts from the interview:

In the book, you talk about regret, although mostly framed as how you regret the things you haven’t done. I’m curious about something you did do that may have cut off future opportunities. Do you regret agreeing to do Star Trek: Generations, and allow them to kill off Kirk?

Well, I didn’t think I had any choice in the matter. Paramount had decided that the ceiling that they could reach in our box office had been reached and they thought that by putting in the Next Generation cast, that they would reach a higher box office. That decision had been made. It was either I was going to appear and die, or they were going to say he died. So, I chose the more practical of the two.

So, they were killing you no matter what?

That was their theory. It didn’t work out that way, but that is the way it was.

Recently you gave an interview where you said you were happy for Patrick Stewart and his new Star Trek series, but doing something like that wasn’t for you. Some in the media took that to mean you were done with Star Trek entirely. Last year you told me you were open to returning to the character. You may not want to do a new TV series, but if they can find a way to make it work, you would still return to the role, right?

That is exactly right. If they can find a way of writing a 50 years older captain and it was meaningful and had something to do with the plot, I would jump at the chance.

Evangeline Lilly was recently asked about the Lost finale at a convention. Here is her response:

“Well, I’m going to have to go straight to the finale. Vote of confidence, who liked the finale? [The room broke out into cheers] Who did not like the finale? [about the same amount of cheers] About 50/50. So, for those of who you didn’t like it; you loved our show, because at the end of every week, we would leave you with an impossible and pressing mystery. It would force you to the water cooler, or the dinner table, asking each other the most difficult questions. Usually philosophical questions. Sometimes questions that touched on God or religion and reality, and what it means to be human.

And then, on the finale, you sat waiting with baited breath, thinking ‘they’re gonna give us the answer.’ Well, that’s what religions do. So if you want the answer to the great big question of life, go to church, go to God, find the answer, but art…art is supposed to, every time without fail, turn the question back on you, and asks you to look at what you’re seeing, listen to what you’re hearing, experience it, and then look at it in the mirror of your soul, and figure out what it means to you.

And so there is no one interpretation of the finale of LOST. For as many people that are in this room, there are that many true, real, endings for LOST.

Because it’s just a reflection of who you are, and it’s the ultimate question being posed to you, not the ultimate answer being handed to you.”

Jacqueline Pearce, who played Servalan on Blakes 7 has died at 74.

I highly recommend reading Sapiens by historian Yuval Noah Harari. Wired reports that Harari is a big fan of science fiction and that he “includes an entire chapter about it in his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.”

“Today science fiction is the most important artistic genre,” Harari says in Episode 325 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy  podcast. “It shapes the understanding of the public on things like artificial intelligence and biotechnology, which are likely to change our lives and society more than anything else in the coming decades.”