Captain's bLog: 0310.11

•  Recent additions to my Space: 1970 Blu-Ray library include the Close Encounters of the Third Kind 30th Anniversary Edition, which includes the original theatrical cut, the "Special Edition," and the DVD "Director's Cut," all in gorgeous high definition. I also now have all five original Planet of the Apes features. Teenage me would never have imagined being able to watch these movies at home, in their proper aspect ratios, on a big television screen with high-quality sound. It's a long way from my 15th birthday, when my friends and I rented Star Wars on pan & scan VHS and watched it on a 18" TV - and had to put down a $100 deposit on the tape!

• Just  ordered - through a third-party Amazon seller - the Warners Archive DVD of the Gene Roddenberry pilot film, Genesis II. I hope to get Planet Earth and (the Roddenberry-less third try) Strange New World over the coming months.

I always thought it was a shame that the show - at least in its Planet Earth incarnation (I'm a big fan of John Saxon) - didn't get picked up; I think Roddenberry had a good idea with his "Buck Rogers-without-spaceships" premise, and it would have been a fun, action-adventure sci-fi show. (Of course, now that I think about it, Filmation's Ark II was basically the same concept, minus the cryo-preserved hero... hmmmm....)

•   The image-centric posts will continue a bit longer, but I'm determined to carve out some time to wrap up the longer articles I have in the works and write some new ones in the next month or so - hopefully including the long-promised Omega Man retrospective, a couple more "Favorite Episodes" posts (Space: 1999's "War Games" and "Dragon's Domain," Battlestar Galactica's "The Living Legend," and Logan's Run's "Man Out of Time" among them...), a review of the above-mentioned Genesis II disc, a look at the aborted Star Trek "Phase" II television series, and a lot more coverage of UFO, The Planet of the Apes (movies and TV shows), The Fantastic Journey, vintage paperbacks, comic books & magazines, etc. Stay tuned.

•  And although there's no way to authenticate it, it looks like one of the Space: 1970 Space Babes has actually dropped by the blog - and even thanked me for the honor! That's right - St. Exmin herself, the stunning Sybil Danning, has posted a comment to the March Space Babes post. I've long been a fan of the Austrian Amazon, and am thrilled that she stopped by!

• Working on getting a new poll together for April, and still trying to work out the technical details of getting the Space: 1970 podcast I recorded online. I actually listen to it a lot - I'd like to offer you folks that same dubious pleasure.

I'm sure that the process of posting it online is probably ridiculously simple, but then, I'm a moron. In any case, I will get it accomplished one of these days....