The Clone Wars wins Daytime Emmys for Best Animated Show and David Tennant’s guest spot

The 40th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards - Press Room

The Clone Wars brought home the gold at the Daytime Emmys, presented over this past weekend, taking home two awards: Outstanding Special Class Animated Program, and Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for David Tennant as the voice of Huyang, the droid who mentors Jedi younglings in constructing lightsabers.

At the main Daytime Emmy presentation on Sunday, Carrie Fisher presented the Animated Program award to George Lucas, Dave Filoni, Cary Silver and Athena Portillo for the Animated Program win. Fisher did slip in reference to dropping acid, while George had his own slip of the tongue.

David Tennant’s award was given out on Friday at the Creative Arts presentation and Dave Filoni remarked on Tennant’s tenure on Doctor Who as a reason to cast him as the droid: “I absolutely loved what David Tenant was doing on Doctor Who. There was such a quizzical nature to his character, a sense of whimsy, but he could still get very powerful emotion out of the character — a lot of intensity, a lot of anger — just an incredible display of range.”

After switching to Saturday mornings for its final season, The Clone Wars was eligible for Daytime Emmys and earned seven nominations after the show’s cancellation.

Episode VII roundup: Kennedy in, McCallum out

Behind the scenes. IGN’s Lucy O’Brien has a nice profile of Kathleen Kennedy, “Star Wars’ new Emperor,” and her film-making resume.

Meanwhile, shuffling up into the spotlight is the news that Rick McCallum has retired from Lucasfilm. The big question seems to be where this leaves the live-action series, which McCallum has been the main ambassador for and which hasn’t been much mentioned since D-Day. Honestly, given what’s been said of it so far, it’s one project that I don’t really mind staying on the back burner for a while longer.

Outside looking in. Scott Myers looks at some of the recent information and surmises that Disney may be taking the Pixar approach to Star Wars story development.

Actors. The real question is who doesn’t want in on Star Wars, but thus far we’ve heard from Derek Jacobi, David Tennant, plus Thor’s Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston.

The Clone Wars calls in a Doctor: David Tennant guests on Saturday’s episode

Ex-Doctor Who star David Tennant voices the droid Huyang, who helps the young Jedi on their lightsaber quest in ‘A Test of Strength.’ After watching IGN’s exclusive clip, I’m surprised no one guessed this one at Celebration!

Tennant is best known for playing the Tenth Doctor on Who, but may also be familiar to genre fans from his turn as Barty Crouch Junior in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Genre TV Round-Up

Now that everyone has gotten over Johnny Depp’s appearance and that smooch between John Barrowman and David Tennant, Airlock Alpha catches us up on all we missed with sci-fi TV:

And now let’s see what scoopage E! is covering:

And one final tidbit for crushed Jericho fans:  it looks like they’re trying for a wrap-up movie.

Could David Tennant be playing Bilbo Baggins?

Geoff Boucher pointed out yesterday that David Tennant is heading to San Diego for the first time – ostenibly to promote his last spin as Doctor Who – and could that perhaps mean he’s won the lead role in The Hobbit? Others are taking the speculation as an excuse to crow that it’s a done deal, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

As for Peter Jackson, he’s denying that we’ll get any casting news at Comic-Con.

Boucher’s also running an opinion poll, where Atonement’s James McAvoy is just narrowly beating Tennant.