FROM THE SFX OFFICE

With your first look at the cover of the new Comic Heroes , the Doctor Who spin-off you’ve always wanted and news of a magical Merlin set visit

This regular Thursday blog comes with the snazzy title FROM THE SFX OFFICE, but this week it might have been more appropriate to rename it FROM OUTSIDE THE SFX OFFICE. The reason? With half the team on holiday and the other half in and out of the office for a plethora of interviews and set visits all week, SFX towers has been a ghost town in comparison to the usual thriving hub of geekery.

With the exception of art ed Jon, who’s still taking some much-deserved R&R, today is the first time we’ve had the team at full strength in what feels like weeks. Not only that but we’ve got reinforcements in the form of ever-so-helpful workies: Rebecca Adam and Charlett Upham. As well as tea duties (only kidding, we haven’t forced them to make a single cuppa. Yet…) they’ve mostly been helping Jordan plough through his intimidating number of interviews and enormous list of fiendishly difficult unanswered questions submitted to SFX perts over that past few months.

Last week we told you about some of Jordan’s on set antics with the Misfits , well this week it was Dave B and Catherine’s turn to visit the eerie Runnymede set to take some snaps of the gang for an upcoming feature. Speaking of Misfits , Nick is slowly making his way through season two (he watches it in semi-real-time you see – one episode per week) and has just got the last episode left; while Jordan is re-watching the lot on Blu-ray ahead of writing his set report. Although he’s been enjoying it just as much as the first time round, he’s spent the whole time praying E4 launch an Freeview HD channel before season three starts airing. Best-looking show in sci-fi, hands down. He’s also been laughing heartily at this work of genius courtesy of regular SFX scribe Will Salmon (@ evilrobotbill on twitter, which was born after a drunken pub discussion last week.

Rich just finished a review of Firefly on Blu-ray (surprisingly similar to Firefly on DVD), and is staring longingly at the Christopher Lambert movie that’ll be taking centre stage in Couch Potato later today. In a peerless filmography, this is a standout. That’s right, in mere hours the couch crew (including no less than three workies) will be descending on Rich’s pad for another late afternoon/early evening of film fun. It’s not all feet up in front of the telly though, the hidden cost of couch is that one person must furiously dictate the barrage of quips flying back and forth across the room. The biscuits make up for it though.

Ian spent three days in North Wales this week, some of it spent visiting Portmeirion, home of The Prisoner . Yes, he did get his photo taken running down the beach shouting, “I am not a number, I am free man!” – well, you’ve got to, haven’t you? Sadly, his efforts to convince his other half to visit “this rock The Master briefly stood next to when they were filming ‘The Five Doctors’” came to nothing.

After his trip to Egham on Tuesday Dave B headed back to the Big Smoke yesterday for a day of meetings, including a trendy media lunch with the Group Publisher, and a chat about authors at the Weekender with the publicist from Orbit books. Dave G on the other hand headed west to visit Merlin ’s new green screen set in Cardiff where he had a fun-filled day, but still hasn’t quite recovered from seeing Nathaniel Parker strip down to his underwear in front of him. You can read more about his day in a future issue of SFX , but for now be sure to check out this brief snippet with Katy McGrath and a picture of three burly blokes. As if that weren’t enough Dave G, henceforth know as the hardest working man in magazines has been interviewing Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill (twice), saw Real Steel and interviewed the director Shawn Levy and chatted with the team behind the new Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy app. Sterling effort.

Rob has returned from the dead after spending most of the week curled up in his bed in the foetal position after his body gave up on him, while Nick was disappointed by the utter lack of balloon’s at the Bristol Balloon Festival on Sunday. Mother Nature can be cruel sometimes. Ade on the other hand has been off for the past week and returned to find more foreign sweeties from readers’ holidays, though his search for a golden Twinkie goes on.

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Random (Drunken Pub) Quote Of The Week: “I don’t want a haunted arsehole.”

Whose Shoes? (last week’s answer: they were Rob’s specs!)