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April 5th, 2008 1:30am

I really didn't want to post a new, "What's New with Captain Phil" for the last month because I wanted to keep the Barry Morse tribute at the top of the page for awhile. Add to that more usual family and work committments and a month went by.

Well tonight, writing during I-Con 27 I'm posting about the death of another Space: 1999 alum, writer Johnny Byrne.




Picture from the Moonbound 3 Convention in Modena Italy

I plan on writing something up more in depth about Johnny, his wrote some of my favorite Space: 1999 episodes and more importantly passed on the series to the fans with his Message from Moonbase Alpha and his support of POWYS Media's line of Space: 1999 books.

Tonight on Destinies the voice of Science Fiction Howard mentioned his passing and dedicated the show to him. He also promised an upcoming tribute to Johnny in a few months. Here is a clip from the show that mentions Johnny.



The rest of the Destinies episode was the live I-Con 27 mystery guest special and can be heard here on the Destinies page

February 3rd, 2008 11:30pm

I've just learned that Barry Morse, aka Professor Bergman from Space: 1999 has died this weekend at the age of 89. Barry was a great friend to Space: 1999 fandom, attending many of the conventions the fans put on over the years. His last Space convention was in 2005 in Tampa Florida. Complete coverage of that convention and audio of Barry is here on my Space: 1999 convention pages



Barry was much more than a media guest at a convention, he was a real person who stopped and chatted with all the fans and always had a kind word for me and my family at the three conventions I saw him at. He enjoyed his life and inspired a lot of people, he never talked down to the fans, instead encouraged them to achieve their goals.


Barry at the Breakaway convention
in Los Angeles in 1999



Barry Morse speech from the Breakaway 1999 convention
Right click to download

  
Barry Morse and Catherine Schell at Main Mission 2000 in NYC



Thanks Barry. In 1975 watching you walk around Moonbase Alpha talking about Nuclear Waste I never dreamed I'd actually get to meet you in person. I'm glad I did.



January 19th, 2008 1:30am

Well, I need to get some sleep but I just finished uploading this weekends Destinies show featuring the great John Kenneth Muir! I've known John since the late 1990's when he published one of the first books about Space 1999. I wrote a review, he wrote me back and that was it! Since then I've seen him at conventions, hung out with him and his wive Katherine and chatted about all things Sci Fi and other assorted Geekery. John has the second season of his internet TV series, "The House Between." coming out next week and I encourage you to check it out.



I bet John would love this one of a kind Space 1999 toy currently on EBAY. Imagine the fun with your Mattel Eagle, this custom Hawk and that Mattel Moonbase control room toy they made back in the 1970's.



Now all we need is a matching Martin Bower bomber to really bring us sad old Sci Fi geezers back to 1976.



January 11th, 2008 10:30pm

I'm pretty psyched about tonights Destinies show which will feature a live interview with Matthew Atherton aka


FEEDBACK!

Howard has been talking about it for weeks and he'll be starting the show with a new Destinies promo that Matthew was kind enough to record into my Archos MP3 recorder back at the last Chiller Theater convention. So listen live or in the archive because Matthew is a great guy and this promises to be a great interview.

Some really sad news today, over in Iraq
Major Andrew Olmsted was killed along with Captain Thomas J. Casey and are the first US Casualties of 2008. I usually don't write about what happens day to day in Iraq here on Captain Phil Online (And I'm not a real Captain, the names a stupid Star Trek joke that's about 30 years old now!) but if you poke around a bit you'll figure out how I feel about things. If you look at my links section you'll get a clearer picture on how left I am.

But I'm not going to talk about any of that now except to tell you to read Major Andrew Olmsted's blog right over here:



and pay careful attention to the sort of things he quotes. It seems Olmsted was quite the Babylon 5 fan and I think I would have enjoyed sitting around watching B5 with him. I've always heard B5 quotes in my head whenever I've given the war in Iraq the time it deserves. I'm usually drawn to things Mira Furlan said as Delenn and I've often felt in a lot of ways sometimes this country is Minbari. Well Olmsted was a writer, the type of writer G'Kar became half way through Babylon 5. Unfortunately for all of us Olmsted has joined G'Kar and has gone beyond the rim.



January 1st, 2008 9:10pm

Happy New Year from Captain Phil Online! Had a great visit today from my friend Howard, who is the voice of Destinies which is the voice of Science Fiction. He's bringing me and a bunch of other Desti-fans onto the show this Friday to discuss the best films of the year 2007. Here is the list of films we're choosing from and some notes on who's seen what so far. (I still have a stack of DVD's from Blockbuster to get through!)

Also I have plenty of plans for this lowly little website including...

1) More Convention Reports!
2) Semi-regular Blogging!
3) Revised Destinies pages including the often dreamed of but never appearing Essential Destinies Page (Someday!)
4) More Convention audio!
5) A relaunch of Captain Phil's Podcast (Or would that be Captain Phil's Podcast Re-Imagined?)
6) More Space 1999 Content.


Will any of this happen? Will anyone care? Stay tuned to find out if anything at all happens here on Captain Phil Online!



December 7th, 2007 8:15pm

We love Doctor Who. It's infected this family like a Sci Fi virus. I can't believe something I watched 25 years ago has come back, bigger and better than before. In a lot of ways I feel like Donny in Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty Is Five", as the new Doctor Who is current and exciting, like it was for me years ago but it's been able to keep up with me like the old movies and pulp magazines that appear in the Ellison story. What's best is my 11 year old daughter loves the show and watches it with me all the time. Most of the stories are very clever and touching making this a house of Whovians for the first time since the series was running back in the 1980's on PBS. Everyone always asks me if my kids are going to become Trekkies or Star Wars fans because I take them to a lot of Science Fiction conventions. I think they've become Whovians because they happened to sit down in the living room while I played the show on TIVO trying to decide whether or not I liked it.



Well I do like it and here is a cute little clip from the show which ties the whole thing together for me since my favorite of the old doctors (From my "era" of Doctor Who) was Peter Davidson. Here my favorite Doctor meets my daughters favorite Doctor. It seems we're all fans!

December 7th, 2007 7:35pm

I really don't know a heck of a lot about running a website and I've figured out that I really really never did set up my sites email properly. Hopefully now if you email me at my email link I will get the message, it will not be buried in 7,000 viagra spam messages and I will actually respond in a reasonable amount of time! Enjoy emailing me at captphil@captphilonline.com.

Really!

November 22nd, 2007 5:05pm

November 18th, 2007 4:45pm

  

The lovely Gigi Edgley and terrific Walter Koenig at the Big Apple Comic Con yesterday afternoon.

November 18th, 2007 1:45pm



Shockingly not only is the convention season over but I also missed posting anything here after September 10th, the entire month of October and most of November. Reasons being the usual crush of work, family and going to lots of Science Fiction conventions.


This is my 20th year teaching and I got an award!

I'm going to have to get off my butt and really write up a review of all the conventions I attended in 2007 now that I'm finished with the last one, the Big Apple National Convention



I did write a quick post on the Big Apple Comic Con Yahoo Group bitching and moaning about some things and gushing over some other things. You can read the incoherent post here:

Big Apple Con Mini Rant

Also I've updated my
Classic Adventures page with the conventions I'm thinking about attending next year. The biggest surprise I had this year was the fun I had at United Fan Con on November 3rd and 4th. Briefly here is the list of the Conventions I attended in 2007.

February:
Boskone
New York Comic Con

March:
I-Con

April:
Chiller Theater

July:
Readercon

August:
Super Mega Con

October:
Chiller Theater

November:
United Fan Con
Big Apple Comic Con



Hopefully I'll be able to upload some nice pictures I took of these events, I bought a new camera over the summer a Sony DSC H2 which takes nice pictures from far away and shoots good video too.



So I have a lot of "Celeb in your face" type shots even though I may have been sitting 4 or 5 rows back in a panel room. Time will tell when I get to that but maybe before the New Year?


I know what you're thinking!

Well at least I've been able to maintain successfully the Destinies Online Archive up to date and right here:

Destinies

Once there check out some great new shows featuring composers Basil Poledouris, Joel Goldsmith, Murray Gold, authors John Kenneth Muir, C.C. Ekeke, T.A. Barron, Musicians Neil Norman, The Brobdingnagian Bards actress Anita LaSelva and commentary by Christopher DeFilippis. After you've listened to all that check out the

Classic Destinies page

for even more great Classic Destinies shows.

September 10th, 2007 9:45pm

I heard about the death on Madeleine L'Engle while I was recording the latest episode of Destinies on Friday night for the website. I was never a super fan of her work but I did see her several times over the course of my fannish life. The first time was when she was a Guest of Honor at Lunacon in the 1980's. I remember being very impressed with her talks even though I was just getting the hang of SF conventioning back then. While I was trying to date the woman who eventually became my wife I went to a workshop with her where L'Engle was a speaker. Remembering her from the Lunacon I recognized her sitting in the back of the room while we waited for the talk to begin. I asked my "someday to be" wife if she wanted to talk to her and she was too flustered to go up there. I did, got a couple of books signed and chatted, probably about that Lunacon, and brought the signed books back to she who would someday be Mrs. Captain Phil. The last time I saw Madeleine L'Engle was at the New York is book country festival, I was actually dating the future Mrs. Captain Phil by that time but I went to that fair with a friend. I think I may have seen Ed Koch at that one too but L'Engle was there at the Scholastic booth and was lovely. It's a shame to hear about her leaving but wow what a privledge to see her those few times. Here is a terrific writeup from Salon.

L'Engle's last wrinkle


L'Engle Publicity photo from Random House

September 1st, 2007 2:15pm

Well the entire summer has passed pretty much and again I didn't do that much here on Captain Phil Online except tweak the Destinies pages. Speaking of Destinies there are a couple of great live interviews up right now, Murray Gold, Composer of the new Doctor Who series music, T.A. Barron author of the Great Tree of Avalon trilogy and Neil Norman, the Force behind GNP Crescendo records. All this and more on the

Destinies Pages

On the other hand I did enjoy swimming everyday, painted my den and bought new office furniture and rewired my home entertainment center. So now that all that stuff is done maybe I can get back to doing some regular updates! Or maybe I'll waste all my time on looking at You Tube videos featuring melted cheese on toast:



August 9th, 2007 2:00pm

I've been reading about all sorts of terrorist threats lately from the head of the HS (Homeland Security) having a gut feeling to rants on the Mike Malloy radio show but now at least I know what the problem is. The volume control on the embedded player is on the bottom right in case you can't hear the audio


Bush Worried About New Threat

July 24th, 2007 5:15pm

Well another month has slipped past after my triumph of posting from a pool in Virginia. The tens of regular readers of Captain Phil Online may have wondered if I ended up at the bottom of the pool that day. But no, but I bet some of you thought something like this may have happened instead


Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

Please go and check out the recent and classic Destinies shows over on the Destinies pages. Howard has been selecting some terrific ones for the Classic Destinies pages and the current crop is has been pretty great as well. I know what he has coming up for August and I think the listeners are going to enjoy it!

Destinies Page

Classic Destinies Page

June 29th, 2007 4:30pm

27 days without a new, "What's New" could lead you to believe that Captain Phil has left the planet. Not true, I am still inflicting myself on this poor world! Things just got a little out of control the last three weeks of work but today, TODAY is an exciting day as I try to update this what's new page on a laptop PC on vacation beside a pool in Virginia! Will it work? Will the internet explode? Will anybody care? All those questions will be answered when this post reaches the dimension of cyberspace.

Take a look at the
Destinies Page
for an excellent show featuring Captain Phil and a cast of characters looking at Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer In that episode we meet Brian Krey, long time Destinies listener...admitted visitor to Captain Online. Listen to his insightful review of the movie as the Captain tries to say something interesting during the show. Tonights Destinies episode will go up sometime on Sunday or Monday since I am away unless I figure out a way to record the show from my hotel room tonight. I only have WiFi out in the lobby and I may be too tired to make the attempt.

Take a look a my
Classic Adventures Page
where I've updated my Sci Fi convention plans for the summer and fall. A couple of interesting shows are coming up including a Transformers convention in Rhode Island this weekend. As I type this the convention has already started. I also forgot to include the October Chiller Convention which I'll try to fix at some point this vacation. Well, time to see if I can update this from the pool. Another Captain Phil milestone is about to occur!

June 2nd, 2007 1:10am

Like last week been a a bit busy now that I'm in the vortex of the final three weeks of school. Mrs. Captain Phil and I both are busy with end of the year work, scrambling to get paperwork done plus rushing around with the two little Captain Phils. The good news is in three weeks we'll be done! At the end of June I hope to do some major work on Captain Phil online taking this site on the road so to speak and doing web-site work by the pool!

This week on the
Destinies Page
Howard is celebrating the 25th anniversary of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. I was never much of a fan of this film myself, I remember having to see it with all my friends back when it came out except we weren't able to see it at the same time. So I ended up watching it 3 times in one week. Not good. I remember the scene with Elliot screaming in the backyard and Spielberg shot that scene from 3 or 4 different angles. The third time I saw it I remember thinking, 12 O'Clock, 3 O'Clock, 6 O'Clock, 9 O'Clock!

One of the things I like about ET is Dee Wallace Stone who I met at several Chiller Theater conventions and who is very sweet.





Boy, if ET had a peanut allergy it would have been a completely different film!

May 25th, 2007 11:00pm

Hey, been busy here, ya know, teaching, getting ready for graduations and tons of other stuff. Lots of great Destinies shows are on line right now including an HG Wells/Orson Welles interview from 1940 and a John Williams interview in honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. In fact here's a little video embed to honor that fact as well! Enjoy!



May 12th, 2007 9:20pm

Captain Phil Online Department of Egomania
I'm mentioned over in the composers section of John Muir's blog on his series The House Between. Check it out
here

You can see all of the first season of John Muir's The House Between by clicking this:



Also of interest is my appearance on Destinies Friday night in which half the review crew didn't appear, Chris, coming in from Bethpage was running late and yours truly, Captain Phil was dozing at home before the show and barely made it to Stony Brook on time. When I got there Howard was waiting for me and we prepared to do the show as a duo. The Destinies Duo. I wish, I wish, I wish I had the energy to jot down some of my thoughts before the show instead of sitting in front of the TV dozing during Trading Spaces (The ultimate preparation for appearing on a Sci Fi Radio Show). Even so it went off pretty well I think, with Howard coaching me along and using ideas from an earlier conversation about the movie. I would have added a couple of comments more but at the end I think it was one of the more enjoyable times I've had on the show. I think my favorite appearance was the night we reviewed ICON 26 where the chemistry seemed really natural between all of us.

About fifteen or Twenty minutes in Chris showed up and made us the Destinies Trio or perhaps the Triumvirate of Destinies. If we had all been wearing these I guess we could have been a triumvirate.



Well the best part of all this is the amount of fun it is. Hanging out and talking about Science Fiction on a Friday night is way cool and restores my faith that Science Fiction fandom will never die. Chris had watched all of season one of Battlestar Galactica (The new version) and loved it. I was so glad he enjoyed it, it meant I read him right. After listening to him and speaking with him for the last year or so I got a pretty good vibe of where his science fiction interests lie and one of the great pleasures of being a Science Fiction fan is discussing Science Fiction with your friends. I'll be back on Destinies for the new Fantastic Four Silver Surfer movie in June and I hope the radio show will be as much fun as this one was. The movie I'm not too concerned with because it's the subject that will bring us all together!

May 11th, 2007 9:20pm

Wow! It's been a long time since I was able to put up anything on this What's New page. Turns out there is a lot thats new but not a lot of time to write about it. And they'll be more gaps after tonight so I guess I got to put up the old Eagle Soup can.

First up, I'll be on the radio tonight with Howard and the crew reviewing Spiderman 3! So if you read this in the next two hours you can tune in right here:

Listen Live to WUSB! Click to Stream Live Audio



Of course you might check out the page after that time so the show will be archived on the

Destinies Page

along with the last couple of shows which I didn't write about here. On May 4th Howard did a great Spiderman show with a terrific Spiderman rap with Sudden Death and Luke Ski. Worth checking out.

Okay, hanging up the soup now so you know I'm busy and may not have time to post regularly here. I will be updating Destines every week though so be sure to look at that every week for a new show.



April 20th, 2007 10:50pm

Today is a really important day, what day is it Pikachu?


April 12th, 2007 4:50pm

Been busy again, first with Easter and then with getting back to work for the final push until summer vacation in two months. I've set up some WiFi in my house and with a new laptop PC from work I'm able to access my email, websurf or just veg out on some stupid web games in front of the TV. Fun but it took me away from the Captain Phil website here where I know tens of people come to for enlightenment every day. Read some email about Space 1999 that really cheesed me off and I'm debating about writing a huge post about it. Maybe later.

Here is some sad news which you probably already know about, writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr died on Wednesday, April 11th at the age of 84. I never read all his books but I liked the ones I did read. One of my favorite stories was Harrison Bergeron which you might be able to read if you Google it. I'd also seen Vonnegut on a few of the interview shows I like to watch like PBS Now. I also remember really liking the book Timequake but not a lot of other people seemed to like it. I don't know, I thought it was pretty memorable and odd in its way. I've only read one tribute and I love it. Its over on Salon right here:


Click on the S

It's called "Playing chess with Kurt Vonnegut," by Andrew Leonard and it's pretty wonderful and tells a story that is so....Kurt Vonnegut.

I love this part,
"My father and Vonnegut were good friends.....Another perk was having Vonnegut crouch down on the floor that Thanksgiving, eschewing the give and take of New York conversational tango, and invite me to play a game of chess. On a whim, he suggested that we rearrange the board. Why did the pawns have to go in front, those sacrificial lambs about to be chewed up by the slaughterhouse of the front lines, those powerless vassals of the high and mighty? Let's force the feudal lords out of their foxholes and into the hurly-burly! Let's put the pawns in the back row, he proposed. Let's put the knights and bishops and kings and queens in the front rank! Oh, the thrill of chess sacrilege!"


1922 — 2007

April 6th, 2007 6:00pm

Two posts in one day! Who knew! I'm trying to get a handle on how I can take this webpage or weblog and push it more into the "blogosphere". I'm at a disadvantage there because I'm kinda old school internet and I like writing this stuff in Notepad, I distrust sites like Blogger and the rest. So slowly I'm trying to insert tags and such to make this page "visable" in things like Technorati and google Blog Search and all the rest. But it's slow going and when I look at sites like Blogger or Technorati I feel like there's a gap where they ignore stupid people like me who are trying to get a weblog going in this backwards manner.

Anyway, that's not important, what is important is that someone out there is listening to and enjoying Destinies-The Voice of Science Fiction and has written a nice little review. Well, he doesn't like Mission of Gravity but he says

There's a SF radio program called "Destinies - The Voice Of Science Fiction". It's at least 22 years old and frankly it's awesome. I've heard 3 episodes of it so far, featuring book reviews, interviews (I've heard Mark Leonard, George Takei, John Buscema and Larry Niven) and some radio drama.

You can read his whole Blog entry here (And this is a modern Blog, not this wonky Notepad retro page here) and read his trashing of Mission of Gravity but praising the awesomeness of Destinies

I Waste The Buddha With My Crossbow

Enjoy!

April 6th, 2007 11:55am

It's been "Spring Break" here at the Captain Phil headquarters so updates have been slower than usual. Add to that a change of monitors and a new router designed to work with my laptop PC from work and I've been doing nothing but talk to tech support for two days. The people at LINKSYS were pretty nice though and most of the problems have been solved. There's still a few bumps here and there but i think all the ducks are now in a row.

I read a review of The Last Mimsy over on the
Flick Filosopher Site and my friend Howard Margolin recommended it as well. We saw it the other day and it's the perfect family film for all ages. It the type of Science Fiction film that doesn't let the special effects get in the way of the story. The story it's based on is the Science Fiction classic by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore) Mimsy Were the Borogoves. It was first published in Astounding Science Fiction, February 1943 and in the same issue was part one of The Weapon Makers by A. E. van Vogt. What a great issue for .25¢ I think the movie cost us at least $25 not counting popcorn!



I don't think the story is available online but it is available in many many Science Fiction Anthologies. If you google Lewis Padgett + Mimsy Were the Borogoves you'll find where it's in print and I'm sure you can pick up a copy at the library or EBAY or Amazon. Probably really cheap too!

Some bad news today for fans of the classic great Gerry Anderson show UFO, one of the lead actors has died, George Sewell


George Sewell with Barry Morse (Space: 1999) at
Moonbound One
picture ©
Moonbase'99

I never met George at any convention but he did do a bunch of conventions in England and Italy. From what I've read he sounds like he was a lot fun to be around. His character in UFO, Col. Alec Freeman was a bit more serious than George but then again UFO was a show that took itself very seriously even if the main headquarters for the defense of Earth was located under a film studio!

In UFO when Freeman wasn't being too serious he always had time for the ladies and it's these scenes that I remember the most, his conversations with the beautiful ladies of SHADO were a nice counterpoint to the intensity of Commander Straker played by Ed Bishop (1932-2005). He also had a very memorable face that makes me think of William Macy or Ernest Borgnine. This of course is the visual counterpoint to the series hunk Col. Paul Foster played by Michael Billington (1941-2005). Billington almost was James Bond but in the end didn't get the part and had to settle for making out with Barbara Bach instead.


picture ©
Michael Billington's website

Here are some of my favorite images of George Sewell, acting as Col. Alec Freeman in UFO and being the "Ladies man!"




Goodbye George. Thanks for the great work and for being such a terrific actor, We'll miss you.

Obituary from
Telegraph.co.uk


images from
Lisa's Frame Capture Library
and
The UFO Series Homepage

March 29th, 2007 10:35pm

Captain Phil Alert! Captain Phil will be joining radio legend Howard Margolin and the band of merry fans in the Destinies Post I-CON 26 review show on Friday, March 30th 2007 at 11:30pm. Tune into WUSB Stony Brook 90.1 FM or stream it here:

Listen Live to WUSB! Click to Stream Live Audio



Start your Spring Break off right with Destinies and Captain Phil! Play the Captain Phil drinking game. At 11:30pm on Friday tune your radio or realplayer to 90.1fm Stony Brook. Have your favorite alcoholic beverage available. Listen for Captain Phil's Basso Profundo voice and every time he say's "Um, Ah or Space 1999", take a drink. By 11:45pm you will be feeling no pain. By midnight you won't be seeing straight and by 12:30 you will have forgotten what planet you're from. And don't forget to pledge!


Support WUSB Stony Brook Radio Free Long Island!

March 26th, 2007 11:05pm

I've done a little cleaning up of the

Captain Phil ICON 26 Con Report

in terms of spelling errors and such. Writing this report here, the way I do makes me realize that there is still a lot of stuff I'm doing wrong in maintaining this site and updating it. So I had a few ideas tonight and did a little googling and came up with a few solutions. Actually it's not really solutions to problems, it's filling in the potholes of ignorance that dot my brain concerning how to create and maintain a webpage. But no big deal, it's a hobby, like shortwave radio or collecting hubcaps and I just realized my antenna wasn't connected too well.

Someone who is connected pretty well is Keith DeCandido who wrote about my wonderful, brilliant yet somehow humble I-CON review over on his site. If you can't get enough of people talking about me....and hey, who wouldn't love to read about Captain Phil 24/7....then head over here to listen to the angels sing the praises of your ever-luvin' Captain Phil.

Two long-haired guys

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