Welcome to Live From Mars, the website of Fringeworld, producers of fine fanzines since 1992. Here, you’ll find an abundance of articles and features about tv, films, music and events some of them new, a lot previously published in our zines. Plus there’s lots of information on our current zine `This Way Up`.

To contact us: hello@livefrommars.co.uk Zine queries: zine@livefrommars.co.uk

Update 10/6/09


DOCTOR WHO + HEROES + JAMES MACTAGGART + THE FEATHERED SERPENT + RICHARD WILLIS + SPOOKS CODE 9 + WAR HORSE + VERONICA MARS + BEING HUMAN + JUDGE DREDD = THIS WAY UP 23

IT ALL ADDS UP TO A GOOD READ

FOR A PAPER COPY EMAIL zine@livefrommars.co.uk with postal address details*

*If you’re on our mailing list you will automatically have been sent a copy of the issue.


READ A COPY HERE

This Way Up Issue 23 (PDF 1,872 kB)

You’ll need Adobe Reader installed on your machine to be able to view this, if you don’t have it, you can download it from here.


This Way Up To Become E-zine

The next issue of This Way Up (no.23 – due this month) will be the last to be available in a paper, posted format. From issue 24, the zine will be released solely as a pdf file on this site for you to read or print out if you wish. Issue 22 was the first to be made available in both formats and the results speak for themselves. While the number of people who read the issue online was considerably higher than our readership has been for several years, no requests for the paper version were received. Paper copies were still sent to the regular mailing list meaning that in total the issue was the most read Fringeworld zine for more than a decade. It’s clear that remaining a printed zine and the schedule that involves would adversely affect our ability to find as large a readership as possible. There are now a lot of fans who have never even heard of paper fanzines. In addition postage costs continue to rise and as the recession affects the printing industry it has become more difficult to find a printer that is both reliable and cost effective. The pdf format will allow This Way Up to be more flexible in content and publication and it is intended to produce up to six issues per year. Shorter reviews will now appear on this site leaving the zine free for the sort of incisive and entertaining articles and features for which is had become known. It also hoped we can expand our team of regular contributors so both the site and zine become more active and up to date while not forgetting the rich source of archive tv that demands our attention. Watch out for further information here soon.

If you are interested in writing tv, film or event reviews for the site or longer articles for the zine please contact us at hello@livefrommars.co.uk


SKY ON DVD


Incredibly, and despite parts 3 & 7 only existing as VHS copies, this fondly remembered ITV children's telefantasy series is getting a DVD release in June. Find out more info here, and for younger readers wondering what on earth we're talking about, read our feature on Sky here.



THIS WAY UP IS BACK!


“One day I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. I will you know. Come back, yes. Mmm, back. And if you had her shoes, Chessington, you’d be a mountain goat any day!”

We’re pleased to announce the return of the acclaimed fanzine This Way Up for a brand new series packed to the rafters with comment, opinion and analysis on a wide range of tv and other stuff.

Issue 22 features reviews of the first season of Merlin, the second season of Heroes and of The Sarah Jane Adventures as well as the Doctor Who special The Next Doctor. There’s a look at the work of pioneering TV producer Michael Barry, 1980’s kid’s programmes, Arthur C Clarke’s classic novel Childhood’s End and the time last year when a giant mechanical spider stalked the streets of Liverpool.

Get TWU Delivered!

Order a copy from zine@livefrommars.co.uk remembering to include a postal address we can send it to

Read TWU Now!

Just click on the link below to open a PDF file containing the whole issue (this will only be available for a limited period)

This Way Up Issue 22 (PDF 1,534 kB)

You’ll need Adobe Reader installed on your machine to be able to view this, if you don’t have it, you can download it from here.

Join the TWU Mailing List!

If you want to receive each issue whatever’s in it, then let us know and we’ll add you to our mailing list.

Write for TWU!

We’re always looking for new writers for forthcoming issues so if you’d like to get involved contact ed@livefrommars.co.uk


New Who reviews updated

We've now added the Season 4 reviews from the first issue of Jargon to this part of the site - don't worry, we've kept the originals 'cos we know you like a bit of variety.

Back to top

Updated 4/7/09

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

Just about the only regular aspect of Michael Jackson was his name. Everything else seemed to arrive from another planet whether the talent or the eccentricity. full story...

TV: Robin Hood Season 3

…there was some doubt as to whether a third would be commissioned. That it turns out to be the most accomplished of the series is quite a surprise… full story...

THEATRE: Lost Monsters

“The world would be a better place if we were all bees” full story...

TV: Britain’s Got Talent Final

It says something about the entertainment industry that this kind of show is the only route through which so called less glamorous but talented people can attain public recognition. full story...

FILM: Star Trek

`Start Trek` - back to the beginning with Kirk and co. full story...

FILM: Angels And Demons

More religious shenanigans taken from the book by the adult’s JK Rowling- Dan Brown. full story...

FILM: Watchmen

The reverence with which the original graphic novel is treated by fans means many will follow its writer Alan Moore’s lead and stay away from this cinematic interpretation. Those of us unencumbered by such expectations can only judge what we see which is an absorbing and often clever narrative sometimes hindered by presentation. full story...

FILM: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

For an idea with such potential span, this ends up as a curiously un-involving journey that straddles the best part of three hours without really getting off first base. full story...

TV: Demons (Jan-Feb 09)

You’d never imagine a series about fighting monsters in London could be so dull and derivative but Demons somehow manages it. full story...

TWO GOOD REALITY TV SHOWS SHOCKER!


TV: The Victorian Farm (Jan-Feb 09)

As we all know, history can be dry and dull or it can dance itself alive in front of us and this six part series certainly does the latter. full story...

TV: Big Chef Takes On Little Chef

In which the notoriously iconoclastic chef Heston Blumenthal takes on the challenge to rebrand the Little Chef chain. full story...

TV: Don Taylor

The BBC’s appointment of Sydney Newman as their Head of Drama in 1962 was the opening act of a perceived ‘Golden Age’ of British television drama, a period characterised by a new generation of ambitious writers and directors coming together to create original and sometimes controversial programmes. That is not to say, however, that this is how it appeared to everybody at the time, and the alienating effect of Newman’s ‘new broom’ must be remembered. full story...

Book: Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

Did Jules Verne invent science fiction? Perhaps. There are other contenders, as far back as Mary Shelley but what Verne did do was seize upon the era’s taste for mechanical miracles, social progress and limitless optimism, opening up the world, and the places beyond the world, as playgrounds for predictive adventure. full story...

TV: Skins Season 2

Skins became one of 2007’s television talking points, surrounded by controversy, some manufactured, most of it based on inaccurate assumptions but it became a series television heads had an opinion about. full story...

Music: REMs Albums

For the majority of the British public, R.E.M. were essentially famous in the early 1990s – a passing fancy that rose out of obscurity and has steadily been dropping back into it after a couple of years of fame. full story…

DR WHO: The Daleks' Masterplan

According to all known laws of science, 'The Daleks' Master Plan' should be rubbish. Even at the dizzying height of Dalekmania, when their image adorned everything from bagatelle games to fish slices and people walking down the street in papier mache Dalek masks were a common sight, the idea of an entire twelve (thirteen, if you count the mezannine) episodes being devoted to a single story featuring the malevolent mutants in metal casings was something approaching overkill. full story…

DR WHO: Who is the longest running Doctor?

An easy enough question to ask you may say but, really, it’s not. When David Tennant announced his departure from the series after three years, he had done considerably less work than old Billy Hartnell and Patrick T did in their three years. full story…

DR WHO: The 60s Historicals

History, as any bored schoolkid knows only too well, is a difficult subject. It may by definition be grounded in documentation and factual records, but it's also widely open to interpretation, reducing serious academics to bitter playground spats over who would 'win' out of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel. full story...

Torchwood Season 2

It’s probably fair to say that the first series of Torchwood was not exactly a roaring success with fans of Doctor Who, but it was obviously enough of a triumph with the general audience to make the transition from the digital backwaters to BBC2 which feels like the most natural home for the show, rather than being tucked away on BBC Three. full story...

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