It's a tall task to overstate the contributions of Michael Okuda to the world of "Star Trek," as the acclaimed VFX artist and graphic designer’s distinctive fingerprints are all over the 60-year-old space fantasy franchise nearly wherever you look.

Okuda and his wife Denise have been officially anointed as "Star Trek" royalty, having been involved in many iterations of the property since "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and through "Enterprise." Their production design artistry is praised for its creativity and careful attention to detail. In addition to their "Star Trek" TV series and feature film projects, the Okudas have written several behind-the-scenes "Trek" books, including "The Star Trek Encyclopedia" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual," as well as having participated in the HD remastering process of "Star Trek: The Original Series" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Space's Editor-In-Chief Tariq Malik and "This Week In Space" podcast co-host Rod Pyle recently visited with the legendary Mike Okuda in an interview discussing his early influences, designing starship control panels, crafting "Star Trek's" visual identity, favorite episodes, easter eggs, and preserving screen-used sets and props.

Here's a sample of our conversation with Okuda where he recalls fond moments helping to build upon the look and the lore of "Star Trek" as it continued to evolve.

"I think the biggest contribution was as graphic artist for 'Star Trek,'" Okuda shared regarding his impressive list of career credits. "Simply because 'Star Trek' had such an impact. And 'Star Trek' was one of the first shows that understood that graphics really helped define the universe."

Okuda's first "Trek" gig came for 1986's "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," one of the best of the initial six "Star Trek" films that began with "Star Trek: The Motion Picture."

"After 'Star Trek II,' the Enterprise bridge used to have these cool round screens. But the graphics on them, the information, was rectangular in format," he added. "And I'm going, that's kind of inappropriate. So I thought, if you have round screens, why would you have round screens? Well, obviously because you have a display style that's circular, that's radial.

"I thought, what might that look like? That's kind of interesting and fun and futuristic. So I did a bunch of sketches and just for laughs, I sent it in to Paramount. And I got a call from Ralph Winter. This is just before they did 'Star Trek III', saying, ‘we're already staffed up on 'Star Trek III,' but if we ever do a 'Star Trek IV,' I'll give you a call.’ So 'Star Trek IV' comes up, he calls, and I was living in Hawaii at the time, I flew back and forth from Hawaii to work on 'IV.'

"After that I figured, okay, that was fun, that was my big foray into Hollywood. Just before 'IV' came out Paramount announced they're doing 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' so I sent all that material to Roddenberry's office. I ran into him at the cast and crew screening and told him I was gonna go visit ILM. He said, 'well, before you accept anything there, I hope you'll give us a shot.'"

On the occasion of "Trek's" big 60th birthday that just landed this month on Sept. 8, 2026, Okuda was asked about some of his most special "Star Trek" memories while being involved in its graphic design creating all the fantastic readouts and displays.

"For me, the Enterprise in 'Voyage Home,' that was the first movie I worked on, the first Enterprise I worked on,” he shared. "I'm very proud of that bridge. Same thing with 'The Next Generation' bridge, that was the first bridge for which the interfaces were really mine. As far as working on things, for both Denise and I, the 'DS9' episode 'Trials and Tribulations,' where we revisited the original 'Star Trek' series, was very near and dear to our hearts. That was probably the most fun we had working on 'Star Trek' for that period of time."

Cruising down the calendar to current times, Okuda is still dipping his creative toes in the "Star Trek" waters as a respected franchise guru and canonical resource.

"A couple of years ago we continued to work on 'Star Trek'-related projects including the Roddenberry Archive. Dave Blass, who was production designer on 'Star Trek: Picard,' called and said he wants to get the band back together. And I don't know if you saw the third season of 'Star Trek: Picard,' but we recreated, rebuilt from scratch, the Enterprise-D bridge. And you know, they say you can't go home again, but just for a moment you could. Oh, it was so wonderful."

Speaking of the future, Okuda chimed in with his musing on the lasting effects of "Star Trek" with words from the visionary creator of what began as an idea for an ambitious "Wagon Train To The Stars" TV series.

"Roddenberry used to say it's not necessarily a straight line from today to 'Star Trek,'" he noted. "That you go three steps forward, two steps back, go to the side a little bit. You look at his series concept for 'Genesis 2.' It's what happened after the nuclear apocalypse. And yet even there, it was a hopeful, optimistic show that these good people are working to make tomorrow better.

"And the original 'Star Trek' was made in the '60s when we were terrified of nuclear apocalypse. We were terrified of environmental catastrophe. We were shattered by racial strife and international conflict and famine around the world. And 'Star Trek' said at the time, we can do better. We can make good choices and that it won't necessarily all be over. I think that's the thing that I try not to lose sight of."

For more BTS "Star Trek" tales and the entire Michael Okuda interview with Tariq and Rod please check out "This Week In Space" #227 on YouTube.

You might be shocked to see decades-old trading card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG) on our humble space website, but MTG has been dipping its toes into science fiction sets for a few years now.

After last year's canon Edge of Eternities set, Wizards of the Coast also embraced the space opera angle, so it was only a matter of time before the 'Universes Beyond' crossover series brought in a major sci-fi franchise. Now, just in time for its 60th anniversary, Star Trek is being adapted into a sprawling MTG set that aims to cover the franchise's entire history.

At Gamescom, we had the chance to sit down with principal designer Gavin Verhey to chat about the peculiarities of this set, its sprawling scope, and how the team boldly adapted "Trek" into a compelling addition to the ever-growing card game.

Disclaimer: The following interview has been edited for better flow.

A five-year mission

"We started working on the Star Trek discussion, I think, back in about 2021 or so," Verhey revealed. "I wasn't part of the initial deal, but I started working on the set in 2022. We've been designing it for about four years." His relationship with Star Trek started way before a Magic: The Gathering set was on the table, however: "In many ways, I've been working on it for like 25 years, because I started watching Star Trek when I was eight years old. I fell in love with it right away."

Even if MTG had dabbled in sci-fi before, Edge of Eternities represented a huge swing for Wizards, so how did the experience of making that set (and the reaction to it) shape an even bolder Star Trek expansion? According to Verhey, EoE was its own thing from the beginning: "We weren't doing it to set up for Star Trek or anything. We just thought it'd be a cool thing to do for Magic. But of course, we learned a lot from it for Star Trek, so we did take some notes and lessons."

A key part of that set, which is making a return for Star Trek, was the Spacecraft mechanic, a twist on the familiar concept of vehicle cards. The potentially game-changing spaceships have to be "charged" by other creatures, but they then act one-hundred-percent like powerful artifacts and/or creatures. According to Verhey, it was "a little soft for a lot of players", so we can expect spacecraft to be "amped up" for the new set. "Star Trek builds quite its own thing. It's trying to do a much more different thing."

Report to the ready room

Spearheading the roster of products, there are four "ready-to-play" decks – based on key crews and villains from Trek – for the famous 100-card Commander format. Commander has become MTG's go-to "game mode" over the years because it's welcoming and dynamic, and it lets players use cards from across the game's incredibly long history.

"The Green-White-Blue deck very much follows the aesthetics of the original series and has a large focus on its characters. There's also a Red-White-Blue that's more about the Next Generation and Voyager eras," he explained. Those are meant to celebrate two key timelines of Star Trek, but players looking for a more villainous twist can grab the Red-White-Black Klingon and White-Blue-Black Borg decks, which focus on two of the franchise's most "beloved species."

"We had the agreement to be able to do anything from Star Trek that showed up on the screen. This set contains all 60 years of its history, all the way from the original series to Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and all the stuff from today," Verhey told us. That sounds like an incredibly daunting task, considering all the source material available. It was made much easier by Paramount's flexibility, it seems. "You guys do the research and put in whatever you want" was the overall attitude, the designer recalled. "We have cards from all kinds of deep cuts."

Make it so

Of course, Paramount "gets final say over the artwork", but the game design was guided by Wizards (the company, not actual wizards).

That didn't take much pressure off the team's shoulders, though: "We want to do right by Star Trek. That's really, really, really important to us. So we iterated on a lot of things... Star Trek is a very interesting one to tackle because in many ways it maps onto Magic very well. You have cool characters, incredible creatures, and all the places you want to go and visit from fantastical worlds."

There was one issue, though: Star Trek (at its core) "is not really about fighting as much", so much of the set was built around the ideas of "exploration and moral dilemmas" with unique mechanics that tie into that aspect of the universe, so less aggressive players might be eating well with this one.

On the matter of using actors' likenesses – a major departure from sets like the ones built around Middle-earth, which did their own thing separate from the movies – he explained the goal was to have "only one actor depicted as any one given character" when it came to the main set. "Every version of Kirk is William Shatner."

But fear not, Kelvin timeline fans, as the 'Stardates Bonus Sheet' cards include "all the alternate universes of Star Trek" and have Kirk from the J.J. Abrams movies, among others.

Strange New Lands

Verhey admitted there were some challenges "with figuring out how to make Star Trek feel like Magic", so there's a heavy focus on new mechanics and a game rhythm that's "a little bit slower", building up towards "large things in the late game" (good news for Commander enjoyers).

Verhey wanted to highlight two major mechanics that help make it feel like Trek. The first is "Strange New Worlds", which gives players "a bonus equal to X, where X is the number of differently named lands you control". The cards built around it benefit from and push for a longer, more relaxed game.

Then, there's "Face a Dilemma", where players have to make choices like the characters would in the shows. "We made cards like 'Set phasers to' and then your options are 'stun' or 'kill' and you can choose. There's a card involving the Prime Directive where you can either violate it or observe."

These dilemmas come with rewards that should "inspire you to build a deck full of all these hard choices". Surprisingly, MTG's Star Trek set amps up the roleplay element by throwing players into "What am I doing in this situation?" scenarios very often.

Seeking out strange new life

As always, the art on these new cards looks stunning. Wizards is used to delivering on that front, but Verhey underlined that "making sure all the details were right" was key to success, as "Star Trek fans are very detail-oriented" (we totally agree).

However, the art teams also made the decision to have fun with certain designs, especially those of many monsters and creatures from The Original Series, where they "wanted to show them as their most awesome version" without the "restrictions" of back in the day. He brought up the Salt Vampire as a good example: "It was a little rough around the edges, so we imagined it as the coolest version you could possibly imagine."

There's also art that feels "a little magical" in a way that (hopefully) resonates with MTG players that aren't as familiar with the franchise: "I love art of this card called Crystalline Entity, which looks like it would fit right into Magic and is a huge monster shooting a beam into the landscape... It looks like an Eldrazi, honestly, and I think it's very cool to be able to bring that magic into the world of Star Trek."

Verhey also confirmed this is a large set – unlike the more medium-sized ones like The Hobbit – with four Commander decks, the two scene boxes, a Beginner Box, a "welcome deck", and more. "All those have new parts. I hope we got almost everything you could possibly want in a Star Trek set into this one."

So far, it looks like Wizards has boldly gone where no man has gone before with this set.

Magic: The Gathering's Star Trek set and all its products will be hitting shelves on November 13, 2026. Prerelease events will take place between November 6 and 12.

No, we're not talking about Liam and Noel. Arcade shooter "Galaga" celebrates its 45th anniversary this month, and there’s a lot to be thankful for. Developed by Namco, few know the game was actually a sequel to 1979’s "Galaxian", thanks to the massive success this title eventually brought.

Arcade games of the late 70s and early 80s were saturated with space theming, but "Galaga" rose above the rest thanks to its innovative gameplay and thoughtful little touches, like the Challenging stages. You’ve likely played it in two ways: via an arcade machine if you're old enough to remember those, or on the loading screen for the first "Tekken" game on Sony PlayStation, released in 1995 (which you may still not be old enough to remember). Beyond that, "Galaga"'s most recent pop culture claim to fame is Tony Stark's declaration of "That man is playing "Galaga"" during The Avengers.

You control a starship fixed at the bottom of the screen, where you must shoot down any alien craft that fly in predictable patterns. The more you hit, the more points you score. There are bosses who mix up the difficulty and add to the fun factor too. Although "Galaga" didn’t inspire the band Oasis’ Gallagher brothers a decade later, it did help spur the Arcade years some look back on as a golden age. To celebrate 45 years since "Galaga"’s debut, we’re looking back to see why it still stands the test of time in the sea of retro space shooters.

A Galaxian Quest

It sounds strange to assume that "Galaga" was made to clear out a hemorrhage of "Galaxian" arcade boards, but that’s exactly how the sequel began. 1979’s "Galaxian" was a huge success for Namco, and back then, games were few and far between, so it wasn’t unusual to see the same game in arcades for a few years. But once 1981 came around, Namco knew it needed something else.

Namco had a lot of "Galaxian" arcade boards, so they decided to clear them out with new games, such as "King" and "Balloon". Galaxion arrived in 1980 as a fixed shooter where you had to save the King before he got carried away. But in September 1981, the second title arrived in the form of "Galaga", adding innovative new features that kept players coming back, like the ability to capture another ship, so your firepower could double against enemy ships.

The Challenging Stage was another highlight, where multiple ships flew in with multiple formations. "Galaga" creator and designer Shigeru Yokoyama explained in an interview, via Shmuplations, how this came about. “At first there was only one pattern they’d fly in, which was the pattern that a bug had created.

During the course of the development, we realized we wanted this to be a game with a lot of replay value, so we decided to add more patterns.” Yokoyama says further that he owes this to programmer Tetsu Ogawa, who went on to create even more patterns to make the stages more fun and challenging. It’s little touches like these that made "Galaga" the iconic arcade shooter it became.

In addition, "Galaga" even has some unused graphics, thanks to The Cutting Room Floor. There’s a ‘500’ point graphic, but no enemy has that. Another is a laser beam graphic that could have been a weapon.

There’s even an Easter Egg you can try out in "Galaga"’s arcade version. When in Service Mode, press and hold Button 1, then press Right (×5), Left (×6), Right (×3), Left (×7). If done correctly, "©1981 NAMCO LTD.” should appear.

"Galaga" was a smash hit, coming in at sixth place in Japan for the highest-grossing arcade game of 1981, and climbing to 3rd the following year. But it was its longevity throughout the 80s that gave "Galaga" its classic status and made it a big moneymaker for Namco. Of course, sequels appeared over the years — like "Gaplus" and "Galaxian3" — but 45 years later, people only remember "Galaga".

But in 2026, how can you play this arcade legend?

A Rave War Return

One of the most common ways that players discovered "Galaga" (this writer included) was by playing Namco’s fighting game, "Tekken", on the original PlayStation console. Allegedly placed as a way of masking the long loading screen, it also came with the secret of unlocking Devil Kazuya if you cleared all eight stages with a perfect score.

But in 2026, there are various ways to play "Galaga". On the Switch, you can play it via the Arcade Archives series, as well as on Steam, PS5, and Xbox. But "Galaga" was a seismic game and a huge part of the arcade golden age; it feels like there should be more to celebrate it.

This goes back to Namco itself. The company doesn’t seem to have a drive to celebrate their past games like "Tekken" and "Ace Combat" in remastered collections - it’s worth noting that only the first "Tekken" game was made available on Switch 2 this year, with no other modern ways to play available at the time of writing.

It’d be great to see an entire "Galaxian" collection that celebrates "Galaga" as well as the other titles in the series, similar to how Digital Eclipse has made their spin on other franchises like "Tetris Forever" and "Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection".

Nevertheless, it’s still easy to find and play "Galaga" on PC and consoles in 2026. It’s an iconic game, and for good reason. It tests your reaction skills and has that ‘one more go’ factor that was an important attribute for any arcade game in the 1980s. It rose above other space games and gave players something unique to come back to.

If you have a spare evening, buy the game for console or PC and see why one of the best-selling arcade games of all time has lasted 45 years.

"Galaga" is available to play via the Arcade Archives series on Steam, PS5, Switch, and Xbox.

The sad death of Hayden Panettiere in August brought "Heroes" — one of her most famous roles — back into the public consciousness.

As resurrecting cheerleader Claire Bennet, she became the face of a show that burned so brightly during its zeitgeist-grabbing first season that it sparked hours of watercooler chats as it brought superheroes to primetime. In that pre-streaming age, when network TV shows still dominated the conversation, the NBC series was — in the months following its September 2006 debut — the thing everybody was talking about.

But unlike many of the creatives who've since found success in the superhero space, "Heroes" creator Tim Kring was no comic-book nerd. "The idea of the dialog bubbles always bothered me," he admitted to Wired. He did have some genre experience, mostly thanks to a stint writing for David Hasselhoff and his talking car in "Knight Rider", but back in 2006 he was best known for ratings-grabbing crime procedural "Crossing Jordan".

So when NBC — a network that had been suffering in the ratings — went on the hunt for a must-watch hit to rival "Lost" and "24, it turned to Kring. "I was the right guy at the right time," he told IndieLondon.

"I wanted to do a show that addressed some of the larger issues that I felt all of us were facing. Between terrorism and global warming and diminishing natural resources, the world is out of balance. I started to think about wanting to make a statement about that, and the average cop show, or law show, or medical show didn’t seem to have the foundation to deal with those issues and the scope and breadth that I wanted. So I thought about ordinary people making a difference in the world and what could incorporate a message of hope, and that led me to this idea of ordinary people waking up to discover that they were extraordinary."

While superheroes have since become the dominant force in pop culture, they weren't yet there in 2006. With "Iron Man" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe still two years away, the genre was still finding its feet on the big screen, the critical and commercial success of "Spider-Man" and "Batman Begins" often tempered by the less beloved likes of "Fantastic Four" and "Catwoman". Doing convincing superheroes on a network TV budget — even a generous one — also seemed risky. The nearest thing to a test case was "Smallville", a Superman prequel that famously kept the Man of Steel grounded.

Kring was well aware, too, that entering the comic-book space was something genre newbies shouldn't take lightly. He subsequently packed his writers' room with superhero-literate staff — who named themselves 'the League of Heroic Scribblers' — to make sure he didn't do anything crazy.

"Heroes" was superpowered storytelling that ditched the Spandex, capes and alter-egos — a smart move that meant the producers didn't have to dodge costumes or character names that might inadvertently overlap with Marvel or DC's copyright. But more importantly, the show was the story of ordinary people who suddenly realize they're extraordinarily gifted, waking up with abilities that — like the characters in Pixar's "The Incredibles", released two years earlier — reflect their personalities and situations. Police officer Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) was able to read other people's minds, while prisoner DL Hawkins (Leonard Roberts) developed a handy penchant for walking through walls.

Crucially, "Heroes" was as much about these gifted few not using their superpowers as it was about them flying/using superstrength/teleporting (delete as appropriate). "That's the real secret of comics in the first place," said Jeph Loeb, the comic book writer and "Smallville" and "Lost" veteran that Kring had added to his team. "Peter Parker's dilemma is infinitely more interesting than Spider-Man's." Writers' room member Bryan Fuller, who went on to co-create "Star Trek: Discovery", would describe the show as "'Magnolia' meets 'X-Men'".

The ensemble was large and disparate, from the aforementioned Texas cheerleader, to an aspiring politician in upstate New York and an office worker in Tokyo. Early on in that first season, the characters are kept intentionally separate — a choice reflected in the writers' room, where an individual scripter would stick with a single character through multiple episodes. Fuller, for example, shaped cheerleader Claire's arc.

"The haiku-type of storytelling was effective when characters had very separate storylines," Kring told AV Club in 2010. "My idea was for them to stay apart for as long as possible. The network wanted them to be together on the second episode, and we really fought that. Once characters start crossing, you can do fewer stories."

Although thousands of miles apart, the nascent heroes' stories are gradually drawn together by a single mission to avoid global apocalypse by averting an explosion at Kirby Plaza (a nod to legendary comic-book artist Jack Kirby) in NYC. "Save the cheerleader, save the world," became the show's extremely catchy tagline.

They're not alone on their journey, however. Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) is a geneticist on a mission to understand what's turned these people super, and there are more sinister agents on their tail, too. Power-stealing serial killer Sylar (a pre-"Star Trek" Zachary Quinto) is bumping people off, while a mysterious guy in horn-rimmed glasses (aka HRG, aka Noah Bennet, aka Claire's dad — played by Jack Coleman) was the face of a sinister agency trying to keep supes under control.

Although derivative to anyone who'd ever read a comic, "Heroes" captured a moment. That first season — or "Volume", to use the show's parlance — was a ratings hit for NBC, picked up numerous awards nominations, and launched multiple careers. Panettiere would go on to star in "Nashville" and "Scream", Milo Ventimiglia (power-mimicking Peter Petrelli) was one of the leads in the long-running "This is Us", and ILM VFX-whiz turned actor Masi Oka (teleporting Hiro Nakamura) became Hollywood's go-to geek for a while.

A spin-off show, "Heroes: Origins" was planned (but ultimately aborted), and Kring and co had the foresight to set up 9thwonders.com (the title inspired by the comic written by clairvoyant artist Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera) in the show) as a pre-social media destination for fans to get their "Heroes" fix.

But season one was as big as "Heroes" got. Unlike "Lost" — which has since become shorthand for a show that asks question after question without giving any answers — that first year had neatly wrapped up most of its important storylines. Despite Kring's best intentions, however, it wasn't great for the future of the show.

Volume Two's arc subsequently had to start more-or-less from scratch, but took too long to establish where it was going, leading to significant backlash from the fanbase. "The message is that we’ve heard the complaints — and we’re doing something about it.” Kring responded in Entertainment Weekly.

Kring had originally intended to refresh the cast for each season, but the popularity of many of the lead characters meant that was never going to happen. The season also suffered as a result of Hollywood's 2007-08 writers' strike, which led to a planned 24-episode run being cut down to 11, and interest in the show continued to wane until it was finally cancelled after season four. A 2015 reboot (for which Kring returned) also struggled to set the world alight. It was an ignoble end for one of the last network genre shows to truly capture the zeitgeist before cable and streaming eclipsed traditional channels the pop-culture hive mind.

Twenty years on "Heroes"' legacy is dragged down by the memory of the series it became, but that first season still stands up as one of the best superhero stories of the 21st century. Sometimes a great idea is only enough to sustain a single season, and there's no shame in that — "Heroes" wasn't the first show to outstay its welcome, and it won't be the last.

'Heroes' is available to stream on Netflix in the US and the UK. You can also buy or rent the show on Prime Video.

By the fall of 1996, everybody wanted to believe. The first three seasons of "The X-Files" had been a smash hit for Fox, turning FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully into household names, and bringing aliens and conspiracy theories into the mainstream. It was such a lucrative combination that, unsurprisingly, other networks wanted a piece of their own.

On paper, "Dark Skies" (which debuted on NBC 30 years ago this week) looked like a blatant rip-off, with its pair of good-looking leads, talk of extra-terrestrial invasions, and high-reaching government cover-ups. Its "history as we know it is a lie" tagline was also a direct descendant of "The X-Files"' famous "trust no one" catchphrase.

But this was no by-the-numbers imitator. Instead, "Dark Skies" was a 1960s-set period drama that posited the notion that a network of "here and hostile" aliens had infiltrated US culture and had been manipulating key historical events for years. Want to know who killed JFK? Look out for the extraterrestrial shooter on the grassy knoll.

"In the early stages, ['Dark Skies'] was, 'Let's do "Forrest Gump" meets "War of the Worlds",'" co-creator Brent V. Friedman said in a 2010 retrospective documentary. "'Let's do a complete revisionist history of the 20th century as if aliens really existed.' That kind of opened the door to all sorts of possibilities — we just went in and mined history for all of these interesting incidents and put a 'Dark Skies' spin on them."

Sounds like the kind of show Mulder himself might want to watch…

The series' masterminds did everything they could to play up 'Dark Skies'' fictional cover-up vibe. The pilot episode's opening narration 'claims' that "This program is presented as fiction to protect those people fighting in the resistance," while their original pitch to networks had an ingenious conspiracy theory theme.

"We created an ultra-classified briefing book as our pitch," co-creator Bryce Zabel recalled in a 2011 interview with Icon vs Icon. "Inside there was a memo that basically said, 'This truth has to be revealed to the public, but it's such a radical truth that if we try to do it by covert means, it'll blow too many people's minds. Therefore, you need to do a TV series.'

"The briefing book basically had a gold foil seal on it, and it said that if you broke the seal, you accepted the penalties of treason if you were to speak about this. Then we wrapped it in brown wrapping paper, put twine around it, and stamped 'Top Secret' on it. We left those with network executives."

NBC ultimately agreed to share a story that had — allegedly — been kept under wraps for over three decades. In the show's complex mythology, the famous Roswell incident of 1947 alerted the US government to the presence of aliens, prompting President Harry S. Truman to form the top-secret Majestic 12 (an organization some conspiracy theorists believe to be real) to monitor the threat.

It turns out that the familiar "Gray" aliens (another crossover with "The X-Files") are under the influence of a power-hungry race of parasites known as the Hive. They've taken control of the Grays' sophisticated tech and are now out to absorb the human race into their collective consciousness.

When he takes a job as a congressional aide in Washington DC in 1961, idealistic college graduate John Loengard's (Eric Close) investigation into the funding of UFO-research scheme Project Blue Book uncovers much more than he'd expected. Knowing too much, he's soon forcibly recruited to Majestic 12 by its inscrutable boss, Captain Frank Bach (the reliably brilliant late J. T. Walsh), who gives him a crash course in the Hive and their ways.

In the meantime, John's girlfriend Kim Sayers (Megan Ward) has started working for First Lady Jackie Kennedy, but is soon implanted by one of the Hive's spider-like Ganglions. John manages to perform an experimental extraction on her, and the pair go on the run, founding the eponymous Dark Skies movement to expose the extraterrestrial threat.

As the couple criss-cross the US, they set out to foil various Hive schemes, most of them led by under-the-influence former Majestic agent Jim Steele (Tim Kelleher). But they also have to stay one step ahead of Bach, who gradually develops a marriage of inconvenience with Loengard — they need each other, despite their mutual distrust, and very different goals and motivations.

There's impressive attention to detail throughout, whether the show is imagining elaborate crop circles, or recreating 1960s fashions, cars, and backdrops. The storyline also intersects with numerous famous events of the era (Vietnam, the Warren Commission, the Watts Riots in Los Angeles), as well as famous figures from politics and pop culture — the Hive even attempts to use the Beatles' famous 1964 performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" to bring the populace under control.

Zabel, the son of a history teacher, had worked as a correspondent for CNN in a previous life, and relished the chance to dive into America's recent past to inform the story, using his collection of Time and Newsweek magazine back issues for research.

"History books are about the big picture, you get the trends and all that," he explained in the aforementioned DVD doc. "But in those magazines you'd find all those different things that were happening at the same time in detail. We would constantly match those up with [stories of] UFO events."

One thing "Dark Skies" did not have, however, was government agents in black suits. With the first "Men in Black" movie shooting nearby (it would be released in 1997, becoming one of the best space movies of all time), network executives got nervous about Majestic agents adopting the same look — even though the concept of "men in black" was already well known and, more to the point, scenes had already been shot with actors in black suits.

"'Men in black' were out there in the zeitgeist," Zabel pointed out, "but when I made this argument to one of the executives who came down to the set, they said, 'If you don't get your guys out of black suits today, we will shut down the production and burn the negative.'"

They subsequently became — as star Megan Ward put it — "men in dark gray," as some scenes were reshot and others colorised in post-production. Majestic's goons would become known as "Cloakers" in "Dark Skies" mythology.

By the time the show's first season concluded in May '97, the timeline had reached 1967s Summer of Love. By this point, Kim's Ganglion had reawakened, she'd gone full Hive, and her and John's two-year-old son were now on board the alien mothership. John embarked on a daring mission to rescue the boy with his new partner, Soviet agent Juliet Stuart (a pre-"Star Trek: Voyager" Jeri Ryan), while Bach was seemingly dead at the hands of a Hive mole who'd infiltrated Majestic 12. It was a hell of a cliffhanger, but it was left unresolved when the show was cancelled after a single season, apparently the victim of high production costs and lower-than-expected ratings.

However, there was plenty more story left to tell. Friedman and Zabel always envisioned their show as a "Babylon 5"-style five-year arc, with subsequent seasons covering the decades leading up to a big finale set — and potentially broadcast — in 2000. Even when they were first pitching the series, they'd already devised a "Dark Skies" chronology running from the dinosaur era through to the then-future of 2020.

"This was a reaction to other shows that felt like they were just making it up as they went along," said Friedman. "We said, 'Well, let's do the antithesis, let's come out with a whole blueprint, so we've got a big epic show, we can actually prove to people that we've thought this through.' In the span of a month or so, we thought out five seasons, and we just kept falling in love with the idea — let's put in more details, because we had history to mine from.

"It's a very subversive show," he added, "and I'm still shocked to this day that this was allowed to go on [TV]."

'Dark Skies' is available on DVD in the US and UK. There are also some full season uploads on YouTube.

Creativity thrived in the 1980s. It was the only decade brave enough to center a family sitcom around a fluffy alien puppet with a croissant-like nose, the lovability of a dog, and sensibilities of a stand-up comedian. While never the No. 1 show of its time in the U.S., "ALF" took first place in everybody's heart for four seasons, establishing itself as an important cornerstone of pop culture – even if it feels like it has lost some of its sheen and influence in modern times.

"ALF" is a tale as old as a time. An intergalactic creature named Gordon Shumway from the planet of Melmac crashes his spaceship into a garage. He meets the Tanner family – no, not the annoyingly huggy people from "Full House" – who proceed to name him ALF, which is shorthand for Alien Life Form. Since his ship can't be repaired, and every '80s kid wanted to be Elliott Taylor and have a friendly alien best buddy like in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," ALF sticks around on Earth, cracking quips, wreaking havoc, and terrorizing the neighborhood cats.

Our pal ALF was far from the first TV alien to crash-land on this rock and become chummy with humans. In the '60s, "My Favorite Martian" explored a similar premise through Martin O'Hara (played by Ray Walston). Then, in the late '70s, Robin Williams portrayed Mork in "Mork & Mindy." Did Martin or Mork have the charm and side-splitting gags of ALF who at one point tries to hypnotize a cat into thinking he's a bagel? Of course not. There was only one Gordon Shumway.

"ALF's humor came out of him not knowing any better," said Paul Fusco, the co-creator, puppeteer, and voice of the character. "He wasn't politically correct, but he was like Sophia on 'The Golden Girls' – the remarks came out of honesty. That was always the premise. He was never mean."

Under the guise of humor, "ALF" got away with a lot for its time. The pilot episode sees ALF downing beer and almost sharing one with the way-too-young Brian Tanner (Benji Gregory). Even so, the show ducked and dived the long arm of the network fuddy-duddies beautifully, skirting the edge of censorship with a knowing wink, clever pun, and out-of-this-world comedic timing.

Speaking of otherworldliness, the absolute best sci-fi shows don't need to belabor the fact they're about science fiction. They trust that the viewer understands the basic setup and wants to find out more about the stories behind the individuals. "ALF" gets this, choosing to focus on the main character being a fish out of water and an unruly houseguest rather than hammering home the point that he's an alien at every opportunity. Think of it as a PG version of "You, Me and Dupree", but with a funnier and less insufferable Dupree in the form of ALF.

Unlike other family sitcoms of its era that always devolved into ham-fisted lessons about "oh shucks, family knows best" and "it's not toxic if we gaslight and say I love you," "ALF" finds the balance between light-hearted shenanigans and hard-hitting events.

Yes, there are the running gags of ALF trying to hide his presence from snooping neighbors, dodging the Alien Task Force, and turning the Tanner household into his own personal playpen, but there's also a seriousness behind the smiles when you look for it. From him feeling survivor's guilt over the destruction of his planet to his sincere reaction to the death of Lucky the cat in later episodes, there's genuine emotion and depth behind the jokes that highlight real character development and growth throughout his story arc.

ALF is also a complex guy. He's sarcastic and a bona fide troublemaker, yet he's also kind and caring. There's an hilarious episode in the first season titled "Looking for Lucky," where Lucky the cat disappears and the Tanners presume that ALF ate him because of a furball he coughs up. ALF pleads his case and embarks on a search for Lucky, even questioning other neighborhood cats about his whereabouts. This episode alone shows the different facets of his personality – yeah, he spoke about Lucky as if he was a meal best served with some fava beans and a nice Chianti, but when Brian misses his pet, ALF realizes he needs to right this wrong, even if he isn't the one to blame here.

It's this template that other alien comedies, such as "3rd Rock from the Sun" and "Resident Alien," imitate to various degrees of success. They all begin under the guise of aliens failing to understand the complexity of human life and stumbling into awkward situations. However, they become more about how the concept of humanity transcends species; these characters become more human than the actual human beings featured in the series.

The truth is, though, that "ALF" surpasses all of them as the ultimate comfort and relatable alien show. You want to spend more time with ALF and the Tanners; you feel as if you're part of the family and understand exactly what they're going through. It's for this reason that the show received an animated series, a TV movie that wrapped up the events after the fourth season's cliffhanger ending, and even a talk show for ALF to host guests. Did John Lithgow's Dick Solomon ever get this treatment? No, and he didn't deserve it either, if we're being honest.

"ALF" might not be looked back on in the same way as iconic sitcoms like "Friends" and "Seinfeld," but it's a show that connected with audiences around the world – from Ma and Pops watching in their lounge in Louisville, Kentucky to the young boy sitting in front of his grandparents' TV set in Johannesburg, South Africa. Its layered humor, sharp writing, and outstanding performances made everybody forget that the main character was a puppet. And that's part of the magic, since he still feels real to this day.

Every few years or so, a new rumor pops up about an "ALF" reboot in the making. While it's an enticing prospect to consider, let's be honest here: nothing will reach the heights of the original show. It's lightning in a bottle. A moment in time. A one of one… and it ended when it was supposed to. So, to quote the madcap Melmacian himself, "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it gets run over by a car, you don't want it."

"Doctor Who" and "Star Trek" were both born during the space race in the 1960s. An interplanetary human race seemed only decades away, and TV was bound to explore the possibilities, though both British and American networks felt that science fiction didn’t appeal to audiences.

In 1962 the BBC commissioned a report into the genre, which concluded that it was not particularly popular or suitable for the medium of TV. A second report conceded that a time-travel series might work, as a sort of police procedural of science fiction. Head of drama Sydney Newman developed the "Doctor Who" concept in 1963 as a way to fill a gap in the Saturday early-evening schedules.

Gene Roddenberry pitched his "'Wagon Train' to the stars" in 1964. NBC was not convinced "it would make a commercial television series, that there was enough of an audience out there to support this mixture of science fiction and fantasy," writes Herbert F. Solow, "Star Trek’s" executive in charge of production. But Solow was persistent, and the deal was done.

Dual pilots

The most striking similarity between "Doctor Who" and "Star Trek" is that both had pilot episodes which were rejected by their networks, yet the networks took the unusual step of financing second attempts.

Pilots, as they’re known in the US, were not a part of how the BBC worked. All involved in "Doctor Who" intended the version of "An Unearthly Child" made in September 1963 to be broadcast as the beginning of the series. But the recording — done almost as if live — suffered problems, cameras bumping into set dressing and doors swinging open by themselves.

It was the characterization of the Doctor and his granddaughter Susan, though, that really motivated the remount in October. He was too grumpy and lacked sparkle, and she was too weird and unrelatable for young viewers.

The changes to "The Cage", "Star Trek’s" pilot, were far more sweeping. NBC famously branded it too cerebral. The whole story was thrown out and a new one, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", was filmed as the second pilot.

As with "Doctor Who", it was the characters that really needed work, and although the alien Spock was the character that NBC was most concerned about, he was the only one ultimately retained. The Vulcan became more emotionless, while William Shatner’s Kirk — who replaced Jeffrey Hunter’s Pike — became a little more instinctive. The female first officer was dropped entirely, and Scotty, Sulu and later McCoy were added.

With pilots remade and series up and running, both productions found that making ambitious science fiction on a weekly basis was tough. A dozen episodes into their first seasons, "Doctor Who" was over budget and "Star Trek" was slipping behind its delivery schedule. Both arrived at the same solution: make an easy two-part story to get back on track.

"Doctor Who’s" writers came up with "The Edge of Destruction" and "The Brink of Disaster", two episodes telling a tense and mysterious story set entirely inside the TARDIS. Only the four regular characters appeared, and aside from a small bedroom, the existing console room was the only set.

"Star Trek" chose to play the ace up its sleeve: the unbroadcast pilot. Gene Roddenberry wrote "The Menagerie", a story revolving around a court-martial in which Spock presents video evidence, which was footage from "The Cage". By using almost all of the pilot in this way, Roddenberry and his team got a two-parter for which they only had to shoot about one episode’s worth of new material.

Both ruthlessly practical decisions had creative consequences in the series’ futures. "The Edge of Destruction"/"The Brink of Disaster" establishes the TARDIS as having a life-like intelligence, a fact taken to its logical conclusion in the 2011 episode "The Doctor’s Wife", in which the time machine temporarily gets a walking, talking human body.

Meanwhile, "The Menagerie" establishes that Captain Pike and his crew, including the more emotional Spock, existed in universe, predating Kirk’s command of the Enterprise by several years. If that version of the Enterprise crew hadn’t been canonized like this, we would likely have no "Strange New Worlds" today.

Save our series

From the growing pains of the two sci-fi series’ early days, we flash forward to later periods when they were threatened with termination.

In the case of "Star Trek", we don’t have far to go. After both the first and second seasons, it was far from clear that NBC would renew the show. Both times, Roddenberry ensured others put pressure on the network on his behalf.

In late 1966, he prompted Harlan Ellison to encourage all members of the Science Fiction Writers of America to lobby TV stations, sponsors, and the press, demanding "Star Trek’s" renewal. A year later, he collaborated with influential fan Bjo Trimble to orchestrate another letter-writing campaign.

"Doctor Who" had its cancellation crisis in 1985. The British series had been running for an impressive 22 years, with several different producers taking turns to steer it, but the latest BBC management disliked it.

When the axe fell, there was a swift backlash from the press, at least partly driven by Ian Levine, a prominent fan and unofficial script consultant. By some accounts, producer John Nathan-Turner was behind Levine’s efforts, trying to ensure the continuation of his series via a fan as Roddenberry had done.

Both series earned only temporary reprieves. "Star Trek" managed a third season before succumbing to the NBC axe in 1969. "Doctor Who" limped on for four more years before quietly disappearing in 1989. Both had extended periods of rest before returning bigger and more popular than ever.

History repeats itself

Now, in 2026, both properties face uncertain futures once more. "Doctor Who" has been dropped by Disney+, which had been co-producing it for the last few years. Now the BBC is currently seeking a new co-production partner.

On the other side of the pond, "Strange New Worlds" and "Starfleet Academy", the two most recent "Star Trek" series, have also ceased production with no replacements in the works.

It's a worrying time for sci-fi fans, to be sure, but if the last sixty-plus years are anything to go by, we haven't seen the last of either of these venerable sci-fi franchises.

You don't need us to tell you Project Hail Mary was a smash hit earlier this year. The uplifting sci-fi movie, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, went on to make about $685 million worldwide at the box office; an impressive feat for a non-franchise blockbuster these days. Now, it's making the jump to video games through mixed-reality and VR with Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars.

At Gamescom, I was lucky enough to go hands-on with an in-development build of the game, which is currently targeting a launch later this year. Developer Maze Theory was there to show off how it looked and played, but I was also able to sit down with Sandy Lockie — gameplay and creative lead — to discuss what made Project Hail Mary a must-play for fans of both the movie and Andy Weir's novel.

"We worked with Andy a lot in the early stages to set the direction, the time, and the framing of our narrative," Lockie told me when asked about the project's conception. "We've seen how people respond to the film and the book... Our goal was to remain authentic to that, so working with Andy was super important to us."

The book and movie's story follows Dr. Ryland Grace, a middle school teacher who wakes up aboard an interstellar spacecraft with no memory of how he got there, as he tries to save humanity with the help of an unexpected alien pal.

The demo threw me right into the action. Something is broken inside the Hail Mary, so the player, embodying Grace, has to check for the warning lights and, really, anything that looks off. While the mixed-reality setup still needs a VR headset, the impressive part is that no controllers are needed to interact with your digital surroundings.

As seen in the gameplay reveal trailer released during Gamescom, the game can be calibrated in any open-enough space to adjust the "play area", which is overlaid on top of the real world. It works shockingly well, with my hands being registered instantly as Grace's, which allowed me to push buttons and grab cranks and items all around me. Even when Rocky — voiced by James Ortiz once again — was waiting for me to finish a task, I couldn't stop toying with objects floating in zero gravity.

"Maybe it's the idea of confined environments and being transported into a place that people can't usually go to, but space games are quite a prolific theme in VR and MR," Lockie said about the boom of VR space games built with the still-evolving tech. "I think the real differentiator (for us) and the real unique opportunity is Rocky... It's kind of a unique responsibility to try and bring that to life, to make the player feel like they are collaborating with Rocky. It's not just a non-player character or kind of quest giver. He's your companion throughout the game," he noted.

Indeed, Rocky's presence and surprisingly fluid interactions with the player are what might ultimately separate Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars from many of the "safer" VR and MR space adventures out there. Lockie also mentioned the devs at Maze Theory like to talk about the idea of "single-player co-op", and that feels like an apt way to describe what they're going for here.

These space-set experiences can feel isolating and lonely at times, and while I'd say the situation Ryland Grace finds himself in remains stressful and dangerous, having Rocky around — doing "jazz hands" and other hand gestures taken straight from the movie — is oddly comforting. Lockie compared the overall collaboration process to the ones we're used to in other space co-op games, but of course, being inside the Hail Mary and using your actual hands makes Journey Among the Stars more immersive.

There are, of course, limitations to what mixed reality can do even at this stage, and Lockie was happy to go into the process of getting it right: "I love design in this space. It's still a relatively new space. Things like hand-tracking were important to us because we wanted to remove as many barriers between you feeling that you're there with Rocky as possible... A lot of work goes into that kind of tactility and feedback... If you do it well, the player doesn't even know it's there, things like mapping the hands to different objects."

Going back to my own hands-on experience with the game, I found myself quite impressed by the precision of my movements. As someone who'd spent more time playing a few VR games in the past, it was a reminder that the tech has been making massive leaps in recent years, even if the entry bar remains high. The mixed-reality element helps make it more convincing and less cumbersome, too. Still, you need to have a large-enough space devoid of obstacles.

At Gamescom, Maze Theory didn't have control over the space they were given for their booth, so this isn't a problem of the game or its developers, but it was slightly frustrating to have to reach out to grab a battery in the digital world, only to smack my hand against a pillar.

Don't expect to be able to play this one inside a small, regular room. You'll need to secure a larger space for "three to four hours", according to its developers. "There's puzzle-solving and exploration in there, and sandbox sections where you just get to futz around with Rocky."

Mostly influenced by the movie, Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars also wants to dig into a bit of the science involved, serving as an introduction to Andy Weir's approach to it. "We want people to feel like they're pros and know what they're doing, but we simplify things without getting bogged down too much in stuff like the chemical formulas," Lockie told me. "The idea is the player is Grace, and Grace knows his science. We have him explain things in a very grounded way, which is what Andy Weir excels at."

As a final note, Lockie mentioned Maze Theory is still looking at ways to inject more of that "science element" for people who want to go deeper, even if the governing idea is to allow anyone to fully play through this new story set within the continuity of the movie.

So far, it gets an "amaze" from me.

Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars is releasing on Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 3S, Meta Quest Pro, PICO 4, and Android XR platforms in autumn 2026. Players can pre-order it now to get extra in-game digital assets.

On January 2, 1860, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier announced the discovery of a new planet. Situated in the toasty region between Mercury and our star, what better name for this body than Vulcan?

Vulcan was the Roman god of all things hot — fire, forges, metalworking, deserts and, of course, volcanoes, to which he gave his name. He was literally thrown out of Olympus by his father Jupiter, falling into Mount Etna. He was said to labour away at his forge there, deep below the earth, and whenever his wife Venus was unfaithful, he would grow so angry that the sparks from his metalworking would shoot up out of the mountain.

Le Verrier had spent the 1840s and 1850s building a theoretical model of Mercury's orbit using classical mechanics – Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. Unfortunately, observations of Mercury transiting the sun repeatedly showed a small but definite deviation from Le Verrier's predictions. The planet's perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, was shifting around the star a little bit faster than expected.

So Le Verrier hypothesized a body between Mercury and the Sun which was gravitationally affecting the former's orbit. This hypothesis was lent significant weight by Le Verrier's 1846 discovery of Neptune using the same method, deducing its existence from the perturbations of the neighbouring planet, in that case Uranus.

In late 1859, Le Verrier found his "proof" of Vulcan. Edmond Modeste Lescarbault, a physician and amateur astronomer, claimed to have observed an unknown body transiting the Sun. It appeared to orbit in a speedy 20 days at a distance of just 0.14 AU (13 million miles). Le Verrier made his announcement, and Lescarbault was awarded the Légion d'honneur, the highest order of merit in France.

But some were skeptical. For the next 55 years astronomers endeavoured to confirm Vulcan's existence, particularly during solar eclipses. Many claimed to see the planet, including some highly reputable astronomers. But no matter how much Le Verrier reworked his calculations, Vulcan never seemed to show up when it was predicted.

Finally, in 1915, the true reason for Mercury's accelerated perihelion precession was discovered. It was Newton's laws that were at fault. Einstein's newly published Theory of General Relativity, in which massive objects like the Sun cause spacetime itself to curve, explained Mercury's observed motions exactly.

The "real" Vulcan was dead, but the idea had a long life in it yet.

Planet of the Daleks

Vulcan appeared in numerous works of science fiction during the first half of the 20th century, including works by Ray Cummings and Leigh Brackett. Often it was portrayed as small, dense, and rich in minerals, with a thick atmosphere.

"Doctor Who" jumped on the Vulcan bandwagon in 1964. The series' menacing metal villains, the Daleks, had proved wildly popular — popular enough to warrant the publication of an anthology of short stories and comic strips called "The Dalek Book", written by David Whitaker and Terry Nation.

As the Daleks draw their plans to conquer the Solar System in one of the strips, their map is seen to include Vulcan between the sun and Mercury. Apparently, in this version of the "Doctor Who" universe at least, Le Verrier was right.

Two years later, Whitaker wrote the TV story "The Power of the Daleks" and used the name Vulcan again. The Doctor – newly regenerated for the very first time – must save a human colony from the Daleks on this desolate planet covered in bubbling mercury pools. But this Vulcan may be extrasolar; the 1993 novelisation of "The Power of the Daleks" places the planet many parsecs from Earth, out on the frontier.

And the frontier, specifically the final one, is where we find the most enduring version of the planet Vulcan.

Strange New World

"Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry originally conceived the Enterprise's science officer as a red-skinned humanoid from Mars. By the time cameras rolled, though, he was from Vulcan.

Spock (Leonard Nimoy) displayed emotions in the rejected pilot, "The Cage", but was quickly established in transmitted episodes as a strict adherent to logic. As the series (and franchise) went on, we learned that Vulcans suppressed their emotions or purged them altogether, and we discovered the wonders of the Mind Meld and the Nerve Pinch.

Spock was enormously popular with audiences, even more than the show's lead character, Captain Kirk (William Shatner). Coincidentally, Shatner had appeared in a 1964 "Outer Limits" episode as an astronaut on a Venusian mission called Project Vulcan. Amongst Shatner's co-stars was Lawrence Montaigne, who later cropped up in the "Star Trek" episode "Amok Time"… as a Vulcan.

"Amok Time" provided the series' first visit to the planet itself, revealed to be a desert with a red sky and thin atmosphere, where ancient rituals hold sway. Later visits in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "The Next Generation" fleshed out the planet and its culture, while "Voyager" gave us a new regular Vulcan in the form of tactical officer Tuvok.

"Enterprise" took us back to the early days of Earth-Vulcan relations, leading up to the two planets becoming founding members of the Federation, as well as exploring Vulcan culture further through series regular T'Pol and even meeting the father of Vulcan logic, Surak.

J. J. Abrams may have destroyed Vulcan in the alternate timeline of his 2009 "Star Trek" film, but it lives on in the various new series of the last decade. "Discovery" recounted how the planet, now called Ni'Var, rejoined the Federation after a period of galactic devastation in the far future, while "Strange New Worlds" continues to fill in Spock's journey from the emotional lieutenant of "The Cage" to the logic-driven lieutenant commander of the Original Series.

Meanwhile, there was one more surprise in store. Spock's Vulcan orbits a real star, 40 Eridani A, about 16 light-years from Earth. A 2018 study of 40 Eridani A concluded that radial velocity variations in that star were likely caused by a planet orbiting it. Had the real Vulcan been found at last?

Sadly not. Like Le Verrier before them, the scientists had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Subsequent studies debunked the potential planet, and as of 2024 it has been generally accepted that the variations are purely down to stellar activity. The Astronomical Journal called it "The Death of Vulcan", but in fiction at least, Vulcan still prospers.

Few franchises have inspired more cosplay than "Star Trek". Head to any sci-fi convention and chances are you'll encounter representatives of numerous Starfleet ranks and eras, and possibly an alien species or two. You may even bump into a particularly imaginative fan dressed as a starship.

That penchant for fancy dress isn't just limited to "Trek"'s fanbase, however. Federation officers are just as keen on raiding the costume closet, whether they need a disguise for an away mission, are planning a trip to the holodeck, or have been manipulated by the meddling of a cheeky cosmic entity.

This week's episode of "Strange New Worlds" extends that long tradition, as "Once La'an a Time" plunges the Enterprise's senior officers into their very own Disney fairytale.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "ONCE LA'AN A TIME" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

It's easy to see why crews might get bored stepping out in the same Starfleet uniforms every single day, even if it eliminates all your worries about what you're going to wear tomorrow. Luckily, missions to pre-warp alien cultures often provide an excuse to experiment with planet-appropriate clothing, while travelling through time offers an opportunity to try out some fashions from the(ir) past.

The "Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine" crews were always dab hands at this, whether hanging out with Mark Twain in "Time's Arrow", going undercover in the build-up to San Francisco's (fictional) 2024 Bell Riots in "Past Tense", or wearing 'authentic' 2063 outfits in "First Contact".

Sometimes, when they've had the implausibly good fortune to land on planets that mirror Earth's own couture, crews have managed to tick both boxes at the same time. In Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action", Kirk, Spock and Dr McCoy masquerade as 1920s gangsters, while recent "Strange New Worlds" outing "A Case of Chiaroscuro" borrows extensively from 1940s film noir.

But it's holodeck adventures that really give Starfleet officers to let their hair down, escaping from their everyday lives by pretending they're someone they're not.

For example, Captain Picard spends his downtime solving mysteries as hard-boiled detective Dixon Hill ("TNG"'s "The Big Goodbye"), Data likes to unleash his inner Sherlock Holmes ("TNG"'s "Elementary, Dear Data"), Dr Bashir dons a tux as a James Bond facsimile ("DS9's "Our Man Bashir"), and Harry Kim and Tom Paris get their kicks by painstakingly recreating 1930s sci-fi adventure serials ("Voyager"'s "Bride of Chaotica").

The problem with holodecks, however, is that they're ridiculously prone to the sort of malfunctions that drag other members of the crew into the cosplay party — whether they want to come along or not.

In "Our Man Bashir", a transporter accident turns the "DS9" crew into participants in a globetrotting spy mystery — Captain Sisko becomes the Bond villain-esque Dr Noah, while Jadzia Dax is saddled with the ridiculous moniker of Dr Honey Bare. The unexpected intervention of photonic beings forces Captain Janeway to become Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People (yes, really), in "Bride of Chaotica".

In "TNG"'s Western adventure "A Fistful of Datas", a shipwide computer malfunction ensures that all the bad guys in the frontier town of Deadwood look like Data (Brent Spiner has a field day).

And in "Strange New Worlds"' "A Space Adventure Hour", the Enterprise's computer uses likenesses of the crew to populate a murder mystery simulation which — of course — goes, potentially, lethally wrong. (It's worth noting that the tech's dubious safety protocols do come into their own when Picard lures some Borg into a Dixon Hill simulation in "First Contact", before killing them in a barrage of Tommy gun fire.)

Sometimes a starship encounters a cosmic entity that — for some hard-to-fathom reason — chooses to study lesser mortals by forcing them into a big old game of dress-up.

Q was always the master of this, whether pretending to be a Starfleet officer, an old-school military commander or even the leader of a mariachi band. And in "TNG"'s "Qpid", he believes that cosplay might be the solution Picard's romantic problems, as he transforms the crew into Robin Hood and his Merry Men — Worf, a grudging Will Scarlet, famously protests that "I am not a merry man!"

The events of "Once La'an a Time", meanwhile, are a direct consequence of the Enterprise's previous encounter with a Boltzmann Brain in season one episode "The Elysian Kingdom" — an incident only Dr M'Benga remembers.

There, the brain transforms the crew into fairytale characters from a favorite book of Rukiya, M'Benga's terminally ill daughter. She subsequently left to merge with a cosmic entity, and has since created a flat planet that exists "in defiance of physics and logic" — it's also home to a fairytale castle, fairies and magic mirrors, and populated by doppelgangers of the Enterprise crew. Of course, Pike and co have no choice but to don intricate medieval outfits — again — to help them blend in.

In story terms it's an excuse for La'an to reconcile her increasingly volatile self with the softer side embodied by her fairytale princess double. The problem is — like so many of "Star Trek"'s sillier dress-up episodes — the largely forgettable "Once La'an a Time" looks like it was much more fun for the cast to make than it is to watch. Indeed, you suspect that Mr Worf would not approve.

The finale of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4 debuts on Paramount+ on Thursday 24 September. All previous episodes are also available on the platform.

40 years ago on Sept. 12, 1986, musical icon Michael Jackson debuted in "Captain EO," a 17-minute long 3D sci-fi fantasy film. The catch? You could only see it at Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center in Florida, or — six days later — at Disneyland’s Magic Eye Theater over in Tomorrowland.

Jackson had already been anointed the King of Pop in the ‘80s with the stellar multi-platinum album "Thriller" when the creative cosmic tumblers aligned, joining the immense talents of Jackson, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and the wizards of Disney's Imagineering to create one of the most unique sci-fi entertainment offerings ever conceived.

With impressive special effects, catchy songs, dynamic dance numbers and co-starring Academy Award-winning actress Anjelica Huston as the witch queen known as the Supreme Leader, "Captain EO" was a huge attraction seen by millions of Disney guests.

It told the story of a rag-tag crew of space misfits led by Jackson's charismatic Captain EO (in a sweet white leather uniform) on a mission to a sinister industrial planet to deliver a mysterious gift to its despotic ruler. Plenty of hijinks ensue with EO's oddball companions: Major Domo, Hooter, Idy & Ody, and a winged kitten creature named Fuzzball.

After crash landing on the dark world directly onto the homing beacon, EO and his crazy crew are apprehended by a gang of warrior henchmen and hauled into the throne room to face the wicked alien ruler who is imprisoned in anger and hate.

Huston is electrifying in her Giger-esque makeup, supported by a tangle of banded black cables and sporting long fingernails that were deliciously thrust into audiences’ eyes using the magic of 3D and the special red-and-blue-lensed glasses handed out when arriving for each screening.

When EO's crew manifests into a musical band to offer a song to the Supreme Leader, Hooter trips over the power cord to ruin the performance. The commotion tries the queen’s patience and she dispatches her cruel Whip Warriors to capture EO and send him to her deepest, darkest dungeon.

But EO fights back with an illuminating t-shirt (hey, it was the '80s!), some fancy dance moves and a surge of musical energy to unlock her beauty. This transforms Huston into a colorful enchantress with her grim lair now becoming a lush Greek-like temple. Darkness turns to light and everyone leaves as peaceful galactic friends.

It's an honest plot with heart and humor filled with cool tunes and a sprinkling of in-your-face 3D moments for the whole family, and really, what else would you expect from a Jackson/Disney collaboration in the decade of excess?

The two prominent songs — the original "We Are Here to the Change the World," and "Another Part of Me" — are used to great effect throughout the simple narrative. I can fondly remember leaving the Magic Eye Theater the first time I saw it in the 1990s with an uplifted attitude and the renewed vigor needed to brave the epic summertime Disneyland crowds. Over the years I’d revisited the film a dozen times and it's remained a fun time capsule of unbridled spirit perfect for its age and even more relevant today.

Production began on "Captain EO" in the summer of 1985 with "Star Wars"' creator George Lucas serving as producer and legendary Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather fame in the director's chair. James Horner, who’d later go on to compose the music for "Titanic," was enlisted to pen the original score. Essentially an expanded music video similar in format to 1983’s horror short, "Thriller," "Captain EO" was filmed entirely in Los Angeles with Lucas's ILM unit called in for a VFX polish.

Costing nearly $30 million to produce, "Captain EO" was, at the time, the most expensive short ever filmed on a per-minute basis. It was also a pioneering attraction that used in-theater 4D techniques that delivered floodlights, fog, smoke, starfields, meteors and LED laser effects out into the audience in conjunction with the added visual component of its 70MM 3D filming process.

"For all those who share Walt Disney's dream and delight in the promise of the future, we cut this ribbon signifying the opening of the 3-D musical motion picture space adventure, 'Captain EO!,'" proclaimed Coppola at its 1986 Disneyland premiere.

The attraction ran continuously at Disney World’s EPCOT Center until 1994 and lasted three years longer at Disneyland's Magic Kingdom before it was closed in 1997.

Upon Jackson’s untimely death in 2009 it returned for an encore tribute run between 2010 and 2015, including re-releases at Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris before vanishing completely to be locked up forever in the Disney Vault. It was also broadcast once though on MTV for a 1995 Michael Jackson tribute.

While an official Disney streaming option is nowhere to be found, there are YouTube channels that have uploaded enhanced and/or upscaled copies of "Captain EO" if you've got a hankering for some heart-warming sci-fi.

With so many dire warnings, dystopian fare and AI doomsdays prophesied everywhere you turn, maybe we all need a little bit of Captain EO's hopeful “The planets are linin' up, we're bringin' brighter days” message.

Raise shields and charge phasers, because we're running down the best "Star Trek" spaceships from across the galaxy.

When Matt Jefferies started designing the original USS Enterprise, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry told him he didn't want to see rockets or jets propelling the ship. "I bought whatever I could find on 'Buck Rogers' and 'Flash Gordon' and pinned it up on the wall," Jefferies explained. "I said, 'That we will not do.'"

It's fair to say the artist came up with a truly brilliant solution, as the saucer/warp nacelle design of Kirk's Enterprise became a cultural icon. Its legacy survives 60 years later, with an updated version of that famous ship currently flying through "Strange New Worlds", and every other "Trek" spin-off featuring a descendant of that famous design. Starfleet crews have also faced off against some similarly iconic alien spacecraft along the way.

Now, 60 years after James T Kirk launched his original five-year-mission, we've looked back at some of the most memorable vessels ever to leave Spacedock (or its non-Federation equivalents).

We've limited ourselves to three Enterprises — Captain Archer's NX-01 did not make the cut — but you'll find plenty more of the best "Star Trek" spaceships below, whether friendly or hostile.

1. Galileo shuttlecraft

"Star Trek" famously got around the challenge of landing on a new planet every week by inventing the transporter beam. There are times, however, when only a shuttlecraft is up to the task, and the Galileo flew its first mission in "Star Trek"'s first season — it even gives its name to an episode, "The Galileo Seven".

It's essentially just a box with warp nacelles stuck to the bottom, but the design is so timeless that the shuttlecraft of "The Next Generation" era and beyond are essentially variations on the same theme. The Galileo may be small, but it's also perfectly formed.

2. USS Enterprise (Constitution Class, post-refit)

Matt Jefferies' Original Series Enterprise was — like the crew's uniforms — an instant design classic, but the NCC-1701 reached its peak when it got a top-to-bottom refit for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture".

Andrew Probert's update replaced the cylindrical nacelles with a squarer, sleeker look, and thoroughly modernized the saucer and stardrive sections. This iteration would ultimately be destroyed in "The Search for Spock", but the follow-up NCC-1701-A used the same blueprints. Arguably the most iconic Enterprise of them all.

3. USS Reliant (Miranda Class)

The script for "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" necessitated Kirk's crew going head-to-head with another Starfleet vessel. A clone of the Enterprise would have made things confusing, while a complete design overhaul would have seemed incongruous.

The USS Reliant was the perfect halfway house, a design that kept things consistent with its trademark Federation saucer section, but shook things up by putting the warp nacelles under the primary hull. Less elegant than the Enterprise, perhaps, but still much more noteworthy than "The Search for Spock"'s USS Grissom and USS Excelsior.

4. HMS Bounty (Klingon Bird of Prey)

It was the Romulans who flew Birds of Prey in the Original Series, and they were all set to be the primary antagonists of "The Search for Spock" until Paramount executives pushed for the more famous Klingons. Luckily, Commander Kruge was allowed to hold on to the ship, because variants of this design went on to become a mainstay in later movies and into the "Next Generation" era.

There's a pleasing, "Star Wars"-like grubbiness to the hull, while the powerful weapons and movable wings make it look like an apex predator. The cloaking device is helpful, too, particularly when Kirk takes the rebranded "HMS Bounty" to the 20th century to pick up some whales in "The Voyage Home".

5. The whale probe

It's never entirely clear whether the whale probe is a vessel or a lifeform in its own right, but we're going to assume the former. What is obvious is that this vast probe possesses great power, enough to threaten human existence as it tries to make contact with humpback whales who — thanks to their extinction in the 21st century — have stopped phoning home.

It's the probe's design that's the masterstroke, however: a minimalist and surprisingly effective combination of giant log, energy beam and floating ball. The spacecraft's unknowability — along with its haunting cry — is what makes it so intimidating.

6. USS Enterprise-D (Galaxy Class)

Probert also designed the flagship of "The Next Generation", albeit with a very different brief. Set decades after the voyages of Kirk and Spock in an even more enlightened future, the new show needed a friendlier home for its space explorers.

"I felt like it was an ambassador for Starfleet," said Probert. "It should look unthreatening, it should be very soft." That meant an oversized saucer section, a curvier secondary hull, and plenty of room for families.

It also has the rarely used capability to split into two sections — something that came in very handy in the brilliant episode "The Best of Both Worlds".

7. Romulan Warbird (D'Deridex Class)

Nobody had heard a peep from the Romulans in decades when they turned up in "The Next Generation" episode "The Neutral Zone".

It turned out they'd gone back to the starship drawing board in a big way, replacing the veteran Bird of Prey with a creepy, green design light years away from the shiny white exteriors beloved of the Federation.

The front of the hull is reminiscent of "Battlestar Galactica"'s OG Cylon helmets (Probert worked on both), while their decloaking maneuver is disconcertingly ghostly.

8. Borg Cube

It may look like what happens when other ships get crushed at a scrapyard, but the standard-issue Borg Cube is one of the most intimidating sights in the "Star Trek" universe.

Lacking a front or back — or, indeed, any distinguishable features — the design's uniformity is a cover for seemingly limitless power. Frustratingly impervious to most forms of attack, capable of self-repair, and surprisingly speedy (largely thanks to their ability to negotiate transwarp conduits), Borg Cubes are something you never want to see on your viewscreen.

9. Cardassian Galor Class

Cardassian designs had a major role in "Deep Space Nine", seeing as they built the original Terok Nor station.

Their most significant contribution to "Star Trek" aesthetics, however, may just be their military cruiser, an elaborate design inspired by the emblem of the Cardassian Union (Not the last time a Trek ship would be designed around a logo, as "Starfleet Academy"'s USS Athena also looks a lot like the combadges worn within the faculty).

The Galor Class isn't much to look at in profile, but from above there's a definite invertebrate vibe to the silhouette, even if the ship's back-to-front styling makes it look like it's perpetually in reverse gear.

10. USS Defiant (Defiant Class)

"Deep Space Nine"'s space station setting ensured it was more static than its predecessors, with the crew's occasional away missions undertaken on Runabouts.

The onset of the Dominion War ensured Sisko and co were given something with a little more punch, a "tough little ship" built for battle, supplied with special "ablative armor" and — thanks to a unique deal with the Romulans — its own cloaking device.

Color scheme aside, it's a complete break from Starfleet norms, the design owing as much to the Millennium Falcon as the USS Enterprise. So iconic that — following the destruction of the original USS Defiant — the replacement USS Sao Paulo took its name.

11. USS Voyager (Intrepid Class)

Unlike the Enterprises, Voyager was never designed to be the flagship of the Federation. This was always a more midtable vessel, equipped with some state-of-the-art technologies but only headline-worthy thanks to its extended jaunt across the Delta Quadrant.

Still, this nimble ship is one of the most good-looking in the fleet, with saucer and drive sections that feel like an organic whole, and — in a cool innovation — nacelles that move before a jump to warp.

It also, in season 2 "Voyager" episode "The 37s", became "Star Trek"'s first lead ship to intentionally land on the surface of a planet.

12. USS Enterprise-E (Sovereign Class)

After the Enterprise-D's saucer section crash-landed on the surface of Veridian III in "Generations", Picard and the "TNG" crew needed a new home.

The new-look USS Enterprise-E is more divisive than its predecessors, though it was a result of designer John Eaves' efforts to create a ship that looked better at multiple angles than the notoriously hard-to-shoot Enterprise-D model. In canon, the design reflected the Federation's shift to a more warlike stance after tussles with the Borg and the Dominion.

This was a more functional ship, crafted for battle rather than comfort, with a flatter, more streamlined profile, and — controversially — an elongated saucer section.

13. The Phoenix

AKA where it all began. The Phoenix is the ship warp pioneer Zefram Cochrane used to break the lightspeed barrier, attract the attention of some passing Vulcans, and usher in an era of (give-or-take) galactic peace.

The irony that it's constructed from a World War III nuclear missile is noted, though it's the optional extras that make the Phoenix so memorable — it's like a pair of extendable warp nacelles have been added to a modern-day rocket. There's also a built-in sound system.

The Phoenix is so important to the 'history' of spaceflight in canon that it featured alongside Apollo and the International Space Station in "Star Trek: Enterprise"'s opening credits.

14. Species 8472 Bioship

"Babylon 5"'s computer-driven VFX meant the show featured organic designs from its early days, but with "Star Trek"'s space scenes still dominated by model work, the debut of Species 8472 in the 1997 "Voyager" episode "Scorpion" brought a whole new breed of starship to the franchise.

These squid-like vessels (created in "fluidic space", but similarly adept in a vacuum) were more than a match for the Borg and could join forces to fire a single energy blast of Death Star-esque proportions.

To boldly dress as no one has dressed before… In another universe, that could have been the "Star Trek" mission statement.

Sure, the veteran franchise has spent much of its 60-year lifetime seeking out new life and new civilisations, but it's also been preoccupied with keeping crews fashionable as they explore the final frontier. It seems that nobody wants to make first contact sporting last year's jumpsuit.

The sheer volume of uniforms worn on Federation duty is mind-boggling, as Starfleet has turned regular style updates into one of its prime directives. So, as "Trek" celebrates its 60th anniversary, we take a warp-speed tour through the outfits Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and the rest have hung in their wardrobes. Make it sew, number one!

The Original Series era

Departments denoted by: Logos in Starfleet delta, color of sweater (Command: Gold/Green, Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

Although the ranks were lifted directly from the Navy, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry didn't want the Enterprise to feel militaristic — this was the enlightened 23rd century, after all, when exploration was more important than war. As such, the uniforms worn by Kirk and co were rather more casual than standard forces' issue.

By the time the Enterprise started its five-year mission in earnest, the outfits had been through a couple of subtly different evolutionary stages (in pilot episodes "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before") before costume designer William Ware Theiss zeroed in on those now-iconic designs.

They featured sweaters and black pants for the men, peak-'60s minidresses for the women, and all of them were color-coded blue (Science/Medical), red (Operations), or green (Command) to show off the wonders of those new-fangled color television sets.

And yes, we did say green. The command sweaters worn by Kirk, Sulu, and Chekov were actually green in real life, but a combination of studio lights, early color TV tech, and the velour fabric made them appear gold on screen.

The casual wraparound number occasionally worn by Kirk was made from a different material, and hints at the green Theiss originally intended.

The Animated Series later retconned canon to match public perception, making gold Starfleet's official color of command.

The Motion Picture

Departments denoted by: Flash of color behind badge (Command: White, Science: Orange, Medical: Green, Engineering: Red, Operations: Gold, Security: Silver)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

The primary colors were ditched for Trek's first big-screen adventure, as director Robert Wise and costume designer Robert Fletcher opted for subdued "Space: 1999"-esque pastels.

The loose-fitting, pajama-like uniforms came in an exciting range of light blue and beige (newly promoted Admiral Kirk had his own special design), with departments denoted by a flash of color behind the Starfleet delta logo.

Uniforms came with a built-in fanny pack (a medical monitor, apparently), while engineering and security were given protective clothing. The crew also got jackets to wear on chilly away missions.

The other Original Series movies

Departments denoted by: Color of turtleneck (Command: White, Science: Gray, Medical: Green, Operations: Ochre: Operations, Red: Cadets/trainees)

Rank denoted by: Metal insignia on epaulettes/cuffs

"The Motion Picture" uniforms didn't last long, as "The Wrath of Khan" director Nicholas Meyer decided he wanted a more militaristic look for his "Hornblower in space" epic. "When I watched the TV show, I never understood why they were all running around in pajamas," he said, "so I tried to change some stuff".

The one thing that did remain from the Original Series was the voluminous cut of the pants, albeit enhanced by a natty red stripe down the side. Otherwise, this was a complete overhaul, as Fletcher introduced maroon tunics — arguably more flattering to the ageing crew's waistlines — over color-coded turtlenecks. The tunic was secured via a matching epaulette that also carried rank-specific insignia.

The "Wrath of Khan" look would remain intact until "Generations" 12 years later, and the design persisted in canon for decades — in classic "Next Generation" time travel episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", the doomed Enterprise-C crew still dressed in those maroon tunics, though by the mid-24th century they'd ditched the turtlenecks.

Variations appeared in later original crew movies, including bomber jackets and a vest which — handily for chief engineer Mr Scott — comes with multiple pockets.

The Next Generation era

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform/shoulders/turtleneck (Command: Red; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Gold)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on collar

Loose fits were out as "Star Trek" reached the late 24th century. Roddenberry demanded a future free from the tyranny of zippers and buttons, while returning TOS costume designer Theiss instituted a "no wrinkles" rule for fabrics.

The resulting skintight Spandex suits were a nightmare for the "Next Generation" cast, causing so many back issues that Patrick Stewart's chiropractor intervened. The suits also had an unpleasant knack of retaining body odor.

They subsequently switched to a two-piece design for the show's third season, though there were variations. Jean-Luc Picard occasionally stepped out in a bespoke red jacket, Worf donned a Klingon sash, acting ensign Wesley Crusher introduced his own brand of smart/casual to the Enterprise bridge, and Counselor Troi seemingly wore whatever the hell she wanted. Early seasons also featured occasional sightings of men in dress-like skants, intended to be a reflection of a more progressive future.

There was also a color scheme switch, with red worn by command, and gold allocated to operations. Rank was now depicted by metal pips pinned into the collar, and the Starfleet chest badge became a portable communicator.

"Deep Space Nine" made comfort a priority, putting its crew in black jumpsuits with color-coded shoulders to denote department, and rank pips appearing on a light blue turtleneck.

They also turned up in the first "Next Generation" movie, "Generations", though that wasn't always the plan. The production had intended to dress the crew in new-look uniforms, but when they didn't work out, they instead turned out in a selection of "TNG" and "DS9" outfits.

Unfortunately, they didn't have time to tailor outfits for everyone, meaning that Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and LeVar Burton (LaForge) had to borrow suits previously worn by Avery Brooks (Sisko) and Colm Meaney (O'Brien) in "DS9" — rewatch the film, and it's clear they don't fit the actors properly.

When Picard and co returned to the big screen in "First Contact," they had new uniforms to go with their sparkly new Enterprise-E. The black jumpsuit look remained (albeit in a more tailored form), though everyone now sported the same blue/gray shoulders — the departmental color-coding was instead shifted to the obligatory turtleneck.

This design was quickly rolled out on board Deep Space Nine, though poor old Voyager — trapped thousands of light-years from Earth — had to stick with the old jumpsuits until the crew made it home.

The Enterprise era

Departments denoted by: Colored piping on jumpsuit (Command: Gold; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on chest

The uniforms in the prequel series were closer to contemporary designs than those from other "Treks". In fact, you could almost imagine a modern astronaut wearing those blue jumpsuits, well stocked as they were with zippers and pockets. The outfits worn by the admiralty even featured old-school collars and ties.

The departmental color scheme was the same as the Original Series. Slightly incongruously, however, "Enterprise" utilized the same ranking pips as the "TNG" era — Starfleet seemingly ditched this system for a century or so, before bringing it back for the voyages of the Enterprise-D.

The Kelvinverse

Departments denoted by: Color of sweater (Command: Gold/green, Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

Starfleet uniforms in this alternative timeline were remarkably similar to the original TOS models, though they were given a thoroughly modern makeover.

The classic sweaters from the '60s now came in two parts, with a colored top sitting over a black crewneck undershirt. Adding to the look, costume designer Michael Kaplan integrated loads of tiny Starfleet deltas into the fabric.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Kelvinverse trilogy, however, was how many distinct uniform designs there were. There was seemingly something for every occasion, and even the regular crew uniforms went through a significant overhaul for the third film in the series, "Star Trek Beyond".

The new TV era

Discovery (23rd century)

Departments denoted by: Accents on uniform (Command: Gold, Science/Medical: Silver, Operations: Bronze)

Rank denoted by: Pips on Starfleet delta

When "Discovery" brought "Star Trek" back to TV in 2017, Starfleet had given its couture a major rethink. This time out, the crew wore figure-hugging uniforms that looked a lot like tracksuits, featured Roddenberry-defying zippers, and used shiny, magpie-friendly styling for the obligatory departmental color coding. The design also 'homaged' the Kelvinverse look by integrating tiny Starfleet deltas into the fabric.

Strange New Worlds

Departments denoted by: Logos in Starfleet delta/sleeve design, color of sweater (Command: Gold/green, Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Red)

Rank denoted by: Bands on sleeve cuffs

When the Enterprise's Christopher Pike turned up in season two, he wore a modern riff on Original Series uniforms, which was subsequently given another update when he returned for "Discovery" spin-off/TOS prequel "Strange New Worlds". This borrowed heavily from the original Kelvinverse sweater/undershirt design, though with a more pronounced V-neck and tiny departmental logos (rather than Starfleet deltas) woven into the fabric of the sleeves.

Discovery (32nd century)

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science: Blue, Operations: Gold, Medical: White)

Rank denoted by: Pips on Starfleet combadge, collar, and epaulettes

Meanwhile, when the USS Discovery blasted off to the distant future, the crew were introduced to the asymmetrical fashions of the 32nd century.

It was never quite clear why the two halves of the tunic didn't line up properly, though future Starfleet had, at least, decided to stick with the "Next Generation"-era color scheme. Rank was advertised in at least four different places (shoulders, neck, and chest).

Starfleet Academy

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science: Blue, Operations: Gold, Medical: White)

Rank denoted by (when used): Pips on Starfleet combadge, collar and epaulettes

Similar rules now apply in "Starfleet Academy", though cadets — like admirals, strangely — wear predominantly gray outfits.

Lower Decks

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Gold)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on collar

And when "Lower Decks" and "Picard" returned to the (more-or-less) "Next Generation" era, the crews' stylists didn't break the wheel. The USS Cerritos uniforms were TNG-adjacent, though borrowed heavily from the aforementioned designs that were ditched ahead of "Generations"

They also allowed for some Chief O'Brien-homaging sleeve-rolling.

Picard

Departments denoted by: Color of uniform (Command: Red; Science/Medical: Blue, Operations: Gold)

Rank denoted by: Metal pips on collar

The outfits in "Picard"'s third season, meanwhile, were effectively the "Deep Space Nine"/"Voyager" jumpsuits given a Kirk-style wraparound update.

As to the fashion future, no one knows what Trek has in store for us. There are no new shows announced yet, and only vague whispers of a new movie in the works. Time will tell, but we can't wait to see what the 24th century innovations they can bring to the jumpsuit next.

In the meantime, you can check out all of Star Trek on Paramount+.

September 8th, 1966 was a Thursday. Not a fresh-start-Monday or an exciting Saturday. A regular old Thursday; except that this one catalysed a cultural phenomenon. This was the Thursday that "Star Trek" was first broadcast, drawing viewers across the United States into a space-age world that revolutionised television.

The thing is, in 1966 no exoplanets (planets beyond our Solar System) had actually been discovered. Yet the franchise gave audiences a galaxy brimming with desert planets, ocean worlds, binary sunsets, and countless versions of Earth. Sixty years later, astronomers have confirmed more than 6,000 planets beyond the Solar System, known as exoplanets.

But how well do "Star Trek"’s fictional worlds compare with those astronomers have actually discovered?

When many of us think "Star Trek", the first planet that comes to mind is the dry, hot, and rocky Vulcan. Canonically, it orbits 40 Eridani A, a real star around 16 light-years from Earth. Real stars invite real observations, which led to astronomers announcing a possible planet in orbit in 2018. Of course, this was nicknamed Vulcan. However, later work has shown that this apparent signal was likely caused by stellar activity, rather than a planet in orbit.

This is, unfortunately, a common issue. Stellar activity, such as starspots, convection, and other magnetic activity, is very good at producing signals that look incredibly planetary.

Although the candidate planet was ultimately discredited, genuine hot, rocky planets do exist around other stars. Many of them orbit extremely close, completing an orbit in less than an Earth day. Some may have molten surfaces, atmospheres poisoned with vapourised rock, or even permanent day and night sides. While Vulcan itself may not be real, nature has produced rocky worlds considerably more hostile than Spock’s birthplace.

In contrast to Vulcan, "Star Trek" also gave us planets almost entirely covered with water. One particularly intriguing case is The Waters, from Voyager’s Thirty Days episode. The Waters is a sphere of water, with no solid core, kept together by a containment field. This is a little different to what an astronomer would refer to as a water world, but a planet-sized mass of water could theoretically be held together by its own gravity, without the need for a containment field.

However, the immense pressure deep inside this would transform much of the water into high-pressure ice rather than leaving it as one enormous liquid ocean. While no exoplanet has been definitively proven to have a global ocean, there are candidates like TOI-1452 b — a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star — that could contain a much larger proportion of water than Earth. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that a water-rich planet doesn’t necessarily make a good home. Water could exist beneath a chokingly thick atmosphere, as high-pressure ice, or sitting above an inhospitable interior.

Something "Star Trek" got very right is planets with two or more suns, such as Risa under its twin stars. The first confirmed planet orbiting two stars — known as a circumbinary planet — was Kepler-16 b. As it orbits a binary star system, it would experience a double sunset from the surface…if a surface existed.

Unlike many of the fictional planets in "Star Trek", Kepler-16b is a cold, gas giant; not somewhere we could sit and admire the view. In 1966, not only had exoplanets not yet been discovered, but astronomers had no observational evidence that planets could form and remain stable in dynamically complicated multiple star systems.

There are, however, many circumstances where reality goes far beyond what was imagined in "Star Trek".

Take WASP-76 b, an ultra-hot gas giant around 640 light-years away. The planet has a dayside so hot that iron vaporises, and it could be re-condensing into iron-rain on the cooler nightside. KELT-9 b is similarly hot, with molecules torn apart by the heat and metals existing in the atmosphere. 55 Cancri e is a super-Earth that orbits its host star every 18 hours, and could be covered by a magma ocean. There are also rogue planets, wandering through space with no host star.

"Star Trek" frequently invented strange planets by changing one familiar feature, but nature stared at the rulebook and ripped it to shreds. We’ve observed planets that have combinations of temperature, gravity, chemistry, and orbital architecture that writers in 1966 never could have anticipated.

The greatest scientific accuracy in "Star Trek" wasn’t the description of any given planet. Instead, it beautifully predicted that we live in a galaxy in which planets are abundant, gorgeously varied, found around a huge range of stars, and worth investigating even when they are nothing like Earth.

The necessity of a large population of conveniently habitable, human-safe worlds for "Star Trek"’s storytelling definitely set a limitation on the types of planets explored throughout the franchise. Our discoveries so far show that finding planets with Earth-like conditions is incredibly difficult, but not that they aren’t out there, somewhere.

"Star Trek" gave us a galaxy teeming with strange new worlds. Sixty years later, the surprise isn’t that these worlds exist, but that the real ones are even stranger than writers dared to imagine.

The date of 'Star Wars Day' is based on a "May the fourth be with you" pun. The date of 'Alien Day' (April 26), meanwhile, is inspired by an extremely tenuous link to LV-426, a moon pivotal to the first two movies.

'Star Trek Day', however, is based on an actual date; September 8 is the anniversary of the Original Series' very first broadcast in 1966. This year's birthday is more important than most, as the "Star Trek" franchise reaches the ripe old age of 60 — Kirk and Spock's diamond jubilee.

Birthdays are traditionally a time to take stock of past, present and future, so we've taken this opportunity to deliver a status report on the legendary franchise, via TV, movies and 60th anniversary celebrations — including commemorative coins and record-breaking Vulcan salutes.

Will "Star Trek" continue to live long and prosper, or would Dr McCoy deliver one of his more pessimistic assessments, Jim?

It's time to give the veteran franchise a health check…

TV shows

Television is where the voyages of the starship Enterprise began, and still feels like the franchise's natural home. There have now been 12 separate TV shows set in the "Star Trek" continuity — 14 if you throw in "Short Treks" and pre-school YouTube series "Star Trek: Scouts" — and the final frontier has flourished on the small screen over the last decade.

Indeed, since "Discovery" first spooled up the spore drive in 2017, we've enjoyed the most bountiful period of "Trek" since the glory days of the '90s, when "The Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager" became appointment viewing. In many ways it's been a masterclass of universe-building, as executive producer Alex Kurtzman (with his Secret Hideout production company) has overseen an impressively large and varied fleet of shows.

Although Disney+'s "Star Wars" TV adventures have all — with the notable exception of "Andor" — tended to be relatively uniform in tone, "Trek" has generally taken much bigger swings. "Discovery" warped off to the undiscovered country of the 32nd century, while "Lower Decks" proved that "Star Trek" and out-and-out comedy can be natural bedfellows.

"Star Trek: Picard"'s peerless final run of episodes (arguably the best season of "Trek" ever made) skilfully mixed masterful storytelling with unashamed "TNG"-era nostalgia. "Strange New Worlds" managed to recruit the franchise's best ensemble since the '90s. "Prodigy" was a kids' show grown-up fans could enjoy, too.

And for a brief period between May 2022 and April 2023, there were five active "Star Trek" shows at various stages of the production/release cycle. Little did we realize that would be a peak for the franchise and that — a little over three years later — we'd be facing the prospect of a future without any "Star Trek" TV at all.

At present, there are no "Trek" shows in production. "Strange New Worlds"' fifth season and "Starfleet Academy"'s second are already in the can, but both will be their respective show's final voyages; the sets have been dismantled, the casts have moved on to new projects.

Meanwhile, rumored spin-offs like "Picard" follow-up "Legacy" and "Strange New Worlds" sequel "Year One" seem destined to remain in the realms of Trekkie fantasy.

As "SNW" co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers told TrekMovie in August 2026, "We haven't been told anything [about 'Year One']. It's not up to us. It's up to Paramount. We stand by and are ready to work at their discretion. We love 'Star Trek'. We'd be happy to do it again. It is out of our hands."

Rights holder Paramount (and its CBS subsidiary) is the unknown factor here. Skydance Media bought the studio last year, and — perhaps unsurprisingly — execs have been hesitant to invest in major new projects as they wait to learn the new regime's direction of travel.

Skydance's impending acquisition of Warner Bros may also be a factor — if, say, Paramount and Warner were to merge their respective streaming platforms, would "Trek" get as much prominence on HBO Max as it currently does on Paramount+?

Reports in early 2026 suggested that Kurtzman was in early negotiations to renew his production deal (the previous one expired with "Starfleet Academy"), but it's looking increasingly unlikely he'll return. Paramount, however, has reiterated the ongoing importance of the franchise to its bottom line.

"It's one of the reasons why Chris [Parnell, executive vice president of Paramount+ Originals] is here as the resident number one fan of the 'Star Trek' franchise," said head of Paramount+ Originals Jane Wiseman in an August 2026 interview with Deadline.

"And there’s so many people in this building, by the way, that are. It is our goal and it is our job to figure out what the next bounce of 'Star Trek' is. We're talking to a lot of writers, we are leaning on [production company] CBS Studios, and it is imperative that we figure out what the next iteration is in this franchise because it's just too important. We also are in touch with Paramount Pictures; they have a 'Star Trek' movie that’s in development." (More on that below…)

That still leaves an awful lot of questions. Would a new iteration of "Trek" stick with the current 10-episode format, or go back to the longer 20+ runs of the '90s? Has the disappointing "Section 31" killed the prospect of another "Trek" TV movie stone dead? Will Paramount see more value in its massive library of legacy "Trek" content? And how will "Trek"'s famously progressive and liberal outlook mesh with a new-look company whose CEO, David Ellison, is close to President Trump?

Like fellow veteran genre franchises "Doctor Who" and "Star Wars", "Star Trek" is still trying to find its place in a streaming world. There's little doubt that it will one day return to TV, as it did after a decade away following "Enterprise"'s 2005 cancellation. But the how and the when will have to wait for another day.

Movies

Nearly seven years elapsed between "The Rise of Skywalker" and "The Mandalorian and Grogu", but that's small fry next to the extended wait for a new "Star Trek" movie. It's now 10 years (and counting) since "Star Trek Beyond" brought the Kelvin-verse adventures of alt-Kirk and alt-Spock to a close, as movies from the final frontier took a backseat to their TV counterparts.

Having made a critically acclaimed start in 2009 — director JJ Abrams ramped up the fun, effectively using "Trek" as a calling card for "The Force Awakens" — this self-contained "Trek" offshoot gradually ran out of momentum. Released four years later, "Star Trek Into Darkness" made more money than its predecessor, but felt like a tired retread of past glories. "Star Trek Beyond" (2016) made less money than either, offering an enjoyable (though hardly memorable) planet-based romp that set up the crew for more voyages… voyages that would ultimately never happen.

JD Payne and Patrick McKay (now showrunners on "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power") were hired to write a script, while SJ Clarkson ("Madame Web") and Matt Shakman ("The Fantastic Four: First Steps") were both attached as directors at one stage or another. One iteration would have seen timey-wimey stuff uniting two of the Hollywood Chrises, Pine and Hemsworth, bringing James T Kirk face-to-face with late dad George.

"The conceit was that through a cosmic quirk in the 'Star Trek' world, they were the same age," McKay told Esquire. "It was going to be a grandfather-son space adventure — think 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' in space. We were really thrilled about it."

"Alien: Earth" boss Noah Hawley also worked on a new story entirely separate from the Kelvin-verse, and even Quentin Tarantino pitched his take on "Trek" to the Paramount suits. The "Pulp Fiction" writer/director's Earth-bound story would reportedly have taken its cues from "A Piece of the Action", a 1920s-inspired episode from the Original Series.

"I think [Tarantino's] vision was just to go hard. It was a hard R. It was going to be some 'Pulp Fiction' violence," recalled "The Revenant" screenwriter Mark L Smith, who worked with Tarantino on the script (h/t Collider). "Not a lot of the language; we saved a couple things for just special characters to kind of drop that into the 'Star Trek' world, but it was just really the edginess and the kind of that Tarantino flair, man, that he was bringing to it. It would have been cool."

But after all those false starts, Paramount is seemingly moving ahead with another film, currently — as far as we know — the only "Trek" screen project in active development.

The as-yet-untitled movie is scripted by "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" writer/director duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, will feature an entirely new group of characters, and will apparently be inspired by a pair of hit movies from the '90s and '00s.

"Two movies we cite as [comparisons] for what we're hoping to do are 'Training Day' and 'Crimson Tide'," Goldstein told Inverse on the recent press tour for Apple TV+'s "Mayday".

"I think the portrayal of Starfleet and the people that work within it have always been generally idealized versions of what the future could be," added Daley. "And while this [script] isn’t a cynical or nihilistic take on it, I think it does acknowledge that there are some bad apples in every institution that can have a strong voice and can really make an impact on that institution and everything it stands for."

It's hoped that the new film will launch a new franchise of its own, though it seems to be a riskier franchise relaunch option than a TV show. Although "Trek" has spawned a long-running and successful movie franchise, its films have rarely ranked among the biggest earners in Hollywood — not since 1986's "The Voyage Home" has a "Trek" outing made it into an end-of-year top 10 in the US.

Maybe Paramount is eyeing up this "Training Day"/"Crimson Tide" format as an excuse to cast a pair of high-profile A-listers in the lead roles, following Disney/Lucasfilm's lead in recruiting Ryan Gosling for the upcoming "Star Wars: Starfighter". But with IP-based, space-set adventures "The Mandalorian and Grogu", "Masters of the Universe" and "Supergirl" all having floundered in multiplexes this summer, this film could be a gamble — especially as it'll need to appeal far beyond the traditional "Star Trek" heartlands to become a hit.

Beyond movies and TV

As "Doctor Who" proved when it was off air between 1989 and 2005, a lack of new screen "product" can be good news for other platforms.

In other words, there's little chance of a shortage of new stories across media, old (novelisations and comics) and new (Webtoons, audiobooks and videogames) — way too much to list here, in fact.

You can also get stuck into some "Star Trek" Lego, which is a pretty good way to fill that Starfleet-shaped hole.

The 60th anniversary

A media franchise reaching its 60th anniversary is a massive deal, but is Paramount doing enough to celebrate one of its crown jewels becoming a sexagenarian?

The 30th birthday was marked by a couple of special episodes: "Voyager"'s literally titled "Flashback" saw Tuvok remembering his days on the USS Excelsior alongside a certain Captain Sulu, while "Deep Space Nine"'s "Trials and Tribble-ations" spliced Sisko and the gang with footage from Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles".

But now, even though we're seven episodes into a run of "Strange New Worlds", there's no special birthday episode on the cards — it's no spoiler to say that this week's tense instalment, "Orders of Magnitude", is not very party-ish at all. It feels like a missed opportunity, seeing as "Doctor Who"'s 50th and 60th anniversary outings — most notably 2013's multi-Doctor "The Day of the Doctor" — have been memorable in their own right.

"The days of being able to know when your show was going to be on television are maybe behind us," "SNW" co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman lamented to SFX magazine. "God knows nothing would have been more fun than a 'Strange New Worlds' Christmas episode, and yet there'll not be one."

So we'll have to make do with 60th anniversary side events, like the cast of medical drama "The Pitt" performing a live reading of debut "Trek" episode "The Man Trap", birthday screenings, special episodes of game shows "The Price Is Right and "Let's Make a Deal", commemorative coins, and the London Science Museum's attempt to claim the Guinness World Record for the biggest ever simultaneous Vulcan salute.

And if you want to mark the occasion yourself, there are nearly 1,000 episodes of "Star Trek" — plus 13 movies — to enjoy, most of them on Paramount+. That's one hell of a legacy.

Live long, and prosper!

It began with an unusual flash detected off the coast of South Africa by an aging American satellite — and to this day, debate continues over whether this odd Cold War event involved an illicit atmospheric nuclear test.

The strange story of the "South Atlantic Flash," better known as the Vela Incident, began on Sept. 22, 1979. At that time, Vela 6911, a satellite in a constellation developed by the United States for the specific purpose of detecting nuclear detonations, observed something that immediately alarmed officials: a peculiar flash of light emanating from somewhere over the South Atlantic Ocean.

A significant part of what concerned U.S. officials at the time had been the double flash of light detected during the event — a distinctive feature that strongly resembled the flashes produced by a nuclear explosion in Earth's atmosphere. The characteristic double flash results from the rapidly changing brightness of the fireball and shock wave produced by an atmospheric nuclear detonation, creating a distinctive optical signature that Vela's sensors were specifically designed to recognize. The South Atlantic event, therefore, seemed like a prime candidate for a secretive nuclear test being carried out by an unknown party — but if that were the case, who was responsible?

What do we know?

U.S. officials responded to a possible nuclear test

Then-President Jimmy Carter was promptly alerted to the situation, as evidenced in diaries the former U.S. leader would publish years later. "There was indication of a nuclear explosion in the region of South Africa," Carter wrote in an entry on the same date of the event. A later entry penned the following February would go on to add that "We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa."

Despite that belief regarding the possibility of a clandestine nuclear test, a scientific panel assembled in 1980, chaired by MIT professor Jack Ruina, eventually put forward an alternative explanation: that the flash had more likely been an anomaly caused by a small meteoroid striking the satellite.

Notably, the panel did not rule out the possibility of a nuclear explosion at the time, although the alternative they put forward remained controversial among scientists and intelligence officials.

Documents and government insiders surface

By the turn of the 21st century, formerly classified documents began to surface that revealed the extent of the inner tensions between U.S. government agencies over what caused the Vela incident.

Among the critics of the debris-induced "anomaly" hypothesis had been Defense Intelligence Agency Vice Director Jack Varona. According to documents released in 2006, Varona said the investigations by the 1980 scientific panel had been a politically motivated "whitewash," and that evidence collected by the U.S. intelligence community included detections "unique to nuclear shots in a maritime environment," based on an analysis by the Naval Research Laboratory.

Varona wasn't alone. Other former intelligence officials who came forward over the years included Stansfield Turner, the former Director of Central Intelligence during the Carter administration, who in 2003 described the Vela detection as a "man-made phenomenon."

Similar views were advanced by retired CIA officer Tyler Drumheller, who in 2006 wrote that he had sources at the time who "collectively provided incontrovertible evidence that the [South African] apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis."

What remains unknown?

Scientists revisit the mystery

While we still don't know if the South Atlantic Flash was a nuclear test, several scientists have reexamined the available evidence within the last decade, and what they found has lent further weight to the idea that the Vela incident had involved a detonation of some kind.

Among the most significant assessments, a 2017 study by Christopher Wright and Lars-Erik De Geer combined modern research into interplanetary dust and hypervelocity impacts with revelations from recently declassified documents, as well as publicly available information that had been previously overlooked.

Their conclusion: while no model was presented for the tenuous "meteoroid" theory advanced by the May 1980 scientific panel, the double flash observed by the Vela satellite in 1979 was indeed "consistent with a nuclear explosion, albeit detected by an aged satellite for which background modulation was abnormal and/or commenced earlier," adding that additional radionuclide and hydroacoustic evidence existed which supported the conclusion "that the Vela Incident was a nuclear weapon test explosion."

Wright and De Geer weren't alone either. A 2022 study examined data collected by NASA's Nimbus-7 satellite just 16 minutes and 44 seconds after the double flash over the South Atlantic, which suggested a disturbance in the ozone layer that appeared to be consistent with a blast-generated shock wave.

Still, some of the original members of the 1980 scientific panel have defended its work amid the more recent scientific studies. Richard Mueller, who served as the panel's youngest member at the time, defended the group's conclusions in a November 2019 oral history conference, maintaining that the chances the Vela incident had involved a nuclear event were "as close to zero as it gets."

This determination, Mueller argued, was made despite early interpretations by many panelists that a nuclear event had seemed most likely. Wright and De Geer, both of whom attended the 2019 oral history conference, were among the participants that pushed back on Mueller's views.

Who was responsible?

Amid the mounting evidence over the last several decades suggesting the Vela incident was indeed a nuclear test, debate continues over who was most likely to have been responsible.

Although suspicions have long centered on a cooperative — and secret — strategic effort between apartheid-era South Africa and Israel, publicly available evidence remains lacking, and a fair amount of information in declassified documents that could point to this possibility remains redacted.

The mystery continues

Thus, after more than four decades, questions continue to linger over the famous Vela incident, including what nations might have been involved in such a test if it occurred. Despite that uncertainty, one thing does seem evident: information conveyed in unredacted portions of declassified records, combined with modern scientific analyses, increasingly point to the likelihood that the strange "South Atlantic Flash" in 1979 was anything but natural.

Exodus' journey so far has been quite transparent, with publisher Wizards of the Coast and developer Archetype Entertainment giving us a surprising number of updates and looks at the sci-fi action RPG over the years. Now, at Gamescom 2026, they've finally given us the release date and a striking hands-on demo.

I was able to play a 50-minute demo that takes protagonist Jun Aslan (who you can customize Commander Shepard-style) and their companions to Khonsu, a huge orbital space platform above the world of Lidon, where a population of Awakened frogs – genetically modified animals that are natural to this universe – are keeping more than a few critical systems in working order. I won't get into story spoilers here, but their connection to Lidon's people makes them valuable allies who must be protected from certain evildoers...

For the most part, Exodus plays exactly like you think it does after looking at the gameplay videos, and I mean that as a compliment. In many ways, it feels like an evolution of Mass Effect – one that's fiercer and more dynamic. The gunplay is punchy and satisfying; Jun and their NPC companions are more agile; and the arsenal of both sci-fi weapons and ancient powers (magic in a sci-fi trench coat) gives players a richer selection of tools to neutralize enemies with.

On top of my hands-on time with the game, I was able to sit down and chat with three members of the development team: Chad Robertson (producer), Chris King (director), and Drew Karpyshyn (writer). If those names sound familiar, it's because they all come from a BioWare background*, so they know their way around sprawling space operas.

*Archetype houses more triple-A talent from other iconic studios like Naughty Dog

The following interview has been edited for better flow.

"One of the tenets was that we wanted to be developing an IP that could stand the test of time, and we needed something in the science fiction space for the benefit of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. They're very interested in developing an IP that could be owned and be science fiction," Robertson said of the project's beginnings years ago.

Archetype was founded in 2019, so Exodus has been brewing and evolving for quite some time. The backing of Hasbro and Wizards could be felt throughout the whole demo; Exodus is an expensive game with a stunning visual look.

"We've been able to stick with that without having to worry about money and financing and being able to execute on that vision," Robertson added. This also extends to how all the exploration and combat feel even at this stage. While the demo wasn't ready for the public yet, it was a compelling vertical slice with most of the systems and assets in pretty good shape.

The more you dig into Exodus' universe-building, the bolder it becomes, throwing concepts like the Awakened or time dilation into the mix. Still, it's very much a game ideated by BioWare veterans.

"It's sort of natural that we ended up with an RPG set in an epic sci-fi universe with strong player agency and heavy companion content... Yeah, I could've guessed that's where we would end up," said Karpyshyn. While the KOTOR and Mass Effect veteran led on the narrative front, sci-fi author Peter F. Hamilton added to the "core" of the universe and wrote two big sequel novels that also serve as our first proper step into Exodus' universe.

"He was very collaborative, but we also wanted to give him a free hand to tell the story he wanted to tell. So he took the elements that he was most interested in and expanded on them, and that allowed us to take some of the ideas and bring them into the game," Karpyshyn explained. Plenty of time (roughly 40,000 years) and space (it's set in the Omega Centauri cluster) separate Exodus from being a look at humanity's immediate future, so Archetype is looking at the universe as a place "that will tell many different stories" over time.

Well ahead of the game's launch, Wizards of the Coast is betting big on the IP, with tabletop adventures, novels, and a Secret Level short introducing RPG fanatics to its universe. How do you rein all that ambition in when working on a huge video game? According to Robertson, setting reasonable limits happened naturally: "We wanted to build a player experience that was cohesive and complete enough. Over the course of the first couple of years, I think we kinda naturally figured it out." He admitted there's "plenty of other stories" they want to tell, though.

A highlight of the demo was how fluid the tone in Exodus seems. It's playful — and often comedic — but never too much, and even as a separate, isolated chunk of the game, it presents high stakes and dilemmas I personally cared about. Again, it reminded me of Mass Effect at its best – especially the second one. I was impressed by how grounded it all felt despite heavily featuring a bunch of talking frogs and an armored bear who was also insulting me during a boss fight.

King mentioned the Awakened are "a really interesting example", as it's a concept that pushed them to explore "different ways to present them and what the tone would be". In fact, he revealed they made them "a bit too serious" early on (some of that can even be felt in the earlier lore videos on them). Eventually, the team found a balance between Jun's progression, which "has a lot of heavy, even dark themes", and other elements and characters that you run into. "They're meant to provide a counterbalance to that. You do have lighthearted moments."

Inevitably, I had to ask about the matter of romances, and that human emotion we call love. Many players show up for these RPGs looking for hilarious, dramatic, and spicy romantic relationships.

The first thing Karpyshyn did was shoot down the possibility of a Salt (the combat mech-piloting octopus) romance: "Salt isn't really into humans. She thinks they're kind of gross. But there are many other romances. You can play as male or female Jun, and we don't lock any of the romances out based on gender choice. But you do have to pursue and work for them. They're not gonna happen by accident."

His reply then led to some brief talk about the tension between Jun and the members of the crew: "All your companions have their own goals, wants, and needs. They don't get along with each other always. We're constantly putting you into these conflict situations where you have to decide how to navigate... As a player, you have to decide, 'Do I want to risk annoying the romance character?' and maybe the romance ends... Life is messy, and we wanted the game to be messy and complicated."

Indeed, the hands-on preview mission ended with a heavy choice that no doubt would have major consequences down the line. Even if my save game meant nothing at this stage, I was still conflicted, and the developers mentioned it was interesting to finally get this game in front of people outside the studio and see their reactions to certain story beats.

On that front, I also had to ask the trio about the voice acting (some voices were really familiar) and the music in the game, which are totally top-notch. "I'm tempted to ask which ones you recognize," Robertson said before stating they're not ready to elaborate on those yet. "The marketing team would shoot us in the head."

During our chat, the team wanted to get some quick feedback on a specific zero-gravity section — shooting and platforming are involved — which they described as "revelatory" after getting the sound FX right. I agree with them. Whereas many space walks in video games feel too fantasy-like or realistic to be truly exciting, Exodus appears to find a fine balance between the space opera spectacle we're showing up for and the harsh coldness of the void out there. There are certain sound FX still giving you feedback, but muffled shootouts are refreshingly scary.

When asked about customization options and character build – as in abilities and skills – possibilities, King answered that "philosophically, what we want to do is give players interesting choices and figure out what they like playing the most".

It's not a hard class system like in the original Mass Effect games. "We let you sort of express and figure out what you like in the skill tree... Layered on top of that, there are mastery levels on classes, and then depending on your choices, it unlocks hybrid trees," explains King.

Combined with the many types of guns and suits available — each with different firing modes and upgrades — it all creates a familiar yet deeper progression structure.

Speaking about the game as a whole and what he's particularly proud of, King circled back to "player agency" and what he calls "water cooler moments", as you can discuss with friends at work or online what your and their choices were and what happened. At least, that's what the team hopes will happen with some of the story beats.

Robertson added to his answer: "The first time we had enough pieces together... and you could feel the music and cinematics coming together, and the emotional weight behind it, that's what these games are about. Where you have that angst over a decision and feel the anxiety of what just happened. 'I should have chosen something different.' I think we're super proud of those. There's a bunch of moments in the game like that." At this point, I can already see what the team means, which is why I sincerely believe there might be something special to Exodus.

Exodus is releasing on PC (Steam & Epic Games Store), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on April 7, 2027.

Released in 2014, "Alien: Isolation" was a sci-fi horror gaming masterpiece that combined stealth, survival horror mechanics, and cinema's greatest monster to create an underpants-ruiningly terrifying experience. After earning phenomenal reviews, winning awards, and selling millions of copies globally, players were left clamouring for a sequel. Now, 12 years later, it's finally happening.

In June 2026, fans got what they’ve been waiting for: their first real glimpse into what Alien: Isolation 2 has in store. From the trailer, we learned that players will play as a survey team member at a small Weyland-Yutani outpost called Kurosaki Station. When a ship crashes in the nearby forest, you head out to search for survivors, but the search-and-rescue mission quickly becomes a fight for survival when you start being hunted by a xenomorph.

While Alien: Isolation 2 doesn’t have an official release date yet, more info is expected later this year, including our hands-on preview at Gamescom 2026 (which is coming later this week). In the meantime, Space caught up with Al Hope, the Creative Director for Alien: Isolation 2, to chat about what it’s like to create horror in video games and what fans can expect from the sequel.

Space.com: Alien: Isolation is considered one of the scariest games ever made. In fact, many people see it as the scariest game ever. Do you think you’ve discovered the secret to great video game horror?

Hope: "What can I say, we had the best source material in the world to work with. We spent so long deconstructing Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie when making Alien: Isolation to really understand the building blocks, and how it evokes such a unique and striking sense of horror to this day.

"That’s what we build into our games. That sense of powerlessness against an unknowable, unkillable foe. The ‘perfect organism’ as Ash dubs it. And you’re its prey in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. We’re taking that brand of horror even further in Alien: Isolation 2."

Space.com: We have new sets in Alien: Isolation 2, from woodlands to an outpost settlement. What was it like taking the claustrophobic, outer space terror of the first game and transporting it into new environments and settings? Were there any challenges in keeping the horror alive in these areas, or did the new settings help create terror of their own?

Hope: "In many ways, the sequel is a blend of the old and the new. You’ll experience that familiar claustrophobia you felt on Sevastopol Station in the first game while exploring the facilities on Kurosaki in the sequel. You’ll be hunted mercilessly, and you’ll need to improvise in order to change the odds and survive. These are the cornerstones of what we term the ‘Isolation Experience.’

"But as you’ve guessed, the exterior environments in Alien: Isolation 2 have a kind of horror all their own. You might feel some initial sense of relief when escaping the claustrophobic confines of the colony, but the exterior areas are storm-ravaged and wildly inhospitable. The violent weather can rob you of your senses, and yes, the Alien will hunt you outdoors as well, in ways you haven’t experienced before. You’re going to feel exposed, vulnerable, and very isolated."

Space.com: Over the last few decades, the Alien franchise feels like it’s drifted more and more into the action genre. What encouraged you to take Alien back to its horror roots with Isolation?

Hope: "Back then, we wanted to provide, for the very first time, the experience of encountering and trying to survive against cinema's greatest killer. In a way, it was the game we always wanted to play."

Space.com: In Predator: Badlands, we got our biggest Alien-Predator crossover yet outside of the AVP franchise. With the debate settled and it now firmly canon that the universes are shared, can players expect any Predator easter eggs in Alien: Isolation 2?

Hope: "Our focus in the sequel is very much on placing you in the shoes of a character who has no prior knowledge of the Alien, and who encounters it for the first time.

"How she reacts to that, and how you deal with it through your choices and actions, is where the drama lies. While we will have other NPCs and threats which contribute to that drama, the Predator isn’t a character or concept we’re factoring into the game."

Space.com: It's been over 10 years since the first game, and many fans started wondering if we were ever going to get a sequel. What took so long to make a sequel happen, and do you think waiting so long helped (or hindered) you at all when making the game?

Hope: "We’d always intended to make a sequel. Even during the development of the original, we had a number of ideas regarding the direction the next game could take.

"But we also had some great opportunities to work on other titles and try some new stuff out, like Halo Wars 2. But again, the hope was always to return with another Isolation game, and now that we’re back in full flow, it feels like coming home."

Space.com: Timeline-wise, Alien: Isolation takes place between the first two movies, and the sequel apparently takes place just months after the first game. So in the larger Alien timeline, gamers are still playing a story that happens between the first two movies. Does the game’s place in the larger timeline impact how you told the story?

Hope: That’s right, so the original game takes place around 15 years after the events of Alien, and Alien: Isolation 2 picks up a few months after the first game. Its place in the timeline means we’re continuing to draw inspiration from that lo-fi, sci-fi world of tactile, analogue equipment, and environmental features you can touch and feel. Now that we’re expressing those aesthetics in the context of a Weyland-Yutani colony, we have a whole new canvas to explore artistically.

Alien: Isolation 2 is releasing on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2, though there is no fixed release date at this time.

At the turn of the century, sci-fi evolved to new heights, which fortunately had nothing to do with Y2K (even if previous sci-fi movies might have led us to believe it would).

Propelling themselves through the 00s, iconic franchises continued to thrive with both Star Wars and Star Trek maintaining their dominion over sci-fi cinema.

The decade also saw the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with 2008's Iron Man. The MCU now consists of 38 movies and counting, with many of them sitting firmly in the sci-fi genre.

It wasn't all legacy franchises, though; our list is chock-full of original stories that joined the upper echelons of sci-fi history. In fact, it was such a fantastic decade for science fiction flicks that we've had to extend our "best of" list to 12 entries, because we simply could not narrow it down to ten.

So, let's all meet up in the year 2000 (to 2009), with our list of the 12 best sci-fi movies of the 2000s. Oh, and when you're done here, we've also covered the best sci-fi movies of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

12. Iron Man

Release date: May 2, 2008 | Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, and more | Director: Jon Favreau | RT score: 94% critics, 91% audience

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is simply that, a universe that weaves and threads through a multitude of movies all centered on Marvel Comics. Over almost three decades, there have been phased releases (with plenty more in the pipeline), but the movie that started it all was Iron Man in 2008. Not only did it kick-start the MCU, but it catapulted Robert Downey Jr. back into the limelight for his stellar performance after being rocked with personal issues prior.

Iron Man follows billionaire engineer Tony Stark, who wasn't born with special powers, but can sure as heck pay and use his powerful mind to give himself them. Crafting the iconic weaponized suit to save himself from a terrorist kidnapping, Iron Man is born.

If you watch the Marvel movies in order chronologically, it's technically not the first, with both Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain Marvel taking place before it, but it was the first in release order, and it's still one of the best MCU movies to date.

11. Star Trek

Release date: May 8, 2009 | Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Leonard Nimoy, and more | Director: J. J. Abrams | RT score: 94% critics, 91% audience

Another iconic sci-fi franchise makes an appearance now, as Star Trek returned to the big screen towards the tail end of the 2000s. While Star Trek has been around for decades, in 2009, renowned director J. J. Abrams brought the franchise back with an incredible cast, vibrant visuals, and an epic story.

James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) board the USS Enterprise to embark on an epic space adventure to take down a Romulan commander, Nero (Eric Bana).

Reigniting the much-loved franchise, it mostly stays true to the source material, whilst giving it an appropriately modern twist. Whilst it's basically a reboot, Star Trek 2009 uses some time travel shenanigans to establish this Kelvin timeline into the wider Trek universe, with Original Series legend Leonard Nimoy playing a significant role in the flick.

Curious to see how this spin-off fits into the main timeline? Check out our guide on how to watch the Star Trek movies in order.

10. District 9

Release date: August 14, 2009 | Cast: Sharlto Copley, David James, Jason Cope, Vanessa Haywood, and more | Director: Neill Blomkamp | RT score: 90% critics, 82% audience

South African sci-fi movie District 9 is a thriller that blends action and poignant emotional moments, all set in an alternate timeline.

Aliens land in Johannesburg in 1982 seeking refuge, but instead they're crammed into an internment camp called District 9. Skip forward to 2010, and a forced relocation is underway to kick the "Prawns" — now seen as second-class citizens — to the outskirts of the city.

Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) plays a government agent working in the Department of Alien Affairs, who gets caught up in a world of questionable ethics and violence. Things only get worse when he gets infected with alien blood that starts to transform him into one of them.

It's a unique take on the mockumentary format, playing out in fictional interviews, news segments, and surveillance videos, alongside the present-day storyline. It's an obvious allegory for apartheid with a sci-fi thriller twist and an incredibly unique offering to the genre.

9. Sunshine

Release date: April 6, 2007 | Cast: Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh and more | Director: Danny Boyle | RT score: 77% critics, 73% audience

Danny Boyle is an iconic British director, and after phenomenal pieces of cinema like Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and The Beach, he finally went to outer space with Sunshine.

Sunshine is a twisty sci-fi thriller set in the near future. The year is 2057, and the sun is dying, threatening human existence. To save the planet, a crew is sent on a mission to give the sun back its shine… by nuking the crap out of it.

As with a lot of death-defying space missions, it doesn't go as planned, or it wouldn't make a very good movie. Funnily enough, heading into space to try and fix the sun with a nuclear fission bomb is a pretty volatile plan, though it's not the bomb that ends up being the biggest threat (No spoilers here, just go watch it). The resulting tension — and some breathtaking moments — cement this movie's spot on our list.

Fun fact: Sunshine was made in collaboration with Alex Garland, the writer of The Beach who would later go on to write and direct another iconic piece of sci-fi cinema, Ex Machina.

8. Serenity

Release date: September 30, 2005 | Cast: Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alan Tudyk, and more | Director: Joss Whedon | RT score: 82% critics, 91% audience

After director Joss Whedon's TV show Firefly was discontinued, fans feared that was the end of the iconic space Western. Luckily, it was given a new lease of life in Serenity.

With the same cast reprising their roles, Serenity takes place after the events of the final episode, providing closure for fans of the unfortunately short-lived series, which sits amongst the best sci-fi TV shows of all time.

Serenity follows the crew of the ship as they try to avoid the Alliance forces and protect River, the powerful telepath they are harboring onboard. Skirting bravely around the edges of space to seek solace, they’re hunted by the Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a deadly Alliance assassin on a mission who seeks to recapture her.

For fans of the original show, it's a fitting send-off, and for new fans it's a fun adventure with an impressive cast and unique space western charm.

[Editor’s note: It’s recently been announced that Firefly will get its own animated series!]

7. Donnie Darko

Release date: October 26, 2001 | Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, and more | Director: Richard Kelly | RT score: 87% critics, 80% audience

This psychological thriller was one of Jake Gyllenhaal's most prolific roles to date and an unlikely foray into sci-fi for the actor. Yet, his role as Donnie Darko, a troubled teen with a bunny costume-wearing friend that only he can see, is most certainly one of his finest performances.

After a freak accident, Frank the bunny appears in an outstandingly creepy fashion to inform Donnie Darko of the world's impending doom. The following adventure is a wild blend of time travel, crime, and a warped version of reality. You'll be left theorizing on what you've witnessed in Richard Kelly's sci-fi classic.

It might not have got off to the best box office start, but it's certainly secured its cult status now. Fair warning, though: the tension-building of the movie is not for the faint-hearted.

6. The Man From Earth

Release date: November 13, 2007 | Cast: David Lee Smith, Tony Todd, John Billingsley, and more | Director: Richard Schenkman | RT score: 100% critics, 85% audience

Compared to the rest of this list, The Man From Earth stands alone as a unique flick. Why? Because it strips the sci-fi genre back to basics: there's no crazy CGI (marking an interesting exclusion in the 2000s), no intergalactic adventures (or misadventures), or even dystopian reimaginings.

Retiring college professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith) reveals to his colleagues during a surprise goodbye party that he is, in fact, thousands of years old. As his peers press him about his life on Earth, he unravels his historic tale that touches on a lot of thought-provoking topics.

It's Earth-based as we know it and aims to stun viewers with a simple design, yet complex tale. A goal it very much achieves.

5. Minority Report

Release date: June 21, 2002 | Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, and more | Director: Steven Spielberg | RT score: 89% critics, 80% audience

Loosely based on a novella of the same name by Philip K. Dick, Minority Report imagines a world in 2054 (less than 30 years away now) where criminals are stopped in their tracks before they commit a crime. Aided by three psychics called the 'precogs,' a special police department has been set up to apprehend the assailants before they manage to execute their wrongdoing.

This fascinating cyberpunk flick is fronted by Tom Cruise as Precrime Chief John Anderton, a troubled soul determined to complete the department's mission until he becomes a target for precrime himself. Desperately on the run and fighting for his innocence, the system he’s so devoutly believed in begins to unravel.

It's a prescient movie in more ways than one; some of the technology that's predicted in Minority Report, such as iris scanners and multi-touch interfaces, has become a reality today. This is owing to the fact that director Steven Spielberg actually invited scientific experts to think about the kind of technologies they may expect in the future and, interestingly (or worryingly), they proved to be true.

Thank goodness the projectile vomit-inducing 'sick sticks' aren't real…yet.

4. Children of Men

Release date: December 25, 2006 | Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, and more | Director: Alfonso Curaón | RT score: 92% critics, 85% audience

There was a recurring theme inspiring sci-fi movies in the 2000s, and it was looking into the near future rather than the far-flung space age.

For Children of Men, the year is 2027 and 18 years of infertility have left Earth facing extinction… that is until a woman gets pregnant. In a dystopian world of desperation and war, small glimmers of hope keep society from crumbling completely. In the face of an intense political climate, Theo (Clive Owen) takes it upon himself to transport the pregnant woman to safety and rebuild humanity at a sanctuary at sea.

Alongside incredibly poignant themes running throughout, Children of Men offers a stunning visual style thanks to director Alfonso Curaón's prowess, which he later expands on in 2013's Gravity.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Release date: March 19, 2004 | Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood, and more | Director: Michael Gondry | RT score: 92% critics, 94% audience

Joel (Jim Carrey) is shocked to discover his ex-girlfriend and love of his life, Clementine (Kate Winslet), has had their entire relationship erased from her memory. Amidst the heartache and upset, he decides to get the same procedure. As his memories begin to fade, he's left in a panic, not wanting to lose everything.

It's a sci-fi tale that blends wholeheartedly with romance, offering a unique look at a world where humanity can choose to forget. When the option of erasing heartbreak is so readily available, is this a kindness or a cruel, emotional violation?

Prepare to be psychologically ruined by the performances from both Carrey and Winslet, which are compelling and heart-wrenching in equal measure.

2. Moon

Release date: June 12, 2009 | Cast: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Dominique McElligott, and more | Director: Duncan Jones | RT score: 90% critics, 89% audience

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the sole employee of a lunar station on the Moon. For three years, he's been tasked with sending a fuel resource, helium-3, back to Earth. Totally isolated, Sam's only company is his intelligent computer, GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), and he yearns to return home to his family.

In the final two weeks of Sam's mission, an accident threatens his return to Earth. What happens next are the most dramatic and twisted moments of his life, as these mysterious events bring Sam face-to-face with his younger self.

It's one of the best sci-fi movies of all time for good reason, owed mainly to Rockwell's outstanding performance that makes you feel almost as entirely alone as he is.

1. WALL-E

Release date: June 27, 2008 | Cast: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, and more | Director: Andrew Stanton | RT score: 95% critics, 90% audience

Disney Pixar is no stranger to a good story. Over the decades, they've brought us tales full of adventure, comedy, monsters, and even bugs. Then, in 2008, Pixar turned to sci-fi and introduced us to one of the best movie robots ever: WALL-E.

He's a cute, charming, waste-collecting robot who communicates only in beeps. He has no one to talk to anyway, sadly, as he is the last of his kind, having remained behind on Earth to clean up the mess that humans abandoned. With seemingly no hope in his mission to save our trash-covered planet, WALL-E is surprised and delighted to meet EVE – a companion for a wild adventure.

Beneath the bubbly, fun edge, there's a deeper message that takes a hard look at humanity and tackles environmental issues through the lens of a heart-warming adventure, making this one of sci-fi's most profound and moving animated tales.

Now, if someone could just invent that pizza plant, that would be great.

Growing up, the best Saturday morning cartoons were the ones we re-enacted with our friends on the playground. Whether it was screaming at the top of our lungs to go Super Saiyan like in Dragon Ball Z, or sleuthing around the school as Darkwing Duck.

In the years since our childhood, we’ve often bonded with both strangers and friends over memories of Saturday morning cartoons, remembering the quaint stories and characters that influenced our lives in surprisingly profound ways.

Those stories have a unifying power, and that’s at the heart of developer Shapefarm’s debut, Orbitals, which seeks to combine that rich heart with the gameplay style of Hazelight Studios’ co-op games like It Takes Two and Split Fiction. Will Orbitals be looked back on quite as fondly as those cartoons years down the road? Probably not, but this Switch 2 exclusive is a no-frills co-op smorgasbord that’s delightful from start to finish.

Editor's Note: Since Orbitals requires two players to complete, this feature is co-authored by George Yang and Hayes Madsen. Name a more iconic duo.

You play as Maki and Omura, two space explorers tasked with finding power cores to power up their home ship and prevent it from being destroyed by a cosmic storm. Orbitals is very similar to co-op games like It Takes Two and Split Fiction, both from Hazelight Studios.

Strictly a two-player game, you and a friend have to work together to solve environmental puzzles while communicating with each other. This dynamic complements the friendly camaraderie between Maki and Omura, the former of whom is a bubbly girl and the latter a more laidback, blue-skinned male humanoid with horns.

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about Orbitals is its sense of lightness. This is a game laser-focused on fun, evoking that through smart puzzle design, cooperation, collectibles that are all tied to fun little minigames, and more.

Experiencing Orbitals was just like marathoning an entire season worth of anime. The 80s and 90s anime art direction emphasizes thick lines and simple shading, as opposed to modern standards of meticulous detail and cinematic lighting.

This retro aesthetic permeates every facet of Orbitals. The splash screen that appears when loading up Orbitals, showing Shapefarm and publisher Kepler Interactive’s logos, is soaked in retro-futuristic bright neon like Apple’s back in the 80s. The amazing opening song, “Accelerating Destiny,” is sung by legendary 80s anime vocalist Mami Ayukawa. Each decision feels intentional, like a love letter to this era.

It’s an absolutely gorgeous journey through space that lasts a brisk 5 hours. There are 12 chapters lasting around 20-25 minutes, with each feeling like a separate TV episode, and we know what you're thinking; that seems like a short game. And it is.

Compared to Split Fiction, which lasted way too long, Orbitals finds itself on the other end of the spectrum. The pacing quickly picks up into the finale, making it feel a bit rushed. There's a middle ground that both games missed, which is a shame. Despite that, although hastily, Orbitals wraps itself up in a satisfying way.

Shows like Cowboy Bebop had a ragtag team of underdogs exploring the solar system, instilling lessons about loneliness and existentialism. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing had heavier ethical themes about war. These ideas flew over our heads as kids, and we were mostly occupied by the pretty lights and awesome fight scenes. But rewatching them as adults allowed us to grasp them better. Orbitals follows in these classics’ footsteps, tackling subjects like agency of choice and forgiveness.

Orbitals has its fair share of battles, with one player controlling the guns while the other steers the ship to take down turrets and incoming asteroids. It’s not too difficult, since each of you only has to focus on one task, but the real challenge comes from communicating.

In a few boss fights, the battles can suddenly change into a completely different format. In one instance, the pilot had to dodge enemy projectiles like a bullet-hell game, while the other player's perspective shifted inside the ship, with them putting out fires before heading back to the guns. It’s these unexpected moments that make Orbitals a blast to play.

As the designated pilot of the duo, Hayes quickly felt the burden of protection weigh upon his shoulders. He didn’t just have to get us from point A to point B, but also had to dodge enemy attacks in frenetic battles, pilot through the sudden bullet-hell segment, use a microwave to possess creatures and shift the stage, and so much more. George, on the other hand, had to quickly dispatch enemies before they depleted the ship’s HP, while also frantically navigating through lava while Hayes cooled it from underneath, creating a path to the other side of the level.

Despite a runtime that feels like it ends when the game is really picking up, Orbitals is an incredibly smartly designed little game. One that consistently weaves different gameplay styles and genres together into something effortlessly distinct, even though it clearly is trying to emulate the magic of It Takes Two and Split Fiction. The good news is that it largely succeeds at what it does.

The story is breezy, but punctuated by shockingly good performances and that whimsical Saturday morning cartoon feel. The main duo instantly feel like lifelong friends, with the game knowing it doesn’t need to take the time to lay out that backstory.

Equally, gameplay mechanics are briefly explained but then further explored through experimentation and context clues, rather than lengthy tutorials. Those two aspects combine into a game that, ultimately, makes every hour feel distinctly different, just like a Saturday morning cartoon.

It’s those differences that make Orbitals more than the sum of its parts, alongside how much the experience of the game’s two players actually differs.

While the game likely felt more like a shooter for George, Orbitals was essentially a platformer and vehicular exploration game. That inherently adds a bit of a different tinge to each experience, even in how Orbitals relates to those Saturday morning cartoons it tries to evoke. For Hayes’ part, it transported him back to his favorite shows like Gundam and Code Lyoko. This also adds some much-needed replay value, as you can swap roles and dive back in once the credits have rolled.

Orbitals may be short, but there’s a lot to love. The kind of dessert that satisfies your craving, but doesn’t taste too sickly sweet.

Orbitals launches on September 3 exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2.

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.