I forgot to watch Saturday's episode of Doctor Who

And didn't realize until I woke up at like three in the morning and the realization instantly hit me. I am really, really, really bad at remembering not just remembering when new seasons premiere, but that the shows are back on the are until a few weeks in. I watch almost no TV during the summer, save for wrestling and Doctor Who. I missed the second season of Orphan Black because of it.

Eeesh.

Last Saturday's episode of Doctor Who was okay, I guess (spoilers)

It didn't knock my socks off and felt a bit underwhelming until the end. I enjoyed Madame Vastra calling Clara out on her bullshit, as well as her relationship with her wife Jenny. Why isn't there a spinoff starring those two? Eleven calling Clara and asking her to stay with Twelve, along with Peter Capaldi's performance, and the aforementioned Vastra and Jenny saved this episode from sucking.

Ever hear of a wargame called StarForce: Alpha Centuri?

This came across my dash on Tumblr this morning.

http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/post/95288514209/starforce-alpha-centauri

I found the Wikipedia article for Simulation Publications, Inc. via Google. The company was founded in 1969, folded in 1982 with TSR acquiring its assets the following year. The company made all sorts of wargames and even tried to compete with TSR in the RPG market. StarForce was one of the companies first scifi-based games and here's what its Wikipedia article says:

StarForce described a future history of humanity reaching out into local interstellar space, and making first contact (and war) with a number of alien species. FTL (faster than light) travel was based on "telesthetic" (teleportation) powers enhanced by artificial intelligence, both from on-board crew members and with the assistance of fixed Star Gate installations. Space combat was relatively non-violent, mostly based on telepathic disruption of the enemy's crews. The space volume on the map represented real astronomical data, designed to allow players to become familiar with the layout of nearby stars.
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Unlike most board games, StarForce used both pre-plotted simultaneous movement, and a 3D playspace covering a radius of approximately 20 light years from Sol. "Semi-hidden" movement allowed players to display their horizontal location while keeping their vertical position concealed.

 Another point of interest is that 80s new wave band, The Human League, took their name from one of the game's factions.

So anybody ever hear of StarForce? Anybody play it?

RIP Robin Williams

Fuck.

Syfy turning John Scalzi's Old Man's War into a series!

 Via Hollywood Reporter:

The NBCUniversal-owned cable network has put into development Ghost Brigades, a drama based on John Scalzi's Hugo-nominated Old Man's War universe book series, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The NeverEnding Story's Wolfgang Petersen will oversee development on the project alongside Scott Stuber (Safe House), with Jake Thornton and Ben Lustig (Winter's Knight) on board to pen the first script. The drama hails from Universal Cable Productions, Petersen's Radiant Productions and Stuber's Bluegrass Films.

Excellent. Old Man's War is one of my favorite scifi novels and the rest of the series is pretty damn good too. To give you an idea of how good OMW is, I started re-reading the thing like ten minutes after I finished it. I was probably fifteen pages in before I stopped myself. That has never happened before or since.

The premise is (and spoiler warning, folks) that the John Perry enlists with the Colonial Defense Force, the military arm of the interstellar government that manages human colonies, the Colonial Union. The catch? Perry is 75 years old and the CDF's entire military force is based around geriatrics. The spoiler bit is how they make use of people who would likely break a hip just matching - genetically engineered bodies created from each person's DNA, but mostly comprised of non-human material. The CDF transfers each person's mind into one of these new bodies, then transfers them into brand spanking new cloned human bodies after their term of service is completed.

The book is military science fiction, but mixed with a good bit of humor and wit. The title of the TV show is interesting, as Ghost Brigades is the title of the second book in the series and doesn't really feature Perry at all. The series itself is going to be a mix of the entire series, rather than a straight adaption of just the first book. The name change makes even more sense, then. I mean, having a show called "Old Man's War" isn't going to attract a ton of viewers.

John Scalzi has a series of posts over on his blog about the new series. This isn't his only work getting the TV treatment. FX is turning one of his other books, Redshirts, into a miniseries. Interestingly, Syfy is also turning James S. A. Corey's Expanse series into a show. Looks like the channel is finally shifting away from reality shows and back towards science fiction.

Just gonna leave this here

http://www.listoid.com/list/140/page2

"Mom, dad, why can't you just accept us for what we are? I know Johnny is a giant robot and society will scorn us, but our love is real. It's real."