JOHN CARTER is UK's number one (no matter where he's from)

Although already labelled as a flop in the US with a less than stellar run, Andrew Stanton's take on Edgar Rice Burrough's science fiction adventurer topped the UK charts in its opening week. The £2 million take in the first week would cover somewhere in the region of one percent of the film's overall budget.

This isn't really important to us and anyone who heard Andrew Stanton on Five Live's Simon Mayo/Mark Kermode show will know that it doesn't mean anything to the director either. This is all to the good, but anyone who bankrolls a $250 million movie would be a little worried that the director doesn't care whether it makes its money back.

It looks like JOHN CARTER (the 'OF MARS' being dropped not to put off non science fiction fans apparently - and if that isn't a commercial decision then we don't know what is) is destined to join a list of expensive science fiction flops (remember WATERWORLD? No, us neither) and that is worrying because it's a genre that is traditionally thought of as expensive and high profile failures does us no favours.

Dinosaurs Extinct! (again)

Word is that the Fox Network in the US has cancelled the time-travelling series TERRA NOVA after the first season.

The show, which saw pioneers from a shattered future going back in time to a prehistoric past to build a better world in an alternate timeline. They were faced with a rogue group of humans and, very occasionally, the odd dinosaur here and there.

The show will be offered up to other networks, but the cost of dino-creation and location shooting makes it  an expensive proposition for anyone and any paring back on the dinosaur appearances would be to remove them altogether and they were the lure rather than the prehistoric soap operatics that were finally served up.

Steven Spielberg's name was plastered all over the show in the publicity, but his big screen touch of gold wasn't evidenced here.

Ralph McQuarrie Dies

Production designer and artist Ralph McQuarrie, who was responsible more than anyone for the look of STAR WARS, has died aged 82.

McQuarrie's designs for sets and characters infused the film series and gave it many of its influential design statements such as C-3PO, the stormtroopers uniforms and the like.

He won an Oscar for his work on the pensioners rejuvenated by alien swimming pool comedy COCOON and was also responsible for the ships and Cylons of the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

He will be most remembered by the SciFiFreak Site team, however, for designing the mothership that gave us an almost religious moment in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.

DIRK GENTLY slips back onto BBC 4

Dirk Gently was the great Douglas Adams' creation forever overshadowed by the undisputed work of genius that was The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (whose title, incidentally, was reworked into our own TV reference guide The Sci Fi Freak's Guide To The Televisual Galaxy so thanks for that Douglas).

A standalone pilot episode for a series based on the character of Dirk, a detective who believes in the interconnectedness of all things and therefore whose investigations are somewhat unorthodox appeared in December 2010, but it's taken until now for the following three part series to emerge. This is probably down to show writer Howard Overman having to put episodes of the BBC's own Merlin and E4's Misfits to bed before getting around to this.

The new series starts on Monday March 5th, but might have gone right past us since we haven't seen anything in the way of publicity for it.

Our reaction to the pilot is to be found here and we'll be reviewing the series episodes as we see them.

HUGO only genre success at Oscars 2012

So the long-winded orgy of self-congratulation that is Oscar Night is over the box office boosts (sorry I mean golden statuettes) have been handed out to those American projects that needed them. Actually, this year around it was a European silent movie THE ARTIST that took the major accolades, but in the more technical categories one film flew the flag for fantastic films and that film was Martin Scorsese's HUGO.

Winning for best visual effects, sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography and production design, HUGO did pretty well for itself, but won't be making the headlines.

To be fair, there weren't that many truly great science fiction or fantasy movies out there in the last year, so there wasn't much to choose from and the American academy is known to be averse to fantasy/sci fi so it shouldn't come as any great surprise.

Anyway, well done to HUGO. You done good.

FRINGE is back in the UK

The midseason break is over and FRINGE's fourth season returns to Sky TV on Wednesday 8th February.

Will Peter find a way to convince everyone that he really was a part of their lives? Will Olivia remember that she was in love with him and not her new partner? Will the Observers ever grow hair?

The chilliest sci-fi show on TV, FRINGE has season arcs to die for and characters that it's often hard to care about, but it's compulsive viewing and we're certainly glad to see it back.

Vampires Bite Back This Sunday

Sunday is to become the UK's Vampire Night as two popular shows return for their fourth seasons.

There's TRUE BLOOD, the story of Bon Temps, a deep south US town where everyone is apparently some sort of supernatural being. Sookie is a telepath and her true love Bill is a vampire. This is a decidedly grown up show with lashings of blood and more than the occasional amount of nudity thrown in.

Then there's the BBC's own vampire show BEING HUMAN in which vampires, ghosts and werewolves share a house. It sounds like the start of a joke, but this has been consistently one of the best supernatural shows for grown up people of the last few years. It is also probably a good time for new viewers to join the fun as the climactic events of last year's finale will necessitate some sort of reboot.

So, if vampires are your thing then Sunday is going to be your day.