Musings of a Babylon Lurker

The SciFi Smackdown Podcast

Saturday, June 30th, 2007 | Babylon 5, film and tv, podcast, scifi | No Comments

A podcast with people having fun comparing similar aspects of different Science Fiction stories.

Their very first episode had a match between the Battlestar Galactica and the Enterprise. Follow the debate about differences, advantages and disadvantages of the two flagships.

Each episode is followed by a voicemail show or two with listener feedback of the match.

Episode 2: Captain America vs Batman

Episode 3: Heroes vs. X-men This time with another approach: The smackdown is played out as a role playing game match, playing over a few podcasts.Very Entertaining.

Episode 4: second part of the Heroes vs. X-men

Episode 5: X-wings (from StarWars) vs Starfuries (from Babylon 5). This time with a guest participant known from the Babylon Podcast – since they wanted a knowledgeable representative for the Starfuries. Yet another approach : The “combattants” are to make a sales pitch for their respective fighter. Their guest made quite a pitch for the Starfuries.

Link : Scifi Smackdown Podcast

Heroes on Dutch TV

Thursday, June 28th, 2007 | film and tv, scifi | No Comments

I have been watching the first two episodes of the “Heroes” series , “Genesis” and “Don’t Look Back”.

This looks promising, I must say , but will wait a few more episodes and see where this leads.

In the first two episodes we meet people from all over the world, discovering that they have unusual abilities, such as flying (levitating), controlling time and telepathy, as well as a professor (and his son) studying genetics and predicting that some people will develop those abilities – and what looks like a peek into a disaster in the future

Babylon Podcast fan fiction

Thursday, June 21st, 2007 | Babylon 5, podcast, scifi | 2 Comments

It looks like the Babylon Podcast voice mails are being dominated by a piece of fan fiction (or two) Some contributors send in pieces of talks , like captain’s log or whatever , creating a story within the podcast.

If you know the series well, you will appreciate the humor of these voice mails.

If you are a Babylon 5 fan , listen to the podcast , or better to the live feed. In my opinion it is well worth it.

The Babylon Podcast

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 | Babylon 5, film and tv, podcast, scifi | No Comments

The Babylon Podcast is a podcast dedicated to the TV series “Babylon 5″ created by Joe Michael Straczynski (also known as JMS).

In this the hosts Summer Brooks and Tim Callender (two dedicated fans) and Jeffrey Willerth (producer on the series) deal with news about the series, have interviews with people relating to the series – cast, crew, authors etc as well as (in many of the podcasts) deal with a specific episode of the series, a section of the podcast dubbed “Deep Geeking”, where the episode is analyzed, and they talk about what worked for them or not etc., and finally a voice mail section.

I have been following the podcast since September last year, when I got started in a big way listening to podcasts, and was very happy to find this one. Having some time at hand, I spent two weeks listening to the preceding 42 (one hour long) podcasts in order to get up to date.

They also record live every Wednesday evening at 18 pm Phoenix Arizona time, rather inconvenient for Western Europeans (3 am), but sometimes well worth it.
Simultaneously they have an IRC chat running, so live feed listeners can comment live. Find all info about the live feed on their website (link : Listen Live). The live feed is , of course unedited so if you join in, you get bloopers, banter and all – can be very entertaining.

Their latest show #69, released last week, was a little different : Members of the chatroom were invited to call in and contribute – they had 3 contributions, and I participated in the second section.

Today I (re)watched the final episode of Babylon 5, Season 2, “The Fall of Night” . the subject of this Wednesday’s “Deep Geeking”.

Link : Babylon Podcast

Heroes coming up on Dutch TV

Monday, June 18th, 2007 | film and tv, scifi | No Comments

This coming Thursday “Heroes” begins a run on the Dutch commercial TV channel RTL5, running the pilot episode this Thursday. Hope I can make it through the commercials.

I have heard a lot of good about that one and look forward to see it.

Heroes the Series

Doctor Who

Monday, June 18th, 2007 | Doctor Who, film and tv, scifi | 2 Comments

I have been watching the new (2005 onwards) series of Doctor Who, and found it very good. Generally good story lines, often a subtle arc going through a whole season.

I am much more impressed by the new series than the old one. This should not be a surprise, since a lot has happened to scifi TV in the last 20 years. No wonder we sometimes find the older tv series a little lacking. Not just special effects, but in general.

Watched episode 11 , Utopia, of the 3rd (new) series in the week end and found it extremely promising for the 2 concluding episodes. I am not going to give any spoilers yet.

The Babylon Lurker – science fiction and fantasy

Friday, June 15th, 2007 | general, scifi | No Comments

This blog will predominantly deal with Science Fiction and Fantasy that I have seen/read/heard.

Expect my love of the TV series Babylon 5 (just look at the title) to dominate this blog , especially in the beginning.

Also expect some excursions into the realm of real science and mythology, both related to SciFi/Fantasy – and probably a lot of other diverse stuff

Jan , The Babylon Lurker