Pixel Scroll (9/18/26): Doctor Who’s Next Era, Rethinking Jules Verne, and the Reality of Space Weapons

The useful part

Filers might also like to hear what David Tennant said about the matter on his Facebook page. The new series should feel "contemporary and creatively ambitious", balancing big science-fiction ideas with strong emotional storytelling, character and human experience. Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf are departing the series, and the previously announced 2026 Christmas special will not go ahead as the BBC instead focuses its investment on Doctor Who's longer-term future.

How it works

• What are we overlooking when we over-focus on the gadgets sci-fi "predicted," as these charts and memes and discussions tend to do?
• This is worth interrogating—and the way we discuss the work of Jules Verne, and the prescience of his science fiction, is particularly elucidating in that respect….
• Is every new technology we invent a product of an inevitable "law of Progress," or is "progress" just convenient rhetoric to justify developments such as, say, AI data centers that guzzle more water than...
• "No more book bans: how Florida students are pushing rightwingers out of school boards" – the Guardian has the story.
• The book publisher said last year that it had dropped the children's author following reports that he was accused of behaving inappropriately towards young women.

What to take from it

But "the world should be listening with open ears about this information because of the wide range of consequences," says astrodynamicist Thomas González Roberts of Georgia Tech in Atlanta…. HarperCollins is set to phase out remaining copies of David Walliams 's books after announcing last year that they would no longer publish him. Walliams strongly denies any claims and said at the time that he had not been informed about an investigation by HarperCollins.

Example or evidence

• …HarperCollins has published all 23 of the children's books written by Walliams, beginning with 2008's The Boy in the Dress, as well as his short story collections and picture books.
• Ardan's quote may well not reflect the beliefs of Verne himself, whose first (unpublished) novel, Paris in the Twentieth Century, offers a dystopian vision of the future in which technology and a...
• So there may be a wait before that familiar blue box lands again, but the BBC's plans now make one thing very clear:
• Anastasia Klimchynskaya warns readers about "Misunderstanding the Genius of Jules Verne — And Why It Matters to Science Fiction" at Reactor.

Details worth keeping

Pixel Scroll 9/18/26 File The Dishes And Scroll The Plates, That's. Hates | File 770 Skip to primary content (1) A SECOND OPINION. Yesterday's Scroll included the BBC's "Invitation to Tender:

Related coverage

• File770: (1) TWO DECADES OF BACON CAT.
• File770: (1) ANTHROPIC SETTLEMENT PROBLEMS.
• File770: (0) If it can't be done with a rock and a stick, I can't do it on the internet it seems.