The floodgates to the future open this weekend as many channels welcome 2000 with all the science fiction they could round up. See "The Outer Limits" and "The Twilight Zone" battle for supremacy! Gasp at rare films and reruns!
In the event of Y2K service irregularities, local television may vary.
(all times Eastern)
Saturday, January 1
12:20 AM Heavy Metal (Starz)
Cult classic displays a series of surreal, mostly unconnected animated shorts punctuated with the mellifluous songs of Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult.
1:15 AM Femalien 2 (Cinemax)
Two female aliens fend off UFOlogists and the Men in Black while trying to track down a missing comrade who's gone native on Earth.
1:30 AM The Twilight Zone (SciFi) - The Midnight Sun
Some say the world will end in fire, others say the world will end in ice. Problems with the Earth's orbit around the sun could lead either way.
2:00 AM The Outer Limits (Showtime) - Human Operators
A man enslaved by his own spaceship meets a woman and starts a revolution of sorts
2:45 AM The Outer Limits (Showtime) - Deja Vu
Kevin Nealon's hyperspace experiments are doomed to failure when he gets stuck in a closed time loop.
3:30 AM The Outer Limits (Showtime) - The Inheritors
Super-powers from space! A random assortment of people bathe in the glow of a fallen meteor, gaining superhuman abilities therefrom.
3:30 AM Light Years (Starz)
Intriguing animated venture starts with an original Asimov plot and adds numerous grotesque and beautiful alien characters.
4:00 AM The Twilight Zone (SciFi) - Death Ship
Jack Klugman and two other astronauts encounter what looks like their own spaceship, and their own corpses. Mordant rare hour-length episode reuses props, sets from Forbidden Planet.
4:20 AM The Shadow Men (Cinemax)
Eric Roberts and Sherilyn Fenn seek the aid of SF writer Dean Stockwell after being abducted by aliens and chased by unsympathetic Men In Black.
4:30 AM Space Marines (Showtime Beyond)
Deep-space adventure pits titular military group against rival pirates, but rarely rises above the level of pulp.
5:00 AM The Outer Limits (Showtime) - Joy Ride
An aging space pilot causes his passengers distress by taking his vessel back to the strange zone that previously ruined his career
5:00 AM The New Millennium: Science, Fiction and Fantasy (Fox News)
Four SF writers and three science writers discuss what life will be like in the future.
5:30 AM The Twilight Zone (SciFi) - Third From the Sun
Two families get sick of the warlike nature of Earth politics and steal a rocket to safety.
6:00 AM From the Earth to the Moon (TCM)
Original English-language film adaptation of Jules Verne's visionary space odyssey pits rocketeer against religious inflexibility.
6:00 AM The Twilight Zone (SciFi) - On Thursday We Leave for Home
Another rare hour-length episode shows that the order to return to Earth can be bittersweet for the colonists of a distant world.
8:10 AM Stargate SG-1 (Showtime Beyond) - Demons
Due to a misunderstanding, the primitive inhabitants of an alien world mistake our heroes for demons.
10:30 AM Until the End of the World (SciFi)
The decaying orbit of "the Indian nuclear satellite" provides an apocalyptic backdrop to this now only slightly dated vision of 1999 as seen nearly years ago. Although it now seems unlikely that any satellites -- Indian, Russian or otherwise -- are poised to fall on Paris, most of the stylish ideas in this film (starring William Hurt, Solveig Dommartin, Jeanne Moreau and Max von Sydow) still hold up.
11:30 AM The Ice Pirates (Cinemax)
Campy 1984 curiosity pits titular hydro-bandits against John Carradine, Anjelica Huston and the ubiquitous Ron Perlman. There's also a princess and some macroscopic disease organisms.
2:00 PM
The Thing (TCM)
Original 1951 film adaptation of John Campbell's "Who Goes There?" pits a shaky alliance of scientists and the military against a hungry shapeshifting alien (James Arness). Classic, creepy, claustrophobic.
2:30 PM The Second Arrival (Cinemax)
Patrick Muldoon and others must fight a secret invasion of knock-kneed aliens in this relatively expendable Invaders swipe.
3:30 PM Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Showtime)
Musical aliens get up close and personal with Francois Truffaut (as a thinly-disguised Jacques Vallee), Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, J. Allan Hynek and other Earth people, while "tinkerbell" brings up the rear. A classic example of Steven Spielberg's sensibilities circa 1977.
4:00 PM The Apocalypse (SciFi)
Madman takes over a spaceship in order to nuke the Earth. Forgettable.
4:00 PM Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (TCM)
The best of the six movies focused on the original Star Trek cast. The crew stumbles across the barren planet where they had unwittingly stranded Khan, a genetically engineered villain played by Ricardo Montalban who has spent his time plotting revenge against Kirk and the rest of the crew.
4:15 PM Space Truckers (Cinemax)
Shady agencies hire interplanetary teamster Dennis Hopper to take a shipment of deadly robots to Earth. Unusual effort by cult favorite Stuart "Reanimator" Gordon also features Stephen Dorff and George Wendt.
6:00 PM Night of the Comet (SciFi)
After the titular cosmic event wipes out most humans and turns many of the survivors into zombies, it's up to some Valley girls and
Robert Beltran among others to save civilization. Good dumb fun.
6:00 PM Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock (TCM)
As it turns out, Spock wasn't killed in the second Trek film; he was only resting. Kirk, McCoy and company go in search of answers.
6:00 PM The X-Files:
Fight the Future (Cinemax)
In their big screen debut, Scully and Mulder travel to the ends of the earth, from the deserts of Texas to the icy plains of Antarctica, out to stop the alien menace and menaced by FEMA and bees every step of the way.
8:00 PM
2001: A Space Odyssey (TCM)
Inscrutable intelligences with a flair for minimalist architecture guide humanity toward some evolutionary goal, paying especially close attention to our attempts to explore space.
8:00 PM Predator (Cinemax)
Invisible alien stalks Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse 'The Governor' Ventura, Carl Weathers and others.
9:00 PM
Roswell (WB) - Monsters
Maria has a chat with Sheriff Valenti about the alien kids, while Max gets a job in one of Roswell's finest tourist traps
9:45 PM Soldier (Cinemax)
Kurt Russell fights a cadre of genetically engineered super-warriors. At stake is a backwater community of colonists from Earth.
10:00 PM The New Millennium: Science, Fiction and Fantasy (Fox News)
See 5 a.m. listing for summary.
10:45 PM 2010 (TCM)
The monolith arrangers return, this time to do some housecleaning and teach us that Americans and Russians can get along.
11:30 PM Outland (WB)
Space western boasts an all-star cast including Sean Connery and comedy legend Peter Boyle, but the High Noon-derived plotline wears a bit thin by the end.
Sunday, January 2
12:00 AM Night of the Comet (SciFi)
See Saturday's 6 p.m. listing for summary.
1:00 AM Alien: Resurrection (Cinemax)
Most recent take on the Alien saga brings Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) back to continue her unending war with the ultimate carnivorous nightmares. French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Delicatessen fame brought big boots, a sense of humor and Ron Perlman to the franchise, while screenwriter Joss "Buffy"Whedon gave Winona Ryder some saucy dialogue.
4:20 AM Project Shadowchaser III (Cinemax)
A communications satellite orbiting Mars faces the wrath of a long-lost mining freighter that has returned with an apparent vengeance.
6:00 AM Explorers (TNT)
Juvenile would-be astronauts build a spaceship, only to be rewarded with an encounter with an alien voiced by Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens.
8:30 AM Fox News (FoxNews)
Former NASA official Alan Ladwig is scheduled to discuss the outlook for space tourism.
9:05 AM Day of the Triffids (Showtime3)
Mutant plants make a bid to conquer the Earth after a freak meteor shower in this apocalyptic 1962 classic.
3:00 PM The New Millennium: Science, Fiction and Fantasy (Fox News)
See Saturday's 5 a.m. listing for summary.
4:00 PM Day of the Triffids (Showtime3)
See 9:05 a.m. listing for summary.
11:00 PM Stargate SG-1 (Showtime Beyond) - Dead Man's Switch
While on a routine planet exploration, SG-1 is captured by a seemingly unfeeling alien bounty hunter.
11:00 PM Five Million Years to Earth (AMC)
Better known under its British title, "Quatermass and the Pit," film deals with the apocalyptic ramifications of a Martian spaceship being dug up under London. Harrowing climax, stolid plotting.
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