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…
“Bicentennial Man” (1999) gives Isaac Asimov’s story a pop-friendly makeover…
Out Of The Box. 1999 was only 21 years ago, yet it feels like a different universe now. We were so hopeful and optimistic about the 21st century that was looming on the horizon. Homes of privilege would soon have robot servants, all vehicles would be electric, the clean-air skylines of major US cities would…
The final few episodes of “The Clone Wars” brought me back…
Return to the Jedi. I know that “May the Fourth” has now passed (if you don’t know the meaning of that, you might want to stop reading now), as has “Revenge of the Fifth” (I never got that one; wouldn’t a better title be “Revenge of the Sixth”?). Nevertheless, I decided to throw out a…
In what ‘frame of mind’ do you watch “Star Trek”?
Meet the Virtual Family. Star Trek has been (“and always shall be”) a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and for the foreseeable future. To varying degrees, I enjoy the show in all of its incarnations, past and present. I’m as old as The Original Series (both of us debuted…
Age matters not: “The Empire Strikes Back” turns 40…
40 Years Ago, In A Theatre Not Too Far Away… This May (no, not May the 4th…the 21st) marks the 40th anniversary release of one of my all-time favorite movies, “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” (1980). The film was primarily written by George Lucas and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan (who would write many other…
The case for a possible Captain Pike “Star Trek” series…
****STARSHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!***** Captain Christopher Pike. With Star Trek: Picard on hiatus and Star Trek: Discovery‘s 3rd season slated to return (sometime?) this year, I thought it might be a good opportunity to explore the prospects for a possible new Star Trek series, headlined by none other than Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter/Bruce Greenwood/Anson Mount), the…
San Diego Comic Con 2020 has been cancelled. Here’s to Comic Cons past…
San Diego Comic Con 2020 is cancelled. It’s only been a little over a month since my state went on self-isolation status during the pandemic, and remembering things like going to the movies or going out to eat are beginning to look like grainy silent footage of flapper parties and speakeasies from the 1920s. As…
“The Andromeda Strain” (1971) is a timely reminder that it can always be much worse…
Exposure. I swore that I would do my best to stay away from plague movies like “Contagion” (2011) and “The Andromeda Strain” (1971) during the current coronavirus pandemic right now, because I thought that going there would be too depressing. But with a gentle nudge of encouragement from my wife, I decided to tackle “The…
Fifty years after the real thing, the movie “Apollo 13” (1995) celebrates its own silver anniversary…
50 Years Ago. It’s been 50 years since the perilous flight of Apollo 13. Apollo 13 was the ‘successful failure’ of the Apollo moon missions which had to abort its planned lunar landing due to an exploding oxygen tank, which crippled the combined spacecraft’s service module. Despite the explosion, which resulted in both a…
