Our friends over at Slice of SciFi picked up on Eureka producer Amy Berg’s tweets, explaining the reasons behind the show’s cancellation. From their news piece:
“Everyone is asking why [the show was cancelled]. It’s simple, really. We are the network’s golden child in every way, except for profit margins. Fact is, Eureka is an expensive show to make,” she said on Twitter. “We could not maintain the quality of our show with the cuts it would take to make us profitable for Syfy’s new parent company.” Berg went on to say that Syfy wanted to renew the show and worked to try to make that a reality. But in the end, that didn’t happen. “Trust me, they love us,” she said. “We just couldn’t make the numbers work.”
If that’s the case, does this mean that a Chuck-like push to existing and potential advertisers might indeed have a hope of saving the show?
I’ll admit it. It took me a minute or two to entirely get the reference on this shirt. But that’s what makes a killer geek shirt, IMO: multiple levels of awesomeness. So yes, Princess Peach definitely doesn’t have green hair in-game. Hint: She’s punk. And yeah, I ordered one. ($15 shipped in the USA)
God Save The Princess [shirt.woot!, link expires 8/16/2011]
The Operator tipped us off today to an Entertainment Weekly piece interviewing Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the husband-and-wife team who wrote the seriously awesome RotPotA screenplay. The bombshell drops when the interviewer asks about the possibility of sequels. While Jaffa and Silver clearly state that “there hasn’t been any official discussion yet about a sequel,” they admit that they had sequels in mind when they penned RotPotA — and they mention some specifics.
If you consume podcasts, you’ve probably discovered the joy of podcatchers — applications which automatically keep track of the latest podcasts, download them, and transfer them painlessly to your favorite portable devices. Used correctly, they’ll make your life MUCH easier and dramatically increase your podcast enjoyment. But to take full advantage of podcatchers — especially the uber-popular iTunes — you need to know a little bit about how they work. Read on for four tips every podcast lover should see.
It surprises us not at all now to see in-game product placement — like, for example, hopping in a specially-designed street vehicle to outrun enemies in a military FPS. But Jeep’s turning that upside down, offering an in-game vehicle IRL. It’s called the Call of Duty: Black Ops Edition 2011 Jeep Wrangler, and besides offering a seriously cool way to show off your love for the game, it also looks like a pretty sweet ride. Or, as Jalopnik calls it, “the ultimate accessory for some Call of Duty cosplay.”
Our friends over at Wired posted this awesome beginner electronics project that mashes up a cheap digital camera and an Arduino board to create a “camera trap” — a camera that snaps a digital picture when triggered by an external switch, in this case an IR emitter/sensor loop. Whenever something breaks the beam, you get a pic. It looks like a pretty straightforward project and it shouldn’t be too pricey.
I’m a huge fan of NASA, which is why I love the recent shift away from NASA-as-shuttle-service to NASA-as-science. Assuming that this isn’t just a smokescreen to hide ditched funding, it makes perfect sense to me. Let commercial entities handle shipping things. They do a great job of it here on Earth, and there’s no reason they can’t do it in space, too. If the end of the Shuttle program pissed you off, I’m guessing it’s not because you just love the Shuttle and see it as the end-all of space vehicles, but rather because we don’t have a suitable replacement. I mean, if Rutan can get us (suborbitally, at least) into space on a shoestring sub-$10 million budget, what can a company like Boeing do with real cash? Answer: The CST-100.
If you’re a Futurama fan you won’t want to miss Ript Apparel’s offering today. ($13 shipped in the USA)
I Heart NNY [Ript Apparel, link expires 8/14/11]
The Operator tipped me to the above video this week — for obvious reasons. Here’s my take: Forget which side of the aisle your politics lean toward. Forget who you voted for in 2008, and forget who you’re going to vote for in 2012. I don’t care, and I don’t really want to hear about it. (I’m sure John Jackson is super awesome and so much better Jack Johnson. I believe you. You don’t have to tell me. Really!) Here’s something we can all get down on.
We need to dream. We need to continue learning about our universe, to keep learning about what makes the world go, and to keep exploring. Things down here are bad. But guess what? Things down here have always been bad. There’s never existed a single point in our short history in which we faced no socioeconomic issues. Yet exploration (both scientific and geographic) has always proven core to the process of growing society and improving our collective lot in life. Always.
For five days my feet touched the holy ground of San Diego Comic Con 2011 geekness. Short of working in SyFy’s Vancouver-based studios or being on set filming the next Tron: Legacy, Avatar, or Star Trek-type movie, this is the closest I will ever come to geek-topia. The friends were phenomenal, the panels were funny and full of information, the cosplay was food for the geek soul, and the exhibition floor was the neverending hall of “I want it all.” I came away supercharged for the next year of scifi, and I’m happy I had the opportunity to attend.
SDCC is more than just the panels you see on YouTube or the coverage on G4. SDCC is a total geek experience. It’s fun. It’s engaging. It’s creative. It permeates all of your senses. It allows you to relive past material and it excites you for upcoming or new material.
Audra and I ventured down to the Angelika this week to check out an indie sci-fi flick about which we’d heard good things: Another Earth. Penned by the director, Mike Cahill, and the lead actor, Brit Marling, Earth tells the tale of “an ambitious young student and an accomplished composer” whose “paths cross in a tragic accident on the night of the discovery of a duplicate planet in the solar system.”
Cahill, from a video interview: “I love the fact that audiences will not get what they’re expecting… You see the concept–this other Earth and this thing. It feels like a certain thing. Is it sci-fi? Is it a drama? Is it minimalist sci-fi? Is it a story of redemption?” By Sean’s classic definition, it’s sci-fi simply because it includes modified scientific elements — in this case, a second, duplicate Earth. But in the film, the alternate Earth serves only as a backdrop to a classic indie-film drama plot. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either.
After ordering episodes so far ahead that when we talked to Colin Ferguson back in May (GWC #273), he was already on the set shooting season five before we’d even begun to see the second half of season four, SyFy announced yesterday the end of Eureka. It was a roller-coaster week for fans of the show as the possibility of cancellation leaked, followed by word that we might receive six “final” episodes. SyFy’s official statement:
“After painstaking consideration, we have had to make the difficult business decision to not order a season six of Eureka. But Eureka is not over yet. There is a new holiday episode this December and 12 stellar episodes set to debut next year, marking its fifth season and six memorable years on Syfy. The 2012 episodes are some of the best we’ve seen, and will bring this great series to a satisfying end. We are very grateful to Bruce Miller and Jaime Paglia, their team of incredible writers, and an amazing cast and crew who have consistently delivered a series we continue to be very proud of. We thank the fans for their support of this show and know they will enjoy its final season in 2012.“
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