“Firefly” Felled by the Fox. Continuing the success afforded by his back-to-back TV successes “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1997-2003) and “Angel” (1999-2004), writer/producer/director Joss Whedon (currently of Disney/Marvel “Avengers” cinematic fame) created, along with “Angel” partner Tim Minear (“American Horror Story”), a short-lived TV series (2002-2003) that could be described in broad terms as…
Happy Birthday, “Back to the Future” (1985): Sending us back for 35 years…
“Well, I figured…what the hell?” 1985 saw the release of “Back to the Future”, a pop culture phenomenon that has, in the years since, become more a time capsule of 1980s pop culture than the 1950s culture it romanticized. It is one of the most iconic films of its decade, right along with “Ghostbusters,” “Raiders…
“Cocoon” (1985); a sentimental summer fantasy of seniors and immortality…
Summer of 1985. The summer of 1985 stirs a few memories for me; it was the year I graduated high school, and I was at a very different place than I am now, 35 years later; the back door of life was much further away than it seems now. So it’s not a great surprise…
CBS-AA’s “The Twilight Zone” is slightly more surefooted in its sophomore season…
Season One: Danger Zone. When writer/director/actor Jordan Peele took the reigns of CBS-All Access’ new remake of Rod Serling‘s classic series, “The Twilight Zone”, few were more excited than myself. As a big fan of Peele’s movies (“Get Out” “Us”) I thought he’d bring some of the profundity and gallows’ humor of his films into…
A slice of Soviet-era sci-fi cinema: “Planet Bur” (1962) is three movies in one…
Soviet Sci-Fi Cinema. Russia’s Soviet era (1917-1991) was a difficult time, especially for artists, who worked under heavy state censorship. Many artists during this time were stifled, fined, imprisoned or even executed for daring to challenge the Soviet status quo through their works. That said, Soviet-era science fiction cinema still managed to produce some truly…
Star Trek: Enterprise’s two-parter “Demons” and “Terra Prime” speak to right now…
Earth, Today. The third decade of the 21st century is off to a really rocky start. Political unrest in the United States at its most volatile since the late 1960s, arguably more so, in fact. Severe racial and economic strife, grotesque social injustice, a global pandemic, rampant political corruption, multiple constitutional crises and even murder…
JAWS (1975); the movie that invented the summer blockbuster turns 45…
“This is summer…” June of 1975 was a very different time. Video games were mainly for arcades. Home video wasn’t yet a thing. There was no internet. No 24 hour news cycles (there was the evening news and the morning news, as well as newspapers). Cheap entertainment options for the masses were limited to LP record…
Netflix’s “Space Force” (2020) or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Satire…
*****HIGHLY CLASSIFIED: SPOILERS INSIDE! ***** Netflix has just unveiled a new Steve Carrell-produced/starring streaming series that takes place in a reality just west of our own; it’s a universe that still has Star Wars, Twitter, Tiktok, K-Pop, the Apollo lunar landings, Donald Trump (though never mentioned by name) and other alignments with our own universe, but…
Deep Space Nine’s “Far Beyond The Stars” still matters…
Brave New World. To those who believe that Star Trek wasn’t concerned with ‘social justice’ issues until the newer CBS All Access series? I’ve got something for you… Deep Space Nine’s 6th season episode “Far Beyond the Stars” (1998) broke a lot of Star Trek’s rules. Rather than deal with racism through the metaphoric lens…
Remembering actor and artist Richard Herd, 1932-2020…
As if 2020 hasn’t been trying enough, yesterday I learned that actor Richard Herd, whom I’d met and spoken with at many conventions, passed away from cancer on Tuesday, May 26th. Richard Herd had a long and varied career. He was often cast as authority figures, with costarring roles in TV shows such as “T.J. Hooker”…
A few sci-fi reboots and sequels I’d like to see…
While the ongoing COVID19 pandemic has temporarily ground much of the entertainment industry to a halt, there is still an abundant supply of reboots and sequels, with more on the way. I’m not going to rant against them, either. Yes, one can argue that reboots and sequels are a lazier way to retain a built-in…
Revisiting “The Martian Chronicles” TV miniseries…
Mars: Warm Fiction vs. Cold Reality. I have been a Mars fanatic since the age of 9, when the twin Viking spacecraft first touched down on the Red Planet in the summer of 1976. Mars has long been a theater for humanity’s collective imagination, a strange realm largely the domain of science fiction. Viking…
