Every so often, "Star Trek" likes to put its brave interstellar adventurers through hell. You know the drill — a bunch of one-off crew members will probably be blown up and/or sucked into space, while set dressers get to have fun making starship bridges look like they've been through the wars. We all know that seeking out new life and new civilisations is the prime directive on that final frontier, but sometimes we just want to see how Starfleet officers respond when the chips are down.

The latest episode of "Strange New Worlds" season 4, "Off-Hour", is one of "Trek"'s semi-regular life-or-death outings. The Enterprise finds itself trapped in a bizarre slipstream wormhole that threatens to destroy the ship if Pike and co can't find a solution before the "24"-style ticking clock (sorry, "Shipboard Chronometer") counts down to zero. It also leaves the fates of several key characters (one in particular) hanging in the balance… or at least it would, if the show wasn't a prequel, with most of its lead characters guaranteed to reappear in subsequent "Trek" canon.

Minor spoilers ahead for "Off-Hour". If you haven't seen the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" yet, report to transporter room 3 and get out of here at once.

The likes of "The Wrath of Khan", "Voyager "'s two-parter "Year of Hell", and "Strange New Worlds"' very own "Memento Mori" have all gone to extreme lengths to mess up the normally pristine interiors of Starfleet vessels. "The Search for Spock" went even further, leaving the Enterprise in such a bad state that Admiral James T Kirk had no choice but to deploy its in-built self-destruct system.

Unfolding in real-time, "Off-Hour" is built from similar blueprints, as the aforementioned anomaly turns the Enterprise into a nightmarish environment where pretty much anything can kill you. Pike getting an electric shock while turning on the shields is just the tip of the iceberg, as Una "Number One" Chin-Riley snaps her leg in a pocket of extreme gravity, Christine Chapel loses a finger to extreme cold, and an unfortunate group of redshirts finds themselves trapped on the wrong side of a barrier with some lethal neutrino radiation.

But it's Dr Joseph M'Benga who has the worst day at the office, and by a distance. His quick and noble actions pushing Christine out of the way of an out-of-control medical table leave him pinned against a wall with a fatal trans-lumbar severance — the only thing keeping him alive is the table itself, his internal organs doomed as soon as it's pulled out of the way. Like the clichéd movie cop starting his last day on the beat, he picked the wrong day to tell Christine he's thinking of quitting the Enterprise — especially as his likely replacement, Boyce, is already on board.

There is no way M'Benga should survive this — Boyce even orders Chapel to make the patient comfortable when the inevitable happens — and in most other TV shows you'd think that actor Babs Olusanmokun was about to receive his final paycheck.

But "Star Trek" fans know that M'Benga (then played by Booker Bradshaw) filled in for Dr McCoy in two episodes of the Original Series, meaning that his deathbed chats with Chapel aren't quite as deep and meaningful as they'd be in "ER" or even this episode's biggest influence, "24".

For the same reason, you never fear for Scotty when he beams into a Jefferies Tube, unsure whether there'll be oxygen or heat waiting for him. Or wonder if Spock will survive the radiation burns he endures in a high-risk spacewalk on the Enterprise's hull. In fact, the only lead character who could be in any danger at all is La'an. As one of the few regulars whose post-"Strange New Worlds" fate remains unknown, canon offers little protection when she steps out of the airlock to rescue Spock.

"Star Trek" isn't "Game of Thrones", and shouldn't ever get into the habit of killing off characters for fun. Spock's (albeit temporary) demise in "The Wrath of Khan" still resonates because it was so emotional, dramatic, and unprecedented, as does the death of Kirk's son, David, in "The Search for Spock". William Shatner's performances in the aftermath of both are among the best of his career.

"Strange New Worlds" itself hasn't been afraid to wield the grim reaper's bat'leth when necessary, though it's always been with characters — such as original chief engineer Hemmer — who have no existing legacy in the franchise.

The question facing any prequel, however, is whether you can play around with life-and-death stakes as you would in a story whose conclusion is open-ended. Surely an "anyone could die at any time" plot is redundant when canon has the same protective properties as the Super Stars that make Mario invincible.

The exception that proves the rule is "Andor"'s majestic second season — Mon Mothma's had-to-happen escape from the Galactic Senate turned out to be one of the most unbearably tense TV moments of last year. But that show mostly reserved its highest stakes for characters who didn't have an appointment with the Original Trilogy.

Indeed, when you pretend that a beloved character might die even though they can't, you risk cheapening the drama the same way "The Rise of Skywalker" did when it led us to believe Chewbacca had been blown up, before revealing he was on a different ship all along. You're telling life-or-death stories, without ever having to deal with the messy death part — something that, as we all know from "The Wrath of Khan", even the legendary James T Kirk was never much good at.

As a result, you spend the whole of "Off-Hour" waiting for the inevitable "magical" intervention to save the day. It's certainly not a massive surprise when Chapel works out that using previously theoretical strong-force neutrinos might repair M'Benga's broken body — and a not-at-all unexpected twist when Scotty reveals they could also fix the ship's faltering engines. "Almost sounds too good to be true, I know,” Scotty admits.

Future events will always weigh heavy on any prequel, but surely stories have a responsibility to better acknowledge that viewers know what's coming. Is "Off-Hour" a brilliant example of "Star Trek" at its most tense or a cheap play on our emotions? It's probably a bit of both.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

Across the decades, Star Wars' secret sauce has always been a feeling – an intoxicating mixture of whimsy and adventure that’s nearly impossible to replicate. That’s especially true with the original film trilogy and the prequel film trilogy, even if the two have distinctly different flavors.

The series forays into video games have seen a lot of success, but Zero Company does something I’ve never seen a Star Wars game do before: it seamlessly combines the two different eras of the original and prequel film trilogies into something that not only recaptures the magic of those stories, but entirely stands on its own.

By taking the strategic XCOM formula and splicing it together with the whimsy of Star Wars, Zero Company becomes one of the best adventures you can find in a galaxy far, far away.

Zero Company takes place in the midst of the Clone Wars of the prequel trilogy, following an ex-Republic officer named Hawks who left their military post after losing an entire unit. The game picks up long after this event, with Hawks now running the titular “Zero Company,” a mercenary group that takes on odd — and often off-the-books — jobs across the war-torn galaxy. But on an ordinary mission, Hawks discovers a bizarre magic plague, a secret plan hatched by the Separatist army, and a contract with Republic intelligence to take on jobs the army can’t do.

The story of Zero Company is firmly set within the Clone Wars, and along with that comes the era's distinctive visual style and aesthetic. Fascinatingly, though, this narrative feels remarkably like a Rebel one, more in line with the original trilogy.

Zero Company’s secretive missions are a perfect vessel to explore the fringes of Galactic Society, the underworld, and the harsh reality common people face in a Republic dangerously veering toward authoritarianism. Zero Company meaningfully explores these themes, using a ragtag band of outcasts as a filter to view them. For all intents and purposes, this story could slot into the original trilogy just as easily, making it a fascinating mish-mash that Star Wars has seldom seen before.

And that all starts with Hawks themselves, a wonderfully charismatic hero who’s nearly impossible to dislike. I played the game as the male Hawks, but you can choose a female Hawks as well. The best way I can think to describe Hawks is as if Han Solo was played by Mathew McConaughey; a hero with a biting sense of humor punctuated by a thick Southern drawl, backed up by some genuinely hilarious writing.

Hawks is the grounding force of Zero Company, the down-to-Earth scoundrel that keeps everyone humble. It's a common trope in Star Wars, but it works well here because Hawks has some real weirdos to bounce off of, including a clone named Trick who has nightmares of losing his helmet before battle, an alien named Kabb who’s obsessed with opera and had a Yoda-like stilt to his speech, and a lost Jedi Padawan, who’s not quite sure how to be a Jedi.

Zero Company relishes the quiet moments where your characters get to bond, translating those bonds directly into gameplay enhancements and skills in battle. Again, this inevitably ends up giving the game more of a Rebellion-era feel, as each of your operatives holds some kind of dark secret or goal that has led them to Zero Company.

There’s a selection of defined characters to build your squad out with, on top of the ability to recruit generic operatives. And you’re going to need the numbers because in Zero Company, literally anyone can die.

This is an XCOM-style game through and through, meaning complex turn-based combat where each and every one of your characters can fall in battle. But it’s not instant death, luckily, as every character can take two injuries (downs), and the third one means permanent death.

It provides some flexibility to the game’s combat, also tying into the heavy focus on teamwork and operating the squad as a whole. You can take up to four characters into each battle, though you are occasionally joined by some kind of guest character or have to rescue a hostage, thus gaining another character midway through battle.

Zero Company is, essentially, split into three parts: The hideout, Operations, and Tactical Missions. In the hideout, you can talk to characters, conduct research to improve weapons or facilities, and then prepare for missions. On the mission board, you can use intel (gained from Tactical Missions) to conduct quick little text-based expeditions called Operations that grant various rewards, boost your influence in that specific zone, and unlock new Tactical Missions. These add some flavour without actually engaging you in combat. For that, you'll want the Tactical Missions.

There’s a ton of variability in how you build your forces; alongside the class system, which decides a character's skills, each can equip one of four weapons, along with utility items like medpacks or grenades.

Classes and skills lean into different styles of play; Astromech droids are entirely support-focused, generating AP (action points) and buffing the party, while the Assault is focused on heavy damage and drawing aggro. Zero Company smartly leans into the Star Wars universe, making classes and characters feel like distinct pieces of said universe. Tel-Rea, the Jedi character, is almost entirely melee-focused, but comes with her own entirely distinct skills and combat abilities, essentially requiring you to build your party around her.

But by far the most interesting element of building your squad is the relationship system. As characters battle alongside each other, their relationship levels will rise, and each level lets you pick a perk that applies to both operators. You might be able to permanently increase ranged damage, or critical chance, or the range of movement on first turn. This provides a ton of flexibility for progression, and feels extremely rewarding for painting units together – and directly ties into that narrative sense of camaraderie that builds as well.

Zero Company has a lot of different systems and stats to keep track of, and it can be overwhelming at first, but eventually everything clicks together in a superbly satisfying way, like finding that section of a puzzle that just effortlessly comes together.

I’m not hesitant to say that outside of XCOM itself, this is one of the best squad-based strategy games I’ve ever played. And that’s largely because of how well the game leans into the uniqueness of the Star Wars universe, using its source material in nearly every narrative beat and gameplay mechanic.

But the beating heart at the center of everything is the convincing way the game builds your tight-knit squad, the little family that quickly starts to develop. It’s in the little moments in your base, where your janitor says he’s gonna find that space mouse…. and eat it, much to the chagrin of Hawks. It’s in those little moments in battle, where a skill you’ve invested in lets your party member execute a follow-up attack at the perfect time, taking out a Sniper Droid that might have dropped your own squadmate next turn.

And I think the initial smaller scope of Zero Company’s narrative really helps nail that Star Wars feel. There are bigger stakes that eventually develop, but for the first half of the game you’re simply living out life as a band of mercenaries, getting to know your squaddies, and trying to juggle the various systems and injuries your crew gets.

Zero Company uses the epic backdrop of the prequels and the Clone Wars to tell an original trilogy-style story about a band of heroes that simply come together in the right place at the right time. Star Wars is no stranger to good video games, and Zero Company quite handily blasts its way into the conversation as one of the best.

The history of Alien video games is long and twisty, but Mike Diver — veteran writer, editor, critic, and journalist — decided a few years ago to make a complete chronicle of Xenomorph-filled games his next big adventure. Ahead of Aliens: The Video Games' August 30 release, we sat down with him and discussed the franchise's past, present, and future in games.

The following interview has been edited for better flow.

"I played a lot of Alien 3 on Mega Drive," Diver recalls when asked about his first few contacts with Alien. "I was slightly too young to be watching those movies... I was also quite taken with a book that a friend of mine's dad owned – it was a book with stills of the film in it... I saw the chestbursters in those stills before I saw it moving on-screen, and in a way that was more striking." He believes that left an impression on him, which likely helped his fascination with the franchise over time.

Diver worked in games media for a long time, which afforded him opportunities such as covering the first Alien: Isolation, going into Creative Assembly and playing before it came out. This led to Diver researching Alien games for "on and off over, let's say, five to ten years".

It was actually the Nintendo DS exclusive Aliens: Infestation — a gorgeous 2D sidescroller with a permadeath mechanic for squad members — that made him realize maybe there was a cool opportunity in trying to chronicle the entire history of Alien video games, including the overlooked ones.

"There's no book about Alien games. There was one about Doom, Nintendo, Star Trek... So why not Alien? I pitched it around, got a commission, wrote a book. It sounds easy when you say it like that." While he admits being a fan of the franchise helped, it wasn't easy, especially as he had to chase developers from disbanded studios for research.

"I was speaking to Dave Dorman, who's a comic book artist, and he was working on the cancelled CDI game Aliens Interactive, so he's quoted from archive material, but he and I were exchanging emails, and he was going to send me some concept work and answer some questions, but that never came off, unfortunately," he reveals. "I spoke to a couple of people for Alien: Isolation, but I didn't speak to [director] Al Hope. Sega were quite positive about it, and then they said 'actually no, you can't', and that may be because of the new Isolation game."

While those were notable misses for Diver, he also landed plenty of big shots too. "It was really cool to get someone like Tony Beckwith [producer on Alien 3 for SNES], who's retired, in there, and John Heap, who programmed the original Alien on ZX Spectrum, or Mark Eyles, who worked on Aliens: The Computer Game... There's 24 new interviews across the book in total, so yeah, happy with it."

After reading through the book myself, I must say it's a proper deep dive that, despite being full of illustrations and screenshots, still feels like a rather breezy read at under 200 pages.

It was a balancing act, Diver admits: "You gotta think about where the audience's interests are gonna lie. I could definitely write a lot more on the MSX Aliens, for example, but the reality is that not many people will know that game. It's nice to include, but I'm not that worried it's a smaller chapter next to something like Colonial Marines. It made sense to go deeper into the games that people played, but I wanted even the smallest chapters to have some sort of substance."

Diver and I also got to gush about weirder, more overlooked experiments like Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction for PS2 and Xbox, an off-beat real-time strategy game that wasn't released on PC. "I managed to get in touch with someone on that game; Jason Hough, a designer at Zono... They had totally worked on multiplayer for ages, and then it was all removed." The reason? Probably deadlines and the fact that "online play wasn't really a thing" in the console space back in 2003. (It wouldn't be long before it took off with titles like SOCOM and the Halo sequels.)

Speaking about the future of Alien video games, we have Fireteam Elite 2 right around the corner and Isolation 2 already being shown off. Diver admits he knows "quite a lot about the Isolation sequel" since "devs talk to devs", but the actual chapter in the book only quotes other people about what they think it'll be like. "It's a little bit annoying to sit on that because I thought there'd be more about that game out by the time this book's out... There are things about that game that I'm excited for people to see."

With all the movement around the IP right now — especially after Alien: Romulus and Earth revived a lot of interest in it — Diver wants to return and do more work on upcoming games. "It's quite a rich, fertile period for Alien games, and I'd really like to do more about them in the future."

When asked about his favorite part of the book to put together, Diver returns to Alien 3: "That came really quickly, the combination of the Mega Drive and SNES ones, and then being able to speak to Jas Austin, who did the Game Boy version. I wasn't expecting to get anyone for the Game Boy one because credits back then weren't great. I had to dig around a bit."

The AvP (Atari Jaguar) chapter also came together fast according to Diver: "James Hampton was pretty cool as well... He was very responsive. It's lovely when an interviewee is sending you stuff and like really happy to talk more if I had any follow-ups."

I had to ask Diver about the 'ideal' way to go through his guide, which will no doubt push curious gamers to check out some forgotten Alien games one way or another. "It doesn't go from the early '80s through the 2000s in a straight linear, chronological way... Let's say Alien or Alien 3 is your favorite movie. You can go straight to that," explains Diver. "I'd love it if anyone who picks this up sees an Alien game and they go 'Maybe I'll go check that out' and find a way to play them."

Before logging off, I also asked for his top three Alien games of all time. Diver went with Capcom's AvP (1994) for arcade machines, Aliens: Infestation, and Alien 3 on the SNES. "The Mega Drive one is quite punishing with its time limits... The SNES one is just a lot more methodical, and you can take your time, and the environment art is great. The game ends like Alien 3, so credit for that as well, 'cause the other ones didn't."

We don't get movie tie-ins like those anymore, but looking at what's next for Xenomorphs in video games, I'd say we mostly can't complain… mostly.

Aliens: The Video Games will be available where books are sold starting on August 30. You can pre-order it through Amazon right now.

In August 2001, filmmaker John Carpenter said "Boo!" and unleashed "Ghosts of Mars" on the world. While not one of Carpenter's most revered works, it's still a neat sci-fi horror movie in which Mars has been terraformed – 84% terraformed to be exact – and inhabited by humans. Plus, it has Jason Statham and Ice Cube in it, so it's automatically 99% better than all other movies ever made.

Now, the action takes place at Shining Canyon, a remote mining outpost on Mars that has a gritty wild west/Mad Max-ness vibe; it's cold, harsh, and so so so so soooooo dusty – not exactly a dream home location.

Then there's the whole "scary horde possessed by ancient extraterrestrial evil spirits trying to kill you" thing. But let's remove the spooky elements and put them aside for one second, and really consider the possibility of actually living on Mars. It's been 25 years since the movie was released, so how much closer are we to calling the Red Planet our new home?

Chief Scientist at the Planetary Society, Dr. Bruce Betts, isn't optimistic. "I don't think we're in a position to do global terraforming due to the technology and lack of resources. The papers indicate now you have only a tiny fraction of carbon dioxide, and then there's just the political and economic reality of it. Any method I've ever heard of is really outrageously expensive over time, and you would have to have multi-year, multi-generational support for programs at a high level. You'd have the whole world having opinions on whether you could or should do it. Then there's also the planetary protection agreements that many countries have agreed to. But the lack of carbon dioxide is the showstopper, really." Even in the movie, they're still 10 years away from having air like we do on Earth.

Dr. Mark Gallaway, an astronomer, science pundit, and founder of Starlight Planetarium, also mentions the cost and carbon dioxide issues as major obstacles, as well as two other challenges that may make attempts to live on Mars near impossible. "There have been enclosed habitats we've built on Earth. A number of times external teams have had to go in and break groups up, because there have been fistfights [...] so that's going to be a long-term problem." And that’s probably going to be an extra big problem when people are cooped up at a remote mining outpost.

"The other big problem is we have no idea how human physiology works at 0.38G. The only way we could do 0.38 of a G is to have some kind of spin habitat and have people live there. So, without actually knowing what that surface gravity is going to do to us, it's a bit tricky. We might find that they're on Mars for a year, and when they come back, they can't function anymore."

Recent studies about the state of Mars haven't been too promising either. Betts views Bruce Jakosky and Christopher Edwards' 2018 research paper, where it explicitly states "terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology," as the biggest reality check.

"The Jakosky and Edwards paper about CO₂ makes me very negative," Betts says. "There have been thoughts of using exotic technologies, such as nanorods and aerogel, but even with the aerogel, I believe they're talking about using it to create localized domes, and you'd create the interior of that and try to terraform it. It's certainly more plausible than doing the whole planet, but still seems like [there are a lot of implications]. [...] People are coming up with new, nifty technologies, but I just don't see how they can be implemented, even if they did work."

Science fiction tends to depict Mars as a possibility for human occupation, but Gallaway points out another big blow for any terraforming ambitions: "We've made recent discoveries that the soil on Mars is actually quite toxic to life. So the scene in 'The Martian' where Mark Watney grows potatoes? That's just not possible. It means if you're going to colonize Mars, you're going to have to bring all your topsoil, which is a big problem."

In addition to all of this, there are the ethical dilemmas that need to be addressed. Astronomer, teacher, and author Dr. Jeffrey Bennett wrote "Life in the Universe" along with Seth Shostak, Nicholas Schneider, and Meredith MacGregor.

In the book, there's a section that discusses introducing greenhouse gas to the Martian atmosphere in order for humans to walk around without a spacesuit. However, this leads to serious questions about the effects of colonization and whether humans have the right to fundamentally change another planet's atmosphere and potentially wreck it for other possible lifeforms already living there. Remember, "it's their planet… we are the aliens."

For Bennett, he questions whether terraforming Mars is even an option if humans can't get their own house in order: "Given that we can't even seem to keep Earth's climate functioning the way we'd like it to – for example, global warming is making the climate worse for humans and other life – I find it difficult to believe that our present level of knowledge would allow us to turn an inhospitable place like Mars into a livable world. Perhaps this may become possible in the future, but certainly not before we first learn how to take care of our home planet's climate."

Clearly, living on Mars isn't possible at the moment, but "Ghosts of Mars" takes place in the future, so we still have time because who knows what scientific advancements await us? Alas, experts tend to agree that it's unlikely to happen by 2176 at this current rate, though developments could happen: "I think that people will continue researching on the small scale of things you could do, but I don't think we're going to be any closer to terraforming Mars in reality by 2176 than we are now," Betts says. So, I guess you could say we "don’t stand a ghost of a chance."

Gallaway suggests an interesting alternative to terraforming Mars, or any other planet: "From a personal point of view, I actually think we should be looking at space habitats rather than planet-based habitats. Get to what we call an M-type asteroid: [...] Get the platinum group metals out, sell those, then spin the asteroid up, and you can live on it – inside at 1G. I'm a big fan of the late Iain M. Banks and his science fiction, where virtually everybody is living in inhabitable orbital structures, because it's easier to make the environment than it is to change it."

Hmm… Gallaway may have just pitched the perfect sequel. Yeah, "Ghosts of the Asteroid" sounds decent, doesn't it? Just as long as Statham somehow returns and punches everything in sight.

Watch "Ghosts of Mars" on Prime Video or Apple TV.

In August of 2006, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) democratically voted to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet — but 20 years later, with our greater knowledge and understanding of planetary systems, is it time to revisit the controversial decision? Should Pluto be called a planet again?

For several years before the IAU vote, there had been agitators among the astronomical community lobbying for our solar system's nine worlds to become eight, and for Pluto's planetary status to be revoked. In 2000, Neil DeGrasse Tyson even went as far as to remove Pluto from the planets display at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. The questioning of Pluto's status began even earlier, in the 1990s, with the discovery of distant objects in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune which had similar orbits to Pluto.

It all came to a head in July of 2005 with the discovery of Eris, which is a Pluto-size body even further from the sun than Pluto is. Was Eris the 10th planet? If it was not a planet, then how could we still call Pluto a planet? A year later, the issue was debated at a meeting of the IAU, where astronomers from all over the world convened to discuss various conundrums. Numerous proposals and counter-proposals were put forward, some of which even increased the number of recognized planets to as many as 14. But in the end, Pluto became a dwarf planet.

Though Pluto was officially "reclassified," to many in the public it seemed as though Pluto had experienced a demotion. This viewpoint was the one promoted by those scientists who were against the decision such as Alan Stern, who was the principal investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern's spacecraft would launch in 2005 on a journey to a planet, but arrive at a dwarf planet in 2015.

Some argued that Pluto was still a kind of planet, just a small one. This argument is undermined somewhat by the IAU giving Pluto a minor planet number — 134340 — which is typically reserved for asteroids. Nationalistic arguments from some in the United States said Pluto should remain a planet because it was discovered by an American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, at Arizona's Lowell Observatory in 1930. And when New Horizons reached Pluto, it revealed not a minor body, but rather a complex world in its own right.

What is Pluto?

Nevertheless, for 20 years, Pluto has remained a dwarf planet, but on the anniversary of that fateful IAU vote, is it time to revisit that decision? Paul Byrne, a planetary astronomer at the University of Washington in St Louis, certainly thinks so.

"Yes, Pluto is a planet," he told Space.com. And not just Pluto, but the other dwarf planets too: Ceres, Eris, Makemake and Haumea, not to mention the likes of Sedna and Quaoar that are dwarf planets in all but name.

"Ultimately I think they are all planets and I don't think there's any benefit to not including Pluto as a planet," Byrne said.

To a point this entire debate is semantics, and Byrne accepts this viewpoint, reminding us that: "Nature doesn't care what we call Pluto."

However, perception is another matter, which is where Byrne thinks that the IAU's 2006 decree ultimately failed us. Byrne describes how, when he gives public talks about the planets, members of the audience don't ask questions about Pluto's amazing active nitrogen glaciers or what formed its giant heart-shaped feature. Instead, they want to know why it was demoted. The entire issue has got in the way of presenting the science to the public.

"We've done a massive disservice to the public from a science communication perspective," Byrne said. "The messaging has got in the way of trying to understand what Pluto is."

One of the arguments in 2006 was that models of the solar system's formation predict that there could be hundreds of objects like Pluto and Eris that remain undiscovered in the Scattered Disk and the Oort Cloud, which is a vast unexplored region that could extend up to a light-year from the sun.

"One of the issues people brought up was, how would kids remember the names of 200 planets?" said Byrne. "But just look at how many Pokémon there are that kids know the names of. If ultimately there are 200 planets in the solar system, then so what?"

The IAU definition of a planet

Semantics or not, how we categorize celestial objects has to be grounded in some kind of scientific thinking. In 2006, the IAU came up with a three-point plan on what makes a planet.

First, a planet had to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning that its gravity has pulled it into a spherical shape. Furthermore, its interior will have become differentiated, with the heavier elements sinking to the core. Everyone seems to agree with this part of the planetary definition.

Second was that it must be in orbit around the sun, so a moon isn't a planet because a moon doesn't orbit the sun, it orbits a planet instead (though Byrne notes that if he had his way, he'd call the large moons planets too). Strictly speaking, this rules out exoplanets because they don't orbit our sun, but common sense dictates that they're fine because they orbit their own star instead. However, what about rogue planets that wander interstellar space alone? Astronomers are now beginning to discover very many of these free-floating worlds. It could be argued that most of these did indeed form in orbit around a star only to be ejected, so it's okay to still call them planets, but some rogue planets seem to have formed directly from the collapse of a gas cloud without having a parent star. Such planets fall through the gaps in the IAU's definition.

It's the third point that draws the critics' ire the most. It states that to be a planet, an object must have cleared its neighborhood. In other words, it must be dominant in the region around its orbit, its gravity having swept away any other bodies. Pluto fails at this because its orbit actually crosses Neptune's, and it's accompanied by other Kuiper belt objects in neighboring orbits. But then you could say Neptune mustn't be a planet because it has Pluto infringing on its orbital realm. And what about the existence of near-Earth asteroids? Does their existence mean that Earth isn't a planet because it hasn't cleared those away yet? There certainly does seem to be some sloppiness in this part of the definition of a planet, perhaps resulting from the somewhat rushed nature of the vote 20 years ago.

Planetary processes

But if the IAU decision were to be rejected, what should replace it? How should we classify planets? Byrne has some ideas.

"Being round and having some amount of differentiation makes a lot of sense to me," he said. "Geophysically, if they are big enough to pull themselves into balls, then they are big enough to have undergone some kind of internal chemical processing and are capable of having some kind of active geology, in terms of the outgassing of volatiles to form an atmosphere, volcanism, surface geomorphological processes, even a short-lived magnetic field. That's why I count the moon as a planet because it has had these planetary processes."

Byrne acknowledges that gas giants don't have these properties since they have no solid surface, but no one is doubting Jupiter's planetary credentials, and when it comes to Uranus and Neptune we don't actually know whether or not there is some sort of super-Earth itself lurking deep within them.

The moniker "dwarf" doesn't impress Byrne either. To him, it sounds like it implies there is a hierarchy of planets with the gas giants at the top and the dwarf planets at the bottom.

"There is no natural hierarchy; they don't form according to one," he said. And although Pluto, Eris and the other dwarf planets are made from detritus left over from the construction of the solar system, they still coalesced in the same way as the other planets, in the sense that building blocks came together to form these larger objects.

A counterargument to Pluto being a planet, however, is that if it is just one of 200, then it is nothing special; it would become forgotten and ultimately treated almost incidentally. As a dwarf planet, it is the standard bearer of its kind, the guardian of an entire realm of similarly sized worlds. It's a choice between being a big fish in a little pond, or a little fish in a big pond.

The other 200 planets?

The real test will come when astronomers begin to discover some of these purported 200 or so planets far from the sun. As long as they are all roughly Pluto-size, there will be no debate — but what happens when astronomers discover one the size of Mars, or one even as large as Earth? We would surely think of an object so large as a planet. Perhaps this world would have formed closer to the sun but was kicked out through gravitational interactions with one of the giant planets, but on the other hand perhaps it formed out there in the outer solar system from the same detritus as Pluto did.

"By the IAU definition it would fail to be defined as a planet because it wouldn't have cleared its neighborhood," said Byrne. "If we did find such a planet it would be another nail in the coffin of trying to distinguish these things solely on the basis of where they are and not what they are."

Whatever the case, if Pluto is to be a planet again, it must deserve to be so scientifically. Nostalgia, or nationalistic pride, or giving kids names of planets to remember aren;t sufficient reasons to revoke the original IAU decision. Revisiting the name "dwarf planet" and finding a more appropriate category could be the way to go instead.

Or, perhaps we just don't have the words to describe the things that we are discovering. Concepts such as planets are rooted in history going back millennia when there was no understanding what these wandering "stars" really were, so perhaps it is not surprising that we are now running into difficulty when trying to apply the term "planet" to our modern understanding of the different types of worlds. If there is no way of categorizing these objects that is consistent and satisfactory to everyone, then perhaps we ought to stop worrying so much about it.

Whatever we decide to call it, Pluto will always be Pluto.

After all these years, we still want to believe.

Whether you're a bona fide believer or a staunch skeptic, we can all agree that UFO legends and lore is a fascinating subject that continues to fuel endless debate. And with pop culture feeding our lizard brains lurid tales of flying saucers and alien invasions, it’s no wonder humanity is always up for a good story of inexplicable aerial sightings or various uncanny encounters of the third kind.

In "We Want To Believe: How Aliens Went Mainstream And Why It Matters" (Aug. 25, Columbia Global Reports), acclaimed literary critic and Senior Editor at The Atlantic Adam Kirsch explores this insatiable drive to wonder at unidentified phenomena. For Kirsch, the topic asks many of the same questions that human religions do. "For me, humanity's way into the subject is that UFOs are a way of thinking about a lot of the same questions we might also think about in religious or philosophical terms," Kirsch told Space in an interview. "Questions like what is unique about humanity, are we alone in the universe, are there other minds, what's our destiny as a species?"

Kirsch says the recent wave of alleged whistleblowers helped push him towards studying UFOs, or UAP, as they're now known.

"The real start of my interest in the subject was in 2017 when there was this sudden reporting in the mainstream media about the Pentagon UFO videos and the so-called secret program to collect UFO reports. For the first time, it seemed like maybe there was some legitimate news or evidence."

Kirsch recognized that monumental occasion as a pivotal moment that truly altered the way that American culture and media talked about the titillating topic.

"I got more into the history and the lore of UFOs and partly out of just that basic idea that it would be really cool if there were other minds in the universe. It would be amazing if we could find proof of that. Over the years it's happened repeatedly in this history of UFOs. There's a lot of public excitement and then it peters out because there is no evidence and there isn't anything concrete to point to. And that's definitely what's happened over this last cycle."

Using grounded scientific logic and basic common sense, Kirsch brings a calm measured approach to the UAP hysteria that's been gripping the whole country.

"One of the interesting things about testimony that people like David Fravor and Ryan Graves gave about this is, 'When the camera sees something, the person doesn't see it. And when the person sees something, the camera doesn't see it.' It's always one or the other, it's never both at the same time. Even as long ago as the 1950s, people were saying that UFOs for some reason are not photogenic. No one ever seems to be able to get a real clear image of a UFO the way you’d think you'd be able to if they actually exist in the atmosphere."

"The obvious and logical explanation is that there's nothing to take a picture of. But it does get to this basic question of how do we go from, 'I had an experience' to 'This is what the experience tells me about the world.' I talk in the book about the difference between evidence and testimony. When they're talking about UFOs, people often blur that distinction. Testimony is an account and people are often wrong or misinterpret about what happened to them."

After all the smoke clears, the test that Kirsch declares must be applied to these reports is the same test that 18th-century philosopher David Hume said when talking about religious miracles.

"You don't have to prove that a miracle didn't happen, all you have to do is prove that it's more likely that someone was wrong, than that the laws of nature were suspended," Kirsch adds. "The same is true of UFOs. They're not supernatural or miraculous. If they really existed they'd exist in time and space and three dimensions like everything else. Based on the way we understand the universe and space travel, makes the odds very small that a UFO report would really be an actual extraterrestrial spacecraft. It's always going to be more likely that someone is wrong about what they saw.

"Modern science and scientific education is all about learning to not trust your instincts. It's about learning to say that the way that I spontaneously understand the world is wrong and there's a better way to understand it. UFOs are a perfect example of this because there's no evidence for them, but there's lots of people that see things in the sky they don't understand.

"With these released UAP videos, we might not be getting the whole truth, but that doesn't mean the whole truth is as interesting as I want it to be, and that there's some cosmic secret."

"We Want To Believe" is available at bookstores and online outlets Aug. 25, 2026.

LOS ANGELES – On a Saturday evening in Los Angeles, I found myself watching acclaimed actor Elizabeth Banks sing Tom Petty songs along with her fellow actors while writer/director David Wain played the drums. This incredible, bizarre performance celebrated the 25th anniversary of the raunchy, summer camp cult classic "Wet Hot American Summer." But do you remember that it's actually a space movie?

This movie — the debut feature film from co-creators David Wain and Michael Showalter — follows the events of "Camp Firewood," a sleepaway summer camp set in the summer of 1981. It has a cast chock-full of now-A-list actors, including Banks, Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and so many more. Looking back, it's almost baffling how star-studded the cast really is.

Campy in every sense of the word, the movie manages to balance vulgar jokes with some serious heart. And while the off-color comedy was infamously a box office bomb, this heart has cemented its status as a beloved cult classic, and watching it has become as time-honored a tradition as summer camp itself.

I am personally biased toward this film, as my teenage summers were spent as a camp counselor and the movie hits that perfect, nostalgic sweet spot. But when I sat down to watch the film again on Aug. 8 at an outdoor anniversary screening, I realized it had been many years since I'd actually seen it.

And while I remembered the warm, summer camp vibes, somehow I had completely forgotten something: The movie hinges on the plot that a piece of Skylab (yes, that Skylab) is falling to Earth, and a nearby, vacationing astrophysicist teams up with the nerdy kids at camp to build a homegrown device to try and stop it.

The strangest part? In 1979, Skylab did fall back to Earth, and a couple of pieces actually survived the trip (just not at Camp Firewood).

At its core, this beloved camp movie that I used to watch after camp with my fellow counselors (at our own camp, Summer Parks) is … science fiction. It might seem like a b-plot, but if you find yourself rewatching the film, you might be surprised at how much of a space movie it really is.

The first inklings of this emerge when camp director Beth (Janeane Garofalo) meets astrophysicist Professor Henry Newman (David Hyde Pierce), who is vacationing in a cabin near the camp. She asks if he might come to camp and teach some of the kids about space. And while he at first declines, he soon decides to show up at camp to spend time with some of the kids and chat about outer space.

As other camp hijinks are happening, we occasionally cut back to this group of "indoor kids" in the woods, pretending rocks are planets, having a great time. But at some point, it's revealed that the camp is in grave danger. Not only is a piece of Skylab, the first U.S. space station, falling, but it's headed right for camp! In fact, it's headed right for the talent show that's taking place on the last night of camp (of course).

Henry and his merry band of science-obsessed campers are quick to act, and they work together to cobble together a makeshift Skylab tracking device. But to transform the device so it can divert Skylab, they need to generate random numbers between one and 20. Thank goodness one of the campers just so happens to be carrying a D20 die.

In the end, Skylab does crash-land into camp, but it narrowly misses the talent show, and no one gets hurt. Did the device work? Did another camper demonstrating their wind-generating superpowers at the talent show secretly help out? Or was their Skylab tracking wrong all along?

After camp is finally over for the summer, we get to see the aftermath as campers walk out to their rides home past a giant hunk of the Skylab space station jutting out of the grass.

It's a fun easter egg to see Skylab crashing to Earth in a campy summer camp flick, and during a panel ahead of the screening, the cast and crew revealed that it was a lot of fun for them, too.

According to the panelists, which included Wain, Banks, Joe Lo Truglio (who plays Neil in the film), and Marguerite Moreau (who plays Katie), everyone on the set was taking turns getting their picture taken with Skylab. This is evident in the image above, snapped and shared with us by actor Zak Orth, who plays J.J.

While there were no reported injuries or property damage from the debris, roughly 26 tons of material fell to Earth, some of it surviving the trip and landing in Western Australia.

So in an alternate version of history where Camp Firewood is located in a remote area of Australia, this plot could have been more than science fiction.

Want to relive the sci-fi summer camp glory? To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Wet Hot American Summer is returning to select theaters from Aug. 14-21. If you miss that, you can also buy or rent it on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV.

SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "LEVEL-FIVE TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

Back in the late '70s and early '80s, A-list stars were queuing up to guest on "The Muppet Show". Over five glorious seasons, the likes of Steve Martin, Diana Ross and Roger Moore were happy to have themselves upstaged by Kermit the Frog and his legendary felt ensemble. Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, C-3PO and Chewbacca even went on a crossover adventure with the show's resident astro-swine, those famous "Pigs in Space".

Now, the Enterprise's very own Mr Spock gets to join this select group by performing alongside the Jim Henson Company's elite puppeteers in "Level-Five Transporter Accident", the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds". And we're delighted to report that the results are every bit as sensational, inspirational, celebrational, and downright Muppetational as anyone could possibly have hoped for.

It's important to reiterate that this episode makes negligible logical or canonical sense. Even within "Star Trek"'s frequently loose interpretation of "science", the idea that Scotty's transporter experiments on family puppet Little Ricky (a slightly disturbing presence, it has to be said) might transform an entire crew into fabric and stuffing is rather outlandish. Even the writers acknowledge they've exceeded the plausibility threshold when they hint that the whole affair took place in Spock's head.

But frankly, who cares about logic or canon when the results are so much madcap fun?

Even though the puppet versions of the Enterprise crew aren't officially Muppets, they're undoubtedly cut from the same cloth as Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and the rest. Those extremely talented Henson designers have somehow managed to find the sweet spot between the characters' human incarnations and their hilarious felt forms, whether it's Captain Pike's gravity-defying hair or Scotty's Beaker-esque expression of perpetual concern. The cast also throw themselves into their voice performances, relishing the unashamed comedy opportunities and — to quote T'Pring — "hijinks" of their radically redesigned roles.

"We had to do the [voice work] twice because the first time it was just completely wrong," Pike star Anson Mount told SFX magazine. "When the producers got the cut, they were telling me, 'Just do more, just feel more!' I was like, 'What are you talking about?', but when they played the scenes I was like, 'Oh, I need to do what [the puppeteers] are doing'. I had to set aside my ego for a little bit and follow the puppeteer's cues a little bit more."

Putting these puppets on the actual Enterprise set, rather than a scaled-down comedy recreation, is part of the episode's genius. They're dealing with a ship that isn't built for their new forms, from chairs that are way too big to touchscreen controls that don't work with the three fingers and a thumb of a felt hand.

And then there's Pike's realization that their mission to repel the invading Orion will be dependent on answering a long-standing question from an Oscar-winning song: Are they men (and women), or are they Muppets?

The answer falls affirmatively in the latter camp. The finest puppet crew in Starfleet throw themselves at bad guys like the ragdolls they are, and stand on each other's shoulders to masquerade as human-sized crew members (very "Pinky and the Brain").

They also come to embrace the fact they're essentially immortal — a needle and thread is all Pelia needs to recover from being sliced in half, while this week's redshirt guest star doesn't seem particularly fussed about the giant hole blasted in his midriff. There's also a glorious opportunity for the crew to unleash their inner WALL-E by floating through space without a spaceship. Indeed, it seems that when you're a puppet, your prime directive is fun.

"Strange New Worlds" has, at times, been guilty of overdoing the gimmick episodes, from the one that crossed over with "Lower Decks" to the one that temporarily transformed four members of the crew into Vulcans. There was also, of course, "Subspace Rhapsody", the one where everyone made a song and dance out of everything, but that was essentially a less memorable "Trek" spin on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"'s classic musical outing, "Once More, With Feeling" — a tuneful frontier also explored by "Scrubs", "Fringe", "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and more.

The great thing about "Level-Five Transporter Accident", however, is that its felt-covered hijinks feel like "Strange New Worlds"' 'thing', rather than a retread of someone else's idea — as well as being a glorious excuse for the characters to embrace their inner Muppet, and literally have the stuffing knocked out of them.

And by advancing Spock's character arc and his relationship with T'Pring — this is presumably the first time Ethan Peck has ever been asked to kiss a puppet — it's also surprisingly pivotal to the show's continuity, just as "Once More…" was to "Buffy"'s sixth season.

It doesn't make a jot of sense, of course — and may just be a figment of Spock's overactive imagination — but it's also one of the most joyous, unashamedly fun episodes of "Star Trek" ever made. If there's any justice in the Alpha Quadrant, fans will be talking about this particular "Level-Five Transporter Accident" for years to come.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

The world of science fiction started with the written word, long before it hit the silver screen. Stories of man-made life, Martians, and other marvelous subject matter were being read long before the first sci-fi movie was released in 1902: Georges Méliès' "A Trip to the Moon". Some of these stories became classic tales that have been repeatedly adapted for Hollywood and television, think Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" and H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds."

This isn't by any means an exhaustive list but these are the sci-fi books that inspired some of our favorite movies and shows. We have big names like Project Hail Mary and Dune, as well as more obscure titles like the haunting Under the Skin and Stalker. We have included links to the best streaming services to watch each adaptation on right now, but for those of you who are tired of endless subscriptions, we have provided the 4K and Blu-ray releases so you can physically own your favorite media again.

Books are often sidelined in today's visual-obsessed world, but I think they deliver a stronger experience that movies and shows just can't replicate. Now don't get me wrong, I love the movie adaptation of Annihilation, but I have a very special connection to the book. I read it multiple times before the movie release and it made me feel immersed in the inherent weirdness of the natural world and think about how alien our own planet is. The book always came to mind when taking a walk out in the forest and seeing the hypnotic curl of a fern or a bird alighting on a branch inches away from me.

I woke up on the morning of Aug. 12 and looked out of the window to something I hadn't dared hope for: blue sky.

After days of scrutinizing weather models that seemed determined to test the nerves of everyone aboard the HX Expeditions ship MS Spitsbergen, somehow, against the odds, the clouds had cleared. Even then, I didn't trust it (especially after my 2024 eclipse experience). We had traveled thousands of miles, crossed the Greenland Sea and ventured deep into Scoresby Sund to put ourselves in the path of the moon's shadow. Now there was nothing to do but wait — and hope the sky stayed clear.

The wind howled across the deck, but nobody seemed to mind. If anything, it was helping us, keeping the clouds at bay. The atmosphere aboard felt like Christmas Eve with a ship full of overexcited children. Some guests had chased eclipses across the world; for others, this would be their first. Either way, Aug. 12 was the date we'd been waiting years for.

But by the time we reached Scoresby Sund, something had shifted.

I had traveled all this way to look up. Instead, I found myself looking around. I'd come here for 2 minutes and 14 seconds of darkness. Instead, Greenland had spent the previous days relentlessly demanding my full attention.

After a couple of days at sea during the crossing from Svalbard to East Greenland, our first sight of land appeared almost like a mirage on the horizon. Soon, icebergs were drifting past the ship and the scale of the landscape became increasingly difficult to comprehend. We could sail for hours through Northeast Greenland National Park without seeing a single sign of human civilization beyond our own ship. At times, moving through those immense geological landscapes felt less like traveling across Earth and more like exploring some distant, icy-covered moon.

Yet, the more otherworldly Greenland appeared, the more it made me appreciate our own planet.

At times it felt as though I'd stepped into a geology textbook. Processes and structures I'd previously seen reduced to diagrams were suddenly towering above me. And amongst all the enormity were the tiniest signs of life: lichens and miniature Arctic plants hugging the ground beneath vast mountains and glaciers.

The scale and contrast were overwhelming at times, and no view stayed the same for long.

An iceberg viewed from one side could morph into a completely different form as the ship sailed past it. A break in the clouds could transform a gray mountainside in seconds. In Scoresby Sund, even the ice seemed to echo the landscape around it as jagged peaks, flat-topped slabs and sculpted ridges rose from the water like miniature versions of the colossal mountains behind them.

The Greenland scenery was a gift that kept on giving, and I found myself increasingly reluctant to go inside. I began meticulously scanning for wildlife, because I'd learned how quickly something extraordinary could appear.

On an impromptu evening walk in Longyearbyen before we set sail, beluga whales had suddenly surfaced in the bay. Later, in Greenland, while I was distracted by a spectacular circumzenithal arc and sundogs overhead, one of a handful of people still standing on deck spotted two tiny white shapes in the water. I thought they were birds bobbing along.

Then I lifted my camera and zoomed in.

Polar bears.

It became something of a lesson for the expedition: stay curious, keep your eyes open and remember to look both up and down.

That curiosity seemed to unite everyone aboard. Guests had traveled from around the world for this eclipse opportunity. There were seasoned eclipse chasers looking to experience totality somewhere extraordinary, first-timers who had no idea how they would react and people drawn as much by the adventure and wildlife, as the eclipse itself.

HX Expeditions' onboard science and education programme gave that shared enthusiasm somewhere to go. Our days were filled with nature landings, lectures, citizen-science projects and conversations with experts, helping us do more than simply travel through Greenland. The programme encouraged us to pay closer attention — not merely to see the landscape, but to understand and truly experience it.

Conversations jumped from eclipses to wildlife, travel, geology and perhaps, inevitably for a ship full of skywatchers, clouds. We took part in the GLOBE Observer cloud citizen science project and found ourselves happily studying them — while collectively hoping they would be nowhere near the sun on eclipse day.

The eclipse had brought us together, but the journey had quickly become about much more.

Then, on Aug. 12, our attention returned to the sky.

When the moon took its first tiny bite from the solar disk, excitement rippled across the deck. For the next hour, it steadily consumed more of the sun.

As totality approached, the quality of the light began to change.

It became strangely yellow and dull, yet at the same time the landscape seemed almost unnaturally sharp. It was eerie — familiar enough to still resemble daylight, but wrong enough that your brain knew something extraordinary was happening.

What amazed me most was how long that daylight persisted.

Even when only the tiniest sliver of sun remained, Greenland was still illuminated. I knew scientifically how intensely bright the solar photosphere is, but knowing it and watching that minuscule fraction of sunlight continue to illuminate an entire landscape were two very different things.

Then the final fraction disappeared.

The world around me plunged into twilight.

And there it was.

Totality.

I knew exactly what I was supposed to see. I've written about eclipses for years. I understand the science. I had seen thousands of photographs of the corona, prominences, Baily's beads and diamond rings.

None of it prepared me for the feeling of actually seeing one.

The first thing that struck me was how large the eclipsed sun appeared to the naked eye. Photographs had never prepared me for that sense of scale, nor how much detail I could see with my own eyes.

The moon itself looked impossibly dark — a black void punched into the sky — surrounded by the pearly white corona. Long streamers stretched away from the sun and around the moon's edge I could see bright pink prominences.

I was so surprised to see this vivid pink color with my own eyes. For 2 minutes and 14 seconds, I saw the sun as I had never seen it before.

But even then, I couldn't just look up.

I looked around. Jupiter and Mercury shone clearly off to one side of the eclipsed sun, with Mercury far brighter and easier to spot than I had expected. Venus blazed on the other side.

Then I looked down. Below the eclipsed sun were icebergs. Beside us rose the immense walls of Scoresby Sund. Glaciers carved their path through the landscape.

Above it all hung that black disk and its enormous, delicate corona. My brain simply couldn't take it all in.

There was too much beauty. Too much scale. Too much happening at once.

People use words such as "mind-blowing" and "speechless" so often that they begin to lose their meaning.

But my mind was really blown. And I really was speechless. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that my mind felt full, but quiet. Full because there was almost too much to comprehend, but quiet because for those fleeting moments, there was room for nothing else.

The intensity of the experience surprised guests who had originally joined the voyage for different reasons.

"My husband and I came to see the wildlife, and we were actually in awe of what we saw in relation to the solar eclipse," Kenya Haupt, from Colorado, told Space.com. "Truly an emotional experience"

The reasons for joining the expedition varied, but beneath the moon’s shadow, the experience became a collective one.

For Shubhada Maitra, from India, it was her first total solar eclipse.

"When I looked around me, I just had a feeling that we were one community, taking part in one of the most spectacular, perhaps once-in-a-lifetime celestial events," Maitra said. "Although we came from different countries, different nationalities, genders, all of that, that solar eclipse just bound us together."

"Without saying anything, we were just so connected in that experience."

Lisa Marie Morse, from Rhode Island, described the eclipse as both "joyous and melancholy."

"In that moment of darkness, I felt a powerful connection with all living things, to an infinite ancient rhythm locking us together for 134 seconds of shared awareness, then releasing us back into our daily slumber," Morse said. "It was magical."

Then, almost as quickly as totality had arrived, it was ending.

The first brilliant beads of sunlight appeared from behind the moon.

They were beautiful, but there was a sadness in seeing them too. The corona, prominences and extraordinary black void that had dominated the sky were about to disappear once more into the overwhelming glare of the sun.

Two minutes and 14 seconds had somehow felt both packed with experience and impossibly brief. I had just enough time to look with my naked eye, search for planets, check it out through binoculars and try to absorb the reactions around me.

Then it was gone.

For seasoned eclipse chaser Roy Tillcock from the Isle of Wight, the clear view had come as a genuine surprise.

"This was one of the most unexpected eclipses I've seen," he said. "I did not have high hopes of seeing it, and there it was. Brilliant."

And, as if to underline just how fortunate we had been, the clouds rolled in shortly after totality. A few minutes later, and this could have been a very different story.

Some skywatchers were emotional. Others were exhilarated. Many, like me, seemed to be struggling to find words big enough for what had happened.

Perhaps that is part of why eclipse chasing becomes so addictive. We can explain the science of totality in extraordinary detail. We can calculate the path of the moon's shadow years in advance, travel thousands of miles to stand beneath it and know exactly when and where darkness will fall.

But knowing what to expect is not the same as experiencing it.

The following morning, Greenland was still there, still demanding my undivided attention. Icebergs drifted past the ship. Mountains towered above the fjord. The sunlight shifted and the landscape transformed once again. I had traveled all this way to look up.

But somewhere along the journey, I had learned to truly look around. Here I was, standing on a planet of glaciers, oceans, wildlife and ancient rock, watching its moon pass perfectly across its star at a moment in Earth's history when their apparent size in our sky happened to match. How lucky are we to experience any of this? Luck, ultimately, is something no eclipse chaser can ignore.

We could calculate where the shadow would fall. We could sail into its path. We could scrutinize forecasts, prepare our equipment and position ourselves as carefully as possible.

But we couldn't command the clouds to cooperate.

Nature always has the final say. And on Aug. 12, 2026, in a remote fjord in East Greenland, nature said yes.

Editor's note: This trip was made possible by travel and accommodation provided by HX Expeditions.

The DC Universe expands further into the cosmos this month with the addition of "Lanterns".

Created by Chris Mundy, Tom King and Damon Lindelof, the superhero show sees the veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan (played by Kyle Chandler) take rookie John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) under his wing. Wider parts of the Green Lantern Corps lore are incorporated in the story too, as the series unpacks what the famous space cops are all about.

At the same time, let's be real here for a second: for anybody who hasn't kept track of all the DC reboots, Infinite Crises on Corporate Earths and Ryan Reynolds in a green CGI costume, it can become overwhelming to even think about the Green Lantern mythology.

There are many heroes and villains scattered across an overly complex timeline, so let's attempt to break down who's who in terms of the confirmed characters for the show and what their backstory is from the comics.

Here's everything you need to know about the characters in HBO's "Lanterns"

Hal Jordan

First appearance: "Showcase" #22 (1956)

Played by: Kyle Chandler

While not the first Green Lantern introduced by DC (that honour belongs to Alan Scott), Hal Jordan is arguably the most famous of them all. Debuting in the pages of "Showcase" #22, Hal found himself drawn to the spaceship belonging to Abin Sur, the Green Lantern of Sector 2814. The dying alien instructed his power ring to find a worthy successor, and it did in the form of the test pilot known as Hal Jordan.

While known primarily as a hero, Hal had a memorable stint as the villainous Parallax in the '90s. Hey, it was an edgy era, but at least he didn't have infinite pockets for his costume and badly drawn feet to go along with it!

Ryan Reynolds played a live-action version of Hal Jordan in the heavily derided 2011 "Green Lantern" movie, but Kyle Chandler's interpretation in "Lanterns" is a more seasoned and less CGIed version of the character. Interestingly enough, before Chandler was cast in the role, Josh Brolin was linked with the part.

John Stewart

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #87 (1972)

Played by: Aaron Pierre

So here's the part where DC's comic book logic tangles itself into knots. When Hal Jordan was selected as the Green Lantern, he received backup in Guy Gardner. After Guy was injured, Hal received a backup for his backup: John Stewart. Introduced as a civil rights activist and architect, John clashed with Hal at first; however, he went on to become the main Green Lantern in the '80s. After the New 52 reboot, John received another alteration to his backstory; this time, he was a former Marine.

For a generation of fans, John is their Green Lantern, thanks to him being the chosen Emerald Knight for the animated shows "Justice League" and "Justice League Unlimited". He almost appeared in "Zack Snyder's Justice League", where he would have been portrayed by Wayne T. Carr, but the whole debacle around that movie and the Snyder Cut is worthy of its own miniseries.

Aaron Pierre won the role of John Stewart in "Lanterns", triumphing over names like Damson Idris and Stephan James for the gig. One only needed to watch Netflix's "Rebel Ridge" to see his take on a former Marine and realise he was born to play John.

Guy Gardner

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #59 (1968)

Played by: Nathan Fillion

Ah, the Green Lantern with the worst haircut in the universe. The origin story of Guy Gardner is actually interesting, despite his questionable barber choices.

In "Green Lantern" #59, it's revealed that Guy was also a potential contender to be Abin Sur's heir. The only reason the ring went to Hal Jordan was that he was closer in terms of location. Guy became Hal's backup and eventually assumed the mantle of Green Lantern.

As a character, Guy is something of a prickly pear. He is prone to outbursts and not exactly a people person. However, his heart is in the right place, and he'll show up when necessary for others.

Nathan Fillion returns to play Guy Gardner in "Lanterns", having previously played the character in "Superman" and "Peacemaker" season 2. Oh, and he was all in for Guy's haircut. "I was team bowl cut the whole way," he said on the "DC Studios Showcase Official Podcast." "It's canon. It's set."

Sinestro

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #7 (1961)

Played by: Ulrich Thomsen

Much like other characters in the DC Universe, Thaal Sinestro has experienced changes to his backstory with the various reboots and continuity switch-ups altering his motivations and personality. What does remain consistent is that he's an alien from the planet Korugar who became a member of the Green Lantern Corps once upon a time. He was highly revered among his peers, but he abused his powers, became a dictator, and received the boot as a consequence of his actions.

Not one to be deterred, Sinestro founded the Sinestro Corps, which uses the yellow light of fear to power it. Naturally, this puts him at odds with the Green Lantern Corps – but Sinestro really really despises the Guardians of the Universe the most here.

In "Lanterns", Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen plays Sinestro. The first footage of him didn't exactly inspire fans since he failed to have the reddish-purple skin tone associated with the character from the comics. However, the true outrage should have been about the lack of a wispy moustache. This Sinestro's muzzle fuzz shares more in common with Mario than anything else.

Manhunters

First appearance: "1st Issue Special" #5 (1975)

Before the Green Lantern Corps, the Guardians of the Universe created the robots known as the Manhunters. Their sole purpose was to fight evil and restore law and order. If this sounds like a potential nightmare out of Sam Altman's OpenAI playbook, it's because it is.

While the Manhunters worked well at first, their obsession with catching criminals and inability to define what justice is saw them go rogue. And as you know, once the genie is out of the bottle, it's tough to put it back in!

At the time of writing, it's unclear exactly how the Manhunters fit into "Lanterns", except for the fact that they shapeshift and are dangerous. Their inclusion in the show makes sense, though, since they're the predecessors to the Green Lantern Corps.

Guardians of the Universe

First appearance: "Green Lantern" #1 (1960)

Want to know who to blame for DC's multiverse? Well, it's a rogue Maltusian Krona, who couldn't help but peek back in time to see how the universe was created. As a result, Krona's peers decided to band together and form the Guardians of the Universe, an organisation that wants to keep the universe safe from all kinds of threats.

These immortal beings assembled various groups (including the Green Lantern Corps) in an effort to bring about order and peace. Oh, and Sinestro hates them – in case you hadn't figured that out yet.

As the creators of the Green Lantern Corps, it's expected they'll play a role in "Lanterns". To date, only Laura Linney has been confirmed as one of the Guardians.

On August 16, "Lanterns" wills itself into existence on HBO.

'For All Mankind' was pretty good, wasn't it? Sadly, the show's run has finished now, and while we've got spin-off 'Star City' picking up the mantle, it's still going to be a while before we get any more space politics drama on our screens. Luckily, we can find it on our tabletops instead, with these fantastic space board games.

If you haven't seen it, For All Mankind is the story of an alternate history in which the space race between the U.S. and Russia never fizzled out. Instead, it becomes a multigenerational competition that drives everything from electric vehicle adoption to gender equality.

If, like millions of other Apple TV subscribers, you've been rapt watching 'For All Mankind' and want to bring some of that hot diplomacy and betrayal to your own kitchen table, you're in luck. Several space-based board games let you get a taste of the space race intrigue without having to connive your way to the top of an actual space agency.

Social deduction games have exploded in recent years with good reason. Some of the best tabletop games include some level of politicking, as well as the deal-making, deception, and favor trading that entails. Making social and technological advances often comes at the cost of high levels of international brinkmanship and some very gray ethics.

So, are you ready to kick off the space race once again? Here are 7 space board games that capture the high drama of the era, but without all the devastating foreign policy implications of the real thing.

1. Twilight Struggle

Developer: Ananda Gupta, Trevor Devries | Release Date: 2005 | Players: 2 | Recommended Age: 13+

Twilight Struggle is a perfect distillation of the tension and national anxiety embodied by the Cold War. It follows the conflict between the U.S. and Russia across five decades, and its space race track mirrors For All Mankind's geopolitical stakes.

Every satellite you managed to hurl into the atmosphere or astronaut you successfully guide into space represents both a technical and a propaganda victory. It’s like watching Margo Madison and Sergei Nikulov battle with dice in place of launch vehicles.

Buy "Twilight Struggle" at GMT Games

2. Twilight Imperium

Developer: Corey Konieczka (Fantasy Flight Games) | Release Date: 2017 | Players: 3-6 (up to 8 with expansions) | Recommended Age: 14+

Considered by many to be the gold standard in space politicking, Twilight Imperium drops you into a vast galaxy after the fall of the ancient Lazax empire.

Players take on the role of interstellar empires competing to conquer the capital planet at the center of a huge galaxy. They achieve this by building space docks and warships, trading goods, and clashing in cosmic combat.

The true brilliance of TI lies in its asymmetry, with each of the 17 factions having a variety of advantages and quirks that differentiate it from the others, and the way it drives players to negotiate with — and backstab — each other on the galactic stage.

Laws and elections can quickly shift the balance of power in the game, and the rules can be subverted or twisted to your advantage through the deft deployment of crushing bureaucracy. It's a long game and not one for beginners, but there really is nothing quite like a session of Twilight Imperium.

Buy "Twilight Imperium" at Asmodee

3. High Frontier (4th Edition)

Developer: Phil Eklund (Sierra Madre Games) | Release Date: 2019 | Players: 1-5 | Recommended Age: 14+

Designed by real-world aerospace engineer and rocket scientist Phil Eklund, High Frontier puts you at the helm of a space agency or private aerospace company and tasks you with building a self-sustaining space economy.

It channels For All Mankind’s scientific obsession and is a great showcase for the intersection of personal and national ambition and feasibility. Every decision feels freighted with international importance, and players are forced to grapple with mechanics like realistically modeled orbital mechanics and unforgiving resource scarcity.

Beware, though; High Frontier is one of the most complex board games ever developed, but can also be one of the most rewarding for committed players.

Buy "High Frontier" at Ion Game Design.

4. SpaceCorp: 2025–2300 AD

Developer: Phil Eklund (Sierra Madre Games) | Release Date: 2018 | Players: 1-5 | Recommended Age: 14+

SpaceCorp takes us far beyond the imagined future of For All Mankind's world of governmental space agency programs, and into a timeline where vast, powerful corporations have transformed cosmic exploration and exploitation into big business.

Players begin in low Earth orbit and steadily expand their way into the depths of space, trying to find the balance between risk and profit. Like any good far future dystopia, SpaceCorp positions massive corporations as the true governing entities of the future, swapping in private investors for diplomats and corporate boards for politicians.

It's the natural evolution of the creeping commercialization that For All Mankind's later seasons begin to gesture towards. Real life is making similar gestures, if we're honest, and I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.

Buy "SpaceCorp: 2025–2300 AD" at Amazon.

5. Terraforming Mars

Developer: Jacob Fryxelius (FryxGames) | Release Date: 2016 | Players: 1-5 | Recommended Age: 12+

Terraforming Mars takes the terrestrial-based space race so vividly portrayed in For All Mankind and ships it to the Martian surface.

Players compete to build massive engines of profit and production to transform Mars into a livable habitat, all in the glorious name of cutthroat capitalism.

It perfectly embodies the dream-versus-profit conflict so adeptly portrayed in For All Mankind, while also reflecting the later seasons' focus on the red planet as a new stage for human rivalry and ethical reckoning, clothed in the reassuring euphemism of progress.

6. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Developer: Touko Tahkokallio (Lautapelit.fi) | Release Date: 2020 | Players: 2-6 | Recommended Age: 14+

A personal favorite, Eclipse is a 4X* game that blends elements of exploration with research and direct (fairly deterministic) combat.

Players ruthlessly compete for victory points derived from controlling systems, building specific structures, discovering artifacts, and researching scientific innovations. It's a beautiful interpretation of one of our world's oldest refrains, the often impossible balance of diplomacy and domination.

A full game of Eclipse ends up reflecting on human nature in some of the same ways the show does, illustrating how often our best intentions are undermined by our desire for personal advancement (or total victory).

*4X stands for Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate.

Buy "Eclipse: 2nd Dawn for the Galaxy" at Zatu Games.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "A CASE OF CHIAROSCURO" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

You're on a top-secret mission to recover a lost Federation probe from enemy territory. A close encounter with a Klingon cruiser forces you into hiding on the surface of an alien world, which — thanks, in part, to the local star's radiation making everything appear stylishly monochrome — looks like it's been lifted from a classic 20th-century film noir. You dress up as one of the locals on this occupied world, and quickly learn that you're the spitting image of the leader of the local resistance. What are the chances?

This being "Star Trek", the odds are nowhere near as long as they could — and maybe should — be. In fact, the galaxy is so chock-full of doppelgangers, clones and lookalikes that it's a wonder Una "Number One" Chin-Riley hadn't encountered her double before the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds", "A Case of Chiaroscuro".

This may explain why Dr M'Benga doesn't think anything is particularly amiss. "In a universe as vast as ours, the real mystery is that we don't stumble onto our doppelgangers more often," he claims. "That we have found Una's is a momentary stroke of luck."

That said, the origin stories of Trek's previous escapees from the planet Xerox are usually a little more complex — and outwardly sci-fi — than coincidence. The matter transporters found on every Starfleet vessel, for example, have repeatedly given actors the chance to play two roles at once.

In theory, transporter tech breaks you down into your constituent atoms, beams those particles across space, and reassembles them in the right order at the other end. But, in the event of a glitch, transporter rooms effectively become highly sophisticated 3D printers, creating duplicates indistinguishable from the original beamee.

In the "Original Series" episode "The Enemy Within", James T Kirk is split into two versions of himself, one good, the other evil. In this metaphysical exploration of self, it turns out you can't have one half without the other, forcing Spock and co to reintegrate the two Kirks in order to save their captain.

Will Riker also experiences transporter-induced imposter syndrome in "The Next Generation" episode "Second Chances". He learns that a beaming error on the USS Potemkin created an exact facsimile eight years earlier, and Riker 2.0 has been living alone on the remote Nervala IV ever since. Alas, this alt version (who opts to go by the name of Thomas) doesn't find it easy living in the shadow of the Enterprise-D's highly commended first officer, and eventually quits Starfleet to defect to the Maquis resistance organization.

When Bradward Boimler experiences similar duplication issues in "Lower Decks", it's his double, William, who makes better use of their resources. He ultimately finds himself in the captain's chair of a top-secret Section 31 vessel staffed by doppelgangers from alternative realities, including "Deep Space Nine"'s Dr Bashir, "Enterprise"'s T'Pol, and multiple incarnations of "Voyager"'s perennial ensign, Harry Kim.

"Trek"'s parallel universes are arguably even more conducive to duplication than transporter accidents. Indeed, even the Harry Kim who eventually makes it back from the Delta Quadrant in "Voyager" is an alternative version, transferred from a USS Voyager slightly out of phase with the original. (To be fair, OG Harry had just been sucked into the vacuum of space, so the switcheroo was easy to justify — and good news for actor Garrett Wang.)

But "Star Trek"'s most famous doppelgangers from another dimension hail from the infamous Mirror Universe, where the morally dubious Terran Empire crushes non-Earthers under a bloodthirsty boot — while the Federation traditionally comes in peace, these guys make no secret of their love of shooting to kill. Crews from "Enterprise", "Discovery", the Original Series, "DS9" and "Prodigy" have all come face to face with their evil twins. Few imposters have been quite as easy to spot as Terran Empire Spock, however, whose trademark goatee is something of a giveaway.

Shapeshifters are even trickier customers, seeing as they can — in theory — take the form of anyone they want. Kirk shares facetime with himself when Chameloid Marta impersonates him while messing up their attempt to escape the Rura Penthe penal colony in "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country".

"I can't believe I kissed you," says Kirk. "Must have been your lifelong ambition," Kirk replies — sort that one out, Sigmund Freud.

The metamorphing Changelings of the Dominion also prove a particularly tricksy enemy in "Deep Space Nine", thanks to their ability to replicate everyone from Dr Bashir and General Martok to the Federation's in-house shapeshifter, Odo.

And then there's "Trek"'s dalliances with the more traditional sci-fi trope of cloning, the most famous example showing up just in time for "The Next Generation" crew's final mission.

The Big Bad in the 2002 movie "Nemesis" is Shinzon, a Jean-Luc Picard duplicate created by Romulan scientists to infiltrate the Federation. The irony, of course, is that this clone looks nothing like the source material. In fact, the chances of anyone buying that Tom Hardy will one day look like Patrick Stewart are close to zero — Dr M'Benga may believe that we should bump into our doppelgangers more often, but even he wouldn't fall for that one.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

For the generation that grew up in the 1980s, the release of the recent big-budget "Masters of the Universe" movie would undoubtedly have conjured up a sense of déjà-vu.

Picture the scene. The year is 1987. You've got the action figures and the Castle Grayskull playset, you've watched every episode of the cartoon again and again, and you can recite He-Man's opening credits voiceover by heart. He has the power!

Then someone tells you there's a live-action film adaptation coming out.

You persuade your parents to take you to the theater, pick up a great big bucket of popcorn, and get ready to be transported to the familiar surroundings of Eternia. And then…

Well, it's fair to say this is not the "Masters of the Universe" you know and love. Sure, leading man Dolph Lundgren is big, but why does he look and dress nothing like He-Man? Who's that Gwildor guy, and what the hell happened to Orko, BattleCat and Prince Adam? Why do He-Man and Skeletor spend so much of the movie on planet Earth? And when are we going to hear that famous theme tune? (Spoiler: you won't.)

By the power of Grayskull, this was not the film '80s kids expected, or indeed wanted. But disappointing a pre-teen fanbase was the least of "Masters of the Universe"'s worries. Sales of Mattel's previously all-conquering toyline were way past their peak, while the appetite for films trying to capture "Star Wars"' unique blend of sci-fi and fantasy had all but disappeared. Perhaps more importantly, "MOTU" 1987 had been bankrolled by an ambitious but eccentric studio, whose efforts to break into the mainstream had left it in a financial state so perilous that not even the most powerful man in the universe could save it.

"Masters of the Universe" was one of the undoubted pop culture success stories of the 1980s. Although Mattel had made the mistake of turning down the licence to make "Star Wars" toys, the toy giant responded in spectacular style by launching a fantasy behemoth of its own in 1982. He-Man, Skeletor and their Eternian colleagues would soon become household names, largely thanks to the advertising power of an immensely popular cartoon series.

Decades before "Transformers", "The Lego Movie" and "Barbie" made big money at the box office, producer Edward Pressman had seen the potential in taking a toy franchise to the big screen. There had been early interest in "He-Man" from major studios (including Warner Bros), but — largely thanks to delays caused by management changes at Mattel — interest had waned by the time Cannon Films stepped in to foot the bill.

Throughout the '80s, Cannon had become more renowned for the quantity of its output than the quality, as a pair of ambitious Israeli cousins, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, invested in unashamed B-movies like "Enter the Ninja", Charles Bronson's "Death Wish" sequels, and Chuck Norris vehicle "The Delta Force". The studio had around 40 movies in production at the time "Masters of the Universe" got the green light, but was keen to make a move on tentpole blockbuster territory. As well as financing the disastrous "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", Cannon had also paid Sylvester Stallone a record-breaking fee to headline arm-wrestling drama "Over the Top". Both flopped at the box office.

Despite being "a little bit reluctant because it was [based on] a toy line", Stallone's "Rocky IV" co-star Dolph Lundgren signed up to play the mighty He-Man. The Swedish actor looked more like the lead singer of a hair metal band than the sword-wielding hero of the cartoons, though his impressive physique (coupled with He-Man's scanty wardrobe) ensured it was hard to find a convincing stunt double.

Director Gary Goddard also became concerned that his leading man (topping the bill for the first time) wasn't delivering dialogue as he wanted, and subtly chopped some of Lundgren's lines. He reasoned that heroes played by Clint Eastwood are often men of few words, with their sidekicks usually the ones supplying the supplemental information.

There were never any doubts about the man playing He-Man's nemesis, Skeletor, however. Frank Langella had caught Goddard's eye in "Amadeus" on Broadway, and — buried under some impressive make-up — relished the opportunity to ham it up as Eternia's villain-in-chief. But this dark, calculating interpretation was a universe away from the cackling, frequently thwarted bad guy of the cartoon series. It wasn't the only way the film would completely lose track of what had made kids fall in love with the "Masters of the Universe" brand.

Even in 2026, with the help of CG effects and a colossal budget, the new "Masters of the Universe" had to pick and choose which classic Eternians — including Mekaneck, one of the weirdest "Masters of the Universe" characters — made the transfer to the big screen.

Spare a thought, though, for the 1987 fans who had to make do with (on Team He-Man) Man-at-Arms, Teela and the Sorceress; and (on Team Skeletor) Evil-Lyn and Beast Man.

Hovering wizard sidekick Orko was replaced by a new character, Thenurian inventor Gwildor, while Skeletor's rogues' gallery was expanded to the tune of lizard man Saurod, the sword-wielding Blade, and the not-sure-what-he-is Karg. Long-standing favorites like Trap-Jaw, Tri-Klops, and Mer-Man were conspicuous by their absence.

Skeletor was supported by legions of laser-wielding, Stormtrooper-esque soldiers, though — thanks to Mattel's mandate that He-Man couldn't kill anyone — these were robots rather than people. He-Man also tended to favor a laser gun of his own, mostly keeping his famous Sword of Power for show. He didn't even need the sword for a big transformation moment, seeing as alter-ego Prince Adam and his green tiger BFF Cringer were conveniently jettisoned from the story.

The movie's biggest problem, however, was arguably transferring the action to Earth. This didn't contradict franchise mythology (He-Man's mom, Queen Marlena, had long been established as an astronaut from Earth), and the new film has followed suit by bringing Adam to Oklahoma City. But in "Masters of the Universe" 1987, the decision simply made the action feel small — despite the best efforts of legendary "Star Wars" effects veteran Richard Edlund.

Human teens Courteney Cox (the "Friends" star's first movie role) and Robert Duncan McNeill ("Star Trek: Voyager") did their best to grapple with an extended visit from walking, talking action figures, but you'd never know this was a He-Man movie if people didn't keep saying his name.

When Eternia did get a look in, it exposed the film's financial limitations, as over-investment and a series of expensive flops started to catch up with Golan and Globus. Goddard had wanted to shoot exteriors in Iceland to capture a more otherworldly vibe but had to make do with a few days at Vasquez Rocks (a location near Los Angeles that frequently doubled for alien worlds in "Star Trek") towards the end of production.

Money was so tight that, on the final scheduled day of the shoot, the plug was pulled as soon as the clock struck midnight, before Goddard had all the coverage he wanted. The director later admitted that he made a deal to stump up $50,000 of his own money (a sum matched by Cannon) to fund one last day of shooting on He-Man and Skeletor's climactic battle. At least the film would have an ending…

But was it worth it? "Masters of the Universe" made a disappointing $17.3 million at the US box office. It was just the 65th highest-grossing release of 1987, and some way behind infamous stinker "Jaws: The Revenge". It certainly wasn't enough to save Cannon, which had sold off a large chunk of its film library earlier that year in order to stave off bankruptcy. The studio (by then known as Cannon Pictures) would release its final film in 1994.

"The Cannon boys were very charismatic and very ambitious," Lundgren recalled in the documentary "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films".

"They were guys who came to Hollywood to take it over in a quick sort of way, perhaps not playing by all the rules but sometimes that works, and it worked for a while for these guys too. 'Masters' was their big shot, and even though it didn't reach the heights they'd wished for with 'Star Wars' and so forth, I think it's still a decent picture compared to some of the others they made. 'Masters' certainly beats 'Superman IV' in watchability."

"Masters of the Universe" 1987 is available to stream on Prime Video in the US and on Prime Video and ITVX in the UK.

Fans who'd grown up on the original "Star Wars" trilogy were adults when they went through the ordeal of Han, Luke and Leia dying on screen. If tears were shed then, however, spare a thought for the kids who'd queued to watch "Transformers: The Movie" back in 1986, only to see many of their heroes expiring in the cartoon spin-off's opening act.

If you can have a bloodbath of sentient machines, this was it, as robots in disguise met their maker at an alarming rate. Ironhide? Dead. Ratchet? No more. Starscream? Pushing up mechanical daisies. Not even the iconic Optimus Prime was spared, as the noble leader of the Autobots met a brutal end at the hands of his nemesis, Decepticon leader Megatron.

This may seem like a recipe for traumatizing the film's target audience — and for many of "Transformers: The Movie"'s young viewers, it was a genuinely disturbing experience. But toy manufacturer Hasbro had ulterior motives for killing their darlings.

Like "Masters of the Universe" (and many other '80s cartoons before and after), the popular "Transformers" TV show was a thinly veiled commercial for one of the hottest toylines on the planet. But, the theory went, the kids who'd been watching since the series debuted in 1984 would now be familiar/bored with the original line-up, and already have the relevant robots in disguise in their toyboxes. By instigating an on-screen cull, Hasbro believed they'd be able to make way for new characters, and keep their young fans coming back for more.

"They created the story using characters that could best be merchandised for the movie," director Nelson Shin (who, in a previous life, had helped to animate the lightsabers in the original "Star Wars") told SFX magazine in 2011. "Only with that consideration could I have freedom to change the storyline. What I tried to focus on was animation-izing the story. For example, when Optimus Prime died, I changed his color from red and blue into gray in order to show that the spirit was gone from his body."

Although screenwriter Ron Friedman was sceptical — "I told Hasbro and their lieutenants they would have to bring him back, but they said no and had 'great things planned'," he recalled to Todd Matthy.com — many of the production team had little idea of the emotional carnage they were about to unleash.

"We didn't know that [Optimus Prime] was an icon," story consultant Flint Dille admitted in an interview on the "Transformers: The Movie" DVD. "It was a toy show. We just thought we were killing off the old product line to replace it with new products.

"Kids were crying in the theaters," he continued. "We heard about people leaving the movie. We were getting a lot of nasty notes about it. There was some kid who locked himself in his bedroom for two weeks."

Forty years on from its original release, a movie with such a high death count looks like a misguided brand extension for a popular Saturday morning cartoon — especially as the TV incarnation hadn't killed anyone across its two seasons to date. But for all its flaws, "Transformers: The Movie"'s storytelling was arguably bolder than any other Hollywood animation of the era.

It was also an impressive technical feat. Although the visuals are a visible step-up from the TV version, Shin (who'd been supervising producer on the cartoon from day one) and his team had to work to extremely tight deadlines to meet the film's release date:

"Time constraints and the sheer amount of work needed were the two biggest challenges, since everything had to be hand-drawn by people!"

The film is set in 2005, some 20 years on from the original series. The Decepticons have taken control of the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron, while human Autobot chum Spike Witwicky (a kid in the TV show) is now grown up with a son of his own. When the villains attack the Autobots' base on Earth, Optimus Prime is fatally wounded, with Megatron also at death's door.

A moment where he pleads, "Don't leave me, Soundwave!" to his loyal cassette player lieutenant is unintentionally hilarious, though still can't compete with a later sequence in which the surviving Autobots dance for joy with some new allies — tonally this movie is all over the place.

Having been cast adrift by the duplicitous Starscream, Megatron runs into a planet-sized robot in disguise named Unicron, who has a similar world-chomping MO as Marvel's Galactus. He wants to get his hands on the Autobots' Matrix of Leadership (the only thing in the universe that can kill him), so he transforms a reluctant Megatron into the souped-up Galvatron, and sends him out to hunt for the McGuffin.

It makes for a madcap 85 minutes as two factions of mostly unfamiliar faces vie to come out on top. The story is mostly told via the medium of fast-paced laser battles, alongside encounters with the surprising number of robotic lifeforms who populate the galaxy. Among them are a five-faced being with a penchant for feeding its fellow machines to mechanical sharks, and some scrapyard dwellers whose conversation is based on snippets from TV ads.

The "Junkions"' leader, Wreck-Gar, is voiced by Monty Python's Eric Idle, just one of the numerous star names whose presence would have meant little, if anything, to the film's young audience back in 1986. Megatron's Galvatron upgrade brought with it the dulcet tones of "Star Trek"'s Leonard Nimoy, reckless Autobot up-and-comer Hot Rod was voiced by "The Breakfast Club"'s Judd Nelson, and Robert Stack (whom readers of a certain vintage will recognize from "Airplane!") was Optimus Prime's ultra-serious number two, Ultra Magnus.

The biggest name of all was a bona fide Hollywood legend, as Orson Welles delivered his final performance as Unicron. Of the "Citizen Kane" auteur, Shin said, "He was co-operative and professional, and I liked working with him," though Welles was apparently a little less convinced.

"You know what I did this morning?" he reportedly complained to a friend. "I played the voice of a toy… I menace somebody called something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy whoever-it-is is thwarted, and I tear myself apart on the screen."

The filmmakers also spent more of their reported $6 million budget than they probably should have on a soundtrack powered by '80s hair metal and power ballads — Stan Bush's "The Touch", originally written for Sylvester Stallone vehicle "Cobra", went on to have a second life when the fictional Dirk Diggler "covered" the song in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Boogie Nights".

In hindsight, few of the creative decisions above were conducive to winning over a fanbase who'd have been happy with an extended episode of the TV show. "Transformers: The Movie" subsequently struggled to make back its budget at the box office, an also-ran in a packed summer that also included "Aliens", "Flight of the Navigator" and "Short Circuit".

It's since gone on to pick up a cult following, but still feels like one for completists — ask a casual fan to name a Transformer, and they're going to say Optimus Prime, Bumblebee or Megatron ahead of movie debutants Kup, Arcee (belatedly the first female Autobot) or Rodimus Prime.

Perhaps inevitably, Optimus Prime didn't stay dead for long, and made his inevitable comeback in the next season of the TV show. The good/bad thing about living in a modern pop culture universe is that death doesn't have to be the end.

"Transformers: The Movie" returns to theaters with a 40th anniversary re-release on September 17. It's also available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime Video.

Solar observation can be tricky or underwhelming when trying to observe with handheld methods such as using solar eclipse glasses and solar binoculars. Hunting for the sun with binoculars can be tricky due to the essential ISO 12312-2 rated solar filters on the glass blocking all vision except for the solar disk itself. This is where a smart telescope like the entire Unistellar range can help; it automatically finds and tracks the solar disk from a few presses on your smartphone.

Need a smart telescope? Skip ahead to pick from our list of recommendations to suit all budgets.

All you need is to attach the correct Unistellar solar filter for your model, click Go-to on the Sun and the telescope will slew to the solar disk. If connected to a tablet or larger screen, you can get a much bigger image of the sun to share with groups and family. This also allows you to watch the observation from a shaded spot and get comfortable without needing to stay out under the beating sun.

Smart telescopes not only find and track the solar disk but they can image it too. Using built-in image focusing, stacking and processing, the telescope delivers a sharper image within seconds and reveals solar details like sunpots on the surface. If you don't want to miss getting a shot of the next solar eclipse, you can use the solar observation mode to capture the sun at all stages of the eclipse from your smart telescope. At the time of writing, the next total solar eclipse is coming on Aug. 12, 2026 and will be mainly visible in Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain. Partial eclipses will be visible in some other European countries, parts of Canada and New York City.

What to do: A generalist step-by-step for most smart telescopes

• 1. Turn your smart telescope on
• 2. Link the smart telescope to a smartphone or tablet
• 3. Install the solar filter if the model requires a separate attachment
• 4. Select the sun on the app and wait for the location
• 5. Focus the image if needed and then use enhanced vision for more detail

What do you need?

For solar observation with a smart telescope, the first thing you will need is a smart telescope. While I'm going over how to use a Unistellar eVscope 2 for solar imaging and observation, most of the other smart telescope brands have models that are capable of this too, like the Dwarflab Dwarf Mini 3 and Vaonis Vespera II. If you are used to using a traditional telescope, bear in mind that you will need a smart device to operate the smart telescope and observe your targets. Most smart telescopes come with a tripod, so you shouldn't have to worry about getting one extra but it is an essential piece of equipment.

Next, you need a solar filter for your telescope. This is to protect the image sensors in the body of the telescope and drastically reduce the amount of light entering the aperture, so that you don't get a highly overexposed image. Many brands sell these solar filters separately and in the case of Unistellar, you have to make sure you get the right one for your model. There is a solar filter for their Odyssey range and then another filter for their pro range, which features the eQuinox 2 and eVscope 2 models.

Finally, you will also need access to somewhere with a good view of the sun, so a park, garden or open space is ideal. Solar imaging is best done in mid-to-late morning before the sun has heated up our atmosphere, which causes disturbance in the image. This is especially important if you are looking to get crisp shots of sunspots.

Observing and imaging the sun

Make sure your tripod is level, with your smart telescope properly attached, then turn it on and remove the dust cap. Open your preferred app and add your device by following the on-screen instructions.

Next, you should inspect your solar filter for any tears or holes, as any exposure to the sun without the filter can permanently damage the sensor. Installation is easy as you just clip the filter onto the end of your smart telescope.

After the device is connected, go to the list of sky targets in your app and it will allow you to browse or search for the sun. Click on it to bring up the go-to functions and if you are interested, more astronomical information about your chosen target.

Clicking on go-to for the sun brings up a series of slides to guide you through how to safely observe the sun with your device. The app also recommends positioning your telescope mount in the direction of the sun with the motor on your right to avoid any issues or delays in slewing.

After pressing go, the smart telescope should move and slew towards the sun. It can take a little while but it is rather exciting as you see the edges of the solar disk flash on the screen as the telescope gets closer and centers the image.

For smart telescopes with manual focusing, you will need to make sure that your image is in focus. Now on a bright sunny day, this can be tricky to see on a smart device screen but it is essential to getting a sharp image of sunspots. Using the wheel at the bottom of the eQuinox 2, I gradually adjusted the focus in small increments to allow for live image delay on my tablet. I used the sunspots as a guide for my focus, but it was still difficult because they don't become crystal clear during focusing, they just get slightly more defined and darker.

The real detail on the surface comes after you click enhanced vision mode or equivalent on the app, which starts live stacking of exposures of a few milliseconds and reveals a much more textured view of the solar surface. The sunspots get much sharper edges and you are able to see both the umbra and penumbra on some of them. In my imaging session, I got an image displaying the larger active regions of 4498, 4496 and 4492 as well as some smaller regions.

Observing an eclipse with your smart telescope

You should prepare well in advance if you are planning to observe a solar eclipse and test out the kit there before the big day. You don't want to be learning how to use your device on the day of the eclipse. Practice setting it up for solar observation a good few times before the day of the eclipse.

Using one of the best stargazing apps or the official Unistellar eclipse page, you can find out where the eclipse will be visible from and the time of maximum coverage in that location, so you can plan accordingly. The Aug. 12, 2026 total solar eclipse is just before sunset will be very low on the horizon, so you would need to find somewhere with a good view of the sunset and, ideally, do a practice run a week before. Setting up a few hours before the actual eclipse is necessary to avoid any last-minute disruptions and to get your telescope trained on the sun before the lunar disk starts to eclipse it. This is assuming that the skies are completely clear and free of clouds, but this is definitely something you should check before hauling your kit to a remote location. I use the Met Office Cloud cover map for the UK but other sites offer US and international coverage such as and Ventusky, SAT24 and Astrospheric.

Our top smart telescope recommendations to suit all budgets

There are some things you can always rely on in "Star Trek". Vulcans are rarely great company at parties, for example, and you can be approximately 93% certain that the alien you're about to meet will be more-or-less human in form — give or take a few adornments around the forehead area.

And, just as most holodeck adventures turn out to be bad for the blood pressure, going on vacation is never as restful or relaxing as it's supposed to be. In fact, most starship crews would be better off saving the "out of office" for another day.

SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "HUMAN BEST FRIEND" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

That said, it's entirely understandable that the members of the Enterprise's Alpha Shift (aka the usual bridge crew) would want to take a break. They've been working non-stop for months, are on their way to mediate some potentially stressful peace negotiations, and — in the meantime — the mostly unseen members of Beta and Gamma Shifts have managed to sneak in some R&R of their own. But a quick trip through Starfleet history would tell them Pike and co's communal jolly in "Human Best Friend" (the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds" season 4) was doomed from the moment their shuttlecraft touched down.

Even James T Kirk and the Original Series gang take a brief sojourn away from their famous five-year mission. In aptly named season 1 episode "Shore Leave", the crew beam down to a theme park planet that was channelling "Westworld" several years before the 1973 movie unleashed a gunslinging android named Yul Brynner.

This seemingly idyllic vacation world is home to sophisticated tech that can read visitors' minds, and manufactures robots to manifest their thoughts in live-action. Some of these recreations are relatively harmless — Wonderland alumni Alice and the White Rabbit were, of course, no strangers to the '60s counter-culture — but Kirk somehow ends up face-to-face with a former school bully, while Dr McCoy winds up dead, Jim, on the end of a knight's lance. The ship's physician is subsequently resurrected by the park's in-house Caretaker, but it's not the sort of experience that earns five-star ratings on TripAdvisor.

Even so, the Enterprise gives the Omicron Delta region's hottest tourist destination another shot in Animated Series episode "Once Upon a Planet". But, following the kindly Caretaker's demise, the park is now under new management, in the form of a master computer that's become so resentful of its fleshy overlords that it's decided to rebel, kidnapping crew members, unleashing monsters from the darkest corners of their minds, and hatching a scheme to hijack the Enterprise — hardly a recipe for repeat business.

By the time the "Next Generation" era rolls around, Risa (a purpose-built "pleasure planet" with an artificially idyllic climate) has become the only place for vacationing Starfleet types to be seen.

When the famously workaholic Jean-Luc Picard bows to crew pressure in "Captain's Holiday" and agrees to spend a few days buried in a book by the pool, he instead finds himself embroiled in an Indiana Jones-esque quest to recover a powerful artefact from the future. It's not a bad experience, per se — numerous romantic sparks sizzle between Picard and professional relic hunter Vash — but it doesn't deliver on the R&R brief.

In "Deep Space Nine" episode "Let He Who is Without Sin…", meanwhile, the popular view of paradise proves too much for taciturn security guy Worf when girlfriend (and future wife) Jadzia Dax drags him to Risa.

Famously "not a merry man", he refuses to wear his civvies and sabotages the planet's weather systems, proving he's the kind of grump who'll think nothing about ruining the fun for everyone else. Some people really are only happy when it rains…

(The crew of the USS Voyager are presumably relieved that, being trapped in the Delta Quadrant, they have an excuse for giving the vastly overrated Risa a miss.)

That said, steering clear of pleasure planets is no guarantee of a happy vacation experience. When Picard decides to go back to the family vineyard to recover from his Borg assimilation ordeal in "Family", he spends most of the time butting heads with his stubborn brother, Robert — sometimes you just yearn for the simplicity of life in an emotionless cyborg collective. And Benjamin Sisko's own attempt at a family excursion with son Jake in "DS9"'s "Explorers" also proves to be far from peaceful, when the vintage lightship he's built from ancient Bajoran instructions warps them into uncharted waters and a run-in with the Cardassians.

So Pike and his crew should have known better when they embarked on shore leave of their own. Indeed, if anyone had bothered to read the microprint within the fine print — as highlighted by the Ceznar Grand's maître d' (played by "The Kids in the Hall" and "A Bug's Life" star Dave Foley) — they'd have been more prepared for the thumping headaches and memory gaps that come as standard when you're hanging out on a planet with a naturally intoxicating atmosphere.

Cue "The Hangover"-style hijinks as Ortegas and Scotty try to recall the night before via an extended game of "hunt the shuttlecraft", Nurse Chapel reveals a secret passion for bingo, and Number One karaokes her way through a succession of Klingon power ballads (aka the best kind).

They'll all be relieved to know that, in "Star Trek", whatever happens on shore leave tends to stay on shore leave — even questionable facial tattoos that, without futuristic Federation medical tech, Pike might otherwise have come to regret.

But crucially, we will always know what went down when Alpha Shift let their hair down. And at least Kirk and Spock had an excuse to enjoy the hugs and deep-and-meaningfuls we know they've always wanted.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

While Hardspace: Shipbreaker does an excellent job of capturing the dystopian perils of unchecked hypercapitalism, the real fun in this space game comes from carving up massive capital ships with space lasers and explosives.

Floating in zero gravity, players slice derelict spacecraft into salvageable chunks, while also contending with unruly physics, pressure, and profit margins. It's a compelling fantasy: orbital blue-collar labor, where yesterday's spacecraft become tomorrow's raw materials.

As satisfying as the simulation is, the real-world challenge of space debris removal is both more constrained and more urgent.

Christian Steimle is the Project Manager of the European Space Agency's (ESA) ClearSpace-1 mission, the first ever aimed at removing a piece of debris (in this case, a satellite called PROBA-1) from low-Earth orbit.

We spoke to him to get a sense of how actual space junk removal will happen in the future, and how it stacks up to the representations we see in sci-fi games like Shipbreaker.

The fantasy of orbital demolition

Games like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, ΔV: Rings of Saturn, and other space cleanup simulators tend to emphasize three core ideas: that debris can be dismantled piece by piece, that tools can safely cut or break apart structures in orbit, and that salvage is economically driven and scalable.

While they may be necessary assumptions to make for engaging gameplay, they diverge pretty significantly from current realities.

The main issue is fragmentation. Breaking apart a defunct satellite, even under the most carefully controlled and monitored conditions, risks generating thousands of high-velocity fragments. Some of those generated would be too small to feasibly track, yet large enough to destroy operational spacecraft, satellites, or stations. This is the nightmare scenario behind the Kessler syndrome, a cascading chain of collisions that could render entire orbital pathways unusable.

As Christian Steimle, Project Manager for the European Space Agency's ClearSpace-1 mission, explains, "The common agreement between all of these missions is that objects to be removed shall not be broken up or damaged… especially to avoid creating smaller debris which is more difficult to track."

That means that the core mechanic of many space salvage games (cutting or exploding things into smaller bits) is precisely what real missions are designed to avoid.

How real debris removal works

ClearSpace-1 takes a more holistic approach. Instead of dismantling debris, the mission aims to capture PROBA-1 with as little initial damage as possible, then guide it to destruction in Earth's atmosphere.

"ClearSpace-1 will be launched into a position slightly below PROBA-1 by a dedicated launch," Steimle says. "After successful commissioning, the ClearSpace-1 servicer will inspect PROBA-1 in a number of fly-around manoeuvres."

These inspection passes are not just reconnaissance. They validate visual navigation systems and analyze how the target object is tumbling so the capture vehicle can respond appropriately.

The capture itself is a delicate operation. "The ClearSpace-developed capture system will encompass the client satellite, first forming a cage around PROBA-1, then closing the cage carefully to avoid damaging the client," Steimle explains.

Once secured, the combined spacecraft must be stabilized before any orbital change. Only then can the system lower its orbit, ensuring both objects burn up safely during re-entry. "ClearSpace-1 is designed to demise during re-entry, ensuring on-ground safety and disposal at the same time."

The process more closely resembles a surgical extraction of potentially hazardous material than scrapyard demolition.

What games get right

Despite their liberties, space cleanup games do hit the mark in a number of areas. One is the importance of orbital mechanics. Many games emphasize inertia, momentum, and the difficulty of stopping or redirecting large masses. Real active debris removal (ADR) missions face similar constraints, where even small velocity mismatches can lead to mission failure or damage to the capture vehicle or target.

The danger of uncontrolled motion is also well represented. Tumbling objects are among the hardest targets in space operations. Synchronizing with them requires precise, multi-axis propulsion and control systems. As Steimle notes, future vehicles must "synchronise [their] motion with a potentially tumbling space object and apply the proper control to detumble." One of the main challenges in games like Shipbreaker is avoiding being clobbered by moving debris, especially after you've detonated some explosives, or matching the speed of a rotating component long enough to cut it apart.

Third, specialization is key. Your toolkit and how you use it in games like Shipbreaker is key, and real missions rely on highly tailored capture systems. Each target may require a different approach, from robotic arms to nets, harpoons, or enclosure systems like ClearSpace's.

Where the simulations fall short

The biggest gap between games and reality isn't the tech, it's risk tolerance.

In games, mistakes are recoverable. In orbit, a single error can generate long-lived debris fields traveling at roughly 7–8 kilometers per second, turning tiny fragments into deadly kinetic weapons.

Games also tend to assume an eventual salvage economy, where materials are recovered and reused in space. While in-orbit manufacturing and recycling are active areas of research, current debris removal efforts aren't about profit. They're about mitigation.

"The overarching requirement is to preserve the space environment around the Earth for use by future generations," Steimle says. "Removing large objects before first collisions occur is key."

There are also orbital regime differences that games rarely address. In geostationary orbit (GEO), for instance, debris is not deorbited but moved to a higher "graveyard orbit" due to the prohibitive energy cost of re-entry. This kind of orbital zoning has no real analogue in most gameplay systems.

The future of orbital cleanup

Looking ahead, the field of in-orbit servicing and debris removal is diversifying rapidly. Steimle says agencies and private companies across Europe, the United States and Japan are developing competing capture technologies and mission architectures.

Low-Earth orbit operations will likely favor agile, highly maneuverable vehicles capable of complex rendezvous and stabilization tasks. GEO missions, by contrast, will involve larger, less dynamic spacecraft performing long-duration servicing and relocation.

What remains consistent is the guiding principle: do no harm to the orbital environment. There's little room for the improvisational cutting and explosive decompression you see in most space salvage games. Instead, the future of orbital cleanup will depend on autonomy, precision guidance, and tightly controlled interactions with fragile, often unpredictable objects.

Fiction vs. necessity

Perhaps tellingly, most space cleanup games focus on the economy of salvage. You're tasked with generating profit, or feeding it into a progression system to purchase new tools or more efficient methods of destruction. In reality, the immediate challenge is more conservative and more urgent: preventing a runaway cascade of collisions that could close off access to space altogether.

If anything, the contrast highlights just how precarious Earth's orbital environment has become. The fantasy is not that we can break things apart in space; it's that we can continue to use space safely without cleaning up the vast constellations of trash we've already left behind.

As evidenced by Paramount's live-action "Transformers" movies and the recent "Masters of the Universe" film released by Amazon MGM Studios, nostalgic toy lines can serve as fertile grounds for a variety of engaging Hollywood projects leaning into vintage intellectual properties.

With Mattel ramping up their own film production efforts and toy-to-screen endeavors after enormous success with "The Barbie Movie" and hi-octane plans for Hot Wheels movies rolling into theaters, the toys-to-silver screen craze shows no sign of slowing down. What could be next? We think there's a perfect choice hiding in the Mattel goldmine that might just become the next big thing.

We're of course talking about Major Matt Mason, that Plastisol astronaut action figure and kids' playset product line from the 1960s, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.

Born during the heat of America's space race with NASA's Apollo program aiming for the lunar landing by the end of the decade, Mattel's design masterminds found inspiration in visionary space concept artists' wild dreams of futuristic moon bases, lunar buggies, and space vehicles.

Major Matt Mason was one of the first serious space toys to exist in the marketplace, first hitting the shelves of toy shops and department stores across the country in 1966.

Capitalizing on the daily news stories of Gemini missions and Apollo moon-walking dreams, this spacefaring fellow and his astronaut pals let kids everywhere imagine their own colorful cosmic adventures.

Back in 2019, Variety reported that Tom Hanks was attached to star in a Major Matt Mason live-action film being set up at Paramount Pictures with Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind," "The Da Vinci Code") hired to write the screenplay.

Hanks is an enthusiastic advocate of NASA history after starring in "Apollo 13" and co-executive producing the Emmy Award-winning HBO docuseries "From The Earth To The Moon" alongside "Band of Brothers" super producer Graham Yost. Despite the heavy hitters attached, momentum has since stalled on the sci-fi project and it's sadly been shelved for the immediate future.

Matt Mason's line-up of bendy 6-inch astronaut action figures was developed as a competitor to Hasbro's 12-inch G.I. Joe toys that ruled the marketplace in the mid-60s.

Along with Matt's fellow rubberized space buddies — available in a variety of color-accented spacesuits — Mattel also offered a complete universe to create your own space outpost and ramped lunar headquarters, alongside accessory vehicles, moon gear, expansive playsets, and Matt's "allies from the stars": A purple-and-pink creature called Scorpio, and a green-skinned friendly Jovian alien called Callisto.

With the Vietnam War raging in Southeast Asia and televised on the nightly news, Major Matt Mason blasted into Sears and JCPenney catalogs when soldier action figures were losing their appeal.

He wasn't a gun-toting commando but a heroic explorer "ready and able to cope with any space task or fierce danger." In addition to the action figures and peripheral playsets, Matt Mason became a pop culture phenomenon with his own board game, coloring books, lunch boxes, and puzzles.

Named after Mattel's co-founder Harold "Matt" Matson, the Matt Mason line carried a certain air of authenticity as many of its designers happened to be former aerospace engineers. Some of the toys' far-out designs were taken straight out of NASA conceptual art and prototypes seen by millions in the pages of Popular Mechanics, Life, and National Geographic magazines.

But, the general public is difficult to please for any extended period of time and following the triumphant Apollo 11 moon landing in July of 1969, space toys faded in interest. Just one year later, Major Matt Mason was no more, destined only to be coveted decades down the line as valuable collectors items .

As NASA ramps up their Artemis program with 2027's Artemis 3 mission, before an Artemis 4 moon landing set for 2028, and the space agency doubling down on plans for a recently announced permanent lunar base, can there be any better time for Hollywood moguls to resurrect this cool project for a fantastic, retro-styled Major Matt Mason movie or TV series?

It's certainly a better idea than a Matchbox movie.

Despite Han Solo's protestations to the contrary, travelling faster than light on screen is usually just as straightforward as dusting crops. So whether you're in "Star Wars", "Star Trek" or "Battlestar Galactica", jumping to hyperspace, going to warp or spooling up the FTL really is as simple as popping out to the store.

In fact, Albert Einstein's time-dilating general theory of relativity tends to be little more than an afterthought, with films highlighting the inconveniences of interstellar travel definitely in the minority. For this reason, the very existence of "Flight of the Navigator" is even more improbable than its premise.

The Disney family movie — which celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend — sends an ordinary kid on an unlikely journey that's part "Interstellar", part "Back to the Future".

On July 4, 1978, 12-year-old David Scott Freeman is briefly knocked unconscious after he falls into a ditch near his Florida home. When he wakes up — seemingly moments later — he finds strangers living in his house, and gradually comes to realize that eight years have passed for everybody else. In the meantime, David has been declared dead, his little brother is now his big brother, and — perhaps weirdest of all — music videos are now a very big thing on MTV.

He doesn't know it yet, but much like Matthew McConaughey's Cooper in "Interstellar", David has been caught in the crosshairs of relativity. It turns out that he's unwittingly taken a ride in a Trimaxion drone ship, making the round trip to the planet Phaelon (some 560 light years away) in a mere 4.4 solar hours.

NASA scientists explain away the eight-year time slip as a consequence of "light speed theory", the idea that "time slows down as you approach the speed of light". And if that sounds like a big concept for "Flight of the Navigator"'s target audience to grasp, the filmmakers weren't particularly worried.

"I think kids can understand it," director Randal Kleiser said back in 2020. "'Back to the Future' was sort of like that, and kids are smarter than most people think. You just tell them that you’re going at the speed of light and time slows down, and they get it."

Kleiser was best known for the musical smash hit "Grease", the highest-grossing movie of 1978, when he got the "Flight of the Navigator" gig. When he came on board, the film's paymasters were already disagreeing about the direction they wanted to take Mark H Baker's story.

Disney, unsurprisingly, were shooting for a family movie "with dancing little animals", while their production partners at Producers Sales Organization (PSO) were looking for something a little edgier. "They wanted to have the army come in and shoot down the spaceship," Kleiser recalled.

Eventually, a gun-free compromise was found, though the opening act of the movie would remain surprisingly bleak and emotionally complex. Now living in 1986, David has to come to terms with his new reality as a human guinea pig in a world where his family looks familiar, but he no longer really knows them. Also, how did his brain come to be filled with weird alien languages and complex star maps?

The role was always going to ask a lot of its actor, and Kleiser ultimately selected a young Vancouver native named Joey Cramer. Cramer beat hundreds of other kids to the role, including future Hollywood stars Chris O'Donnell and Joaquin Phoenix, who appeared in "Space Camp" the same year.

"Joey was so easy to get to cry," Kleiser said of his casting decision. "For him to be able to do it in the audition — and be also so personable and likeable — was the thing that put him over the top."

Cramer's main co-star would prove even more difficult to find, however, seeing as faster-than-light spacecraft from distant worlds called Phaelon don't — as far as we know — exist.

In the second half of "Flight of the Navigator", David makes a credibility-stretching escape from a top-secret NASA facility — seriously, where did they find such a negligent bunch of security guards? — to hitch a ride on board the aforementioned Trimaxion ship.

Nicknamed Max and voiced by Pee-wee Herman star Paul Reubens (credited here as Paul Mall), the spacecraft reveals that David is one of several alien species taken to Phaelon for study; we also meet a menagerie of puppets on board, including a hungry little guy who eats David's hat, and the pocket-sized, implausibly cute Puckmaren.

Max would usually return the test subjects back to the time and place he found them, but says that David's human physiology is too fragile to make the journey back to 1978. In the meantime, he also needs to access the maps he uploaded to the human kid's brain, seeing as a collision with some electricity pylons has damaged his navigational databanks. It's here that the movie evolves into childhood wish-fulfilment fantasy, as David and the fast-learning AI become BFFs on the run from the authorities.

The spaceship exterior, meanwhile, is arguably the most groundbreaking thing about the film, a mirrored, shapeshifting update of the classic flying saucer design popularized by "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

Kleiser persisted with that shiny surface, despite the advice of a former University of Southern California classmate (a certain George Lucas) who told him that all those reflective surfaces would make the ship "more trouble than it's worth". (By the time "The Phantom Menace" was released 13 years later, Lucas had clearly changed his mind, so maybe "Flight of the Navigator" had a tiny bit of influence on a galaxy far, far away.)

"I wanted to find something different that hadn’t been done before," Kleiser explained. "I was driving down the freeway behind a big silver truck, and I could see my car reflected behind it. And I thought, 'Wow, I've never seen a spaceship like that.' It took a while till we figured out how to do it!"

After several unsuccessful experiments involving silver paint and mylar glued to paper plates, salvation came courtesy of Kleiser's brother Jeff, who'd worked on the VFX for "Tron" and was a pioneer in the nascent field of computer graphics. And while the liquid metal effects aren't quite as, ahem, polished as James Cameron's genre-defining efforts in 1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day", "Flight of the Navigator" deserves to be mentioned in the same breath.

Despite having an innovative spaceship and a considerably happier ending than "Interstellar" (spoiler: David does eventually make it home), "Flight of the Navigator" struggled at the box office. It eventually found its audience on home video, however, and deservedly so, seeing as it's an inventive, witty, and surprisingly sophisticated family movie that refuses to talk down to its audience.

"When it first came out, I think maybe it just wasn’t marketed properly," said Kleiser, "but the fact that it’s become kind of a cult classic is nice. I run into people all the time who say that it's their favourite movie. [Lots of them] really like the fact that it explored how time travel could change a sibling relationship."

As we said, "Flight of the Navigator" really is "Back to the Future" and "Interstellar" rolled into one.

'Flight of the Navigator' is available to stream on Disney+ in the US and Prime Video in the UK. 'Life After the Navigator', a documentary about the film, is also available on Prime Video in the UK.

"Doctor Who" may have a reputation for making kids hide behind the sofa, and the "Alien" franchise famously sold itself on the futility of screaming in outer space, but "Star Trek"'s traditional "story of the week" format has also provided numerous opportunities to bring sci-fi scares to starship corridors.

But few of the franchise's horror outings have been quite as overt as "The Griffin Incident", the latest episode of "Strange New Worlds". In it, Spock (Ethan Peck), La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) and James T Kirk (Paul Wesley) are making their way back from the Future Federation Leaders Retreat (sounds like a blast) when they receive a mysterious signal in uncharted space.

SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "THE GRIFFIN INCIDENT" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

It turns out the communication originated from the USS Griffin, a starship that went missing with 300 souls on board nine years earlier, so — being the conscientious Starfleet officers they are — the trio beam aboard to investigate. It's a decision they quickly come to regret, as they realize they've stumbled on a haunted house floating through the darkness…

This unashamed ghost story soon becomes a chilling mix of psychological terror and body horror, as Kirk hears the cries of his young son David, Spock unexpectedly comes face-to-face with his spurned fiancée, T'Pring, and La'an becomes closely acquainted with the Griffin's ghostly chief security officer, Rose Harper (Sorika Wolf).

As in "Event Horizon" (originally pitched as "'The Shining' in space"), the ship is a malevolent force preying on its victims' insecurities: for Kirk, it's the fear of being an absent father; for Spock, it's the conflict between his human and Vulcan heritage; and for La'an it's the growing fear that her previously latent Noonien-Singh DNA might be stirring something dark within her.

In the tradition of many of "Star Trek"'s scariest missions, "The Griffin Incident" puts a sci-fi spin on classic tropes. Indeed, as far back as "The Man Trap" (the very first Original Series episode aired), the franchise has been transporting recognizable genre conventions light years beyond the confines of planet Earth.

"The Man Trap" is essentially a vampire story, albeit with a "monster" that feasts on salt rather than blood. Meanwhile, "The Enemy Within" (which materialized a few weeks later) is a 23rd-century take on "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", in which a transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into a good and bad version of himself — two William Shatners for the price of one.

There have also been several captain's log entries concerning close encounters of the zombie kind, from the re-animated corpses of "Strange New Worlds"' "Shuttle to Kenfori", to the Borg in "Star Trek: First Contact" — despite their quest for technologically enhanced perfection, the movie's cyborg hordes wouldn't look out of place in "The Walking Dead".

And the horror callbacks don't end there. The parasites who infiltrate the upper echelons of Starfleet in "The Next Generation"'s "Conspiracy" are "The Wrath of Khan"'s Ceti Eels given "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" delusions of grandeur. And "Deep Space Nine"'s own enemy-within episode, "The Adversary", features a shapeshifting Founder hiding in plain sight — think "The Thing", but with less of the ick.

But the franchise's move to streaming has undoubtedly allowed "Trek" to become more extreme than it was in the syndication/network days of the '80s, '90s and '00s. That's not to say "Trek" didn't push the censors' limits back then — the aforementioned "Conspiracy" was heavily edited by the BBC in the UK, who decided a "Scanners"-like exploding head wasn't suitable for teatime viewing.

In the main, however, the horror was more likely to be built on psychological scares than full-on gore — REM sleep deprivation driving everybody mad in "TNG"'s "Night Terrors", for example, or crews becoming alien test subjects in "TNG"'s "Schisms" and "Voyager"'s "The Scientific Method" — the latter storylines could almost have been lifted from "The Twilight Zone". Even the Vidiians, a race of aliens who borrow heavily from the David Cronenberg playbook with their frequent body modifications, are portrayed in a resolutely PG way.

Fast forward to the present, and "Strange New Worlds" has given the Gorn — who famously looked like a guy in a crocodile suit in the Original Series — a new lifecycle, including an "Alien"-style penchant for impregnating humans with their parasitic offspring. An unwanted Gorn infestation subsequently paves the way for Captain Marie Batel to become the Beholder, protecting the galaxy from the horror movie-worthy Vezda.

"The Griffin Incident" is a continuation of this push towards R-rated horror territory, in which T'Pring cuts off the tips of Spock's ears with scissors, and La'an stabs Kirk so enthusiastically you'd think she was auditioning for the next "Scream" movie.

Crucially, however, "Trek"'s latest mission makes a significant departure from most of its horror predecessors in not attempting to provide a quasi-scientific explanation for the Griffin's transformation into the scariest destination in the entire Alpha Quadrant. Instead, Captain Pike delegates the investigation to Division 12, a mysterious branch of Starfleet that specializes in unexplained phenomena.

Expect the descendants of Agents Mulder and Scully to have a field day with this one — assuming, of course, that the truth really is out there.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" debut on Paramount+ on Thursdays.

We didn't exactly go bananas for Tim Burton's odd take on "Planet of the Apes" back in 2001, but now, on the occasion of the sci-fi film’s 25th anniversary, we've had time to reflect on not only the summertime spectacle's notable missteps, but also its unsung merits.

Invading the hallowed grounds of director Franklin Schaffner’s 1968 original "Planet of the Apes" was risky business at best, but 20th Century Fox rolled the dice with their long-gestating $100 million remake and a competent cast that included Mark “Markie Mark” Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Paul Giamatti, David Warner, and the lovely Lisa Marie.

The studio no doubt hoped a modern makeover of one of the most respected science fiction films ever would reignite interest in the franchise and spawn a bunch of sequels similar to what Schaffner’s Charlton Heston-starring classic did.

Instead, "Planet of the Apes" swiftly killed that notion with its poor critical response despite a respectable box office haul of $362 million after it was released to awful reviews on July 27, 2001. That ended any lofty dreams of triumphantly resurrecting Ape mania for another decade, until director Matt Reeves rebooted everything once more in 2011 with "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."

Treading upon sacred cinematic territory was a brash move, one even considered by filmmakers like Peter Jackson, Oliver Stone, Chris Columbus, and James Cameron at one point.

But Tim Burton was anything but timid, and he prematurely plunged into his "Planet of the Apes" project with unbridled enthusiasm. The aftermath was a strange mix of superficial camp and chaotic action that doesn’t really add up to anything of interest, and it remains a curious addition to Burton’s incredible 40-year filmography.

So, let’s peel back the polarizing "Planet of the Apes" to find some of the sweet and sour!

Rick Baker's Fantastic Makeup

Oscar-winning makeup master Rick Baker provided the astonishingly realistic prosthetics for "Planet of the Apes", and the effects are quite convincing. Well, except for Helena Bonham Carter’s Ari chimp character, which often looks like something out of Dr. Seuss's Whoville with her pronounced muzzle and rodent-like appearance (An apt comparison since Baker also did the special makeup effects for "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" the previous year).

That aside, Baker’s practical magic on the movie is fantastic and one of the production’s finest achievements. The man who created the makeup for "King Kong," "An American Werewolf in London," "Michael Jackson’s Thriller," "Harry and the Hendersons," "Men in Black," and "The Wolfman" designed some of the best simian masks ever seen on screen.

Baker’s earlier work on films like "Gorillas in the Mist" and "Mighty Joe Young" made him a natural for the job, and he truly shined here. Charlton Heston even made a cameo appearance as Zaius, a character from the 1968 original.

The Baffling Time-Tripping Plot

The confusing screenplay by Mark Rosenthal, William Broyles Jr and Lawrence Konner was cobbled together at the last minute and was still being rewritten as cameras began rolling.

It’s a soulless retelling of the 1968 version that relies on a few bad one-liners and uninspired performances by a cadre of fine performers, relegated to delivering flat dialogue and clunky exposition amid some cheap-looking soundstage sets.

A miscast Wahlberg plays Captain Leo Davidson, an astronaut scientist marooned on the planet Ashlar where apes are the masters and humans their inferior slaves.

He follows a genetically modified chimpanzee pilot named Pericles into a cosmic storm that engulfed their research station, Oberon, only to be transported to the year 5021, where humans and apes exist in a reversed society caused by the Oberon’s crash thousands of years before his arrival. Those super-smart chimps, gorillas, and orangutans eventually evolved and rebelled against their human masters.

Leo Davidson's time-traveling odyssey goes from 2029 all the way to the 51st century and then back again to his own era, where things have gone totally haywire. The twist ending is infamous. Davidson returns home to Washington, D.C. to find a marble monument of the human-hating warlord General Thade has replaced the iconic Abraham Lincoln statue.

This alternate timeline is a head-scratching "Ape Lincoln" finale that attempts to imitate that famous Statue of Liberty shocker seen in the original Planet of the Apes. It’s a controversial end to Burton’s rushed reimagining and feels forced.

It seems possible that Burton was attempting to be respectful of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel by revealing a modern ape-dominated world in the end, yet at the same time recalling the sensation of that nostalgic beach scene with Lady Liberty in the sand. Whatever he was aiming for, he missed.

Danny Elfman's Magnificent Music

Ah, the sonic magic of Danny Elfman ends our tribute to "Planet of the Apes" as a salute to Burton’s ambitious folly. Elfman and Burton are a melodic combo whose collaboration goes back to 1985’s "Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure" and here Elfman goes for a bombastic sound that utilizes a full range of instrumentals.

His robust, under-appreciated score is composed with droning synthesizer undercurrents, old-fashioned action adventure fanfares, and intense rapid-fire tracks punctuated by brass exclamations and roaring percussion.

It's a more serious piece of musical work that safely avoids the sentimentality and whimsy of earlier scores for Tim Burton projects. This reflects an important evolutionary step for Elfman's maturity as an artist, mirroring some of the movie’s main themes.

"I had been more concerned that the score was going to be more of a traditional, very aggressive Jerry Goldsmith score, which he does so brilliantly, and the fact that it was such an ethereal, otherworldly score, immediately eased all problems I may have had, because I saw that there was not going to be any overlap," Elfman told Soundtrack Magazine.

"I would have been more concerned, if his score was more traditional and aggressive, of what to avoid, so as to not cross over or step on his toes. So it really became very easy once I watched the movie again after 30-something years. The score was such a beautiful, odd, dissonant piece of work. I felt clearly, this is a completely different animal – no pun intended. Having just seen a rough cut of the film, I knew it was going to be a very big, aggressive, muscular, kind of a tribal, driving score."

In summation, anyone attempting to remake the original "Planet of the Apes" was bound to butt up against intense scrutiny and comparison.

Even if Burton’s vision came up far short of what was intended, we still respect the maverick filmmaker for taking on a tough undertaking on the film’s milestone 25th anniversary.

'Planet of the Apes' is available to watch on Hulu in the US, and on Disney+ in the UK.

We all know the cliché: any horror franchise that goes on long enough inevitably goes to space. Critters, Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, Dracula… they've all taken a trip to the stars.

The trope, fair or not, has often overshadowed the fact that science fiction and horror are absolutely perfect bedfellows, with outer space's total isolation, tiny quarters, and oppressive vastness perfectly suited for the horror genre. Horror movies set in space have delivered classics of both genres that have lasted generations and built entire franchises in and of themselves.

Why then, in the middle of a horror film renaissance, has the genre seemingly abandoned outer space? What has become of the space horror movie, and why has Hollywood either stopped producing them entirely or, maybe more accurately, failed to make a good one out of the few they do put out?

Space: The horror frontier

To be clear, science fiction and horror haven’t been on that much of a break overall; it’s just that when the two genres meet, they no longer seem to have any interest in leaving planet Earth.

Instead, the combination either brings the alien threat planetside, à la "The Quiet Place", "Nope", or "No One Will Save You", or makes the horror come from man’s own hand like "Ex Machina" or "M3GAN". Either way, the result is that horror no longer lives in space, with the only truly major space-horror film release this decade being the admittedly excellent "Alien: Romulus", along with some smaller projects like "Europa Report" and "Life".

I was sure there must be more — some hidden classics that I missed — but researching for this article, I was shocked at just how few space horror movies we've had in the past couple of decades. It’s like everyone agreed "Event Horizon" was peak and gave up making horror films in space.

Horror in space has never been a dominant subgenre, but it was once big enough to be considered an entire trope. So it feels especially strange that in the middle of a horror renaissance, as the genre continues to dominate box offices, it is totally left behind. Horror has crawled out of the B-grade shadows and into Oscar contention with films like "Get Out", "Midsommar", and "It Follows", and the box office returns are staggering.

Respected directors are diving into the genre and creating masterpieces, but none of them seem interested in outer space. We are nearly a decade into a horror renaissance that has seen almost every type of horror unpacked, remade, and turned into arthouse, and yet space horror has sat almost entirely dormant. So what gives?

In space, no one can hear you arthouse

Why is this happening then? Where is the arthouse unpacking of "Jason X"? Why didn’t Danny Boyle’s "Sunshine" kick off the horror renaissance a decade earlier? Why did the "Alien" franchise become whatever the hell "Prometheus" was before finally returning to its roots (and then promptly coming down to Earth!)? Where’s our English remake of Aniara from an up-and-coming indie director?

There’s most likely a slew of reasons none of this has happened, but the most likely culprit is that horror has become far more grounded than it used to be. While we still get slashers and jump scares, the renaissance that A24 ushered in has not only brought horror out of the shadows, but also delivered a redefined genre that doesn’t jive as well with spaceships and alien creatures.

That’s not to say it can’t, but this new generation of horror isn’t interested in going off-planet to tell its slow-burning stories of grief and trauma, full of thinly veiled metaphors for real-life issues. “Earth and the present day are scary enough as is” seems to be the argument.

Of course, there’s the other reason. The reason for everything: money.

The other new branch of horror that has come out of this renaissance comes from studios like Blumhouse, which churn out low-budget horror films and rake in huge profits. And that's no knock on budget horror flicks, some of which are truly amazing.

But while space horror can be made on the cheap, it’s definitely not as easy to do. It requires more investment, design, and often sets and special effects than a traditional horror film does. It’s just cheaper and easier to make sci-fi horror that’s set on Earth, and with so many of them becoming massive hits, why bother going to space?

Drag me to space

Given both sci-fi and horror's history of social commentary and cultural unpacking, arthouse horror not going to space — budget restraints aside — seems like a major miss, especially when the very aspects it explores are perfectly built for the isolation, detachment, and fear that space evokes.

Outside of horror, excellent space movies like "Moon" and "The Martian" have explored these themes, but we're missing that spooky, scary edge.

And look, I’m not even saying that space horror has to be arthouse. The trope that horror franchises go to space eventually is actually one I’d like to see more of. Why not jump the shark a bit more with horror franchises? A science fiction version of Saw sounds a hell of a lot more fun than Chris Rock's dreadful spin-off. Sci-fi space "Purge" on a colony ship? Yes, and please. "Evil Dead"’s new anthology style of horror is practically begging to take a trip to space. There’s so much space in space, and these franchises could totally take a trip there.

There is one bright spot, however, for the space-loving horror enthusiast. Video games seem to have taken up the mantle.

Space horror has always flourished in the medium, from AAA classics like "Dead Space" to indie darlings like "Iron Lung" (which itself was transformed into a space horror film!). The subgenre has been going strong for decades, even if film gave up on it. Hell, for nearly a decade, the best output from the "Alien" franchise was "Alien: Isolation", one of the scariest games ever made.

While movies may no longer be playing in the wider universe, at least our video games are taking us there and then scaring us out of our space boots.

In July 2016, "Stranger Things" stormed its way into the pantheon of pop culture greats. Finding the sweet spot of '80s nostalgia, horror, and sci-fi, the Duffer Brothers' series established itself as one of Netflix's flagship shows and a favourite water cooler topic for close to a decade.

Much like "Jurassic Park" encouraged an entire generation to suddenly view paleontology through a new set of eyes, the same can be said about "Stranger Things" and science. Seriously, how many of us discovered the many-worlds theory because of the concept of the Upside Down on the show? Even wormholes are easier to understand now because of Mr Clarke's lessons than whatever the heck happens in "Interstellar" that has Matthew McConaughey bawling like he's been forced to sit through a Jared Leto movie marathon.

Parents and government groups have long highlighted the negative effects of entertainment, but not enough is said about its positive influences, especially the ability to inspire. In fact, it's often underestimated how invaluable a show like "Stranger Things" has been to educators who want to turn around the declining numbers in STEM graduates.

For University of Liverpool physics professor Carsten Welsch, "Star Wars" references were no longer cutting it with his students. However, the "Stranger Things" science allowed him to relate to a younger generation of learners. " It's a really good way to talk about science, which can be quite a challenge, especially with teenagers," Welsch told NPR. "Normally, the moment you mention physics or engineering, they run away."

This is something echoed by Louis Bearson, the director of science, business, and education at the Institute of Physics. Bearson mentioned how some of the devices used on the show and its delicate unpacking of complex topics like quantum physics could widen the appeal of science and physics beyond the explanations in the textbooks.

"One of the issues we have is that physics really needs to be more representative of the community at large," Bearson told The Times. "If we can get a broader base of people interested through things like 'Stranger Things', that's only going to be for the good."

It wasn't only the educators who appreciated the power of "Stranger Things" to connect with others, but also government departments like the U.S. Department of Energy.

The official website used the premise of the Upside Down to explain its own work, especially in terms of its search for other dimensions and how this is done in a real-world setting. While the information was always out there for anybody interested in finding out more, how many people would have read and taken an interest in any of it without the influence of "Stranger Things"?Apart from the natural benefit to educators and government departments wanting to increase the interest in STEM education, "Stranger Things" opened up the doors to something else equally important: intelligent discourse among its fanbase — the kind that's often missing in an online world where trolls walk among us and bring their bad manners from under-the-bridge living.

Reddit and social media forums were flooded with young fans discussing what they watched, the possibilities of where it could go, and even providing explanations to others who might not have understood the scientific concepts. It was encouraging, insightful, and fun, as people learned through interaction and exploration, which to this day is still the best way to learn anything.

In 2017, Olivia Richter, a then-student at the School of Communication and College of Arts and Sciences and writer for The Eagle, wrote a column about how "Stranger Things" served as a modern role model for curiosity.

The author explained how the Hawkins gang expressed "a great thirst for knowledge" and dispelled the notion that being smart or nerdy was something to be ashamed of. "It is encouraging a culture of curiosity and learning in its viewers," Richter wrote. "Much of the science in the show is based in fiction, though it is still highly successful in making science look exciting and fun and creating a model for young people that it is cool to be inquisitive."

Fans demonstrated an example of this ultra-curious attitude after the series finale. Science has always been about hypotheses and proving theories, and this approach was applied to the Conformity Gate theory that spread like wildfire online. Sure, some people might call it a conspiracy theory and looking for something that isn't there, but the fans from around the world rallied to find clues and provide evidence for their unique hypothesis about the show's ending.

They might not have been right in the end — maybe even being deliberately misled by Netflix's marketing — but the fact that they questioned, critiqued, and researched to such an extent is a positive sign that the show's message had an impact. It's also proof that critical thinking isn't dead and intelligent life is still out there.

Say what you want about the final season of "Stranger Things" and whether the ending stuck the landing or not, but there's no disputing the Demogorgon-shaped mark it left on viewers around the globe. More than that, it was a show that provoked curiosity and discovery, as well as encouraging a new generation to find out more about science.

In a world riddled with fake news, false information, endless rage-bait, and sustained pushes for conformity rather than curiosity, we desperately need more neuron-firing programming like this.

All five seasons of "Stranger Things" are on Netflix.

Where does James Cameron's "Aliens" rank among the other Alien movies? That depends on who you ask. Some might say it's the best, while others put it just behind the original (spoiler alert: it's the best). Regardless, there's no denying that this 1986 film shifted gears, moving the franchise from horror to horror-tinged sci-fi action and paving an alternate path for the future.

As Cameron stated in an interview with Lofficier, the plan always was "to do a film that was not as scary... it's scary, but it's not as scary, but more intense, and I like to use the word, exhilarating. Because I think you get exhilarated by the intensity of the kind of action that's in this film."

In terms of story progression, the sequel's shake-up makes complete sense. Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley survived the Xenomorph in "Alien", but now she must conquer her fears and face the grim creature once again. This time, she has allies and firepower on her side, though most of those Colonial Marines turn out to be about as useful as French kissing a beehive.

"Aliens" exploded into a monster hit, both financially and critically, suggesting that Cameron has a Midas touch when it comes to sequels. Famous movie critic Roger Ebert called it "a superb example of filmmaking craft", and it's tough to argue that point. Yet what's amazing to ponder is how "Aliens" nearly fell apart several times before it actually happened.

Despite 1979's "Alien" turning a big profit on paper, Hollywood's accounting practices are more baffling than Palpatine's return in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker".

Somehow, "Alien" was deemed a flop, and 20th Century Fox remained conflicted about a sequel – so much so that it almost sold the rights to the "Rambo" producers of all people (imagine the crossover potential, though, as John Rambo guns down a horde of Xenomorphs while Jerry Goldsmith's iconic score blares in the background).

After much oohing, aahing, and handwringing, the studio relented and selected Cameron to put together a treatment based on the impressive nature of his script for "The Terminator".

In 1983, Cameron only needed three days to put together a 45-page treatment, which can be read here. The nuts and bolts of what would become "Aliens" are mostly present in this document, but Fox turned its nose up at the filmmaker's proposal. The studio certainly wasn't escaping allegations that it looked for more reasons not to do the movie than to proceed.

What "Aliens" required was a champion from within – somebody to convince the studio execs that they were leaving money on the table by ignoring this franchise. This came with the hiring of producer Larry Gordon, who pushed for the sequel in the four walls of the boardroom.

After the success of "The Terminator", Cameron returned to the fray as writer-director, while his then-girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife Gail Anne Hurd boarded the film as a producer.

With the script submitted and Cameron cocked, locked, and ready to shoot in 1985, a new problem arose: budget. Cameron's camp argued that "Aliens" could be done for $15.5 million, but Fox's bean counters feared it would be closer to $35 million, and nobody considered the poor billionaires at stake.

Fox offered $12 million. "We walked out and said, 'Thanks, we'll do something else,'" Cameron told the Los Angeles Times.

Behind the scenes, Gordon managed to convince his bosses to fork out the extra money for the production. With that hurdle successfully navigated, Cameron was back in the driver's seat and ready to head off to LV-426.

Next though, Fox decided to suggest the unthinkable at the time: "Aliens" without Sigourney Weaver. It's a decision that reeks of a straight-to-video sequel, the kind of thing you'd expect to be fronted by a Kevin Sorbo type.

Cameron, on the other hand, was under the impression that Weaver had been contractually locked in for a sequel, but that wasn't the case at all. Now it was up to Cameron to convince Weaver to do the film. He met with Weaver, and the meeting seemed positive enough, but her agents wanted a big payday for her – and rightfully so. Fox refused, and so Cameron and Hurd quit… again; they weren't going to make the movie without Weaver.

Frustrated but trying to roll the dice on this flailing project one last time, Cameron pulled a sneaky trick, as he revealed to GQ years later. Weaver shared the same agency as Arnold Schwarzenegger, so Cameron phoned Schwarzenegger's agent and told him how he was about to start rewriting the "Aliens" script to remove Ripley entirely. The news travelled faster than a Xenomorph through a ventilation shaft.

"The deal was done in 12 hours after that," Cameron said. "So I never wrote a word of that hypothetical story that I said I was gonna do, that I had no intention of writing anyway. So anyway, it worked, and Sigourney got her million bucks, and everybody was happy."

As far as most movie productions go, "Aliens" was mostly smooth sailing when it began to shoot. Deadlines were met, it didn't go over budget, and the studio let them get on with it. The biggest challenge involved the final cut – with Fox wanting the picture to have a two-hour runtime to secure more theatrical screenings.

Cameron relented, taking out his scissors and cutting a few superfluous scenes, but the film still wasn't quite at the magic mark. Having cut everything that he could, Cameron explained that any further amendments would destroy the story and damage the integrity of the movie. This time, Fox didn't argue and stuck with the filmmaker.

History confirms the right call was made here. The franchise now follows the blueprint laid by Cameron's "Alien" more than Ridley Scott's "Jaws in space" foundation. While there's always a survival element in these movies, the action-centric approach is a critical part of the series' DNA. Sure, the protagonists remain scared, but they receive the opportunity to light up the Xenomorphs and show those ugly monsters who's the boss.

Looking back now, it's unbelievable to think that Fox almost tanked "Aliens" with its studio shenanigans. A classic emerged from the chaos of inflated egos, penny-pinching, and blood pressure-raising frustration.

It's proof that in Hollywood, no one can hear you scream (nor do they care), so it's up to you to find a way to survive.

The biggest blockbusters of 2014 threw up a varied rogues' gallery of bad guys. In "Transformers: Age of Extinction", it was a reincarnated version of Optimus Prime's perma-nemesis, Megatron, while Captain America faced off against a reborn Hydra infiltrating the upper echelons of the US government in "The Winter Soldier". For Spider-Man, it was Electro, while Maleficent showed up in live-action to give Sleeping Beauty nightmares.

Christopher Nolan has never been one to go with the Hollywood crowd, however, and in his outer space opus "Interstellar", the antagonist was time itself — or, to be more specific, Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Nolan, whose Homeric epic "The Odyssey" makes landfall in theaters this week, has always been obsessed with time, and our perception of it. From "Memento"'s backwards narrative to "Tenet"'s time-flipping terrorists, the director has tended to steer clear of linear narratives. Even the three interweaving plotlines of his World War II drama, "Dunkirk", unfold at completely different speeds. In short, Nolan is not a filmmaker you should ever set your clock by.

But time has never been as cruel as it is in "Interstellar", where the fundamental constants of the universe combine to wreak havoc with human emotions. "Time is relative," explains Anne Hathaway's biologist/astronaut Amelia Brand. "It can stretch, and it can squeeze, but it can't run backwards. It just can't."

She's summed up "Interstellar" in a nutshell, so it's not hard to see why this was the story Nolan wanted to tell when he added his own entry to the canon of cerebral cinematic sci-fi.

At one point in "Interstellar"'s evolution, it seemed set to be a Steven Spielberg movie. Physicist Kip Thorne had originated the project with producer Lynda Obst, and the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" director spent a year developing the movie with them. He even hired Nolan's younger brother, Jonah (whose credits include "The Dark Knight" and "Westworld"), to write a script.

Spielberg ultimately dropped out — "It just didn't stick with me, and I don't know why," he told Empire magazine — but Jonah knew the ideal replacement. "Jonah actually said, 'If there comes a point where you decide not to make this movie, I can tell you who's gonna grab it. He's already bugging me about it. And that's my brother Chris.' The second I decided not to make it, Chris jumped on board, probably the next day. 'Interstellar' was a much better movie in Chris Nolan's hands than it would have been in mine."

In the film's near future, humanity is literally running out of time. The Earth's ecosystem is breaking down, with dust storms killing crops across the United States and causing major health issues among the survivors. Nolan even uses talking head footage of real-life survivors of the Dust Bowl that ravaged the US Midwest in the 1930s (taken from Ken Burns' 2012 documentary "The Dust Bowl") to add to the urgency of the situation.

But the remains of NASA — now forced into hiding — have a plan. They've discovered a stable wormhole near Saturn, and it leads to another galaxy. Probes have found planets on the other side, and some of them might — just might — be capable of supporting life.

So when former pilot-turned-farmer Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) stumbles on NASA's clandestine base (for reasons that will later become clear), he's recruited for a mission checking in on the brave pioneers sent to investigate these strange new worlds. Unfortunately, this means leaving his kids behind.

And this is where relativity becomes one of the harshest antagonists in movie history. The Endurance crew's first destination, "Miller's Planet", orbits a black hole known as Gargantua. Its gravity is so intense that anything in its vicinity experiences extreme time dilation — to the extent that an hour on the planet's surface is equivalent to seven years for everyone else. "We need to think of time as a resource, just like oxygen and food," Brand says before they make landfall.

But in that old Hollywood tradition, not everything goes to plan on the surface, and by the time Cooper and Brand escape Gargantua's influence — minus their late crewmate Doyle (Wes Bentley) — decades have passed on Earth. In an extremely powerful sequence, we see Cooper catching up on the last 20-plus years of life back home via video messages from his son, Tom (the young version played by Timothée Chalamet, the older version by Casey Affleck).

In a matter of minutes, Cooper learns about the birth and death of a grandchild, as well as the passing of his father-in-law. At the end of the reel, his heartbroken daughter Murphy (young version: Mackenzie Foy; adult version: Jessica Chastain; elderly version: Ellen Burstyn) sends her first message since he abandoned her for outer space. The reason for breaking radio silence? She's now the same age he was when he left; her childhood vanished in the blink of an eye.

"Interstellar" makes a mockery of the myth that Nolan's films are cold and emotionless. Relativity shows no mercy for family bonds, and McConaughey, Chastain, and Hathaway all deliver towering performances as they deal with its consequences. This is a human story told across a multi-dimensional canvas.

Even beyond their lives being thrown out of sync by time dilation — at the end of the movie, a still-40-something Cooper comes face-to-face with a nonagenarian Murph on her deathbed — they're coming to terms with the fact that the whole mission was built on a lie.

NASA boss Dr Brand (Michael Caine) may have thought he was doing the right thing by pretending that his gravity equation could be solved and giving false hope that humanity might one day find a new home among the stars. But it doesn't make it any less of a kicker when he confesses his grand betrayal, admitting on his deathbed that "Plan B" — sending embryos into the cosmos to extend the human race — was "Plan A" all along. Of course, whether he's right or wrong, he's a second-tier 'bad guy' compared to relativity.

Nolan went to extraordinary lengths to give his film a sound scientific footing. He consulted extensively with Thorne in order to generate a scenario where relativistic effects would be so extreme that minutes on a planet's surface would equate to years back on Earth. "Kip, apart from being an incredible mind, is actually a very good explainer of difficult concepts, and he was very patient with all of us lesser beings," producer Emma Thomas told SFX magazine. The Oscar-winning VFX team at D-Neg, meanwhile, turned their work modelling the accretion disc around Gargantua into an actual scientific paper.

By the time the film enters its endgame, it's embracing tesseracts and five-dimensional superbeings, as Cooper uses gravity to communicate with Murph across time. In the process, he reveals that the "ghost" that helped him find NASA all those years ago was actually a future version of himself. Such diamond-hard sci-fi concepts are probably not, however, the reason that "Interstellar" has since — despite mixed reviews on release — become one of Nolan's most popular films a decade later.

"What I've found is that people who let the film wash over them get the most out of it," Nolan admitted in "The Nolan Variations" by Tom Shone, and the director may just have a point. While a cynic might have issues with the notion that love is a quantifiable force transcending the universe (anyone know the SI unit for that?), it's impossible to deny the genius of "Interstellar"'s use of high-level physics to explore the human condition.

It's unlikely any of us will find ourselves in the vicinity of a black hole, but all of us know what it means to want more time with the people we love.

"The Odyssey" is in theaters from Friday, July 17. "Interstellar" is available to stream on Hulu and Paramount+ in the US, and Sky Cinema and HBO Max in the UK.

It's not known whether "Ulysses 31" was on Christopher Nolan's radar in his teenage years, but it's intriguing to think it could have influenced the director's decision to take on Homer's "The Odyssey".

This animated space opera, a French/Japanese co-production, delivered a crash course in Greek mythology to a generation of kids who grew up in the '80s. And, although it looks more like "Star Wars" than Homer's original tale, it had a decent stab at transferring the Classics to the 31st century (the clue really was in the title), years before the Coen brothers took "The Odyssey" to the Deep South in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

The cartoon's core premise would be familiar to any Greek scholar, even though purists would surely bristle at the hero going under his Roman pseudonym, Ulysses, rather than the original Greek Odysseus.

At heart, it's that old story of a ship's captain racing to get home from Troy (in this case, a starbase) before his wife, Penelope, marries another man. That voyage is soon waylaid, however, when Ulysses' son, Telemachus, is abducted to become a sacrifice to a giant robot Cyclops.

Ulysses quickly lives up to the promise of his famous theme song — "Always fighting all the evil forces, bringing peace and justice to all" — by vanquishing the one-eyed menace and rescuing Telemachus along with Yumi and Numinor (a pair of blue alien Zotrians who, as far as we can tell, do not feature in the original Homer).

Unfortunately for Ulysses and his crew, he messed with the wrong giant robot Cyclops, because this one happened to belong to the Greek sea god Poseidon, who's now taken up residence in outer space. The deity is so annoyed at the puny mortal's impudence that he gets his brother, Zeus (aka the head honcho in Olympus), to inflict divine retribution.

Ulysses is subsequently sentenced to "travel among unknown stars" (his ship, the Odyssey, has its navigational databanks purged) while his crewmates — referred to, in what now sounds like contemporary corporate jargon, as "companions" — are put into a perpetual slumber. If he's going to make it home to Penelope, he'll need to find the Kingdom of Hades before his 26-episode run comes to an end.

It's less an update of Homer than a riff on his greatest hits, with several other notable classics of the Classical period thrown in for good measure. In addition to slaying the Cyclops, Ulysses follows in OG Odysseus's footsteps when he meets the Sirens and Lotus Eaters.

But he also ventures beyond the confines of Homer's narrative when he encounters Sisyphus (fated to devote his entire life to a repetitive, pointless task), Orpheus (en route to Hades to rescue Eurydice, the love of his life), and three-headed dog Cerberus, reinvented as an interceptor satellite with, yes, three heads.

Many of the character names are also familiar. Priam, the commander of the Troy starbase, shares his name with Troy's last king in antiquity, while Nestor, Ulysses' second in command, is an advisor in the original story. Shirka, the computer on Ulysses' ship, takes her name from Circe, a sorceress.

But the show also adopts a pretty liberal approach to the source material. Homer's version of Telemachus spends much of the story separated from his dad, whereas "Ulysses 31"'s is a constant presence. While Odysseus's shipmates mostly wound up dead, here they're plunged into a state of literal suspended animation, lifelessly floating in the ship's hold.

And Ulysses is already aware of the Greek gods before he makes first contact — in one episode, he even travels back thousands of years in time to meet his famous namesake.

If this sounds like writers sanitising the story for younger audiences, well, it didn't feel that way if you watched the show as a kid. At times, "Ulysses 31" is genuinely freaky, from those levitating lifeless bodies to some truly grotesque monsters. The gods themselves are also an unnerving presence, omnipresent beings of colossal power who see humans as their playthings and view Ulysses' toils as some twisted spectator sport.

Besides, unlike "Masters of the Universe" and many of the other biggest sci-fi cartoons of the '80s, the good guys weren't always guaranteed to win. Being Ulysses — a single dad guiding his son and adopted daughter Yumi through the cosmos — wasn't easy.

Now 45 years old (though it didn't find its way onto British and American TV screens until the mid-'80s), "Ulysses 31" is showing its age. The animation is often rudimentary, particularly in outer-space scenes that are effectively a cut-out of a starship being dragged across a stellar background. The dialogue, meanwhile, is played hilariously straight — good luck finding a laugh among these uncharted stars — and often consists of someone shouting another character's name. "Telemachus!" "Father!" "My son!" "Yumi!" etc. Telemachus's small red robot pal, Nono, is up there with the most irritating "cute" sidekicks of the era — quite the achievement in an extremely competitive field.

But there's also plenty to like. As static as they sometimes look, the spaceship designs have the feel of a classic space opera book cover, particularly Ulysses' eye-shaped craft, the aptly named Odyssey. The series also borrows heavily from a more modern piece of mythology, namely the "Star Wars" saga. Ulysses may not be a Jedi (as far as we know), but his gun/laser sword weapon looks a lot like a lightsaber. Some of the incidental music even apes John Williams' score from a galaxy far, far away.

Which brings us on to the soundtrack, the main reason this show lives on in the collective consciousness of a generation.

The work of Denny Crockett, Ike Egan, and, on selected tracks, Shuki Levy and Haim Saban (the latter duo also composed for "Masters of the Universe", "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors," and many more cartoon classics), the music is a cut above. "The Curse of the Gods" refrain is loaded with menace, totally living up to its portentous title, and then there's that theme song.

Seriously, to people of a certain age — even those who remember nothing else about the show — hearing the name "Ulysses" is enough to get them singing "Ulysee-ee-ee-ee-ees" ad infinitum, an earworm truly worthy of the gods of Olympus.

Homer's tales may still be remembered thousands of years after he wrote them, but you can guarantee he didn't have a tune quite like that.

"Ulysses 31" isn't on any major streaming service, but there are fan uploads on YouTube if you want to experience the show for yourself.

Making a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" should have been a disaster. This was a movie that defined a whole new sub-genre of outer-space horror, a perfectly structured scarefest that also introduced one of cinema's greatest-ever monsters to the world.

Luckily, James Cameron — then one of Hollywood's hottest properties off the back of "The Terminator" — has never been a shrinking violet, and was brave enough to face the Xenomorph challenge head-on. Reinventing the franchise as a muscular sci-fi action movie, he created a whole new sub-genre of his own with a film every bit as memorable as its predecessor.

So, as the peerless "Aliens" turns 40, here — in honour of LV-426, the moon where the movie takes place — are 26 reasons it's still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time.

1. James Cameron’$ original pitch

With only "The Terminator" (and the long-forgotten "Piranha II") on his resumé, James Cameron was yet to ascend to "king of the world" status when he pitched for the "Alien" sequel. His subsequent meeting with studio execs has since become the stuff of Hollywood legend.

The story goes that he turned over a copy of the script, wrote "ALIEN", added an S to the end, and then scrawled a couple of lines through the final letter. "ALIEN$" was a language the bigwigs understood, and you know what? Cameron was kinda right.

2. A new genre

Same continuity, same creature, same lead character… "Aliens" is undeniably a sequel to "Alien".

But while Ridley Scott's original film was already the definitive outer-space horror, Cameron boldly shifted genres to make the definitive outer-space action movie. Forty years on, fans are still debating which one is best.

3. Nothing is wasted

Anyone teaching action movie screenwriting should use "Aliens" as a core text. It's lean, it's efficient, and every line and moment is integral to the all-time classic whole.

It's no accident that Ripley shows off her Power Loader skills in the opening act — it's Cameron's version of Chekhov's gun.

4. The time jump

Some sequels pick up immediately after their predecessor left off. But by leaving Ellen Ripley in hypersleep for 57 years, the universe has a chance to evolve around her. Indeed, that's enough time for Weyland-Yutani to colonize LV-426 and — just maybe — pay a visit to that mysterious spaceship with all those eggs in its cargo hold.

What could possibly go wrong?

5. Ellen Ripley

Ellen Ripley may have been the accidental hero of "Alien", but she's 100% proactive in "Aliens". At the beginning of the movie, she's still traumatized by her experience on the Nostromo, and her employers at Weyland-Yutani are doing little to help. But her cool head in a high-pressure situation puts highly trained Colonial Marines to shame, and by the final act, she's grown into one of cinema's greatest heroes.

Sigourney Weaver rightly earned herself an Academy Award nomination for her tour de force performance.

6. The Colonial Marines

Cameron waited until late on in production to shoot the scene where the Colonial Marines wake up from hypersleep. It's a genius move, their real-life familiarity helping to establish a convincing camaraderie between these elite soldiers.

Even though most are lucky if they speak more than a line or two, Cameron's writing is so tight that we already know plenty — and care — about them when they inevitably become Xenomorph fodder. (Top fact: with the exception of Lt Gorman and Corporal Hicks, the Marines all share a first initial with the actor who plays them.)

7. The Dropship

Physics purists can bemoan the science all they like, but there's something undeniably cool about the craft that plunges the Marines to the surface of LV-426. A wonderfully utilitarian example of pre-CG model work.

8. The slow-build

In the original version of the movie, an entire hour has passed before you see an alien. Cameron doesn't waste a second of that time, however, establishing characters (see above), introducing Newt, showing off the geography of the Hadley's Hope terraforming base, and building a creeping sense of dread.

Those acid burns on the floor can't be good news, right?

9. The shouldercams

In an era when cameras can be shrunk down into phones or even a pair of glasses, anybody can film anything. But when Cameron gave his soldiers shoulder-mounted video units, it felt genuinely groundbreaking. It provides a suitably chaotic Marine's-eye-view as the carnage unfolds, but you always know whose perspective you're following because, well, their names are written on screen.

10. The ambush

"Aliens" may take its time getting to the actual aliens, but when it does, it doesn't hold back.

The walls start moving, flame-throwers start flaming, and suddenly the Marines are on the back foot against a vastly superior enemy. Throw in an exploding bag of ammunition, and it's all so brilliantly disconcerting that you need several rewatches to work out what you've just witnessed.

Within a matter of minutes, Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, and Gorman are the only Marines left standing — and Gorman's technically comatose.

11. The Xenomorph drones

HR Giger's original Xenomorph is a design classic, but Cameron was more concerned about practicality than looks.

The new alien suits (usually occupied by gymnasts and acrobats) prioritized movement, as the director went big on research and development to make sure their motion was as inhuman — and as fast — as possible.

Remarkably, only six suits were built for "Aliens", but ingenious editing makes it look like Hadley's Hope is swarming with them.

12. The Alien Queen

We'd seen the eggs, the Facehuggers, and the drones. But, as Ripley pointedly asks, "Who's laying the eggs?"

The answer is a truly terrifying new stage in the Xenomorph life cycle, and arguably the last essential addition to the franchise's mythology.

Designed by Stan Winston (who'd worked with Cameron on "The Terminator" and won an Oscar for his work on "Aliens"), the Alien Queen is a towering apex predator who'll do anything to protect her kids.

13. Newt

Introducing a kid to a hard-boiled action franchise can be a risky move, but Rebecca Jordan (known to everyone as Newt, played by Carrie Henn) is totally integral to "Aliens".

As the last known survivor of Hadley's Hope, she's resourceful as hell and has plenty to teach the heavily armed Marines about survival in a Xenomorph-infested world. She also brings out the maternal instinct in Ripley, a key theme of the movie that comes to a head in her famous face-off against the Queen: "Get away from her, you bitch!"

Speaking of which…

14. The quotable dialogue

"We're on an express elevator to hell." "They mostly come at night… mostly." "Game over, man. Game over." "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Few action movies — with the possible exception of "Predator" and "Die Hard" — are quite as chock-full of zingers as "Aliens".

15. The APC

The Armored Personnel Carrier is every bit as iconic as the dropship it calls home.

Part mobile base-of-operations, part all-terrain action vehicle, it's the reason the few remaining Marines escape their close encounter in one piece — even if its transaxles have issues dealing with concentrated acid blood.

It's telling that the Resources Development Administration hardware in the "Avatar" series is so heavily influenced by this timeless "Aliens" tech.

16. Facehuggers on the move

The Facehugger that jumped — and subsequently impregnated — Kane in the original “Alien was already the stuff of nightmares. But the parasites in the sequel are much more than some acid-blooded jack-in-a-box.

In “Aliens”, those spider-like legs allow them to scurry around to hunt down their prey, ensuring they're a clear and present danger — even if you're not foolhardy enough to put your face over an open egg.

17. Carter Burke

If there’s one thing the "Alien" saga has taught us, it's that you should never, ever trust Weyland-Yutani, chillingly referred to simply as "the Company".

If "Alien"'s Ash was the ultimate company android, Burke (Paul Reiser) is the epitome of the company man, a total scumbag whose friendly, "I'm-your-best-friend demeanor" can’t disguise the fact that he’d screw you over for a percentage, kiddo. The only character in the movie whose death by Xenomorph elicits a cheer.

18. The motion trackers

You don't need to see the Xenomorphs to know they're there.

The ominous beep of the Marines' motion trackers is a highly effective way of teasing the approaching menace — even when they're hiding in the ceiling.

19. A countdown to detonation

It's bad enough that you're trapped on a barren moon surrounded by a vicious hive of extraterrestrials who want to use you as hosts for their offspring. And that your primary choice of rescue has crashed on the surface, leaving you even more stranded.

Then, fate (or, to be more accurate, James Cameron) throws you a curveball in the form of an atmospheric processor about to go nuclear. The clock is well and truly ticking…

20. Bill Paxton

The late Bill Paxton was Cameron's lucky charm, also turning up in "The Terminator", "True Lies", and "Titanic". But "Aliens" is his signature role, as the famously pessimistic Private Hudson makes the most of his limited dialogue.

As an interesting sidenote, Paxton had the honor of being killed on screen by a Terminator, a Predator, and a Xenomorph.

21. The Power Loader

Part Japanese mecha, part Transformer, Ripley's Power Loader is an instantly iconic piece of kit, so painstakingly designed that it looks like it could actually work IRL.

If you're going to go woman-to-woman with an angry Alien Queen, never leave the house without one.

22. Bishop

Ash, the Nostromo's resident synthetic in "Alien", was a bona fide bad 'un, prepared to sacrifice the crew in the name of getting a valuable Xenomorph back to "the Company"’s weapons division.

It's hardly a surprise, then, that Ripley is suspicious of Bishop (Lance Henriksen) from the off. Luckily for everyone, he gradually proves his worth via his skills with the knife game, elite dropship-piloting abilities, and generally being an all-round good egg.

Not bad for an android… (Bishop is manufactured by Hyperdyne Systems, a nod to Cyberdyne in Cameron’s “Terminator” movies.)

23. The music

"Aliens" was James Horner's first collaboration with Cameron (he went on to write the scores for "Titanic" and "Avatar"), and the then-32-year-old provided the perfect musical backdrop for the action unfolding on screen.

Sure, some of the themes are derivative of the composer's own "The Wrath of Khan" soundtrack, but it's impossible to imagine "Aliens" without Horner's contribution.

24. The sound effects

The best sci-fi franchises are as recognisable for their sound as their visuals. So, just as, say, "Star Wars"’ lightsabers and "Star Trek"s transporters are aurally unmistakable, "Aliens" has its own distinctive soundscape.

Hear a pulse rifle firing or the squeal of a Xenomorph, and you know exactly where you are. Best Sound Effects Editing was one of the film's two Academy Award wins, and it's easy to see why.

25. The Special Edition

If you've never seen "Aliens", the tighter theatrical cut is definitely the place to start. But once you know what's waiting for the Colonial Marines on LV-426, the Special Edition is the definitive version of the movie.

From Newt's family making first contact with a Facehugger to a wonderfully tense sentry gun sequence, Cameron's extra footage enhances a classic. It also adds to the film's mother/child subtext when we learn that Ripley had a daughter, Amanda, who died just before Ellen was discovered by the Weyland-Yutani recovery crew.

Amanda would later be retconned to become the lead character in the survival horror video game "Alien: Isolation".

26. Cameron himself

Cameron's intense working methods famously didn't go down well with his unionized British crew, who famously made t-shirts bearing the slogan "You can't scare me, I work for James Cameron".

But whatever the on-set experience, it's impossible to deny that he marshalled proceedings to perfection. Even the director's lesser works — the "Avatar" sequels, for example — feature action beats of unassailable genius. "Aliens", however, demonstrates a filmmaker at the pinnacle of his powers.

Every sci-fi action movie ever made will be judged against "Aliens". Even the brilliant "Predator" lives in the shadow of a movie that remains untouchable — and endlessly rewatchable — four decades after its original release.

"Aliens" is available to stream on Disney+ in the UK, and to rent and buy on various platforms in the US.

America and Hollywood might feel like the natural home of sci-fi, but Britain has quite the science fiction pedigree of its own.

Doctor Who is obviously our great nation's most famous sci-fi export, standing tall amongst the other giants of the genre, but it's far from our only contribution. From television to literature, there is a history of some truly great and groundbreaking science fiction coming from this loose collection of islands.

So, make yourself a nice cup of tea and have a seat while we break down the UK’s 10 best science fiction shows of all time (in no particular order).

1. Doctor Who

Release date: November 23, 1963 | Seasons: 41 | Cast: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Jodie Whittaker, Ncuti Gatwa (& many more)

Doctor Who might not be the juggernaut that it once was, but it is one of the longest-running science fiction shows in the world. It's been going (on and off) since 1963, and it has always had something important to teach its audience.

From the off, it was a show championing scientific curiosity, kindness, and openness, though the stern tones and prickly demeanour of William Hartnell have since given way to a minimum of 14 different actors playing the same role.

While there’s certainly a difference between the original run of television serials and the typically self-contained format of the modern incarnation, the sheer wealth of different stories available means you can find something for everyone.

2. The Quatermass Experiment

Release date: July 18, 1953 | Seasons: 4 | Cast: Reginald Tate, Wilfrid Brambell, Katie Johnson

From Doctor Who to one of its contemporaries, or rather, the show that inspired it. The Quatermass Experiment was a set of four different sci-fi serials, each containing 6 episodes, that debuted in 1953, a full decade before Who hit our screens.

The Quatermass Experiment is a striking piece of television, partially because it was really the first of its kind, because it was squarely aimed at adults. Before this, most sci-fi TV was aimed at kids, while silver screen efforts focused on schlocky B-movie-style effects, such as those seen in “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.

Humanity's first rocket launch to space goes awry when it returns to Earth with two crew members missing, and the one remaining astronaut is gravely ill. Professor Quatermass and his team are left struggling to unravel the mystery of what happened to the crew.

While only the first two episodes managed to survive the original live broadcast, the serial still went on to have a huge impact on science fiction. It was one of the first sci-fi shows with mass appeal, and the trio of follow-up serials kept Bernard Quatermass as an icon of pop culture all the way into the 70s, with a variety of Hammer Horror adaptations to bring the character to new audiences.

3. Blake’s 7

Release date: January 2, 1978 | Seasons: 4 | Cast: Gareth Thomas, Michael Keating, Sally Knyvette, Paul Darrow

And now for something completely different: Blake 7, aka one of the grittiest and most depressing space shows that Britain ever produced.

Blake’s 7 tells the story of Roj Blake, a political dissident working against the totalitarian Federation controlling Earth and its colonies. On his way to a lifetime of false imprisonment, Blake manages to escape and capture a powerful alien vessel, which he then crews with another 5 people and 1 computer, to work together to overthrow the federation.

While most sci-fi of the time was chipper and optimistic about our future, Blake’s 7 was a sci-fi show that explored themes of political dissidence, cynicism, and freedom fighting. It’s a show about a small group fighting a much more powerful enemy, and frankly, it goes to some very, very dark places. When the phrase “mass-murder” has to be bandied around more than once, you know you've left happy-go-lucky behind.

It has an incredibly dour feeling most of the way through, and the ending does nothing to change that vibe. Dark tone aside, Blake’s 7 is the sort of sci-fi show that we just don’t see anymore.

4. The Prisoner

Release date: September 29, 1967 | Seasons: 1 | Cast: Patrick McGoohan, Angelo Muscat, Peter Swanwick, Denis Shaw, Fenella Fielding

If you’re a British sci-fi fan of a certain vintage, then you should already be familiar with The Prisoner.

Filmed (mostly) in Portmeirion, the show has some of the most iconic visuals in sci-fi history, despite only being a single self-contained series. From the giant evil balloon, known as Rover, to the beautiful houses of Portmeirion itself, The Prisoner is an incredibly visually striking show.

It follows the plot of a British secret agent who becomes frustrated with his position and resigns. While preparing for a trip, he is rendered unconscious using knockout gas and awakes to find himself inside a perfect recreation of his own home, but this one is located in a mysterious settlement known as The Village.

The plot goes to some wild places from there, but the story is deeply rooted in the societal fear that was surrounding the ongoing counter-cultural movements of the day. Individualism is pitted against collectivism throughout the show, and it’s a testament to the writing that neither ideal is shown to be the obvious right choice by the end.

5. Red Dwarf

Release date: February 15, 1988 | Seasons: 12 | Cast: Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewellyn, Norman Lovett

If you’re into Space and British Comedy but you’ve not watched Red Dwarf yet, then what the smeg have you been doing?

This space sitcom follows the adventures of mega-slob Dave Lister, his neurotic, hologramatic bunk-mate Rimmer, their evolved Cat (of the same name), and square-headed mechanoid Kryten. Each episode sees the crew dealing with various sci-fi calamities, from emotion-sucking monsters and time travel shenanigans to being stuck on a frozen asteroid, as they make their way through a harsh galaxy.

The show packs some of the funniest moments in British TV history, especially during the first 5 series or so. They parody every sci-fi concept known to humanity, balancing straight comedy, horror, and drama. You'll get introspective looks at what it means to be human alongside ridiculous situations where Lister gets turned into a 6-inch-tall RoboCop rip-off.

It's also deeply rooted in the British working-class culture of the time, which means plenty of time for curry, beer, banter, and slobbing around the place.

6. Hyperdrive

Release date: January 11, 2006 | Seasons: 2 | Cast: Nick Frost, Kevin Eldon, Miranda Hart, Stephen Evans

In a similar vein to Red Dwarf, but nowhere near as popular, Hyperdrive is a Nick Frost-led sci-fi sitcom from 2006. It tells the tale of a British spaceship, the HMS Camden Lock, in its attempts to serve the national interest in an ever-evolving galaxy.

Starring British comedy favourites such as Kevin Eldon and Miranda Hart, Hyperdrive is a very silly show that ended up more like a workplace sitcom in space rather than the next Red Dwarf.

What saves Hyperdrive is the dry humour and the slightly insane set and character design. The series is replete with a baffling array of alien races, almost all of which are basically humans with varying levels of prosthetic facial makeup or zany outfits. Some of these guys are obvious parodies of alien races from classic shows, but they’re all thoroughly weird and worth the price of admission on their own.

7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Release date: January 5, 1981 | Seasons: 1 | Cast: Peter Jones, Simon Jones, David Dixon, Mark Wing-Davey, Sandra Dickinson

If you’re more familiar with the movie adaptation or the original radio show, then you might have missed out on the slightly more obscure The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series. A decent amount of the radio cast reprise their roles in this single season of British TV, and much like the radio show, the production was ground-breaking for its time.

The show is a ramshackle blend of production techniques, using everything from model shots, classical animation, and even a fair few instances of matte painting to show the truly impossible on a grand scale.

As a result, the TV show has its own surreal vibe that isn’t always found in other versions, and it can get surprisingly grimy and dark when it needs to. Plus, if you get the DVD version, there’s an added joke where every so often it’ll pretend to have an ‘infinite improbability drive’ issue and stop working.

8. Black Mirror

Release date: December 4, 2011 | Seasons: 7 | Cast: Basically everyone

Any talk about British sci-fi cannot fail to mention Charlie Brooker’s seminal science fiction Netflix series that was so popular it damn-near became a phenomenon.

If you’ve somehow missed out on the show so far, it’s a sci-fi anthology series where each episode tells a self-contained story, usually about an element of modern-day society. This ‘reflecting society’ element is why it’s called ‘Black Mirror’, as it could be said the show is holding up a ‘black mirror’ to society.

Black Mirror mostly works in the realm of speculative fiction, but several episodes have a more contemporary, real-world setting. The bulk of the show, though, deals with the pitfalls of technology, modern consumer culture, and the modern media landscape, certainly realms more than familiar to science fiction.

9. Life on Mars

Release date: January 9, 2006 | Seasons: 2 | Cast: John Simm, Philip Glenister, Liz White, Dean Andrews, Marshall Lancaster

While it might not be what you immediately think of when it comes to sci-fi, Life on Mars is a fantastic show that straddles the space between speculative science fiction and crime drama, though it’s closer to ‘A Stir of Echoes’ rather than ‘Childhood’s End’.

The show tells the story of Sam Tyler, a modern-day police officer who hits his head and wakes up in the 1970s. While trying to figure out what’s going on, Sam has to deal with the realities of life and policing in the UK in the early 70s, something that’s shockingly entertaining to watch him attempt to juggle.

The real draw of the show is the mystery. Throughout the runtime, you’re never really sure if he has travelled back in time or if he’s either dead or in a coma. Even when you start to think that the show is giving you answers, you’ll soon find the rug pulled out from under you, and the want to finally learn what is happening will keep you coming back.

10. Utopia

Release date: January 15, 2013 | Seasons: 2 | Cast: Alexandra Roach, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Paul Higgins, Fiona O'Shaughnessy, Adeel Akhtar

The final entry on the list is a bit more of an obscure one. Back in 2014, Channel 4 put out Utopia, a sci-fi conspiracy thriller with a comedic bent to it.

Utopia follows a group of nerds who discover a comic has been predicting historic events and accidentally unmask a shadowy conspiracy. While the show was unceremoniously ended after only two series, and on something of a cliffhanger, it offers something that is dark, gritty, humorous, and horrific in equal measure.

Utopia doesn’t shy away from the violence inherent in telling a dystopian story. In fact, the level of violence can be a bit much at times, which is part of the reason some audiences shied away from it. But, if you can stomach it, Utopia is some of the most thrilling British sci-fi ever produced.

More sci-fi TV

That’s it for our list of excellent British Sci-Fi Shows, but if you enjoyed the list, you might want to check out our list of upcoming sci-fi shows. If the big screen is more your speed, we also have a list of upcoming sci-fi movies.

Space is incomprehensibly vast. So huge that the human mind struggles to even conceptualize it. The observable universe spans roughly 93 billion light-years. Even our own humble galaxy, the Milky Way — a few tiny stitches of the universal canvas — stretches across 100,000 light-years and contains hundreds of billions of stars.

It's no wonder, then, that space video games struggle so mightily with anything approaching a "realistic" interpretation of those incredible distances, especially in an age where we have yet to invent a technology that can traverse them in a reasonable time.

The Artemis 2 mission's Orion module got up to speeds of around 25,000 mph during its trans lunar injection burn. Ignoring fuel and safety concerns, at those speeds, it would still take us at least 80,000 years to reach our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri.

So how do game developers manage to distill some of the awe of the vastness of space while making it feel like a manageable space? How do they shrink space to a navigable size without making it feel small or claustrophobic?

I spoke to astrophysicist Dr. Jeffrey Bennett, founder of Big Kid Science and author of "The Scale of the Universe", to get a sense of the scope of the problem.

The true scale of space

"On a 1 to 10 billion scale — which makes the Sun about the size of a large grapefruit — Earth is smaller than the ball point in a pen and located about 15 meters (49 feet) away from the Sun," explains Bennett. "On that same scale, the Moon — the farthest a human being has ever traveled — lies only about 4 centimeters (1½ inches) away from us. The planets of our solar system are much farther, though you can still walk to the outermost planets in only 10 minutes or so."

Bennett said most science fiction films and games get the scale wrong by making long-distance travel look too easy. Considering the above 1-to-10 billion-scale representation, for instance, and given that reaching the outermost planets in our system — far further than any human being has ever travelled — would take ten minutes, "to reach the nearest stars, you’d have to walk the distance across the United States."

Just simulating a small part of the existing universe would push current hardware to its limits, even with crutches like procedural generation. Developers use various techniques, like level-of-detail scaling, instancing, and streaming, to create the illusion of vastness without melting hardware.

Bennett also talks about how scale works in the case of interstellar objects like asteroids and maneuvering around them.

Films and games, he says, "tend to make it look very difficult to avoid collisions with asteroids, with spacecraft having to dart this way and that to pass through an asteroid region safely. In fact, while there are many millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt of our solar system, the full region is so large that it would take incredibly bad luck to crash into an asteroid by accident. That is why spacecraft studies of asteroids require careful planning to get a spacecraft close enough to any asteroid to get photos and other data."

The reality is that even in its most populated regions, asteroids are typically hundreds of thousands to millions of kilometers apart in our system's asteroid belt. Standing on one of the asteroids, it would be incredibly unlikely that you'd be able to see even one of the largest other asteroids with the naked eye.

How games cope with the enormity of space

"This absolutely IS a design conflict that all space games have to solve," said Bernd Lehahn, Founder and Managing Director of Egosoft, the company that makes the successful X franchise of space simulators (most recently X4: Foundations).

"On the one hand, space must feel very large, or else players will feel cheated. Space and sci-fi have always been about the dream of infinite distances and exploration in a seemingly endless universe. At the same time, most games, the X games included, do not want to force players through unnecessarily long flight times or, god forbid, boredom."

Lehahn says his studio tries to strike a balance between areas that feel more content dense with regions that feel more like an unsettled frontier, to impart a sense of the true emptiness of space.

"There should be room for both extremes: dense, highly populated regions, often with artificial means of transportation that allow the player to find and visit many important places relatively quickly, but also the empty, remote, fringe areas of space, where the experience is much slower, but where exploration happens, and the uncharted map allows for mystery and secrets."

Finding a solution to modeling and traversing the vastness of space has been an issue for Egosoft from the release of the original X game back in 1999, and continues to be something the studio grapples with today. The reality is that most of space is empty, so empty that you don't even have visual cues to indicate you're moving through it. Traveling through it without some kind of cheat or compression would involve unimaginable stretches of black emptiness with nothing happening, but too much compression begins to feel artificial.

"X4: Foundations probably has the most sophisticated solution to this conflict," Lehahn said. For the latest game, the team combines a number of solutions. It starts with scaled tiers of engine technologies with increasingly limited steering. Faster, more powerful engines allow for increasingly speedy, but more straight-line or on-rails travel.

The team also uses the conceit of "jump gates" to leap across huge swaths of the universe in a blink, as well as teleportation and time acceleration to similarly compress travel. There are also space highways with slipstream acceleration to hurry things along.

Importantly, the X games also often give players things to do during the downtime of space travel. Giving players minor, uneventful tasks or other distractions can help fill out long stretches of uninterrupted travel. Above all else, Lehahn wants to ensure players are enjoying themselves.

"X4: Foundations is still a game. We want it to feel as realistic as possible—allow players to experience the universe and truly believe the 'sectors' are endless, planets are real size, and you can move in relation to planets and even larger celestial objects. But sometimes, if there is a conflict between fun gameplay and realism, then we may have to compromise on realism a bit."

A different approach

Rather than compress space into a manageable slice, the Elite Dangerous team at Frontier Developments takes on a much more ambitious challenge.

"We have a 1:1 scale Milky Way," says Executive Producer Gauthier Verquerre. "Roughly 400 billion star systems."

To create that vast canvas, the team uses a technology called the Stellar Forge, which uses real astronomical catalog data and models phenomena like the collision of stellar systems and the way stars and planets form to procedurally generate systems. The systems are generated once when a system is discovered and regenerated in the same way whenever a player visits them.

One of the most daunting challenges Elite Dangerous faces is that the game doesn't just model the galaxy on a macro scale. It also has to generate planetary surfaces and space station interiors for players to explore.

"Throughout the universe, we have these spectacular stellar phenomena which players are out there discovering every day," said Verquerre. "The flip side of that is that we have players meeting in the same star systems, or on the planetary surface. We have to represent both the huge 1:1 scale of space that we have in the game for interstellar elements like Lagrange clouds or nebulae, and the personal scale of 'I'm on foot in a planetary settlement.'"

Despite releasing way back in 2014, only a tiny fraction of the space the game simulates has been explored by players.

According to Verquerre, "There's still over 99% of the universe out there, waiting to be explored, where any Commander can be the first to add their name to the system and say 'I was the first one to see this'. We also added System Colonisation last year, allowing our players to construct space stations and planetary settlements. That's been really rewarding for us, seeing the rate at which the bubble has expanded."

To empower players to explore that nearly infinite playground, Elite Dangerous (like X4) takes a tiered approach. Three methods of travel provide increasing compression of space/travel time.

"There's Deep Space, where ships move at ‘slow’ speeds (around 300m/s, under Mach 1) to access individual gameplay actions like combat or mining," Verquerre told me, "Supercruise, which is essentially a form of FTL travel within a system useful for scanning systems, and Hyperspace, where players travel between star systems through a tunnel."

The game also recently introduced a fourth tier of movement, dubbed Supercruise Overcharge, which allows players to navigate star systems at a much greater speed. Even with these many systems for speeding up transit, however, traversing such unimaginably vast distances can eat up a huge amount of time, and Frontier has tried to ensure that travel is peppered with events and resource management to keep players engaged.

"It's all about the player," Verquerre explains. "Explorers often want a little solitude, or an unexpected encounter, whilst our traders are considering the risk of what they're carrying. Fuel and heat management tend to be primary considerations; no one wants to be marooned out in deep space! There are also interdictions, where a Commander can be pulled out of a jump and find themselves hunted."

"Additionally, those long trips that our players are taking out into deep space mean that small damage adds up, canopy cracks and moments of tension take the beauty of space and translate it almost instantly into abject fear."

The magic and awe of the staggering scope of space is a core part of the Elite Dangerous mystique, and it's not lost on Verquerre.

"I remember a journey I once made to Beagle Point, one of the most remote star systems found in Elite Dangerous, which I’d consider to be one of the most memorable gaming moments in my life. The sense of achievement in reaching a system that you’ve plotted out at the end of a journey is something very tangible, and it always makes me look forward to the next adventure."

A (nearly) infinite challenge

Space games don't fail to simulate the scale of the cosmos because developers lack ambition or imagination.

The reality is that the universe operates on scales that challenge not only the capacity of the human behind them, but also that of our machines to reproduce them. Bridging that gap requires not just bigger maps, but smarter design, and a recognition that sometimes, the awe of the infinite matters more than the numbers behind it.

"X4: Foundations" and "Elite Dangerous" are both available to play now on PC. You can also pick up Dr Bennett's book, "The Scale of the Universe", on Amazon.

We didn't realize it at the time — nobody ever does — but the '90s were a vintage era in Hollywood.

It was a time when major studios were happy to take a punt on original scripts, knowing that people would, as often as not, buy theater tickets to watch quality releases. Good movies will always be made, of course — just as even the most golden of ages produce their fair share of stinkers — but this was a time when the Venn diagram circles labelled 'acclaimed' and 'popular' intersected on a satisfyingly regular basis.

But beyond the critic-friendly fare produced by the likes of Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Martin Scorsese, this was also a peak period for popcorn-friendly action movies… and especially sci-fi action movies. Highbrow reviewers didn't always appreciate their brilliance back then, but looking back all these decades later, many of the best examples still stand up now.

"Independence Day" — which turned 30 last week — isn't even the best entry in the genre, but it repeatedly shows why the end of the 20th century was the perfect time to experience blockbuster thrills and spills in a multiplex. And, spoiler, there was barely a superhero in sight.

The '80s had teed up the subsequent decade's action explosion perfectly. On one side was the family-friendly fare championed by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, timeless movies like the "Star Wars" sequels, "ET", "Back to the Future," and "Indiana Jones" that produced a generation of budding cinephiles. They were complemented by the more rugged, violent, and grown-up adventures popularized by the likes of "Aliens", "Predator", and "Die Hard".

Anything less than spectacular would no longer cut it in the blockbuster stakes, as the kids of the '80s got that little bit older and decided to take their new favorite genre with them.

It's easy to dismiss this kind of filmmaking as simplistic and dumbed down. Its poster boys were uber-producers Jerry Bruckheimer and his late filmmaking partner Don Simpson, whose "high concept" ethos distilled movies down to a pithy elevator pitch you could squeeze into a single sentence.

But the company's undisputed classics of the era make it obvious they were on to something — "Crimson Tide" (feuding submariners try to avert World War III), "The Rock" (rogue marines capture Alcatraz to hold San Francisco to ransom) and "Con Air" (a bunch of prisoners capture their transport plane). It's a formula that also worked for "Speed" (a bomb will explode if a bus goes under 50mph), "Twister" (scientists chase tornadoes across America), and "Under Siege" ("Die Hard" on a boat).

The director/producer duo of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were clearly paying attention when they made "Independence Day", their follow-up to 1994's "Stargate". Let's start with their own high concept, easily summed up as a modern-day spin on HG Wells' "The War of the Worlds", but with bigger spaceships and a more pronounced fetish for major landmarks.

Speaking to the Guardian, Devlin recalled Emmerich's original idea. "[He said], 'What if we woke up tomorrow morning and we walked outside to get the newspaper and above it was a 15-mile-wide spaceship blotting out the sun for an entire city?' Then he turned to look at me and goes, 'I think I have our next movie.'"

"Independence Day" didn't need to be part of a major franchise to get noticed. The teaser trailers, with their carefully choreographed moments of tourist hotspot destruction, were enough for that, as was the brilliant sci-fi movie poster, which saw Manhattan dwarfed by a flying saucer. "The question of whether or not we are alone in the universe has been answered," said the wonderfully doom-mongering tagline.

As with many of the other action movie classics of the era — not to mention the classic Irwin Allen disaster epics of the 1970s, such as "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" — "Independence Day" prioritized its cast over spectacle.

The biggest name on the roster was arguably Jeff Goldblum, who, thanks to the double whammy of "Jurassic Park" and "ID4", briefly had the two highest-grossing films of all time on his resumé.

But Emmerich and Devlin also spotted the star power of Will Smith before he became a bona fide A-lister, and packed out the vast supporting cast with familiar — though not necessarily movie star — names: "Taxi"'s Judd Hirsch as Goldblum's dad, Bill Pullman as an idealistic POTUS, and Randy Quaid as a former pilot with a bone to pick with ET. They also boosted the film's geek credentials by casting Brent Spiner ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"'s Data) as Area 51's eccentric head of ET research.

Populating the film with quality actors paid big dividends, helping to ground a film whose script rarely shied away from the ridiculous. In a screenplay that shifts from gung-ho action to self-aware gags to over-earnest, tub-thumping presidential speeches (and back again), it certainly helps if your cast can play their roles as if they're on stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the same way, nobody could watch Ed Harris in "The Rock" or Gene Hackman in "Enemy of the State" and claim they were phoning it in.

There's also a lot to be said for the "Independence Day"'s deployment of practical effects. The mid-'90s were a dangerous time to be a filmmaker, when many were tempted to use computer effects when they should have known better. Look at the best action movies of the era, however, and they tend to use the CG to enhance, rather than replace, more traditional techniques.

As groundbreaking as "Jurassic Park" was, Steven Spielberg was remarkably sparing with the digital moments, while "The Matrix" — a film whose bullet-time effects quickly became ubiquitous — hung its action credentials on its live-action fights and wire work.

"Independence Day" was cut from the same cloth, using CG in the right places (most notably in its spectacular aerial dogfights) while also building (and subsequently blowing up) intricate practical models to deliver moments of pure, joyous cinematic carnage. These moments would undoubtedly be animated in a computer now, losing the tactile qualities — and the intrinsic gravity of the situation — you only capture in real life.

Thirty years on, "Independence Day" and its '90s action brethren have come to feel like relics. Sure, superhero movies, their most obvious descendants, still set their eyes on top acting talent, and the best directors (most notably Christopher Nolan) tend to make a point of shooting practically when they can.

But, aside from the numerous "Die Hard" spin-offs, the '90s generation were predominantly telling original stories, well away from the restrictions of franchise filmmaking, starting and finishing an entire story in roughly two hours. Indeed, it's remarkable how few of the classics of the era were followed up by a successful sequel. ("Independence Day: Resurgence" took 20 years to arrive, and when it did, didn't even make half as much at the box-office as its predecessor.)

And crucially, the action movies of the late 20th century were usually about people. Most of the time, they were ridiculous, over-the-top, broadly drawn, clichéd, cookie-cutter characters, but they also tended to — more or less — obey the laws of physics. Without superpowers or magic to fall back on, heroes had to rely on little more than implausible levels of ingenuity and resilience, a capacity to dodge bullets/laser fire, and a gift for making the right quip at the right time. "Independence Day" may just have been on to something.

"Independence Day" is available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK.

When the bright-green Comet 2018/Y1 Iwamoto swung by the sun in February 2019, astrophotographers took advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime chance to photograph the comet with their telescopes. The periodic comet won't be back for another 1,371 years. Comet Iwamoto was bright enough to see through binoculars and small telescopes during its passage through the inner solar system. 

It reached perihelion, its closest point to the sun, on Feb. 7, and it grew brighter over the next few nights as it got closer to planet Earth. It was at its brightest during its closest approach to Earth on Feb. 12, when it passed by  at a safe distance of 28 million miles (45 million kilometers). 

Click through this gallery to see some of the most amazing views of Comet Iwamoto captured by astrophotographers around the world!

In Nerpio, Spain, astrophotographer Gerald Rhemann created this animation of Comet Iwamoto dashing across a backdrop of stars on Feb. 9, 2019, or about two days after the comet made its closest approach to the sun. 

Comet 2018/Y1 Iwamoto is seen dashing before a sea of galaxies on Feb. 2 in this image by Italian astrophotographer and comet researcher Rolando Ligustri, aka "The Comet Man." He captured the image using the remote telescope system at iTelescope.net. If you need help identifying all the different galaxies in this view, check out the annotated version here. 

The Sombrero Galaxy "photobombs" Comet 2018/Y1 Iwamoto in this star-speckled view by Ian Griffin, an astrophotographer and the director of the Otago Museum in New Zealand. Officially designated NGC 4594, the Sombrero Galaxy is about 28 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. 

Griffin captured this image from the University of Canterbury's Mount John Observatory in Tekapo, New Zealand, on Feb. 4, 2019. The 30-minute exposure shows the comet's speedy motion in the night sky. See Iwamoto go in this time-lapse video Griffin shared on Twitter on the same day this photo was taken. 

Rolando Ligustri captured this image the next following day (Feb. 3), when Comet 2018/Y1 Iwamoto was even closer to the Sombrero Galaxy than it was the night before. In this view, the comet and the Sombrero Galaxy form a triangle with the bright star 21 Virginis near the top right corner. (You can see an annotated version of this image here.)

Another image by astrophotographer Gerald Rhemann reveals Comet 2018/Y1 Iwamoto's vibrant coma glowing bright-green in the Virgo constellation on Feb. 8, 2019. 

Astrophotographer Rolando Ligustri captured this image of Comet 2018 Y1/Iwamoto on Jan. 4, 2019, more than a month before the comet made its closest approach to the sun. 

Comet 2018/Y1 Iwamoto looks like a neon glowworm in this deep-space photo by Alan G. Forsyth, a photographer based in Dunoon, Scotland. He captured this image on Feb. 10, 2019 as the comet was passing through the constellation Leo. 

Comet 2018 Y1/Iwamoto takes on a light shade of purple in this image taken by astrophotographer Rolando Ligustri on Feb. 8, 2019. 

As Comet 2018 Y1 Iwamoto made its way toward perihelion, astrophotographer Rolando Ligustri captured this image of it passing between the Virgo and Libra constellations on Jan. 12, 2019.