So it’s finally official. Another one of the worse kept secrets in the MMO world. As we first predicted back in October 07, Bioware and Lucas Arts are making a Star Wars MMO.

Lightsaber duel

Star Wars: The Old Republic (or SWtOR) is set 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic, and 3,500 years before Anakin got into bondage gear and his asthma started playing up.

We’d always assumed it was going to be set around the old republic as that’s what Bioware has done before, but it’s a nice move setting it in a time span that no one has really covered before.

One of the biggest issues with Star Wars: Galaxies (apart from SOE making game changing alterations every 3 months), was the fact it was set in a well covered time frame. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it really left little manoeuvrability for them to expand the story. Galaxies was set in between A New Hope and Empire, when the Jedi were all but wiped out or in hiding… So wandering passed a bunch of Jedi openly having lightsaber battles in front of Mos Eisley spaceport really messes with the canon which ever way you try and spin it!

Star Wars: The Old Republic takes place after a great war, and an uneasy truce between the Jedi and the Sith. Violence is on the rise again, and the galaxy is looking to a new generation of heroes to help deal with the impending chaos…

More info and screenshots over at www.swtor.com

Well this makes a change! The folks over at E4 seem to finally have got the message, and realised leaving a gap of over a year between the US and UK broadcast dates might not actually make a whole lot of sense…

After much complaining from fans, instead of waiting the originally planned 9 months, they’re decided to air Smallville Season 8 from Tues 11th of November 2008 at 9pm on E4.

That’s still several weeks behind the US, so they’re not into the BBC (Heroes) or Sky1 (Prison Break, 24, Lost, Stargate etc…) level of airing US imports a few days after the US transmissions, but at least lil’ E4 are trying bless ‘em!

A whole bunch of new images from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek have emerged onto the interwebs this morning!

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise looking awesome in their shiny new uniforms!

(left to right)
Anton Yelchin as Chekov.
Chris Pine as James T. Kirk.
Simon Pegg as Lt. Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott.
Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy.
John Cho as Sulu.
Zoe Saldana as Uhura.

This is apparently the bridge of the revamped U.S.S. Enterprise! “Abrams was insistent that every piece of equipment on the bridge serve a legitimate purpose — that they all have “functionality.” According to Lindelof, the maps we see in the background near the top of the communications desk were based on the generally accepted layout of the Star Trek universe.” (source)

Zachary Quinto acting a bit more Syler than Spock in this pic!

This is apparently the USS Kelvin, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be boldly going for too much longer.

Kirk being very Kirk-like!

“This is right around the midpoint of the movie,” he said. “One of the things that’s at the heart of the Trek universe… is the idea of the away team. The idea that it’s not just about people shooting around in a starship, but they also go down to these planets.” (source)

This is the villian of the show, Nero, played by Eric Bana. They aren’t saying officially, but he’s believed to be Romulan… (source)

If your into your Star Trek, check out some of the awesome Star Trek Replicas Forbidden Planet have going on at their site!

Sorry posting has been a bit slow. over the last week. It’s due to a mix of work and addiction to Warhammer Online… At some point when D and myself can pull ourselves away from smashing greenskin skulls, we’ll get the review sorted!

Anyway, I know the blog’s been a bit Life on Mars centric recently, but the nice folks at ABC have sent me something which i thought you’d like to see. It’s the premiere episode of ABC’s Life on Mars! Post your reviews, thoughts etc… in the comments.

The promos for ABC’s Life on Mars remake have started to hit the net showing some longer clips of the new team in action. They’ve also release a ‘Starter Kit’ video, explaining more about the characters. Jason O’Mara actually seems to have far more life to his performance this time round than his zombified look in the first pilot. It’s just all looking much slicker. It’s also looking much closer to original UK version of Life on Mars. Looking forward to seeing the first episode.

New Trailer

Life on Mars Starter Kit