What Does Picard Call His Dog?

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Tonight! Does Picard's dog have a name? Is it a good time to go to the galaxy's edge? And I have a couple of interviews from Smallville on this Sci-Fi edition of Multiverse Tonight. Comic books, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and more. If you're looking for a roundup of geeky news, you're in the right place. This is Multiverse Tonight And here's our host, Thomas Townley. Hello everyone, and welcome to the sci-fi edition of Multiverse Tonight. I'm of course your host, Thomas Townley. And uh I'll admit right here at the beginning of the show that the news has been kind of light these past couple of weeks. This time of year, right before uh San Diego Comic-Con, the news is pretty quiet. They're trying to keep you know things so that they have a lot to announce at San Diego. So the good news is that we do have a couple of interviews from Smallville that we can use to cushion the show. Uh tonight's interview is with author T.M. Hunter, and on the Comics Edition that we'll have in a couple days, we'll have interviews with people from TopCon and Air Capital Comic-Con. Both of those are coming up in the next few months. Remember that that episode drops, as I said, a couple days after this one. So uh be sure to check that out. Now let's get on with the news. Now we start Star Trek News waiting for Star Trek Picard. So have you seen that poster? Uh Enterprising individuals have done an extreme zoom on the collar of Picard's dog and deduced that his name might be number one. The collar is engraved with the word NO, followed by the number one. In our words, number one. Guess it's just habit for Picard. He always needs a number one. Too bad I didn't call the dog Lieutenant Woof. And uh while we're talking about CBS All Access shows, we have news that the soundtrack for season two of Discovery has been announced. Lakeshore Records is releasing it on July 19th digitally. There are 36 tracks from the second season episodes, and three from the short track episode, The Escape Artist. That was the one that featured Harry Mudd. Composer Jeff Russo, commenting about the season two score, said, quote, Star Trek Discovery continues to be a source of incredible musical inspiration for me. This season's squaw swashbuckling has allowed the music to shine and grow in ways that I didn't expect. Yep, I agree. The the music you know was one of the best parts of the season. So, are you looking for the mirror universe where Trump is a good president and Canada is our mortal enemy? Some sci so here's uh here's the deal. Some scientists, right now, according to a report from NBC News, is are conducting a series of experiments that will take place at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in t in Tennessee this summer in a supercollider. There, a beam of subatomic particles will be shot down a 50-foot tunnel past the magnet. At the end of the tunnel, the particles will be stopped by a wall, and the scientists involved are hoping that this will cause some of the particles to transform into mirror versions of themselves in order to pass through the wall. Oak Ridge's Leah Brouchard believes that this could be an indication of a mirror world existing alongside our own. The experiment will only take one day to perform, but weeks to pour over the data. There was a lot of information in this article. We'll have a link to it in our show notes. So this mirror universe sounds uh um some people think it sounds more like Stranger Things than, say, a Star Trek mirror universe. Let's hope they just don't open a hole to uh evil. Anyway, let's go to Star Wars news. Yeah, I told you the the sho the sh ne the news was kind of short, didn't I? As we start on Star Wars News, uh we have some details about Rise of the Skywalker, which have you noticed have been few and far between. But we do have some details about new stormtroopers. The newly called Sith Troopers announced by Lucasfilm feature red and black stormtrooper armor. More might be revealed at San Diego Comic-Con at the Lucasfilm Pavilion, which will feature nine different screen-worn trooper costumes, from Thai Pilots to Captain Phasma, on display throughout the con as part of a special exhibit commemorating the Stormtrooper throughout the history of the franchise. That tribute to the iconic armor will cultimate will cultim culminate in the reveal of the Sith Trooper armor, and several early release retail products featuring the Sith Trooper from a new Hasbro action figure to a Funko Pop figurine to t-shirts and baseball caps. I guess uh those people cops playing as stormtroopers have a new color choice. Daisy Ridley's character of Ray doesn't have a lot of quit in her, but Daisy Ridley almost did. Talking with the Happy Sad Confused Podcast, she talked about almost walking away from the Force of Awakens. Quote, it was pretty horrid, it was really scary, I felt just sick, and I didn't really know anyone yet. It takes me a long time to settle down with people. I do remember being behind the speeder and there were loads of people there, and somebody had an umbrella over me and even that like oh, somebody's holding an umbrella over you? Okay. And I remember thinking, I can't do it. Like I can't do this, this is not right. I told the AD, Assistant Director, but what do you say to that? Me and JJ ha hadn't quite got our v gar vibe Unquote. The good news is that by the last Jedi she had a better time of it, saying, quote, It felt really good doing it. Everything we did felt really good. The next part of her trilogy arrives on December twentieth. So what does green milk taste like? Mark Hamill was recently asked about that on Twitter. His response was quote, the green milk was just regular coconut water dyed green in postproduction. Hashtag true story, hashtag yum. Hap face with tongue sticking out, unquote. Yep, you heard right. Green milk isn't even milk, just green dyed coconut water. Um I say ick either way. The Galaxy's Edge has announced the opening of the next ride at the Star Wars attraction, the Rise of the Resistance ride. The Disney Park's blog has revealed, quote, when opens, Star Wars Rise of the Resistance will blur the lines between fantasy and reality, and will put guests in the middle of a climactic battle between the first order and the resistance. Guests will be recruited to join Ray and General Organa at the secret base. Along the way, they will be captured by a first order storm Star Destroyer. With the help of some heroes of the resistance, they break out and must escape the Star Destroyer, protect the secret base, and stay one head s one step ahead of Kylo Wren. As soon as work is completed at Walt Disney World, Immetineers will head back to California to complete their mission at Disneyland Resort, where Star Wars Rise of the Resistance will open on Friday, January 17th. That work at Walt at Disney World should be completed and the ride opened on December 5th. Speaking of the Galaxy's Edge, it seems the crowds might be lighter than expected. According to AZ AZ Central, crowds for the attraction have been so light that the virtual queue system, created to handle the expected high demand, has only been used a few times. This means that the park has been open without limits, and the Millennium Falcon ride has had wait times of only between half an hour to an hour. The report suggests that this might be due to people avoiding it think thinking that it was going to be too crowded. So in other words, now it would be a good time to go while people still think yeah, it's crowded. Disney knows that everything they make is money. So Disney is so confident in the new Disney Plus Star Wars show, The Mandalorian, that they've already ordered a second season. Collider recently spoke to Mandalorian creator John Favreau at the premiere of The Lion King, where he told them that he had starred work on season two already. Quote, I keep getting pulled deeper into the orbit of Disney, but fortunately the stuff that Disney's working on is the stuff that I love. I wanted to do a Star Wars TV show like The Mandalorian and pitched it to them and they were very open to it. I even wrote four episodes before I was even hired to do it because I was excited as a fan to see what these stories might be and see if they were interested in doing what I was interested in, which they were. And I was actually writing season two this morning before I came here. Mr. Favreau went on to say that season two is in pre-production right now. You go, John, you go. Now, let's go to some geek news. The Lord of the Rings series on Amazon is getting its own MMO, that's massively multiplayer online game. First, let's remind you about the details for the series. The series, which will debut on Amazon in 2021, will last for five seasons and will take place in Middle Earth about 3.5 millennia before the Fellowship of the Rings. So don't expect to see anyone you know. Now, to capitalize on this, they're making an MMO in partnership with Leu. The game will be free to play for both PC and consoles. Interesting enough, Amazon has said that the series and the MMO won't be related. In other words, don't expect the events of the show to interact with the story of the game. There's no word on when the game will come to market. Now, some have gotten worried about what that means for the original Lord of the Rings MMO, Lord of the Rings Online. Well, don't worry. There's plenty of room for the two, especially since they don't have anything to do with each other. Robert Downey Jr. has plenty of times on his hands now that Iron Man has gone to Valhalla. Q Warner Brothers, who has announced that Sherlock Holmes 3 is a go with director Dexter Fletcher. Fletcher will be taking over the WB Sherlock Holmes franchise from Guy Ritchie, who directed the first two films in the series. Now, to be honest, the film has always been in the planning, but Downey's Iron Man, uh uh Iron Man of a schedule on Avengers kept it up in the air until he was done. Sherlock Holmes 3 is expected in theaters on December 21st, 2021. 12, 21, 21. See what they did there? Doesn't take a Sherlock to see that now, does it? The cast of Bill and Ted Face the Music seems to be getting larger every day. Added to the cast in the past few days has been Kirsten Schall, who will play Kelly, A Messenger from the Future. Think George Carlin's Rufus in the first two movies. You may remember Kirsten's voice work from Toy Story where she plays Trixie the Triceratops, or her role as Louise on Bob's Burgers. Also joining the cast is Holland Taylor, who will play the great leader, who is described as quote the most powerful person in the universe, the center of which is Saint Sandemis California, 700 Years in the Future. You may remember her as the mom from Two and a Half Men. She joins Anthony Cardigan, William Sadler, Samara Weaving, Bridget Brigitte Lundy Payne, Scott Mescuta, aka Kid Cuddy, Beck Bennett, Erin Hayes, Jamie Mays, and Amy Stotch, Hal Linden Jr., and Jillian Bell. Bill and Ted Face the Music comes out on August 21st, 2020. And while we're talking about casting, you'll remember that in the previous episode we talked about LeBron James's Space Jam 2, which will star NBA and WNBA stars and Sanuco Martin Green. Well now we can add Don Cheadle to the cast list. According to deadline, Mr. Cheetle has a secret role in the movie. So any ideas on what they need Iron Man's best friend for? Now, let's look at uh this week's past box office. Now we will start at number 11 because uh at number eleven is Avengers Endgame. Uh it's down from number nine to number eleven and has grossed another two million dollars. That's down thirty-two percent. Now the total gross right now is eight hundred and fifty-one million dollars domestically. Right now, they think it does have a good shot at at meeting or beating uh the avatar. So they're really chugging away trying to get that trying to get that record. At number 10 is Men in Black Air National, which falls two spots. Uh it's grossed uh a little over two million dollars, down forty-one percent from last week, and it's lost about half the theaters, so at number nine is the Secret Life of Pets, which also fell two spots from last week. Uh it's uh brought brought in another three million dollars. It's uh done pretty well, actually. It's uh total growth domestically is 147 million dollars. So it's doing okay. Midsummer, uh which fell from number six to number eight over the over the past week, is uh number eight, and number seven is Annabelle Comes Home, which dropped from number four to number seven. It's brought in five point six million dollars, losing about forty percent uh week over week. Aladdin, uh the live-action remake, dropped one spot uh going from number five to number six. Uh it brought in an additional six million dollars. Yesterday, that that's the one where the guy wakes up and the Beatles never existed and he knows all the songs, so he yeah. That movie dropped from number three to number five with uh six million dollars, losing about thirty-three percent over the week. It's total gross domestically, is forty-eight million dollars, so it's done fairly well. New uh this week is Stuber, which uh goes to the which just debuts in the number four slot. It's okay. Uh this is actually Disney's uh first R-rated uh sh movie in in several years. Of course it's it's a movie that was uh made at Fox when when Fox was a separate studio, so that's why. Uh its weekend gross is 8.2 million. So at number three is the new movie Crawl. That's the one that has alligators. Which alligators in a flooded house. Why is a movie called Crawl when the alligators are swimming? Yeah, anyone anyone wanna answer that for me? Anyway, that uh brought in twelve million dollars. The and at number two, and keeping at number two, is Toy Story 4. It's uh brought in $20.9 million this past weekend. It's down 38% from the previous week. Its total gross domestically is $346 million. That's you know pretty spectacular for being the fourth film in the franchise. And at number one, staying number one, is Spider-Man Far From Home. It brought in 45 million dollars. It stays number one even though it lost half it went down half from the from the week previous. 51%. It's brought in uh 274.5 million dollars, and uh overall it's grossed two hundred and seventy-four point five million dollars. Now the original budget was 160 million dollars, so you know it's made back more than it's more than it it was budgeted as uh pretty good. And uh that's our week in the box office. And hold on a second here while I bring my notes back up. There we go. One last thing before we get to our interviews tonight. Uh we must say goodbye to actor Rip Torn. The actor, who might be best known to current generations as Zed in the Men in Black franchise, Men in Black, Men in Black 2, and Men in Black 3. Uh you can see him on the wall there, has passed away on July 9th. Rip was born Elmore Raoul Torn Jr. on February 6, 1931. After college, he majored in where he majored in Admiral Husbandry, he left for Hollywood. He began his acting career in 1956, appearing in a segment of the TV series Omnibus. His long career there includes on TV includes two guest roles on Alfred Hitch Coppers, a guest spot of on the Man from Uncle, and Columbo, various voices in the Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, and the role of Arthur on the Larry Sanders show, which won him an Emmy, a recurring role in Will and Grace and 30 Rock, and movie roles in The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Beastmaster, Airplane 2 The Sequel, Defending Your Life, Robocop 3, Canadian Bacon, Down Periscope, and he voiced Zeus in Disney's Animated Hercules. He was all and also, let's not forget, his role in Freddy Got Fingered, Dodgeball, a true underdog story, B movie, and a voiceover as Aphistus in the God of War 3 video game. He had 191 acting credits in all. Over his career, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, nominated for six Emmy Awards, including the one I just mentioned for the Larry Sanders show, and a satellite award. He also won an American Comedy Award for Funniest Supporting Male in a series, two Cable Ace Awards. Now, he is survived by his third wife, Amy Wright, and his six children. He was 88 years old. And now, here's an interview with TM Hunter. There we go. Alright, so family here, multiverse tonight. I am with Tom Hunter.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

And so, uh, tell me about your book. I'm in a science fiction, action adventure. I am action with various adventures. I have four novels and a series of novels. And then uh three short novels and a standard level, and then two shorts of the collections of three. Uh wants to do good, but doesn't want anybody to know he's doing it. Okay. And uh who would these books best be for? Uh so it's all ages. I mean, I've had kids as young as like 11, 12 enjoy them, and I've had people that are in their forties and fifties enjoy them. So I mean it's it's just uh kind of across the board, I'd say. Uh what's your inspiration for these books? Uh so well the first book uh it was under a different name before, but uh the first book, Heroes Die Young, actually came uh about from a dream I had, and and I woke up and started writing down, you know, what happened in the dream, and then I started asking questions like why did this happen to him? And so it the introductory scene of the book is uh is one of the scenes from the front of the book is is based on that dream, and it just asked the questions, you know, why did that happen? You know, what what could have, you know, what did he do next? You know? And so the inspiration for the following books were, you know, what happens next? I mean, okay. And uh so this is a continuing saga. Uh yeah, so I'm still working on the fifth book in the series. Uh I don't know how long it'll take, how many more books there will be. I keep threatening to kill off my character and and end it, but uh I have a lot of fans that tell me no. So that's good. And uh have you been well received? Uh for the most part I think so. Um I mean I'm not I'm not on a New York Times bestseller list, I'm s sorry, but uh, but uh you know it's uh it's just okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

And uh where do people find your book?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Uh so uh Amazon would be the biggest thing. Uh Barnes and Noble also has them. Uh nothing in stores, unfortunately. Um I am self-publish. The first two books originally came out with a small press. Long story short, I figured out I was making a lot more money with doing the same amount of work and doing it myself, so we're uh self-publishing now, so um but uh yeah, Amazon and Barnes Noble online and and uh that's a lot of it. And then AstonWest.com is my website, so people can find excerpts there and and uh and all that.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Okay, people. Uh be sure to go out there, go to AstonWest.com, go to Amazon Barnes and Noble, and check out his books. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yep. Have a good time. Alright. That was a uh pr a good interview. And uh that brings us to the end of the sci-fi of the sci-fi news for this week. Now be sure to check us out on our social media. We're at uh Twitter at multiverse tom. We're also on Facebook and Instagram as well, at multiverse tonight. Now uh be sure to uh if you like what I do, if you want to uh contribute with some money, uh please visit MTPodcast.com to go to our coffee or Patreon and uh donate a dollar. You know, I might give you a chance to win a box of stuff. Now uh you can also go to multiverse tonight.com and find our links to our affiliate marketplace, the uh Te Public store, our show notes, uh the occasional column, and so much more. And if you're a subscriber, please be sure to share us with your friends. And if you're brand new to the show, please be sure to subscribe and leave us with some feedback and just let us know how we're doing. Special thanks to Shane Ivers for our intro music and Lobo Loco for our outro theme music. Thanks for watching the sci-fi edition of Multiverse Tonight. We'll be back in two weeks with the comic book edition. Now, please, exit the universe in Orly Fashion. Good night. Alright.