“John Carter” (2012), the unfairly maligned adaptation of the original space hero…

Before Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker… I was born about a half-century too late to have been among the first generation to read Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” books, but my own first inklings of them came via Carl Sagan’s landmark 1980 PBS TV series, “COSMOS.” The late pop scientist reminisced…

Forever the “Commander”; Joanne Linville (1928-2021)…

You know her face. Long a mainstay of 1950s-1980s television, actress Joanne Linville passed away yesterday at age 93. She was one of those faces you’d recognize if you grew up plastered to the cathode ray tube, as so many of my generation were back in the day. While appearing on many mainstream TV series…

Is Star Trek’s transporter room a chamber of horrors…?

Trauma of the G-rated “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” When I was a kid, some million and a half years ago, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (1979) made its big screen debut. The film took the low-budget spartan sci-fi TV series and upgraded it into an A-list Hollywood feature…even going so far as to hire…