TVSquad

Are you ready for some major disaster film effects? Were you disappointed that there wasn't more destruction when the Golden Gate Bridge broke in half on Eli Stone (I was.) Then you, like me, will be pleased to hear that David James Elliott is starring in a four-hour mini-series called Impact. Producers are promising lots of action and Charlton Heston-like epic disaster. Okay, maybe I added the Charlton Heston adjective, but at $13 million, the guys at Muse Entertainment, Jaffe/Braunstein Entertainment and Tandem Communications aren't skimping.

Casting David is a plus for starters. The former JAG star has a nice balance of serious and tongue-in-cheek, so hopefully he'll keep Impact from getting too cheesey. The story, however, does have Velveeta potential.

Do you like space? Of course you do, you're floating around in it right now.

Despite the fact my brain is clogged with cartoon trivia and the words to that old Tootsie Roll jingle, I love anything having to do with space and space exploration, even if i don't always completely understand the science behind it. If you share my love of space-y things, and if you happen to get the Science Channel, tune in starting tomorrow for Space Week. Here's some of what's on tap:

There's a lot of good programs on television, and there's always something new popping up that catches my interest. However, I rarely get too excited about what gets beamed into my living room from the ol' idiot box. In this instance, though, I have to say I'm a lot more curious than usual.

I'm talking about In the Shadow of the Moon, a new documentary from Discovery Films that screened recently at Sundance and will also premiere at some point on the Discovery Channel and Discovery HD Theater, takes a look at the Apollo moon missions and brings together the surviving astronauts from those missions to talk about their experience. I'm a total sucker for anything having to do with space exploration. One of my favorite things to watch on television is those satellite images of Earth shown on the NASA channel. I find it oddly comforting.

I quick search of Discovery's site didn't pull up any info on the documentary, but I'll keep my eye out for when it might air.

We all know the famous words astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered when he first set foot on the surface of the moon: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." That quote has been burned into our collective conscience for years, but if you think about it, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Armstrong has always insisted that he said, "That's one small step for A man, one giant leap for mankind," and a recent analysis of the audio by an Australian computer programmer may have finally validated Armstrong's claim. Peter Shann Ford studied a graphical representation of the quote, and found evidence that the elusive "A" was transmitted to NASA. Hell, even without the "A" that's still a damn good quote from the first person to ever step onto the surface of the moon. I'm sure if it were me it would just be a lot of screaming and crying.