SFSurplus-2008-04-23-CGR #034 [01:20:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Topics: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Lost, Moonlight, Ender’s Game, Schemes, SciFi 16

Thank you for listening to us. This is show number 34. On the way– we’re going to talk about our favorite and least favorite types of serial story-lines. A couple quick examples would be– I hate colonies of children/Lord of the Flies type episodes but I love parallel universe tales. We’ll dig into this topic with everyone and explore pros and cons of all sorts of scifi premises. We’re also going to talk about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Lost, Moonlight and News from Ender’s world. We’re also going to reveal the results of the first round of the SciFi 16. We’ve organized a tournament of Speculative Fiction franchises and listeners of the show are deciding the outcome. Listeners have also sent in brackets to predict how the tournament will play out and one lucky winner will get Free SciFi Surplus Stuff. All the details and analysis are on the way.

SciFi Surplus is presented by listeners like you. Thank you for your donations.

Guests on the show appear via the Temporal Temps Hotline. Temporal Temps. Keeping track of time since forever.

Let’s call the Council to order by introducing our participants.

• The Esteemed Representative of Vampire Romance and Private Investigation is BriAnna. How are you?
• His Highness of Scientific Endeavor and Documentary is Jeromy. Welcome to the show.
• The Ambassador for Conspiracy and Intrigue is Vince. Glad you could make it.
• The Chairman of World-building and Magic Cost is Mark. Thank you for joining us.
• And I am Casey, Master of the DVD box-set.

Let’s get our geek on!

• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been renewed for a second season. Fox ordered 13 episodes for the TV incarnation of the feature film franchise and may be considering putting it up against Heroes on Monday nights in the Fall. There is also talk about the show getting an early order for the back nine because of cross promotion possibilities with the Terminator 4 movie.

• Joel Silver, executive producer of the vampire-romance-private-eye show Moonlight is writing up plans for a second season of the show. CBS has not commited to its fall line up and isn’t expected to until May when it announces to its advertisers. Silver says that the remaining episodes of this season are strong and he has a very good plan for next season that he’s pitching to the network.

• Marvel Comics will publish a comic book series based on Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game novels. Also on the topic of Ender, the publisher TOR, says that a new novel “Ender in Exile” will be available late this year. Exile is a direct sequel to the original story. It will follow Ender and his sister Valentine to Earth’s first colony world.

• The producers of ABC’s Lost say they know exactly how the show will end in its sixth season. They’re currently finishing up the last few episodes of season 4 and season 5 is expected to begin in January of 2009. Because this seems like a long time to go without Lost, the producers say there will be many story elements online and they’re teasing something special at Comic-Con in San Diego this summer.

SCIFI 16 - Click “SciFi 16″ on the right for the latest details and to vote!

It’s time to reveal the results of the first round of the SciFi 16. The SciFi 16 is a tournament that we set up where listeners of the show were invited to contribute their 16 favorite speculative fiction franchises and based on how everyone ranked their choices an enormous list was created and we took the top 16 of that list and entered them into a tournament. The results of the tournament are based on listeners voting for their choices at SciFiSurplus.com. We’ve also asked listeners to fill out a bracket form to try to predict the outcome of the SciFi 16. The deadline to enter brackets has passed and one person with a bracket that most closely matches the actual final results will win Free SciFi Surplus Stuff. In the event of a tie, we will select the winning bracket by randomly choosing a winner.

The prize is 25 dollars of SciFi Surplus Stuff. If you would like to see everything that is available, you can go to scifisurplus.com and click “Get SciFi Surplus Stuff” on the left. There’s gear that features the logos associated with the show like Frakbert’s Coffee, Temporal Temps, and Zelbrik’s Saucer Repair.

Before we reveal the results, I have to explain a bit about the Strength of Victory score. It’s a simple calculation that compares the difference in percentage of votes to the difference in seed. The number represents how well a franchise actually performed compared to how it was expected to perform. The magic number is 5.83. If the strength was above that, it over-performed. If it is lower that 5.83, it under-performed.

Let’s take a look at Match 1 in the Outer Rim Division between the number 1 seed Star Wars and the number 16 seed Dune…

Click “SciFi 16″ on the right to get to the information about the Tournament!

Please feel free to contact us about whatever you like. The Temporal Temps Hotline is at your disposal. All of this information is also at SciFiSurplus.com. You can leave voicemail for the show by calling 801-938-5525 or you can use skype and send voicemail to the username scifisurplus.

Thanks go out to BriAnna, Jeromy, Vince, and Mark. I’m Casey. We’ll talk to you next time!