Echoes from the Satellite

I had been working on a long post about Ripley from Alien , but unfortunately real world work has gotten in the way and I haven't found the time needed to finish it. Instead, about all I can handle today is this: how the heck did the writers of Star Trek Picard think it was a good idea for our dear captain to wind up as an android? Jean-Luc, who had always proclaimed so proudly his humanity, who was so deeply traumatized by being borgi-fied, is fine and happy that he's been reduced to a computer copy plugged into an android body? Hopefully a good chunk of season two will focus on some existential angst over this situation. I mean, is he even actually Jean-Luc Picard any more, or just an AI copy? What is his perception of himself? How do his friends look at him? What is his status in the Federation? It could be good fodder for episodes, but honestly, I can't really see a way that it ends happily. I guess it's obvious that I don't believe this is truly Jean-...

Earlier this week I saw a tweet by @deanetts about the 70s era Marvel Comics character Killraven (featured in the title Amazing Adventures ) and it got me thinking about that series. As a 70s kid (a Bronze Age Baby, as I was once called), I have an unabashed love of Marvel's output from 1970 to about 1977. That's the sweet spot of comics for me. As a SF fan, I was always excited to see SF elements worked into super-hero fare, but books with straight up science fiction premises were a real treat. I came late to Killraven. Going back through my collection, I can tell the difference between the issues I picked up off the stands and the ones I bought as back issues (I bet most of you can do this too). It looks like I started reading the series with issue 29, which, since it started with issue 18, was a fair way into the run.  But I recall that it wasn't too hard to understand what was going on. The series took H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and imagined that the ...

"The gun is good. The penis is evil." That statement is made by a giant floating stone head very early in Zardoz , a 1974 film by writer-director-producer John Boorman. That, and seeing the late Bond-era Sean Connery running around in essentially a red loin cloth should help set expectations for this film: that it's basically completely nuts. But lord help me, I do find this film enjoyable. Part of it is the sheer goofy spectacle, but the more I've watched it, the more I've come to understand it. Maybe I should be concerned for my mental health. But honestly, Zardoz is not a terrible movie. It's a victim of over-reach.There are some interesting science fiction concepts here, but they are buried under a sea of weird choices. It's a mess, but in the same way a plate of nachos is a mess - deliciously so. I'm not going to give a detailed description of the plot; I'm assuming many of you may have seen it, and if not, rather than re-invent ...

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells There are currently five entries in this highly entertaining science fiction series from Martha Wells. The first four - All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol , and Exit Strategy - are all novellas. The most recent entry, Network Effect , is the first full length novel featuring Murderbot, aka SecUnit, the security construct (part robot, part human tissue) that is the main character of the series and who serves as our guide. I have thoroughly enjoyed this series, devouring the novellas once I became aware of them, and I've just started the fifth book, which was released in May. The stories all take place in a far future where corporations control space exploration/colonization, and teams that go out on these hazardous missions must take a company-owned security unit (SecUnit) with them for protection. The SecUnit of this series has just managed to hack its own control system when we first meet up with it. But rather th...

The refit Enterprise for Phase II (Eaglemoss model) Star Trek: Phase II was a TV series that went into preproduction in 1977 but was quickly shut down in favor of making a movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture ,  instead. But learning about plans for this unproduced show got me wondering: what if it had been made? How would it have been received? And what effect would it have had on the future of Star Trek? Lt. Xon, played by David Gautreaux In Phase II , Spock would have been replaced by a young, full-blooded Vulcan named Xon. This was reportedly due to Leonard Nimoy being either unavailable to play Spock, too expensive, or shut out because Gene Roddenberry was mad at him - take your pick. Could Star Trek succeed without Spock? It's hard for me to imagine the show having as strong a chemistry without him. But maybe Xon would have proven wildly popular. Sure, maybe. From my research, it's apparent that the writers and producers planned to have Xon go on a jour...