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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Episode 222 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by space writer Rich Edwards to discuss the best ways to repel space invaders.

We've all seen the movies... the aliens come to Earth, the aliens overcome the inferior humans, and the aliens fall prey to something dumb they overlooked, like microbes, Windows 95, or most absurdly, water. From the 1950s through yesterday, some of the best movies we've seen were about the invasion of our planet. They can be clever, scary, or even downright dumb, but they are all fun.

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters
• Blue Origin traces origin of huge New Glenn rocket explosion to oxygen valve, CEO says
• Where will the total solar eclipse 2026 be visible from?
• SpaceX Question Time
• How to invade planet Earth: A sci-fi movie alien's guide to bringing the human race to its knees
• Alien movies in order: chronological and release
• Aliens' at 40: Here are 26 reasons why James Cameron's sequel is still the greatest sci-fi action movie of all time

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's always the way, you wait 40,000 years for a Warhammer series from Amazon Prime Video, and then two come along at once.

Spinning off of Prime Video's animated video game-based anthology, "Secret Level," a new "Warhammer 40,000" animated series is marching down the creative pipeline. This spin-off series is spawned from "Secret Level's" "Warhammer 40,000" episode titled "And They Shall Know No Fear," which debuted in December of 2024.

The show doesn't have a name yet, but we know it's coming courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios, Blur Studios, and the miniature wargame's British parent company, Games Workshop.

Hollywood megastar and king of the nerds, Henry Cavill ("The Witcher"), has signed on to executive produce, alongside his role on the previously announced live-action "Warhammer 40,000" series in development at Amazon MGM Studios, which is coming from prolific writer/producer Mike Flanagan ("Midnight Mass," "Carrie").

We don't know much about the plot at this time, other than that it will focus on the Deathwatch, who are a group of intimidating cybernetically enhanced Space Marines who are particularly adept at slaying nasty extraterrestrial xenos.

Dave Wilson directed the original short, and he's signed on again here as co-creator and director, with John Orloff ("Masters of the Air," "Band of Brothers") aiding in the development process.

"Secret Level" creator Tim Miller ("Love, Death + Robots") serves as executive producer with Dave Wilson for Blur Studios, alongside Cavill and Natalie Viscuso. Joining them are Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment and Games Workshop's Andy Smillie.

"'Secret Level' wasn’t conceived simply as an anthology. It was designed as a launchpad for larger stories," said Wilson in a statement. "The response to the 'Warhammer' episode was extraordinary, particularly from fans who understood how much care went into getting the world right. This series gives us the opportunity to build on that foundation and tell a much larger story. I've wanted to tell a long-form story set in 'Warhammer 40,000' for more than twenty years, and I'm incredibly grateful to Games Workshop and Amazon MGM Studios for the opportunity to do it."

Prime Video is knee-deep in gaming adaptations with its acclaimed "Fallout" series and a "Tomb Raider" show starring "Game of Thrones"' Sophie Turner on the roster. Amazon MGM Studios is also hard at work on an epic "God of War" project, with "Guardians of the Galaxy's" Dave Bautista currently topping the list to portray Kratos after Ryan Hurst left the production due to an injury.

No specific release date was unveiled for "Warhammer 40,000's" animated event series, but we’ll keep you briefed on any major details in the coming months!

You might think you're done with the multiverse, but the multiverse is not done with you, as Apple TV preps the next season of its mind-bending sci-fi series, "Dark Matter."

Adapted from New York Times bestselling novelist Blake Crouch's 2016 novel of the same name, "Dark Matter" is another stellar series from the streaming platform that's become the go-to destination for premium science fiction content with hit shows "Foundation," "Silo," "For All Mankind," "Star City," "Invasion," "Pluribus," "Severance," and "Murderbot."

The debut season in 2024 took audiences into a reality-warping nightmare, and season 2 kicks things into a darker dimension when it rolls out on Aug. 28, 2026.

Season 1 found Joel Edgerton ("Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith," "Zero Dark 30," "Train Dreams") portraying Jason Dessen, a quantum physicist who gets sucked into an alternate reality and must struggle to prevent his second self from hijacking his life and family. Season 2 sees the Dessen family jolted out of their safe, quiet life once again when an unimaginable threat forces them to run once again.

"As Jason's obsession with the Box deepens, Daniela's growing paranoia pushes her to the brink, threatening to tear their fragile stability apart," reveals the synopsis. "Elsewhere, Amanda and Ryan join forces in a desperate attempt to find their way home. With Blair determined to stop him, while Leighton relentlessly chases his grand vision of creating a perfect world."

Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly ("The Rocketeer," "A Beautiful Mind") plays his prime world wife, Daniela, and Alice Braga takes on the role of Amanda Lucas, Dessen’s girlfriend in the shifted universe. Crouch ("Wayward Pines," "Recursion," "Upgrade") again serves as "Dark Matter's" showrunner and executive producer, where he steers the first-class production with a steady, capable hand beyond the book's storyline for its sophomore season. He'll share executive producing duties alongside Joel Edgerton, Jakob Verbruggen, Don Kurt, David Manpearl, and Matt Tolmach.

"Dark Matter's first season was an engaging and underappreciated sci-fi series that should satiate fans of sci-fi shows like "Fringe," "The Man in the High Castle," "Black Mirror," and even "Rick and Morty." We can't wait for season 2.

Speaking of which, starring Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi, Oakes Fegley and Amanda Brugel, "Dark Matter" season 2 appears on Apple TV for a fresh 10-episode outing on Aug. 28, 2026.

Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi may not be the Star Wars TV show you were looking for, but after having watched its entire first season, I can confidently say it's something the franchise desperately needed.

With several new Star Wars movies on the horizon without a cohesive plan in sight and a surprising lack of new live-action Disney+ series beyond Ahsoka Season 2, it seems like the galaxy far, far away's future looks brighter in animation.

Shows like The Bad Batch and Maul – Shadow Lord have proven there's room for more tonal experiments and expansions of the canon canvas, yet it's the Legends-like Star Wars: Visions formula that's produced the most striking tales starring Jedi, Sith, Rebels, and whatnot in years.

After a second short released as part of last year's Star Wars: Visions Vol. 3, Production I.G's The Ninth Jedi has evolved into an eight-episode anime series that's far outside what we've come to expect from the canon Star Wars timeline.

And yet, the traditional nature of its story and setting showcases what an icon Star Wars could be for younger generations if it looked forward more often than backward.

A well-calculated evolution

Back in 2021, The Ninth Jedi became a fan-favorite what-if Star Wars scenario with a first short (which you can watch for free on YouTube right now) set generations after the disappearance of the Jedi Order. It's a familiar setup, but crucially, one that doesn't invoke the Skywalker family name, the Republic, or the Empire.

At the same time, the show's approach to the Force, the Jedi, and the Sith doesn't collide with what we've already seen. It almost feels like a canon Star Wars story that's just set centuries into the galaxy's future. Even the visuals, which evoke an old-fashioned style as possible — despite some jarring bits of CG imagery — use the same language Lucasfilm veterans like Doug Chiang have developed over the decades.

The Ninth Jedi sticks to the few rules established by the two previous shorts, but also dreams slightly bigger to paint a richer canvas that doesn't always feel like a genuine part of George Lucas' original universe, which is almost necessary at this point to avoid stagnation.

There will no doubt be back-and-forth conversation about its place within the franchise, but such chatter is less interesting than dissecting what it means for how Disney and Lucasfilm approach the property moving forward.

Honoring the recent past

Interestingly, The Ninth Jedi borrows quite a lot from modern Star Wars entries the loud online types called unmitigated disasters: namely The Last Jedi and The Acolyte.

Lah Kara feels like the direct result of Rey's impact on a new generation of creatives and fans, and Lah Zhima – Kara's father – quickly goes from a missing sabersmith to a far more complex Jedi figure that lands close to Luke Skywalker's divisive role in Episode VIII. General Nawaam — the main villain — also makes for a memorable character that has more Kylo Ren (or The Stranger) than Darth Vader in them.

The nature of lightsaber-wielding warriors like the Jedi and Sith — both ancient concepts to the galaxy's common people — is also questioned. These are religions that, at least in their original shape, have gone extinct for a good reason.

While Kara and Jedi Knights like Margrave Juro — essentially the Obi-Wan Kenobi of this story — and Ethan fight to bring back the Order from the brink of extinction (again), it becomes evident there's no path forward for the guardians of peace and justice without some introspection. These shades of grey only deepen when lightsabers start to change colors, and unlikely heroes rise.

Over the course of this eight-episode season (with more teased but not confirmed), the Production I.G anime veterans Shunsuke Tada (director), Mitsuyasu Sakai (writer), and Kenji Kamiyama (supervising director) make a strong effort to bridge Star Wars' past and present, even if there was no real need to respect what had come before. The Ninth Jedi is its own thing, but not really.

It may be limiting for the Visions experiment — as many fans favor bolder swings as stylish and disruptive as The Duel — but ironically, that makes it a valuable endeavor for Lucasfilm as they navigate an uncertain future trying to conquer the big screen once again. How much classical Star Wars do we need in future projects? This show gives a very reasonable answer.

Star Wars for a new generation, even if the bones are old

Veteran Star Wars fans need to remember newcomers don't care about canon outside of stories meant to be connected. Instead, they're looking for captivating tales starring new characters who are fun to spend time with, and on that front, the first of the Star Wars: Visions shows (more are rumored to be in the works) is a resounding success.

On a surface level, there are enough new planets, spaceships, alien species, and factions in The Ninth Jedi to fuel an entire trilogy of movies, yet it's all put to good use over the course of eight breezy episodes which tell a complete story, just in case Season 2 isn't a possibility.

Thematically, it's also among the richest explorations of the Force, the Jedi, and a cycle of conflicts sparked by the need for more Star Wars forever and ever. Even if corporate needs are the main reason why creatives are still getting to tell stories set in a galaxy far, far away, the meta conversation found in these tales might help refresh and save Star Wars. Beyond that, it shows that Rian Johnson and Leslye Headland had the right idea, even if they didn't nail the execution.

Those who have been around for decades will spot and appreciate the tradition holding this all together, but even with a Death Star-like threat and reheated plot beats peppered throughout the journey, The Ninth Jedi has the pulse and patience to build new legends that deserve a moment in the spotlight.

The galaxy Kara is fighting for might look a little different from the one we know, but this is the most Star Wars-feeling Star Wars entry in quite some time.

Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi (full season) is now available to stream on Disney+ following its premiere on Aug. 5, 2026.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Episode 221 of This Week In Space, Tariq Malik and guest host Rick Jenet of the National Space Society talk about SpaceX's Starship Flight 13, which deployed new Starlink V3 satellites and stunned viewers when the ship survived reentry intact enough to float in the ocean for days afterward.

They also discuss NASA's Roman Space Telescope, now just a month from launch, and an in-progress emergency effort to save the ailing Swift Space Observatory using a servicing spacecraft that is itself now experiencing technical trouble. Finally, they look into Boeing's continued Starliner delays and India's first successful private orbital launch via Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket. Tune in!

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• SpaceX's Starship megarocket makes the 'softest splashdown' ever after launching next-gen Starlink satellites in Flight 13 test
• X: Landing burn and splashdown of Starship on Flight 13
• X: The Starship Recovery team has continued gathering imagery of the vehicle, which is still afloat in the Indian Ocean
• Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a “dead end” for rapid reuse
• SpaceX wins $1.6 billion in launch orders for military satellite networks
• 'It's going to do things that currently are impossible': The Roman Space Telescope, NASA's next great observatory, is ready to launch Aug. 30
• NASA Fuels Roman Space Telescope for Late August Launch
• Actually, Starliner might fly into space this year
• 'The dawn of a new space era': Vikram-1, India's 1st private orbital rocket, aces debut launch
• Should Artemis IV astronauts actually land near the moon's south pole? Artemis II pilot says the lunar equator might be better
• Astronomers may have discovered the 1st moon outside of our solar system — or is it something weirder?
• A SpaceX rocket will crash into the moon next week, and scientists aren't sure what to expect
• An 'almost blood moon' is coming on Aug. 27 and it'll be the best lunar eclipse until NYE 2028
• Perseid meteor shower 2026 — When, where and how to see it

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SYFY’s optimistic space opera series, "The Ark," embarks upon its third thrilling season today, occupying a unique entertainment spot as the only weekly scripted sci-fi series currently on regular broadcast television.

With an impressive creative resume featuring executive producers Dean Devlin ("Stargate," "Independence Day") and Jonathan Glassner ("Stargate SG-1") and a hopeful premise about humanity’s search for a new home amid the stars, it’s a refreshing show perfect for a laidback, summertime watch.

Season 3 delivers more dangerous exoplanets inhabited by ravenous toothy monsters, the mystery of an alien stone tablet, and Captain Sharon Garnet’s Ark One searching for long-lost colonists. We caught up with Devlin to find out more about this third outing.

"We got so lucky with this cast," Devlin tells Space. "Some were cast from Canada, some from Spain, from England, and a lot of them were from Serbia. You never know if they’re going to gel, if they’re going to get along, if there's going to be any egos. It's truly an amazing group of individuals."

Talking more on the unique shooting location, Devlin notes, "I do also believe that because we shoot this show in Serbia, it kind of forces them to live together in a way. They work together, they go out to dinners together. They really spend all their time together, and I think it's created a bond off-screen that you can really see on screen."

Season 3 accelerates all the careful plot mechanisms set up in the previous outings, and the result is a colorful blend of space fantasy action and interpersonal melodrama that makes for good old-fashioned fun.

"Season one had been this crazy hit, and it did so much better than anyone thought," he explains. "While we were making season two, we had discussions about maybe splitting the show into two shows. And that one show takes place on the new colony, and the other show takes place rescuing people. When the season was over, we thought maybe we’d just stick with one show. Then suddenly I had two shows I had to cram into one show. It became twice as big with more locations, more cast, and more adventures.

"We went nuts. We went wildly over budget and just made the biggest, craziest season we could possibly imagine. Our industry has moved so far into streaming, which is great in so many ways. But the weekly viewing on cable is still something that I really treasure and really am grateful that I have a chance to do that. We have two shows doing that this summer [with TNT's "The Librarians: The Next Chapter"] and in both situations we're the only scripted show on each network."

Devlin hints that viewers are going to be shocked at some of the unexpected surprises this season and where it goes on a character level.

"That's always been the strength of this show," he adds. "These characters and bringing out new information about them and seeing how that causes conflicts amongst our group and how they overcome those conflicts. 'The Ark' always has had a mystery element, but this year the mystery box is enormous.”

One thing that’s immediately noticeable is the impressive range of visual effects on 'The Ark' this year, and Devlin admits that this is where a good chunk of the budget-busting occurred.

"The main VFX team is in Serbia, a company called Fried, and they’ve been with us this whole time. I put another team together in Los Angeles that used to be part of our Electric Entertainment effects company. So we basically had two houses because we wanted to step it up; we had a lot more shots to do, and we split the work between us. I’m really proud of the collaboration. In season one, I promised everybody that there were no aliens on 'The Ark,' but maybe down the line. Well, I guess we’re down the line.

"This is a season where if you've never seen the show before, you can jump right in. But if you have been with us for the whole journey, you're going to get some extra love by the time we get to the end of the season. This may be the most emotional ending of a season we've ever done, and I'm anxious to watch people go on that ride with us.”

Starring Christie Burke, Reece Ritchie, Richard Fleeshman, Pavle Jerinic, Stacey Read, Samantha Glassner and Ryan Adams, SYFY's "The Ark" Season 3 launches weekly starting Wednesday, July 29, 2026.

In Apple TV’s "Silo" season 3, we lunge back 352 years to the Before Times to see how the greatest engineering project in the history of the world began… and would end.

Center stage in this dark sci-fi drama are ambitious Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) and journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick), the pre-apocalypse duo we were first introduced to in Season 2's final episode.

In that scene, the handsome couple met on a first date in a Washington, D.C. restaurant in the aftermath of a dirty bomb that had irradiated the city.

Daniel and Helen play pivotal roles in "Silo's" elaborate conspiracy to save humanity, helping to orchestrate a colossal project in Georgia to build a controlled network of survival bunkers that will last centuries until the Earth somehow becomes habitable again after a mysterious calamity. Wait, that sounds familiar...

Zukerman and Henwick create a completely believable relationship as they’re reluctantly drawn into this mind-boggling plot to save the human race. We connected with them to learn details about cultivating their chemistry and intimacy on the show.

"It's nothing we worked to generate; it was really just there from the beginning," Zukerman tells Space. "We hung out, and we certainly didn’t hang out for the purpose of building that chemistry. I think we got very lucky to find a teammate to be able to do that with."

"We share the same taste and work ethic," elaborates Zuckerman. "When you go on a journey that’s this big with someone, and we shot every day for four months together, we just always had each other’s backs, and there was an immense amount of unconditional respect and excitement. I’m not the kind of actor that could fake it."

Henwick discussed the complexities of her resourceful character and her expanded role in season 3 by exploring what she drew from to compose a layered Helen.

"It was my memory of working on the school newspaper when I was 14," she explains. "And also my natural inclination to ‘Spanish Inquisition’ everyone. I do feel quite an affinity to journalists. I always love to ask questions, and I want to know why and want to understand things. I’m really curious about the world. I didn’t feel like I had to generate much for Helen. I actually felt like she was very close to me."

"Silo"'s impressive set design certainly helped the cast immerse themselves in the doomsday world of author Hugh Howey's dystopian novels and in this lavish Apple TV adaptation.

"I'm sort of a terrible guest to sets, especially if I'm a part of the production," Zukerman adds. "I have to remember to sit in wonder for a second at the scale of the operation. Usually I just try to live as the characters live. Then I'm so thankful that you actually get to live in a real space, especially in a sci-fi, which is not our real world.

"Where the drawers open and when you're looking at something, you're not looking at a blue screen or a green screen, you're actually able to experience life as close as you can within this alternate reality."

Likewise, Henwick absorbed "Silo's" immense scope and scale right from the start.

"I've done a lot of fantasy and sci-fi where I’m stuck in front of a green screen, or there's a tennis ball on a stick, and you have to follow it, and that's the spaceship," she shares. "It was nice to be on a show where so much of it was done practically. I remember the first day going to visit the stairs, and that blew my mind. It is a massive set, one of the biggest sets I've been on."

Executive produced by Graham Yost, “Silo” Season 3 is now streaming on Apple TV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rick Baker's Fantastic Makeup

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

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

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

The Baffling Time-Tripping Plot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danny Elfman's Magnificent Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Space: The horror frontier

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

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

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

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

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

In space, no one can hear you arthouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drag me to space

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

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

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

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

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

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

All systems are go! PBS just launched the second episode of its "Once Upon a Time in Space" miniseries on Tuesday, titled "The Russian Thing," and we’ve got an exclusive clip from the harrowing chapter that focuses on near disasters aboard the Space Station Mir in 1997.

In addition to the video, we’re also proud to share an exclusive interview with NASA's celebrated British-American astronaut Michael Foale, who is featured prominently in the new segment regarding the infamous cargo pod collision on Mir, which caused a decompression incident that became a life-threatening crisis.

Hailing from British filmmaker James Bluemel and his crew that delivered the award-winning "Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland," "Once Upon a Time in Space" is a 4-part exploration of human spaceflight. Its weekly episodes trace pivotal events in spacefaring history via the personal experiences of astronauts, cosmonauts, and loved ones left on Earth from the birth of the Space Shuttle program to the blossoming of today’s commercial spaceflight industry.

"James Bluemel is a very perceptive director, and he was different from others that have interviewed me," Foale tells Space.

"What I loved about his method was he would dig up clips from our training or at different points when I was a brand new astronaut, looking really young and had a surfer boy haircut. I love windsurfing. He would dig up clips I don't know where from. And then he'd show it to you, and then he'd say, 'What do you think?'"

Foale — a distinguished veteran of six space missions who retired in 2013 — takes us back to that day of May 25, 1997, when a manual docking maneuver caused an unmanned Progress cargo ship to collide with Mir, ripping a large hole in the Russian space station’s Spektr module.

The crew’s valiant attempt to halt the pressure leak and save the station is like something straight out of a Hollywood thriller. With only 23 minutes of oxygen left, Foale and cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexander ‘Sasha’ Lazutkin were able to repair the damage and stop the tumbling spacecraft from spinning wildly out of control.

"The root cause of the accident was trying to save money," he explains. "And the root cause was an attempt to do a manual docking from a large distance longer than any cosmonaut or astronaut does a manual docking from and doing it without the radar. The radar was built in Ukraine and cost $2 million in that timeframe. And the Russian managers did not want to pay Ukraine $2 million.

"So someone in the Energia corporation — they're the guilty company — decided they would try and get this crew at the last minute to try and do a manual rendezvous and docking without the radar from about a six-kilometer starting point. And that test was with a Progress we'd already filled up with trash and was meant to be de-orbited into the Pacific Ocean. Before it was going to be de-orbited finally, it was going to do this test."

Unfortunately, that test went horribly wrong due to Vasily Tsibliev not being able, based on measurements he could make in real time, to determine the exact closing velocity of the Progress.

"He couldn't ascertain distance very well, but you need the distance first, and then you need to divide by time to get the velocity,” notes Foale. “That was not possible in that situation and never attempted again. It caused a much higher velocity than Vasily could extinguish using the one thruster set that were turned on the Progress.

"So it bounced off, literally bounced off after crumpling part of the Spektr module and bending one of the solar arrays. The joint cracked at the base of the solar array into the module, and that's where the unseen hole is or was. And that's where the air was leaving from. It was a multiple hit that caused it to float away. And we were told as a crew about three days later, because we asked what had happened to it. They said, 'Well, engine was capable of being fired. It was capable of reorienting itself, and it de-orbited into the Pacific.'"

In the aftermath of the collision, an adapter was sent up to try and connect power back from the Spektr module into the Mir system.

"Vasily and Sasha were planned to do an internal spacewalk into the Spektr module to get to those cables that Sasha and I had had to disconnect to save the station," Foale adds. "They were going to go back in during an internal EVA. Vasily, because of the stress of the event, didn't pass the medical test done before the spacewalk, and they wire you up for a heart monitor.

"So then a day later, a call came up from the head of the program, Valery Ryumin, saying, 'Oh, Michael, you're on the radio. I'm going to ask you, would you be willing to go in and do the spacewalk inside the Spektr module instead of Vasily?'", remembers Foale. "I just knew that that was going to create a huge issue with me and Vasily because it was so humiliating for him. And he took all the blame of the collision on his shoulders, which was unfair."

Foale retired from NASA and space travel after a brilliant 30-year career with the agency and six space shuttle missions, but the lifestyle adjustment was a bit troubling at first.

“That was a depressing moment when I was being told, 'Oh, you're done,'" he shares. "I knew I couldn't survive the envy of my astronaut colleagues who are younger than me and haven't flown but once or twice. So I knew I was kind of done in space, at least with NASA. I was dreaming of being an astronaut guide like Peggy Whitson or Michael Lopez-Alegria on an Axiom mission. Those were my daydreams initially. I miss space, but I’ve found other things to replace that fun.

“I've always been turned on emotionally and romantically by soaring and flying. So living in Texas amongst the mountains with fantastic stars every night and soaring here, it's not space. It's not in a spacesuit outside the Mir looking at it, but it's pretty cool. I do go back to a much more comfortable situation in the evening, and I do ride my bike.

"As a 69-year-old now, I have a pretty good late-life pastime. But you have to make do. And hey, you have to keep telling yourself you're one of the luckiest guys around. I would say I was naively optimistic about the international collaboration in space. The show that James Bluemel has put together, "Once Upon a Time in Space," in some ways it looks like a fairytale to me when I look back on it."

"Once Upon a Time in Space's" "The Russian Thing" episode aired on July 21, 2026, at 9:00 p.m. ET on PBS, PBS.org, and the PBS app, with the final two chapters coming on July 28 and Aug. 4.

On Episode 220 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik are joined by Dr. Pascal Lee and astrobiologist Dr. Penny Boston to mark the 50th anniversary of Viking 1's landing on Mars.

This week, we cover how Starship Flight 13 finally prepares to launch amid a legal battle over SpaceX's proposed land swap at Starbase, plus a Chinese Long March 3B rocket gets struck by lightning during liftoff, yet still delivers its satellite safely.

Then, we revisit the Viking 1 mission's groundbreaking life-detection experiments and the decades-long controversy over what they actually found. The conversation traces Mars exploration from the earliest Mariner flybys through Viking's ambiguous, still-debated results — later explained by perchlorates in the Martian soil — and the fierce scientific rivalry the findings sparked. Join us!

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• SpaceX will now try to launch critical Starship Flight 13 test today after delays. Here's what to expect.
• 'The court has to intervene now': Indigenous groups and conservationists condemn SpaceX's South Texas land swap
• Lightning strike on Chinese rocket captured in epic launch photo
• ‘Triumph of Mariner 4’
• Slice of History - 50 Years of Mariner 9 in Orbit
• Viking Lander
• Life on Mars detected ?... Viking 1...
• Viking lander biological experiments

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

Henry Alonso Myers and Akiva Goldsman are the primary ringleaders behind "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds", and they're about to unleash the next cluster of 10 Season 4 episodes for their spirited space show.

With an abundance of genre-crossing indulgences that are scary, surreal, and sometimes silly, the Paramount+ hit is operating at full warp speed in this penultimate outing, the debut episode of which just premiered on July 23, 2026.

We hitched a ride with the acclaimed executive producers to learn all about their vision for "Strange New Worlds'" fourth season and why they believe it will prove to be the finest one yet, taking cues from ‘90s-style time-travel odysseys, haunted starships, noir crime thrillers, puppet mishaps, and utopian fantasies.

"It’s hard to come up through the ‘90s and not feel affected by a lot of the films that came out in that era, some of which my partner is directly responsible for," Myers tells Space regarding the solid one-two punch of the first two episodes.

"I think part of the goal is to come out swinging when you do a premiere. It needs its own premise that stands on its own, and then you need to figure out how to set up everything else for the season through that.

"How do you tell an emotional story that expresses where the season is going to go? And also, we want something that we think is cool. The minute we started talking about doing dinosaurs [In "Valles Marineris"], we were like, 'Yeah, let’s figure out a way to do that.' Then it became a question of how do we fit all of this into the same box."

For the unsettling (and pretty gruesome) horror episode titled "The Griffin Incident," Myers admits that Goldsman is his true north for all the horror elements because the Oscar-winning screenwriter loves it so deeply.

"I always look to see his reaction if whether or not we feel like we've hit it. And every season we’ve tried to do one, and we’ve done some decent ones. But we haven’t quite done something like a ghost story. His reaction to that made it all worth doing."

Goldsman finds it interesting that he understands the rules of the horror genre, yet he actually doesn't watch that much horror anymore, short of the horror projects that he's somehow been involved with creatively.

"The older I get, the harder it is for me to watch," he reveals. "This particular convergence of the open-hearted optimism of 'Star Trek' and the kind of haunted nature of the world behind the world. There's a cadence to this, an almost Lovecraftian sense of there’s something out there that’s more than we know and maybe not so pleasant. I just think that is really interesting in 'Star Trek.' So we built it and shot it like a horror movie, and for me it worked. It’s nice and scary.”

In choosing some of their favorite moments of Season 4, Myers and Goldsman share observations on a few key crew members as they embark on their own inner voyages.

"There is stuff that Uhura goes through this season that really gets me," notes Myers. "She was the new recruit at the beginning of the show, and this is the part where she's suddenly a bit more in charge. She also manages to risk her life and save people in ways we haven't seen on screen. And it builds to something I love, which is she looks at who she's going to be, and looks back at who she was, and has some really great emotional stories around that. I love seeing her on that journey."

Picking his pair of intrepid Starfleet officers, Goldsman looks toward Sickbay.

"I think there's a set of relationship beats between M’Benga and Chapel in the back half of the season that really deepens both those characters and helps us understand where everybody's going that I think Jess and Babs did beautifully," he adds. "So I’m really looking forward to that."

"Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4 is now streaming on Paramount+.

2026 is the 60th anniversary of "Star Trek". To help celebrate the show that creator Gene Roddenberry described as "Wagon Train to the Stars,""Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" returns to Paramount+ for its penultimate season.

From teasers and trailers that first dropped last summer and fall, we’re anticipating a rollicking batch of dynamic episodes that draw on diverse subgenres, with everything from classic film noir crime stories and time travel to spooky ghost stories and sword-clashing swashbucklers.

But the end is nigh for this colorful modern interpretation of "Trek". Next year's truncated fifth season will be the crew's final mission, so let's revel in the time we have left and beam onto the Enterprise bridge for a promising round of missions. Here's our guide to everything you need to know about "Strange New Worlds" Season 4. Hit it!

When is the "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" Season 4 release date?

"Strange New Worlds" season 4 premieres Thursday, July 23, 2026, exclusively on Paramount+ in the US, Canada, and the UK with the first of 10 weekly episodes.

Fans can catch up and binge on all three previous seasons on the streaming platform. There are 30 previous sci-fi excursions into the known and unknown corners of the vast universe.

Forthcoming episodes of "Strange New Worlds" will land each Thursday after that, with the season finale warping into your living rooms on Sept. 24, 2026. Not signed up yet? We’ve got you covered with links to help get you up and running!

How to watch "Strange New Worlds" Season 4

"Strange New Worlds" season 4 streams on Paramount+ in the US, UK, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Japan.

The engaging sci-fi series will also be available on SkyShowtime in the Nordics, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Central and Eastern Europe, starting July 24, 2026.

If you want to check out "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" or any of the other great shows on Paramount+ while you're abroad, you can also use a VPN to access your subscription from anywhere in the world. It doesn’t work so well in neighboring solar systems or in the proximity of supermassive black holes!

What is the plot of "Strange New Worlds" Season 4?

After the bittersweet season 3 goodbye to Captain Marie Batel, Captain Pike’s longstanding love interest, it's back to bold business seeking out new life and new civilizations in the galaxy.

"The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, led by Captain Christopher Pike, embarks on a series of thrilling and emotional adventures across the stars," states the official synopsis. "On their journey, they will battle inner demons and external threats, encounter colorful new characters, reunite with familiar faces, and confront terrifying aliens. Through it all, they strive to embrace a bright, hopeful future."

Check out the individual episode titles and their scheduled air dates:

• Episode 401: "Valles Marineris" — Jul. 23
• Episode 402: "The Griffin Incident" — Jul. 30
• Episode 403: "Human Best Friend" — Aug. 6
• Episode 404: "A Case of Chiaroscuro" — Aug. 13
• Episode 405: "Level Five Transporter Accident" — Aug. 20
• Episode 406: "Off-Hour" — Aug. 27
• Episode 407: "Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass" — Sept. 3
• Episode 408: "Orders of Magnitude" — Sept. 10
• Episode 409: "Once La'An a Time" — Sept. 17
• Episode 410: "Tomorrow's Enterprise" — Sept. 24

Are There Teasers and Trailers for "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" season 4?

You bet your coveted dilithium crystals there are!

Paramount+ delivered the main full trailer for season 4 on June 15, 2026, and it’s packed with dinosaurs, cowboys, horses, space storms, dreams, nightmares, fire-breathing dragons, haunted spaceships, and hallucinatory pleasure planets. Strap in for another genre-hopping season that could be the series’ best yet as we honor the franchise's big 60th birthday!

On July 18, Paramount+ also offered up a fun 20-minute video presenting some of the most memorable moments of Season 3 and it’s definitely worth a watch… or two!

But the funniest surprise came last summer on July 25, 2025 during San Diego Comic-Con, with the hilarious teaser that featured Captain Pike in the center seat as a Muppet! Yep, a Muppet! And we guarantee that episode is destined for immortality.

Who Are The "Strange New Worlds" Season 4 Cast And Creators?

It’s going to be all hands on deck for this fourth and penultimate season of "Strange New Worlds," with the U.S.S. Enterprise exploring the final frontier with a full cast complement and its tireless executive producers and co-showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers at the creative helm.

Returning to Paramount+'s adventurous space fantasy show are Anson Mount (Capt. Christopher Pike), Rebecca Romijn (Number One), Ethan Peck (Spock), Jess Bush (Christine Chapel), Christina Chong (La’An Noonien-Singh), Celia Rose Gooding (Nyota Uhura), Melissa Navia (Erica Ortegas), Babs Olusanmokun (Dr. Joseph M’Benga), and Martin Quinn (Montgomery Scott), and Adrian Holmes (Admiral April).

Recurring guest stars for "Strange New Worlds" season 4 include Carol Kane as the quirky long-lived Lanthanite engineer Commander Pelia and a charismatic Paul Wesley as a younger James T. Kirk.

Will there be a "Strange New Worlds" season 5?

Yes indeed, we will be getting one final season next year, shortened to just six episodes.

The series' swan song will introduce Thomas Jane portraying Leonard "Bones" McCoy and Kai Murakami playing Hikaru Sulu. The original gang's almost all here. Will we get an Original Series reboot/reimagining after this? Our money's on yes.

If you're of a Martian persuasion, "Strange New Worlds"' season 4 opener couldn't have timed itself much better.

Not only does this week mark the 50th anniversary of Viking 1 touching down on the surface of the red planet, new research from University of Oxford scientists recently suggested that Mars once had an active, interconnected system of magma beneath its surface. If accurate, this discovery might have made our Solar System next-door neighbor more habitable in its distant past.

While life on Mars has long been an obsession of sci-fi creators — from HG Wells' "War of the Worlds" to "Doom" via John Carter and John Carpenter — "Star Trek"'s Martians have tended to be human expats. Indeed, by the 24th century of "The Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager", it's home to the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards that would later be destroyed by rogue synths ahead of "Star Trek: Picard"'s debut season.

SPOILERS AHEAD! ANYONE YET TO WATCH "VALLES MARINERIS" SHOULD PROCEED WITH CAUTION TO AVOID VIOLATING TEMPORAL PRIME DIRECTIVES.

Homegrown Martians had traditionally been in shorter supply, however, until "Valles Marineris" paid them a visit. The only catch? Captain Pike and his USS Enterprise crew have to travel a mere 65 million years back in time to say hi.

There's something undeniably delicious (though not, luckily, the crew) about Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn), La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) and Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia) getting to visit the real Jurassic Park (technically Cretaceous Park) on an away mission to recover the iridium they need to repair an Enterprise stricken by its accidental trip through a quantum entangled spatial anomaly.

In the tradition of "Planet of the Apes", it turns out that this particular third rock from the sun was Earth all along. It also, according to star Rebecca Romijn, features an actual puppet from the original "Jurassic Park", and gives La'an that rare opportunity to punch a dinosaur in the face. That's definitely one to tell the grandkids — assuming, of course, you can avoid stepping on a bug, unleashing a butterfly effect, and preventing them (and the entire human race, for that matter) from ever being born.

But it's no coincidence that Pike has a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "A Princess of Mars" on his bookshelf, because it's what happens in orbit that makes this episode such a pulpy sci-fi joy.

Although Battle Commander Cassell (Saffron Burrows) and her crew have the familiar, human-esque appearance of most "Star Trek" aliens, Martian evolution has got them there millions of years before Vulcans, Klingons, and the rest become top dogs in the galaxy. (Spock notes that Martian DNA is present in many modern-day species, though it's unclear how their family tree aligns with the "Progenitor" origin story of "TNG"'s "The Chase".)

These technologically advanced Martians are embroiled in a bloody ongoing war with a "Starship Troopers"-adjacent arachnid species known as the Dol'Drm, who call the fifth planet of the Sol System home. Science purists will note that this strange new world is not the famously gaseous Jupiter, but an extra, science textbook-rewriting ball of rock located roughly where the Asteroid Belt is now.

Unfortunately, once Cassell has sneaked a peek at a future where her "homeworld is a barren red wasteland", she's in no mood to listen to Federation lectures about finding diplomatic solutions. She subsequently steals some of the Enterprise's antimatter and fashions a makeshift weapon of mass destruction to eliminate the Dol'Drm once and for all. But the shockwaves of this cataclysmic blast will stretch far beyond the fifth planet.

Spock confirms that many of the fragments left behind by the obliteration of the Dol'Drm homeworld will form the Asteroid Belt, essentially a riff on the so-called "Disruption Hypothesis" of the belt's origins.

Originally postulated by German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthias Olbers in the early 19th century, the theory suggested that a rocky planet, roughly the size of our Moon, existed between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

It was the destruction of this world (by means unknown, though we doubt anyone suggested an antimatter explosion) that led to the formation of the belt. The hypothesis is now largely discredited — current scientific thinking suggests that the belt is the result of dust and rock coalescing due to gravity — but it's a fun revisionist spin on old scientific ideas.

And the Enterprise's involvement in the Solar System's origin story stretches even further. The gravimetric shift caused by the absence of the Dol'Drm planet shifts Mars' orbit, making it too cold to support life. It also launches arguably the most famous asteroid in history, the Chicxulub meteorite, on a collision course with Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, kickstarting the Cenozoic Era, and sending the planet on an evolutionary journey that will eventually lead to, well, us.

When it comes to interfering with past events, the implications are rather larger than Scotty passing on the formula for yet-to-be-invented transparent aluminum in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home". Even the Borg meddling with a few centuries of history in "First Contact" is small fry next to killing off the dinosaurs.

The intriguing twist here, of course, is that humanity's existence is briefly on a knife-edge, as Pike makes the biggest decision of his (or, indeed, anyone's) life. Standard Starfleet protocol would usually dictate that the Enterprise intervene to prevent the Dol'Drm being destroyed by stolen Federation technology, but its commanding officer sees the bigger picture.

What if the Enterprise was always meant to be there? What if the human race only exists because the ship has gone back in time to answer its own 65-million-year-old Mayday? "In our future there is no fifth planet," he reasons, before allowing the Martians to deliver their deadly payload.

It's a wonderful "what if" that puts 65 million years of history in one man's hands. Indeed, you could tie yourself in knots with all that timey-wimey stuff, but the episode is so much pulpy fun that you barely notice the unbearable weight of those existential dilemmas. Dinosaurs, Martians and an origin story for the human race? What more could you want from a season opener?

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

The latest "Dune: Part 3" trailer arrived back on July 8, and it was a sumptuous banquet of startling set pieces, intergalactic political unrest, close-quarter combat, and a whole lot of sand and ash. A fine follow-up to the initial March teaser, to be sure.

After letting it marinate in our minds for a while, let’s break down five items of particular interest in this newest preview of the Denis Villeneuve-directed conclusion to his trilogy of far-future sci-fi epics adapted from author Frank Herbert’s novels, "Dune" and "Dune: Messiah."

Set 17 years after Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) has ascended to the Emperor’s throne, "Dune: Part 3" explores the corrupting side of political power as his holy war against the Imperium’s Great Houses advances towards a destructive destiny.

Right out of the gate, Chani (Zendaya) is certainly not shy about displaying her displeasure with his ultimate betrayal, which was first fleshed out at the end of 2024’s Dune: Part 2. It’s also pretty cool to see Duncan Idaho (Jason Momoa) back as a cloned “ghola” and Paul’s powerful sister, Alia, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy.

So behold, our five takeaways from this brand new look at Villeneuve’s "Dune: Part 3".

1. The chilling gaze of Scytale

We already knew that a platinum-haired Robert Pattinson plays Scytale, one of the film’s main villains.

Some might have scoffed at the concept of Pattinson as an intimidating foe, but from these extra snippets in the new trailer, his shapeshifting Tleilaxu Face Dancer seems up to the task of carrying out a careful plan to remove the ruthless Paul Atreides from the throne.

Pattinson has the acting chops to pull off an intimidated foe, so he might just steal the show. And come on, folks, Pattinson was The Dark Knight!! Have a little faith.

2. Alia’s bloody scream

Alia Atreides, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, is Paul’s sister. The Bene Gesserit Revered Mother Mohiam called her an "abomination" due to the Water of Life that Lady Jessica drank while she was in the womb.

A blood-covered Alia is perhaps unleashing her god-like power on a captive Mohiam in response to a conversation we’re not privy to here, which could be not exactly a scream of peril, but a stern command.

She’s definitely not someone to cross thanks to her otherworldly paranormal skills.

3. Where did Paul’s eyes go?

Towards the end of the 3-minute trailer, we catch a shot of Paul in the aftermath of a nasty Stone Burner radiation bomb detonated by conspirators in the Arrakis capital, Arrakeen, as Paul and his personal Fedaykin guard accompany him outside the palace.

We can see his eyes are severely damaged after the intense detonation flash strikes him square in the face, causing blindness and eventual exile into the deep desert per the Fremen way.

This will open up his prescient sight abilities in new and extraordinary ways as we’ll soon see for ourselves in this third "Dune" installment.

4. Attack of the Clone

Jason Momoa’s master swordsman Duncan Idaho returns here with more sneak peek screen time.

He's shown resplendent in his crisp white uniform, heavily criticizing Paul for the thousands of worlds he’s destroyed during the terror campaign inflicted by his brutal Jihad.

But, as fans of the books will know, this is not technically the same person as his former mentor. He has been resurrected as a Ghola clone named Hayt as a ‘gift’ from the Bene Tleilaxu, and unbeknownst to Paul, he plans to assassinate the crazed ruler who is deemed beyond redemption.

5. Flight of the Navigator

One of the major grumbles coming from fans, myself included, is the lack of the Spacing Guild and its bizarre Guild Navigators in Villeneuve’s "Dune" films, but all that’s seemingly about to change.

In this trailer, we see a hovering coffin tank that no doubt contains one of the mutated human creatures warped by the spice Melange, enabling them to fold space. This former Spacing Guild member is named Edric and is a pivotal player in the plot to overthrow Paul and House Atreides.

Also seen is Edric’s sinister pod sliding silently into one of the gigantic Guild Heighliner starships.

Warner Bros.' "Dune: Part 3" lands on Dec. 18, 2026.

We’re not going to bombard you with a bunch of "Hasta La Vista, Baby" jokes, but you might want to mark your calendars for Aug. 28, 2026, because James Cameron's Oscar-winning "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is heading back into U.S. and global theaters later this summer in honor of its 35th anniversary.

While the actual anniversary of the movie's release was back on July 3rd, StudioCanal has a great reason for delaying the re-release until August.

Judgment Day in the sci-fi franchise’s mythology occurs on August 29, 1997. It's when Skynet becomes self-aware and launches a doomsday nuclear attack on the world, so that weekend chosen for the re-release is particularly appropriate and pretty cool. In honor of these big birthday party plans, a special new anniversary trailer and nostalgia poster have been composed to heighten the excitement and anticipation.

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, and Robert Patrick, "Terminator 2" was unleashed into theaters on July 3, 1991, and was ultimately awarded four Oscars, instantly cementing its legacy as one of the most influential sci-fi flicks ever.

This anniversary re-release presentation utilizes StudioCanal’s 2017 restoration and 3D conversion. For residents in Australia, the seminal classic arrives back on Sept. 3, with a United Kingdom release due to strike beginning Sept. 4. Tickets in the United States for "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" 35th Anniversary have been available online since July 17.

"T2 was made for theatres, and our lovingly-prepared 3D version, coming back to the big screen, is the absolute best way to see the film," director James Cameron added in an official announcement.

"I believe it’s safe to do spoilers after 35 years, so SPOILER ALERT: the good guys win against the AI superintelligence! And maybe that’s a message of hope we all could use this summer."

If you don't want to wait until next month, you can watch "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" on Paramount+

The first trailer for "Avengers: Doomsday" dropped yesterday, and while it’s jammed full of superheroes, surprises, and our first extended look at Dr. Doom, it is missing one big thing that has been a constant in the MCU ever since "Avengers" was released and the Infinity Stone saga kicked off: outer space.

Believe it or not, the MCU has been very sci-fi heavy for the past decade as the universe expanded into space with "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Captain Marvel", and the entire throughline of Thanos’ quest to bring balance to the universe.

Entire films took place in space, and extended exposition was delivered inside the hulls of spaceships. Alien heroes and villains swung around made-up planets and lived in the skulls of dead space giants. That whole "Eternals" thing. It's safe to say that the Marvel movies were into outer space in a big way. The MCU leaned heavily into science fiction and space for much of its life, but judging from this trailer, that may be coming to an end.

This is a very Earth-based trailer, and while the remnants of years of science fiction still permeate throughout the MCU (superhero comics are almost always dabbling in the genre), the focus on it is clearly gone. This trailer is all about the Earth and superheroes, pulling back hard on the bigger universe. Sure, it opens with the Fantastic Four exiting their spaceship — probably an unintentional visual metaphor for the MCU’s abandonment of the cosmos — but we’re kept mainly on Earth otherwise.

We have absolutely no alien heroes appearing on screen in this trailer outside of Thor and, of course, our main villain is decidedly earthbound even if he may be from a different multiverse (for those not in the know, that’s Robert Downey Jr. behind Dr. Doom’s mask).

There are plenty of reasons that the MCU may be pulling out of space. Introducing all of the X-Men means you’ve got plenty of Earth stuff to mess around with anyway, and there’s very little reason to need space travel when you’ve got time travel, quantum realms, and multiverses expanding your universe in other ways.

To be fair, all of those are sci-fi as well, but it’s not the same as outer space. We do know from casting that some of our favorite space-based heroes will be returning, but what is clear is that space is no longer the focus here. The MCU has been pulling back on space ever since Thanos fell, and this new trailer for "Avengers: Doomsday" just hammers another nail into the coffin of that universe.

Of course, Marvel is a master of misdirection and fake-outs, so anything could change as we get more details and the film finally releases, but for now it seems that the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t so interested in the universe part.

"Avengers: Doomsday" will hit theaters on December 18.

One thing is for certain: there will absolutely be no shortage of superheroes in Marvel Studios' "Avengers: Doomsday", as evidenced by this first full trailer that showcases everyone from the Wakandans and the X-Men to the Fantastic Four and Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers.

Plus, we get slivers of a metal-masked Victor Von Doom looming over the mayhem to further whet the appetites of MCU acolytes before the Russo Brothers’ epic lands Dec. 18.

"Something's coming," Downey's Doom declares as the trailer rolls out before later stopping Thor's Stormbreaker axe with two fingers. "Something we may not be able to deter. Before this day is done, we shall be faced with an unthinkable decision."

Opening with a blinding explosion witnessed by Professor X, fans are treated to a cavalcade of nearly everyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe teaming up to stop a series of multiverse incursions and intentional destructions seemingly orchestrated by the mad monarch of Latveria.

"Beloved heroes from three distinct universes will be set on a deadly collision course and face an existential threat unlike anything they've ever encountered," states the official synopsis for the highly-anticipated $400 million tentpole project.

"Put aside your petty squabbles," Chris Hemsworth's Thor demands as we glimpse Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto together.

Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man arrives to join the party as a welcome addition, as does Channing Tatum reprising his "Deadpool and Wolverine" role as Gambit, who's having a showdown with Simu Liu's Shang-Chi, and a beaded, long-haired Chris Evans as Steve Rogers is surprisingly seen after an encounter with Tom Hiddleston's Loki and his Time Variance Authority character. It's also fun seeing Rogers display his worthiness by snagging Thor's silver hammer! We're just relieved the tone on display is respectful and serious and not choked with jokes and gags as in the most recent MCU outings.

"You are far stronger than all of us put together," the Asgardian warns his brethren in the extended sneak peek. "And they died facing enemies and threats; that's going to be far less than this one. Everything that they sacrificed will be for nothing if we do not stand together."

With its countless superhero cameos and callbacks building to a chaotic crescendo, "Avengers: Doomsday" storms into theaters on Dec. 18, 2026.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Episode 219 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss the space headlines for the past few weeks.

It's been busy, and some exciting things are happening! A couple of companies are moving into the space solar power arena — something we've long advocated — and that's welcome progress. Starship is set to fly Starship test number 13, and a lot is riding on this — the system is overdue for some proof of concept to keep up with NASA's HLS contract.

An exoplanet spotted a decade ago has shown signs of a potentially habitable atmosphere; there are landslides — big ones — on Pluto, and evidence of "space candy" sugars in an interstellar cloud are in the news. Finally, SpaceX is doubling down on their big defense contracts with a well-funded US Space Force. Join us for all the latest!

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 test launch aborts at last second
• Meteorite that crashed through New Jersey house could hold the clues to life's origins
• Astronomers discover 1st atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet in the habitable zone
• How NASA’s Artemis III Lander Test Will Pave Way for Moon Landings
• NASA Taps SpaceX’s Starlink to Deliver Artemis III Imagery from Orion
• Blue Origin continues work on lunar landers during recovery from New Glenn explosion
• SpaceX launches 21 'data transport' satellites for US military
• The FCC just gave Reflect Orbital permission to launch its 1st space mirror to orbit. Tens of thousands more could follow
• A “disaster waiting to happen”? Industry officials worry about Crew Dragon availability.
• Spacecraft Commissioning On Track for Mission to Boost NASA’s Swift
• Raspberry sugar spotted in interstellar space, a sweet discovery that could reveal clues about life's origins
• Defense Innovation Unit - Space Power Beaming
• Nature study identifies a new way to spot nuclear weapons in orbit

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

It's almost inconceivable that 40 years have passed since what's been called the greatest sci-fi action film of all time (and not just by us) assaulted theaters with the juiced-up sequel to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic, "Alien."

Director James Cameron's propulsive vision for a gung-ho military-style movie would call upon Stan Winston Studio's elite creature effects crew from 1984's "The Terminator" — a team that would later work on "Predator," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Jurassic Park," and "Predator 2."

Cameron's "Aliens" greatly expands upon the xenomorph life cycle with the inclusion of a matriarchal beast that his screenplay described as "a massive silhouette in the mist, the ALIEN QUEEN glowers over her eggs like a great, glistening black insect-Buddha. Her fanged head is an unimaginable horror. Her six limbs, the four arms and two powerful legs, are folded grotesquely over her distended abdomen."

The brilliant filmmaker and Winston's energetic gang would craft and operate this 14-foot-tall articulated hydraulic puppet fabricated from fiberglass, foam rubber, and plastic. It contained two stunt performers in the torso and puppeteers on the ground manipulating legs and limbs.

Production was led by Stan Winston, Shane Mahan, Alec Gillis, John Rosengrant, Tom Woodruff Jr., and Lindsay MacGowan, the core wizards who’d later found the acclaimed Legacy Effects firm with J. Alan Scott following Stan Winston’s unfortunate death in 2008. Gillis and Woodruff would eventually split off to form Amalgamated Dynamics in 1988.

We caught up with Mahan and MacGowan to have them offer memories of working on "Aliens" at Pinewood Studios and specifically constructing this magnificent drooling, hissing monster that's spawned countless nightmares since the blockbuster landed on July 18, 1986.

"It was 1983 when I started at Stan's on the first 'Terminator,'” Mahan tells Space. "I’d worked with Jim on a Roger Corman movie that Makeup Effects Lab was doing, 'Battle Beyond the Stars.' [...] During 'Terminator,' Jim had drawings of Sigourney and the Power Loader he'd brought into the shop. I'd see them out of the corner of my eye and knew exactly what it was supposed to be. It was clearly an alien of that world with Sigourney Weaver.

"I was intrigued by it all because four years before, when 'Alien' had come out, it was so amazing cinematically. The lifecycle of the creature, and the organic nature of it. I had no idea that seven years later we'd be in England doing a sequel."

Mahan and posse began working on the Queen's preliminary designs in Southern California at Stan Winston's shop, where they conducted the infamous 'garbage bag test' out in the back parking lot, so named due to the flailing puppet being wrapped in black plastic trash bags.

"It was a proof of concept of how that was going to work," he explains. "Moving to Windsor, England, and setting up shop at Pinewood Studios was extraordinarily exciting. We then started making the full-size process of making the Queen and all the other effects, and we met the English crew, and Lindsay was one of them."

MacGowan fondly remembers his experience on the ambitious project and being recruited to join Stan Winston and the rest of the guys.

"They were legends at that point for us. We were also young and goofy, and it's amazing they actually let us do what we did when we were that young," MacGowan notes. "I was at college at the time, and I’d skip off college and make my way to Pinewood. It was like here’s the rock ‘n' roll Americans, and then we have our more reserved English team that got influenced by the American team. It was a lot of fun and some of my favorite memories of starting in the business.

"I remember it being incredibly cold at Pinewood at the time. There was no insulation in the warehouse, and we had these giant propane jet heaters, and they kept going out. We’d be nice and warm, then suddenly the flame would be out. It was a great time to get to know Shane, John, Alec, and Tom. I look at them as my American brothers."

Having everything under one roof, being created pre-shooting, was a great asset as it allowed Cameron to constantly oversee the process and monitor the progress being made.

"We were life-casting all the actors, various teams were doing the xenomorph warriors and the eggs and the facehuggers," Mahan adds. "It was a pretty big build list, and we had four or five months to get everything done. John Richardson was a great special effects man from the Bond films, and we all thought that was cool to work with guys that had done James Bond movies.

"That was my first time in England, so the setting was very new and exciting. Of course, we blew off a lot of steam occasionally, but we were very serious about just getting it all done. We knew we had a lot to live up to because of the first film. Very few people, if any, had come back from working on that first film. You don’t know how it's going to turn out. We all thought the 'Aliens' script was great. Jim had a lot of turmoil there and didn’t have a good time on his own for various reasons, but we weren't really privy to that."

Before hopping across the pond to the UK, Mahan and his ace crew did molds and castings using a quarter-scale maquette of the Alien Queen sculpted at Stan Winston's shop for their design master.

"Back then, everything had to be done by measurements, by plotting out, and by eye. Today, it's so simple to have a computer generate and mill out a perfectly formed section. You had to use a really focused artistic eye to get exactly where we were supposed to be.

"We also had to make action suits, and there were a lot of them. I think there were 13 or 14, and then there were like eight eight-foot-tall puppets that were more spindly and long that were going to be used on wires and get hit and blow up and get shot. Then there was one articulated half-animatronic that would play in various scenes. You have to imagine an era that was pre-CGI. There was no reliance on rod removal or performer puppeteer removal. You had to hide everything and everybody in the frame. So in the dropship fight, it’s an enormous amount of people making the Queen operate, and you don’t see them.

"That all comes down to Jim Cameron and his magnificent eye for framing this action scene without seeing the crane or any of the support devices. Directors today, most of them don't even have any idea how to do that. And that was the magic of Jim Cameron and still is. He had the designing thought of shot composition and action that played off the best attributes of that hydraulic/actor-driven Queen. Because there were two guys inside and nine of us on her tail, her head, the cable, her hands, the feet. We were everywhere."

MacGowan took his role very seriously to get the fit and finishing perfect for this elegant egg-laying beast that would end up being the seething, android-ripping superstar of the popular 1986 sequel. -

"It was really just to honor what Giger had done in the past, but also to give Jim what he was looking for in his vision for the Queen," he recalls. "The Queen is really Jim's design and entire look. Our focus was making sure that we got what Jim wanted, but still make sure that fans of the original movie, which was all of us, could really appreciate."

As a mentor to his dedicated young crew of VFX creators, Winston schooled them in the subtle art of injecting personality and emotion into their creature performances.

"It's something they always reinforced, but if you’re a student of horror and science fiction films, you know all the great creatures and monsters have got some sympathetic or some interesting personality," adds Mahan. "Even the xenomorph in the first film, the personality is that it does not care. It's just going to kill you. But that’s still a personality trait.

"We were always taught by Stan that these are not effects; these are characters that we’re making; these are actors in the film. It just happens to be a creature from space, or a robot from the future, or a dinosaur. Whatever it is, it has to be believed, and we’ve always carried that philosophy through."

As to the mystery of exactly where the original Alien Queen screen-used puppet ended up, Mahan has a few clues, but sadly admits that most of it has unfortunately been lost to time.

"Jim has one in his museum, and I think collector Bob Burns did have a head," Mahan shares. "The rest of it might be that it's fallen into disrepair. I know when we left, a lot of it was put into containers at Pinewood, and it sat and rotted for years. We always wanted to get that back, but I’ve not seen a real Queen in a while.

While the classic design hasn't changed much over the years, Mahan notes that the materials used to make creatures like the Alien Queen have.

"The head was fiberglass and had other foam rubber parts. The materials back then were not very sophisticated," explains Mahan. "The materials we have today, like what we did on 'Alien: Romulus', are like from outer space. They're translucent silicones, and they stretch well, and there’s lightweight plastic 3D-grown parts."

"Back then, the only thing we had was clear urethane that I got the cowl of her head to kind of move around. The original idea was that the skin on her face was supposed to be translucent. It ended up being foam rubber painted to look translucent. A lot of those materials have just fallen apart. On screen, it's pretty impressive.

"When we did 'Alien: Romulus,' Lindsay and I had not done an 'Alien' film since 'Aliens.' When that opportunity came up to revisit that world, the sensory memories came flooding back. It's one of those movies where I think I remember every day that I was on set for that film.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. James Cameron’$ original pitch

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

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

2. A new genre

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

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

3. Nothing is wasted

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

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

4. The time jump

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

What could possibly go wrong?

5. Ellen Ripley

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

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

6. The Colonial Marines

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

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

7. The Dropship

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

8. The slow-build

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

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

9. The shouldercams

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

10. The ambush

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

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

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

11. The Xenomorph drones

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

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

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

12. The Alien Queen

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

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

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

13. Newt

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

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

Speaking of which…

14. The quotable dialogue

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

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

15. The APC

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

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

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

16. Facehuggers on the move

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

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

17. Carter Burke

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

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

18. The motion trackers

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

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

19. A countdown to detonation

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

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

20. Bill Paxton

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

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

21. The Power Loader

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

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

22. Bishop

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

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

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

23. The music

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

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

24. The sound effects

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

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

25. The Special Edition

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

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

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

26. Cameron himself

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

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

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

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

After cracking into the animation world with family-friendly animated features from the "Despicable Me " and "Minions" franchise, "The Lorax," and the musical menagerie of "Sing," Illumination is finally setting their sights on outer space with next year's "Not Alone."

"Not Alone" isn’t due to arrive in theaters until Apr. 16, 2027 but this sneak peek — accompanied by David Bowie's somber 1969 anthem "Space Oddity" — sets a sweet tone telling the lively tale of an introverted rocket mechanic name Joe, and Fran, his astro-botanist colleague who has engineered the planet's first plant-based rocket, when alien fugitives toss their lives into chaos.

Xenomorph monstrosities and spaceship laser battles can often dominate sci-fi, so it's great to see something different on the horizon, and while a space rom-com starring Timothée Chalamet and Selena Gomez wasn't on our bingo card, the trailer has us really hyped for this one.

It's a wholly original story that's a definite departure for Illumination, but one that could strongly connect with audiences via the project’s colorful Euro style and humor. Vocal duties include the talents of Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Brett Goldstein, Rob Brydon, Jamie Demetriou, Diane Morgan, Allison Janney, and Lamorne Morris.

"When Joe and Fran are brought together to prepare for the inaugural launch of this revolutionary rocket, there are immediate sparks, but neither is particularly adept at romance," states the official synopsis.

"Life becomes more complicated when three aliens—tiny, unruly, and adorable—take refuge in Joe's home. Dunk, Welly, and Shirm are on the interplanetary run from a zealous-yet-inept officer of the law named Zandro. The aliens determine that Fran’s rocket could provide their means of getting back home to safety."

The French animation factory recently launched an early trailer for this charming romantic comedy directed by Eric Guillon, Claire Dodgson, and Jonathan Del Val.

Guillon is an Illumination veteran whose career includes serving as lead designer for "Despicable Me" and "Minions," as well as co-directing "Despicable Me 3." Here he's joined by seasoned editor Claire Dodgson ("The Lorax," "Minions," Despicable Me 3," "Minions: The Rise of Gru") and Jonathan Del Val (co-director of "Minions: The Rise of Gru" and "The Secret Life of Pets 2").

This fun animated rom-com is produced by Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri and executive produced by Joy Poirel, Richard Curtis, and David Distenfeld.

"Not Alone" rockets into theaters Apr. 16, 2027.

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

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

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

1. Doctor Who

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

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

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

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

2. The Quatermass Experiment

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

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

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

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

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

3. Blake’s 7

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

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

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

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

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

4. The Prisoner

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

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

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

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

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

5. Red Dwarf

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

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

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

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

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

6. Hyperdrive

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

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

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

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

7. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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

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

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

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

8. Black Mirror

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

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

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

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

9. Life on Mars

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

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

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

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

10. Utopia

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

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

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

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

More sci-fi TV

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

As our planet revels in the recent achievements of this spring’s Artemis 2 mission and its four astronaut crew members, a new four-part PBS documentary series takes a scrutinizing look at space exploration and its inherent perils and promises. "Once Upon a Time in Space" will be available to watch on PBS (and the PBS app) starting on July 14, 2026 (9pm ET).

Directed by James Bluemel and his filmmaking team — the crew behind the award-winning "Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland" and "Once Upon a Time in Iraq" — "Once Upon a Time in Space" explores the connections between those venturing beyond Earth's gravity and the support staff remaining behind while pioneering souls venture into hostile outer space territory.

"'Once Upon a Time in Space' tells the human stories behind one of our most extraordinary endeavors: the exploration of space," states the official synopsis. "Moving beyond scientific achievement, the series examines the personal experiences of astronauts, cosmonauts, ground-based participants, and the loved ones left on Earth. Across four episodes, it traces significant landmarks in spacefaring history, from the birth of the Shuttle and the pioneering Space Station Mir to the rise of commercial spaceflight."

"Through powerful firsthand testimony and intimate, unseen archival footage, a complex portrait of humanity emerges: one that lays bare both our fragility and boundless curiosity. Accounts of bravery, friendship, and tragedy are told against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world, connecting technical and geopolitical developments to those who experienced them."

Here’s a schedule of the docuseries’ chapters and their slated air dates:

• Episode 1 "America First" – Tuesday, July 14 – 9:00 p.m. ET
• Episode 2 "The Russian Thing" – Tuesday, July 21
• Episode 3 "Politics Always Wins" – Tuesday, July 28
• Episode 4 "Friends Forever" – Tuesday, August 4

This remarkable show features NASA astronauts Charlie Bolden, Anna Lee Fisher, Bill Fisher, Michael Foale, Jerry Linenger, Mike Mullane, Dan Tani, and Terry Virts. They’re joined by cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and Alexander ‘Sasha’ Lazutkin, NASA officials, aerospace engineers, and numerous family members.

Produced in collaboration with the BBC, "Once Upon a Time in Space" was first broadcast last fall in the UK, but now makes its U.S. premiere at 9:00 p.m. ET on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS app.

Disney+’s imaginative anime anthology series, "Star Wars: Visions", is getting a standalone expansion next month with "Star Wars: Visions Presents –The Ninth Jedi".

This 8-episode limited series is a continuation of the saga of Lah Kara, Margrave Juro, and their ragtag crew in the search for her kidnapped father. "Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi" debuts on Disney+ on Aug. 5, 2026.

Fans were first introduced to the intriguing story in "Star Wars: Visions" Volume 1’s chapter titled "The Ninth Jedi", and now writer/director Kenji Kamiyama and his animation studio Production IG will revisit Kara’s world to elaborate more on the mythology behind lightsabers of different hues.

In the original 2021 episode, viewers met a bright Force-sensitive girl named Kara and her sabersmith father, Zhima, as they harvest Kyber Crystals to forge new lightsabers for Margrave Juro, the leader of an outer rim planet called Hy Izlan.

Juro is collecting worthy Jedi to help repopulate the Jedi Order, but evil Sith mercenaries are hiding within his candidates’ ranks. Kamiyama’s short initially presented the cool notion of lightsabers changing colors to reflect their users’ true links to the Force.

A direct sequel to Kamiyama's episode, "The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope," was delivered by anime master Naoyoshi Shiotani and premiered on Oct. 29, 2025, for "Star Wars: Visions" Volume 3. Lucasfilm's new show takes place shortly after the events seen in the two "Star Wars: Visions" shorts as Kara advances her training and searches for her father.

"Every time we finished one of the anthologies, the first conversation would be, 'God, I’d love to expand that story,'" James Waugh, Lucasfilm Senior V.P. and "Star Wars: Visions" executive producer, told TechRadar last year after the project was announced at Star Wars Celebration Japan.

"We love the shorts, but Kathy [Kennedy] heard that, and there was a moment to say, 'Let’s see what could happen if we expanded this.' That’s really where 'Visions Presents' comes from. If we could give a bigger canvas to paint on, what would we get? We’ve been so impressed with what Kamiyama and his Production IG team has delivered so far."

Directed by Shunsuke Tada and with Kenji Kamiyama acting as supervising director, "Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi" arrives Aug. 5 on Disney+ and Hulu.

On Episode 218 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss NASA's new moonbase plans with planetary scientist Dr. Pascal Lee.

Starting with Artemis V (so far), the US plans to begin preparations for a permanent base situated in the south polar regions of the moon. Details are somewhat fluid, but one thing stands out: the poles are likely to be the most challenging places to set up shop in an already hostile environment. Pascal joins us to discuss moonbase siting options and why the poles may not be the best choice at first.

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• Making history! China lands rocket during an orbital launch for 1st time ever
• NASA's New Horizons probe just woke up from hibernation 6 billion miles away beyond Pluto. What's it doing out there?
• Wally Funk, trailblazing pilot and astronaut, passes away at 87
• Moon Base - NASA
• Project Horizon - Wikipedia
• The Artemis Accords
• NASA, Department of Energy to Develop Lunar Surface Reactor by 2030

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple TV’s riveting sci-fi series, "Silo," is stretching its narrative legs for its third and penultimate season. Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) deals with amnesia after her fiery return to Silo 18, satisfying secrets are revealed, and we strap in for temporal jumps 352 years back to the "Before Times" to figure out how the apocalypse arrived.

"We rolled the dice a bit and hoped it would work and weren’t entirely sure, but felt it would," Executive Producer and Showrunner Graham Yost tells Space regarding the new season's time shifts. "After the fact, I heard some of the quibbles about too much time in 17, but we made our best guess on that one as well. What we did feel was that cutting back and forth was not a real problem. Even though it's 350 years separating the two stories, it's not like we're going back to Elizabethan times. It’s Silo world, which is its own crazy time. It's a place out of time.

"So when I saw the first episodes, I felt like this is okay. Part of the good thing about being outside, being people in modern clothing and cars, is you know immediately when you are and where you are. That really helped orient the story."

After Juliette’s harrowing ordeal in Silo 17 last season, audiences were left hungering for answers heading into this new batch of ten episodes. Fortunately, they shine the light of truth on matters — both in the doomsday bunker and back when Earth was still recognizable.

These time shifts allowed the production crew and cinematographers to tinker with the show’s visual style, including using different equipment to film each time period.

"I think they went to a different lens," Yost adds. "The choice was made to go from an anamorphic lens to something else, so there is a slight change and a slightly different framing. We've got the same production designer for both units, so there can be little flavors that Nicole [Northridge] would come up with that we don’t even realize are hints of what’s coming in the future. "

"But the origin story is a political thriller basically. We’re harkening back to 'Three Days of the Condor,' 'The Parallax View' and things like that of the '70s," explains Yost. "That sort of paranoid cinema. There are bits in there that let us feel way more cinematic because we equate that with cinema rather than television."

It's not all about the time jumps back to the past, though; Yost and his team have also been looking to up their game in the Silo's themselves, too.

"Then, in 18 with Juliette, the only expansion there was to spend as much time as we did within the algorithm room with Camille talking to the voice and making that interesting," reveals Yost.

"The answer to that was you cast Alex [Alexandria Riley]. She does such a compelling job that you’re just going to watch her talk to a wall. We knew how good she was from the scene she did in season one, and that's why this whole storyline developed, because we love her."

Apple TV's "Silo" season 3 premieres on July 3, 2026.

Kids who grew up in the '80s and '90s couldn't enjoy the massive selection of live-action sci-fi TV available right now.

With the biggest out-of-this-world adventures likely to be found in theaters, many of the most memorable — and undoubtedly the weirdest — concepts tended to be found in Saturday morning cartoons.

This is a realm of exposition-heavy opening credits, relentlessly earwormy theme tunes, and heroes who, for no obvious reason, choose to hang out with cute/annoying [delete as appropriate] comedy sidekicks like Orko and Snarf.

The massive success of "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" also established a symbiotic link between television screens and playrooms, as toy giants Mattel, Hasbro, and Kenner realised that a successful animated series could be the ultimate advertising opportunity for their latest product lines.

Below, we've picked out 20 sci-fi cartoons that brought outer space, time travel, must-own vehicles, and genre-defining villains into millions of living rooms every week. Just don't blame us if you get sucked into YouTube and Wikipedia rabbit holes, as you look back on classic (and not so classic) shows that helped shape a generation…

1. Battle of the Planets

Dates: 1978-1980 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: 7-Zark-7 (a robot)

Japanese anime series "Science Ninja Team Gatchaman" gets a US makeover, with most of the original show's more violent excesses toned down.

7-Zark-7, a robot whose design owes absolutely nothing (ahem) to R2-D2, was added to supply exposition and kid-friendly comedy, but the basic premise remains — five teens in bird-like superhero outfits (and a very cool spaceship) come together as G-Force, protecting Earth from the evil Zoltar.

2. The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang

Dates: 1980-1981 | Toy Line? No | Cute/annoying sidekick: Mr Cool (a dog)

A spin-off from nostalgia-heavy '50s-set sitcom "Happy Days" might seem an unlikely addition to this list, but — even more than live-action stablemate "Mork & Mindy" — this series is unashamedly sci-fi.

The Fonz, Richie Cunningham, and Ralph Malph end up travelling through time with a 25th-century woman named Cupcake, finding themselves in all sorts of 'hilarious' scrapes as they try to get back to 1957 Milwaukee. Iconic DJ Wolfman Jack (who also appeared in "American Graffiti") supplies the opening narration.

3. Ulysses 31

Dates: 1981-1982 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Nono (a small, nail-eating robot)

Looking to take a crash course in Greek mythology? French/Japanese co-production "Ulysses 31" transfers Homer's Odyssey to the 31st century, as the titular starship captain kills a robot Cyclops, angers the gods of Olympus, and is sentenced to wander unknown stars until he finds the Kingdom of Hades.

While Ulysses looks like a Bee Gees tribute act and his laser sword is a "Star Wars"-shaped lawsuit waiting to happen, this show is bold, ambitious and — at times — surprisingly bleak.

4. SuperTed

Dates: 1982-1986 | Toy line? Yes (plush toys) | Cute/annoying sidekick: N/A

Undoubtedly the only show on this list to have debuted in Welsh, Brit cartoon SuperTed is the story of an ordinary teddy bear who's brought to life, and subsequently gains superpowers courtesy of some "cosmic dust". Former "Doctor Who" star Jon Pertwee voices the hero's jetpack-wearing alien bestie Spotty, who stays remarkably calm considering SuperTed effectively rips off his skin every time he activates his powers.

The character returned in a US co-production, "The Further Adventures of SuperTed", in 1989.

5. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

Dates: 1983-1984 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Orko (a floating Trollan magician)

As much of a colossus as its musclebound hero, "Masters of the Universe" is the ultimate '80s cartoon. Commissioned by Mattel as a blatant weekly half-hour commercial for its popular toy line, the show pits He-Man and his heroic chums against the evil (but strangely inept) Skeletor in a battle for control of Castle Grayskull. Eternia's residents are potential plastic playthings first, characters second, though they never forget to deliver a corny moral at the end of each episode.

The second live-action "Masters of the Universe" movie is in theaters now.

6. Bananaman

Dates: 1983-1988 | Toy line: No | Cute/annoying sidekick: Crow (a talking, er, crow)

Whenever youthful Acacia Road resident Eric Twinge eats a banana, an amazing transformation occurs… A superhero cartoon and a healthy eating campaign in one, this comic-book-inspired series is an unashamedly tongue-in-cheek British pastiche of Superman and other caped crusaders.

Legendary '70s comedy troupe the Goodies supply the voices, as Eric's fruity alter-ego, Bananaman, battles the villainous likes of General Blight, Doctor Gloom, and, of course, Appleman.

7. Challenge of the GoBots

Dates: 1984-1985 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: No

The Transformers weren't the only robots in disguise vying for kids' eyeballs in the mid-'80s. In fact, these robots — an amalgamation of Tonka's GoBots and Bandai's Robo Machine toys — made it to TV first, though the show's mythology (in which the heroic Guardians battle the villainous Renegades) never caught fire like its more successful mechanical cousin (see below).

That said, Peter "Optimus Prime" Cullen and Frank "Megatron" Welker have voice credits on both shows.

8. Transformers

Dates: 1984-1987 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: No

The only cartoon on this list that's even more toyetic than "Masters of the Universe", the original "Transformers" cartoon was the result of Hasbro's efforts to create a backstory for shapeshifting toys it had imported (and subsequently rebranded) from Japan.

It's that classic tale of good robots (Optimus Prime's Autobots) fighting evil robots (Megatron's Decepticons), using an unsuspecting planet Earth as their battleground, while transforming into planes, trains, and automobiles — not to mention tape players and dinosaurs.

The 1986 theatrical movie boldly killed off many of the franchise's most iconic characters in a bid to flog more toys.

9. ThunderCats

Dates: 1985-1989 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Snarf (a cat-like child-minder)

"Masters of the Universe" and "Transformers" were the biggest beasts to emerge from the 1980s cartoon playground, but "ThunderCats" was never far behind. Indeed, it's had a couple of animated reboots, and is arguably crying (or should that be roaring?) out for a live-action movie.

On paper, its warrior cat people premise sounds like a disaster, but thanks to its timeless iconography — the Sword of Omens, ever-living bad guy Mumm-Ra, the catchiest theme tune in an era of catchy theme tunes — "ThunderCats" is a bona fide classic of the era.

10. Star Wars: Droids

Dates: 1985-1986 | Toyline: Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: No

Lucasfilm attempted to keep the "Star Wars" flame burning with a short-lived animated double-bill of "Ewoks" and this more overtly sci-fi offering.

Subtitled "The Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO", it follows some (now non-canon) adventures of the droid duo before they meet Luke Skywalker on Tatooine. Anthony Daniels (inevitably) voices 3PO, R2-D2 stars "as himself", while The Police drummer Stewart Copeland provides the theme tune.

11. She-Ra: Princess of Power

Dates: 1985-1987 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Kowl (a flying koala/owl hybrid)

1985 movie "The Secret of the Sword" revealed that, much like Luke Skywalker, He-Man's alter-ego, Prince Adam, has a long-lost twin sister of his own. And, even though she's been working for Skeletor's old boss Hordak on Eternia's sister planet, Etheria, Princess Adora is just as heroic as her brother – especially when she waves around a magic sword of her own to transform herself into She-Ra.

It's essentially "Masters of the Universe" with an all-new line-up of toy opportunities, though the story was rebooted as the acclaimed "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power" in 2018.

12. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

Dates: 1985 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Oon (a tiny lance-wielding knight)

Future "Babylon 5" creator J Michael Straczynski was hired to create a "MOTU"-esque mythology for Mattel's existing Wheeled Warriors toys. The result was this short-lived cartoon, in which an evil race of sentient plants known as the Monster Minds tries to take over the universe.

For some reason, the aggressive flora have the ability to transform into a fleet of multi-purpose vehicles — it's a good job, then, that eponymous hero Jayce and his buddies have fancy wheels of their own.

13. M.A.S.K.

Dates: 1985-1986 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: T-Bob (an egg-shaped robot who transforms into a scooter)

With the popularity of "Star Wars" action figures on the wane, manufacturer Kenner made a bid for some of that lucrative two-toys-in-one "Transformers" action.

In this particular cartoon/toy commercial, the altruistic members of M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armored Strike Kommand (sic)) thwart the evil schemes of V.E.N.O.M. (Vicious Evil Network Of Mayhem) with their transforming vehicles —such as a motorbike that turns into a helicopter. The protagonists also wear helmets (or masks — geddit?) that give them unique abilities.

14. Centurions

Dates: 1986 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Shadow (a dog), Lucy (an orangutan)

The impossible search for the next "Transformers" continued with this blatantly toyetic actioner.

Three implausibly named soldiers (ocean specialist Max Ray, land guy Jake Rockwell, and fly boy Ace McCloud) are the titular Centurions, who use their impressive arsenal of exosuits to save the world from Doc Terror, an evil cyborg whose name is an absolute PR disaster. The show is possibly most notable for having comic-book legends Jack Kirby and Gil Kane on its creative team.

15. Defenders of the Earth

Dates: 1986 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Kisa (a telepathic black panther)

When Ming the Merciless relocates from Mongo to our very own North Pole, Flash Gordon joins forces with three other less famous characters from the King Features comic-book back catalogue to, well, defend the Earth.

Flash, the animal-whispering Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and super-strong Lothar bring their unique skills to the table, along with their respective kids. The catchy-as-hell theme song features lyrics from a certain Stan Lee.

16. BraveStarr

Dates: 1987-1988 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Deputy Fuzz (BraveStarr's Prairie Person deputy)

Years before "Firefly" and "Serenity" got in on the act, the "Masters of the Universe" dream team of Mattel and animators Filmation took the notion of a space Western very literally indeed.

Superpowered Marshal BraveStarr protects the planet of New Texas from various frontier bad guys, assisted by the eyes of the hawk, the ears of the wolf, the speed of the puma, and the strength of the bear. His 'Equestroid' steed, Thirty/Thirty, can also transform into a bipedal, gun-wielding form.

17. Visionaries

Dates: 1987 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: No

Like "Masters of the Universe" and "Star Wars", "Visionaries" straddles the line between sci-fi and fantasy.

When all technology stops working on the futuristic planet of Prysmos, magic becomes the dominant force. A wizard named Merklynn subsequently gifts two factions of "Knights of the Magical Light" (aka the Spectral Knights and the Darkling Lords) with the ability to transform into the animal totem they wear on the chestplates of their armor.

The good guys get to run around as lions, foxes, and bears. The villains? Well, they have to make do with beetles, lizards, and molluscs.

18. Fantastic Max

Dates: 1988-1990 | Toy line? No | Cute/annoying sidekick: Zoe (Max's five-year-old sister)

Effectively "my first sci-fi", this cartoon from the "SuperTed" stable makes the irresponsible move of sending a baby into space (without his parents) on a regular basis.

Max is accompanied on his adventures by anxious robot C-3PO AB Sitter, and FX, a magical alien masquerading as a toy who can turn the kid's implausibly impressive sand sculptures into fully functioning robots.

Max also has a tendency to yell "dirty diapers" at times of (very mild) peril.

19. The Pirates of Dark Water

Dates: 1991-1993 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Niddler (a monkey-bird)

Just as BraveStarr plundered Westerns for inspiration, this show puts a sci-fi/fantasy spin on another classic Hollywood staple.

On the alien world of Mer (think "Waterworld", but with less Costner), an estranged prince named Ren leads a ragtag bunch of heroes on a quest to find the 13 "Treasures of Rule" — all the while hoping to save their planet from a sentient oil slick known as Dark Water.

20. Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars!

Dates: 1991 | Toy line? Yes | Cute/annoying sidekick: Does the human kid count?

It's basically "Star Wars" with animals, set in a parallel "aniverse" where the eponymous space captain Bucky O'Hare (a green hare) leads a furry rebellion against the evil Toad Empire.

The show only ran for 13 episodes, but it made a big impact, particularly in the UK, where it became a popular part of the after-school CBBC schedule. The theme tune is one of the most memorable out there — "Let's croak us some toads!" — and the Righteous Indignation is surely one of the best names for a spaceship, ever.

On Episode 217 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik discuss the progression of American space efforts.

Since 1958, the United States has been part of the spaceflight adventure, and since the mid-1960s has led in just about any category that counts. In this episode, we review which flights launched or landed on July 4, and relive some of our very favorite US space missions of all time!

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Space news of the week

• NASA launches rescue mission to save Swift space telescope from burning up in Earth's atmosphere
• The Harvard astronomer dubbed Trump’s chief alien hunter starts by assuming UFOs human-made
• 'Independence Day' at 30: Roland Emmerich & Dean Devlin talk blowing up the White House and crafting a true sci-fi classic (interview)
• Flag Day – Flying High: The Stars and Stripes in Space
• America at 500: Where will we be in space in 2276?

Model Falcon 9!

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"Independence Day" definitely isn't "The War of the Worlds". The characters are all new, the alien invaders don't come from Mars, and HG Wells sure as hell didn't write about spaceships engaging in "Star Wars"-esque dogfights over Victorian England.

But here's the contradiction. "Independence Day" totally is "The War of the Worlds". It's about Earth being hopelessly outgunned by aliens from outer space and a human resistance fighting back against impossible odds. It also has, more or less, the same ending — the extra-terrestrials' demise by computer virus is a cunning update of the original book's microbial final twist.

Director Roland Emmerich's genius, however, was reinventing Wells' sci-fi classic for the blockbuster age. His aliens had Hollywood in their blood, their entire plan built around delivering the perfect money shot. Let's be honest, there has to be a more practical way of flattening entire cities than blasting famous landmarks with a Death Star-scale super-lasers, but it wouldn't have been quite so popcorn- — or movie poster- — friendly.

Besides, nobody was going to believe that humanity's nemesis hailed from Mars after the Viking landers had sent back photos of a barren, dead world. Reinventing the aliens' origin story — as nomadic, resource-hungry scavengers — just made sense in the cynical '90s.

"The War of the Worlds" is cut from the same cloth as fellow genre pioneers "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" (the latter was, coincidentally, originally published the same year as Wells' alien invasion classic). Each story is so versatile that it can be reimagined again and again to reflect the hopes and fears of any time period. You can change a few names here and there — as "Nosferatu" famously did with Bram Stoker's vampire page-turner — but these plotlines have become archetypes within our collective consciousness.

More than a century later, we still can't get enough. They're also — to use that hoary old sci-fi/fantasy cliché — a brilliant way of pointing a mirror back at the time they were made.

"The War of the Worlds" was less than 40 years old (and still in copyright) when a 20-something Orson Welles turned it into a radio drama in 1938. The cinematic immortality of "Citizen Kane" was still three years away when the Hollywood wunderkind went looking for a story to adapt as a fake newscast for Halloween.

Writer Howard Koch shifted the action from 19th-century London to contemporary New Jersey (coincidentally, also the location of Steven Spielberg's 2005 "War of the Worlds"), and the resulting broadcast became one of the most famous — and definitely most infamous — radio dramas in history. Indeed, it was so far ahead of its time that "Ghostwatch", the BBC's spooky primetime mockumentary, got itself into trouble for a similar, knowingly 'fake news' stunt over half a century later.

Welles and co designed the adaptation to sound like a news bulletin — complete with weather reports and 'expert' analysis — as the aliens made their move on New York. And even though subsequent reports about the mass panic the broadcast generated in the real world were almost definitely exaggerated, some listeners who came to the show late really did believe that it was time to start welcoming their Martian overlords.

Welles' "War of the Worlds" was perfectly timed to capitalize on fears about the escalating threat of war in Europe. But the first blockbuster movie adaptation arrived in a very different political climate, when the Cold War was driving fears about the rise of communism and the threat of nuclear war.

When the Martians attack in George Pal's 1953 movie, the US army — unsurprisingly — drop an atomic bomb on their invasion fleet, but they're left unscathed thanks to their powerful forcefields. A powerful statement about the pointlessness of nuclear war, or simply an excuse to keep the story's common cold conclusion intact?

The movie is probably more important, however, as a precursor of the sci-fi blockbusters that would follow. Filmed in Technicolor, its visual effects were truly groundbreaking, as the movie imagined alien terrors that, before then, had only been possible on the page or on radio.

Anyone who's read the original book will note that Pal's floating Martian war machines don't quite match Wells' tripods, though the movie does subtly point out that — despite appearances — they're actually walking on invisible forcefield legs. Yes, really…

Wells' story got an unlikely new lease of life in the late 1970s when an American composer made a concept album that found its way into millions of record collections in the UK.

The snappily titled "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds" reimagined the alien invasion as a prog rock opus, with Richard Burton as the journalist recounting the story, and '70s music stars Justin Hayward, David Essex, Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) and Julie Covington (who'd had a number one with "Don't Cry for Me Argentina") popping up on the soundtrack. Nearly 50 years later, Wayne is still touring his masterwork, finding new stage effects and guest stars (Liam Neeson has replaced Burton in later versions) to bring the invasion to life.

But even though the names were changed, "Independence Day" may just be the "War of the Worlds" that's had the biggest cultural impact of all. It was everywhere in 1996, with its superlative marketing campaign propelling it to the top of that year's box office chart. It was 1996's "Jurassic Park", the sci-fi epic that everybody went to see.

It arguably changed the rules of engagement for subsequent adaptations of Wells' novel, as any set-pieces featuring flying saucers flattening cities would now be judged against Emmerich's highly lucrative carnage. Spielberg's "War of the Worlds", released nearly a decade later, wisely took a very different route, keeping Wells' tripods and noxious red weed, and loading the invasion with powerful post-9/11 subtext.

In 2019, the BBC went down a path it had with many classic novels and adapted "The War of the Worlds" as a three-part period piece. The same year, another, longer-running TV version focused on the story of survivors after an alien apocalypse that had wiped out most of the Earth's population.

And then, in 2025, Wells' text finally met its match in the universally panned version that pitted a desk-bound Ice Cube against invaders who want us for our data. This was a "War of the Worlds" for the digital age, built on sledgehammer-subtle allegories for privacy and surveillance.

It wasn't the sci-fi classic's finest hour, but it did at least continue to prove the remarkable malleability of a 129-year-old novel. Like "Independence Day," it wasn't Wells' "War of the Worlds", but it also was, all at the same time.

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

For a franchise where the main hook is time travel, "Terminator" probably wishes it could take us back in time… or just borrow the neuralyzer from "Men in Black" to wipe everybody's mind after everything post-1991. Now, as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" turns 35 this month, we think it's time to call it: Terminator shouldn't be back.

The decline of the "Terminator" franchise might be one of the greatest falls from grace ever seen in cinema. The first two movies established themselves as genre classics, combining heart-stopping action with futuristic sci-fi that explored the threat of AI bringing about an apocalypse.

No one could get enough of the concept, with several clones such as Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Universal Soldier" and Mario Van Peebles' "Solo" copying James Cameron's homework and trying to ride its coattails. In the end, none of them were fit to lick the boots of Arnold Schwarzenegger's T-800. And as it turns out, neither were any of the subsequent Terminator sequels that followed.

1991's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" is one of the best sequels of all time, but it also wraps up the story perfectly in retrospect. It nearly ended there, too, as the franchise sat in limbo for the next decade, buried in legal battles and rights disputes.

Cameron had plans for a third film, but he moved on to create "Avatar", leaving "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" to blast into theatres in 2003 without him. Is it an awful film? No, but it fails to do or say anything new. It's "a rusted robot compared to the first two films", as a fan referred to it in a Rotten Tomatoes review.

A TV series titled "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" debuted in 2008. It ignores the events of the last movie, as Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and her son, John (Thomas Dekker), continue to do everything in their power to stop the creation of Skynet. An interesting and alternate continuation of the story, but no one really watched the show, resulting in a quick pull of the plug after two seasons.

From there, the franchise shot forward into the future in 2009's "Terminator Salvation". Despite Christian Bale's spirited performance as John Connor, including an infamous leaked behind-the-scenes rant, there's no salvation to be found here – only the damnation of a soulless story and deliberate nostalgia-bait. And the less said about 2015's reboot-but-not-a-reboot "Terminator Genisys", the better.

Then, 2019's "Terminator: Dark Fate" arrived. Out of all the sequels, this is likely the best of the lot, as it attempts to inject fresh blood into the franchise, but it's still hamstrung by hanging onto the narrative threads of the past. The decision to kill John Connor is daft to the nth degree, effectively nullifying the entire point of the series. But the worst part about "Terminator: Dark Fate" wasn't the middling reviews or online hullabaloo about John; it was how it tanked at the box office. It's the lowest-performing "Terminator" sequel – all but killing the chances of more movies for at least the immediate future.

So, what did the franchise do? It pivoted. The murder bots headed back to the comics and video game arena, while an anime show, "Terminator Zero" arrived on streaming in 2024. Maybe the audience changed, so the franchise needed to change along with it? Well, about that…

In February 2026, news broke that Netflix had cancelled "Terminator Zero". It's a cruel move, especially since the Mattson Tomlin-created show attempted to do something different by telling a Terminator story that isn't about John Connor.

It's set in Japan and follows Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland), who attempts to stop the rise of Skynet by creating his own AI named Kokoro. The series isn't afraid of having tough discussions about humanity and if we're fated to destroy ourselves, no matter how many times someone tries to prevent it by changing the course of history. Should we even be saved from ourselves?

"Terminator Zero" proves to be a breath of fresh air, keeping the John Connor chronicles out of the picture and introducing new characters to propel the action forward. It's the shot in the arm that the franchise desperately needed; the core themes of Cameron's two movies are still in check, but the additional layers help to evolve and widen the landscape of the story. This is something the fandom had been calling out for many times before in the years prior. Yet, when originality finally arrived in the form of "Terminator Zero", the amount of eyeballs on the series didn't justify Netflix's continued investment in it.

If it wasn't clear before, it is now. The return of both Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton didn't make an iota of a difference in "Terminator: Dark Fate", while the decision to go in a bold new direction with the anime series hardly made a splash. The general public has lost interest in "Terminator" – and there's no coming back from it. No amount of time-traveling expeditions to reboot or create alternate timelines can save it now, because it's been done to the point of overkill.

It's not just that the movies failed to change with the times, though… we've changed. The "Terminator" movies are a warning about the dangers of technology and AI. The problem with watching it now is that it doesn't feel like fiction anymore. As the irresponsible use of AI escalates and an OpenAI smart model has already refused to follow instructions, Cameron's nightmare is turning into reality. Will ChatGPT be building humanoid robots to hunt us down in 50 years time? Probably not. Reality tends to offer less stylish and cinematic ends for its protagonists.

In August 2025, Cameron admitted that he's struggling to write a new "Terminator" film for this very reason. "I'm tasked with writing a new 'Terminator' story," he said. "I've been unable to get started on that very far because I don't know what to say that won't be overtaken by real events. We are living in a science fiction age right now.”

Despite this, Cameron confirmed that he's working on a new Terminator script — this time sans Schwarzenegger — in a December 2025 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "It's time for a new generation of characters," said Cameron. "There needs to be a broader interpretation of Terminator and the idea of a time war and super intelligence. I want to do new stuff that people aren't imagining".

And so we're destined to do this dance once more. Kyle Reese warned us as much in the original. "It absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead!" We thought he was talking about the T-800, but maybe what he was really warning us about was the dark fate of this iconic movie franchise.

The harsh truth is that every good story needs to know when to end. The obsession with turning everything into a franchise and extending it until it's limping along and slack-jawed needs to be curbed. Not everything needs to go on for all eternity. Look at "Back to the Future" as a prime example; despite repeated calls for "Back to the Future Part IV", Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale have rejected it. Consequently, the legacy of "Back to the Future" seems far more secure than "Terminator's" in the modern era, because they know the story's done.

Schwarzenegger's T-800 famously said, "I'll be back," and he kept his promise for over three decades. This time, though, it's time for him to stay gone.

Happy 30th birthday to "Independence Day," the sci-fi mega blockbuster that made Will Smith an instant Hollywood star, crushed the box office by becoming the fastest film to reach $100 million, and obliterated Washington, D.C, all in one fell swoop of pure popcorn movie entertainment.

We often talk about certain works of art ushering in or being ushered in by, but "Independence Day" ("ID4") truly broke the mold for how huge tentpole pictures were marketed three decades ago, something that still reverberates today. Is there any bigger money shot than a city-sized flying saucer poised over the White House delivering a lethal laser blast of searing coherent light?

So, to celebrate "Independence Day" on its 30th anniversary, we connected with the dynamic creative duo of director Roland Emmerich and screenwriter Dean Devlin ("Universal Soldier," "Stargate," "Godzilla") for a jog down memory lane to remember one of the greatest sci-fi movies in history.

"We’d just done 'Stargate', and it was this bizarre situation where MGM had no movies to release in the month of October, so they decided to release our film," Devlin tells Space. "Roland and I had a lot of frustrations in the process of the film marketing. So we were in a fortunate position when 'Independence Day's' script came out, we had nine studios bidding on it. We had a lot of leverage, and one of the things we said was that we want to have real control over the marketing. Roland had this idea of a trailer where in it you see the White House blow up."

Its first teaser on Super Bowl Sunday in January of 1996 was a potent 30-second shot across Hollywood’s bow to announce itself to the world. Rarely had marketing campaigns started six months early, something that’s become commonplace in the digital age. But back in 1996, when Bill Clinton was president, Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls were flying high, and the Summer Olympic Games were about to ignite in Atlanta, it was a bold move that paid off.

"I'll never forget, after we made the deal, we had this big meeting with the studio, and we got in a room, and they said to Roland and I, 'Well, you know we can't really show the White House blowing up in a trailer with what happened recently with this terrorist attack on the Federal Building. It could cause a problem.' I said, 'Yeah, but this is aliens, it's not terrorists.' Then Roland goes, 'So wait, you're telling me that if we do this, it will cause an enormous amount of controversy and everybody will talk about our movie. And that’s wrong why?'"

Released by 20th Century Fox on July 3, 1996, "ID4" and its old-fashioned, flag-waving patriotic flair exploded into theaters with an epic alien invasion tale that was irresistible.

Yes, kids, audiences really did wait in long lines snaking around the block to see their favorite films when they opened. This sci-fi extravaganza was the perfect summertime escape that was appropriately launched over the festive Fourth of July week. The advertising sizzle paid off, and the film became the top-grossing of the year, raking in a whopping $817.4 million worldwide.

Emmerich recalls that the studio secretly tested "ID4" with and without the White House explosion, and there was no more discussion, leaving it as one of the highest-testing teaser trailers ever.

Starring Bill Pullman, Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Viveca Fox, Judd Hirsch, Margaret Colin, Brent Spiner, and Randy Quaid, it showcased terrifying extraterrestrial designs by Patrick Tatopoulos, a stirring score from David Arnold, enveloping soundscapes, and some of the best miniatures and model work ever captured on screen.

It's a spirited throwback to ‘50s-era science fiction thrillers like "The War of the Worlds" or "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and even won a well-deserved Academy Award for Volker Engel and his ace VFX team.

"The art of film has been lost," Emmerich notes. "When you look at 'Project Hail Mary' for example. It's meandering, and you don’t really know why this was $250 million. Because it's one actor and a stone puppet."So this is what got lost. That films got made for a price with great visual effects, and we had great visual effects and won an Oscar."

ID4's cast seems star-studded in hindsight, but Emmerich and his team took some big risks that earned them the ire of the studio.

"At that point, Will Smith was nobody, and we had to really fight for him," explains Emmerich. "The same thing with Jeff Goldblum. Nobody wanted to see him. At the very beginning, there was this idea of using up-and-coming stars and revisiting older stars, and they [the studio] didn’t like that. We had to fight for them. And it inspired a different marketing campaign. Like with helicopters flying around with 'The world ends July 4th.'"

When "Independence Day" opened wide in 2,977 venues, fans furiously flocked to theaters and multiplexes around the country, creating a once-in-a-decade demand for available seats. That week, Roland Emmerich was vacationing in sunny Puerto Vallarta, as far away from the rollout as possible.

"So I'm in a car with a bunch of people while he's in Puerto Vallarta," Devlin recalls. "And we’re videotaping for Roland to see the crowds at the theaters. We’re in Westwood, and the line goes for three blocks. We get to the front of the line, and the number three person in line was director Jon Turteltaub, whose movie ["Phenomenon"] was opening on the same day. I jumped out of the car and said, 'Jon, your movie is opening across the street. Why are you in the line for this one?' And he said, 'This is the one I want to see.' I thought at that moment that yeah, this is a cultural event."

Emmerich and Devlin admit to feeling a hint of this intense response a bit earlier during the final ID4 test screening in Las Vegas.

"Remember, this was before digital prints and digital projectors," says Devlin. "So the audience recruited for the test was not told what movie they get to watch. All they know is it's science fiction. The place was packed, and Roland and I were in the back. The little opening thing comes on and [...] it says 'Independence Day' and the place went insane. They were cheering and freaking out. Roland and I were looking at each other like, 'Oh my god, this is great.'

"In those days, you could still have a head of a studio roll the dice on a project he believes in," reminisces Devlin. "Tom Jacobson was the head of the studio at the time, and he had two lieutenants underneath him. One loved the script, and the other hated the script and didn't want to do it. He read it himself and said, 'No, we're going to make this film.'

"That can’t happen today," laments Devlin. "Now you've got these greenlight committees and algorithms that decide what gets made. And I think that's part of what pollutes the ability to do something that’s original and out of the box."

Few Hollywood partnerships in the ‘90s were as formidable as this prolific pair, and "ID4" might have been the zenith of their long collaboration and friendship.

"This was a really true partnership," Emmerich notes. "Everything that the success brought is 50-50. We wrote a script together, which was f***ing fantastic. Not much got changed. Only a little bit on the Randy Quaid character."

"We were under pressure because I learned that Warner Bros. was already in production of a Tim Burton movie called 'Mars Attacks.' I realized we have to do this very fast and we have to go write somewhere where we’re not disturbed," recalls Emmerich.

The White House wasn't the only casualty caught in ID4's wake, though, as another renowned filmmaker's sci-fi flick took a beating at the box office.

"After three or four weeks, we gave the script to our agent, and he said, 'Oh my god, this is the most commercial thing I've seen in years.' And that's how the auction came along. He sent it out on Wednesday, and they all had to cancel their lunches. We called this thing 'Independence Day' because that's where we wanted to have it, six weeks before 'Mars Attacks' was to come out."

"Larry Franco was producing 'Mars Attacks', and he said, 'You should have seen Tim's face.' He was just destroyed because he had such high hopes with this film because it was so quirky and cool. And it's actually a really good film, but it was destroyed by 'Independence Day.'"

As America salutes its 250th anniversary, relive the counterattack once more and see for yourselves just how well "Independence Day" holds up after 30 years!

"Silo" season 3 is almost upon us, offering another round of riveting episodes of Apple TV's undeniably intriguing sci-fi series. We're about to learn how the end of the world began with the new season's split-timeline between Silo 18 and the Before Times, when the madness all started.

Adapted from Hugh Howey's trilogy of dystopian sci-fi novels, "Wool," "Shift," and "Dust," "Silo" was created by and executive produced by Emmy-winning producer Graham Yost ("Speed," "Band of Brothers," "Justified") and initially debuted on Apple TV back in 2023. This third season promises to be the best yet, and we guarantee that it's going to be an eye-opening descent into the core of the overarching tale of humanity’s last band of hearty heroes and nefarious villains trying to stay sane.

Dump out your memory-suppressing H2O and let's dig into "Silo" season 3!

WHEN DOES "SILO" SEASON 3 ARRIVE?

The third and penultimate season of "Silo" premieres on July 3, 2026, at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) for the first episode of what’s going to be a wildly eventful 10-episode outing.

Fresh weekly episodes will arrive each Friday until the season finale is broadcast on Sept. 4, 2026.

HOW TO WATCH "SILO" SEASON 3

"Silo" season 3 will stream exclusively on Apple TV.

"Silo" is an Apple original that explores the last vestiges of humankind, surviving in 144-level doomsday bunkers, and the various factions of post-apocalyptic society struggling to exist and understand why the outside environment is a death sentence.

The first two seasons of "Silo" are also now available to watch in their entirety on Apple TV, so you can catch up on all the dark drama.

If you're going to be out of the country when the show debuts, you can still watch it on your streaming service of choice using a VPN.

You'll be able to connect to your streaming services, no matter where you are on Earth (though you might not have wifi if you're hiding in one of the Silos).

WHAT IS THE PLOT OF "SILO" SEASON 3?

Warning: Spoilery "Silo" Season 2 Territory Ahead!

The prime timeline of "Silo" takes place in the far future, some 352 years from now, but nobody in Silo 18 is really counting, or even owns accurate calendars, now that we think about it.

Fans who've followed the show religiously know that Juliette trudged back from Silo 17 just before a mass Silo 18 exodus in last year’s finale episode after learning about a lethal safeguard installed in each bunker by the Founders to prevent rebellion.

She's met in the airlock by an unhinged and disillusioned Bernard (Tim Robbins) armed with a gun, and before you can say "Burnt Toast," the automatic fire system activates, and they’re both engulfed in raging flames.

That same episode ends with a flashback three centuries earlier to a restaurant in Washington, D.C., after a dirty bomb has been detonated in the city, where we're introduced to Helen and Daniel, two pivotal new characters that we’ll be following heavily in this upcoming outing.

"Season three of 'Silo' continues the saga of a dystopian society of 10,000 people living underground under mysterious circumstances, while revealing an origin story set centuries earlier," explains the official synopsis.

"In the present, Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) survives her forced 'cleaning' but returns with memory loss as the silo recovers from rebellion and faces a dangerous new threat. Meanwhile, in the 'Before Times,' journalist Helen Drew (Jessica Henwick) and Congressman Daniel Keene (Ashley Zukerman) uncover a conspiracy that pulls them into a chain of events with catastrophic, irreversible consequences."

"SILO" SEASON 3 TEASERS AND TRAILERS

Sneak peeks at "Silo's" third season have been sparse, and with an abundance of startling reveals about to be discovered, fans should be grateful that the PR folks at Apple TV haven’t exposed too much as our survivors try to make sense of their depressing upside-down world.

The first reverse-edited teaser landed back on Apr. 21, 2026, which got us pumped for the pandemonium!

The main trailer debuted on June 2, 2026, and we were immediately brought up to speed about Juliette being inside the fire box for three minutes, but she's now experiencing amnesia and can’t remember her friends or what secret she uncovered while inside Silo 17.

We also gain more info on the silo Founders and the monumental 21st-century engineering project that created them to rescue humanity from extinction.

"The end of the world cannot be stopped, it can only be survived," states Colin Hanks' chilling billionaire industrialist character.

WHO ARE THE "SILO" SEASON 3 CAST AND CREATORS?

"Silo" season 3's outstanding ensemble cast includes:

• Rebecca Ferguson – Juliette Nichols
• Jessica Henwick – Helen
• Ashley Zukerman – Daniel
• Common – Robert Sims
• Harriet Walter – Martha Walker
• Chinaza Uche – Paul Billings
• Avi Nash – Lukas Kyle
• Alexandria Riley – Camille Sims
• Shane McRae – Knox
• Remmie Milner – Shirley Campbell
• Rick Gomez – Patrick Kennedy
• Billy Postlethwaite – Hank
• Clare Perkins – Carla McLain
• Steve Zahn – Jimmy Conroy

The following newcomers will also be joining the series in unknown roles:

• Colin Hanks
• Laura Innes
• Jessica Brown Findlay
• Morven Christie
• Reed Birney
• Matt Craven

Produced by Apple Studios and AMC Studios, "Silo"'s upcoming 10-chapter nightmare is executive produced by showrunner Graham Yost, Michael Dinner, Rebecca Ferguson, Nina Jack, Joanna Thapa, Morten Tyldum, Howey, Amber Templemore, Fred Golan, and Rémi Aubuchon.

WILL THERE BE A "SILO" SEASON 4?

Yes, we’re not out of the hole quite yet!

Apple TV gave a green light for both "Silo's" third and fourth seasons back in December of 2024 after overwhelming acclaim and impressive viewership numbers, guaranteeing a proper end to the "Silo" saga. Season 4 will be the final season, though.

"It has been a richly rewarding experience to adapt Hugh's epic novels with our partners at Apple, and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring this complete story to the screen over the course of four seasons," Yost shared after Apple TV’s renewal.

"With the final two chapters of 'Silo,' we can't wait to give fans of the show an incredibly satisfying conclusion to the many mysteries and unanswered questions contained within the walls of these silos."

It looks there for the taking, doesn't it? The third rock from the sun just sitting there, all defenceless, run by squabbling politicians ruling over a human race who'd rather be sharing "get ready with me" videos than vigilantly watching the skies as they should be.

But next time you set your sights on invading planet Earth, remember that it's easier said than done. Some of the mightiest alien attack forces in existence have met their match in this particular corner of the Milky Way, as the residents of this nondescript ball of rock have repeatedly found ways to repel extraterrestrial attackers — even when they're massively outgunned.

So don't embarrass yourself in front of your attack fleet. Having painstakingly researched numerous previous assaults on Earth, we've assembled a guide to all the things you should — and indeed shouldn't — do the next time you try to bring those snivelling humans to their knees. Follow these tips, and the Earth can be yours to do with as you please.

DO… target major landmarks

Case study: "Independence Day"

If you really want to show your prospective underlings who's boss, you'll need to make a big entrance. Hovering over major landmarks (eg: The White House, The Empire State Building, the Capitol) is a great place to start, as the eyes of the world's media will be upon you.

Some bystanders will think you came in peace, of course, but by the time the masses have realized what you're up to, it'll be way too late for those puny humans.

DON'T… invade if you have a severe allergic reaction to water

Case study: "Signs"

Don't be like these crop-circle-obsessed idiots. If water's not for you, you really shouldn't set your sights on a planet whose surface is over 70% water. There are other, less soggy worlds to conquer.

DO… dress up as the personification of evil

Case study: "Childhood's End"

A bit of a cheat code, this, but if you really want humans to fear (or, at the very least, respect) you, you could do worse than model yourself on Satan/Beelzebub/Mephistopheles/Old Nick/the Devil/whatever you want to call him. They're sure to hang on your every word, though do be prepared for them to assume the worst of you, even if your intentions are good.

DON'T… get cocky

Case study: "Superman II"

Earth's famously yellow sun works such wonders on Kryptonian physiology that it can be tempting to get everyone you know kneeling at your feet. Alas, hubris is a one-way ticket to the Phantom Zone.

DO… plan ahead

Case study: "War of the Worlds"

Transporting invading forces down to a planet's surface can be such a time-consuming process that unnecessary delays could give locals an opportunity to mount a resistance — inconvenient, to say the least.

By playing the long game, however, you can bury your vehicles of mass destruction underground centuries before they're needed. A few carefully deployed bolts of lightning later, and you'll be frying humans for fun.

DON'T… get drawn into crazy conspiracy theories

Case study: "The X-Files"

Infiltrating the upper echelons of existing Earth governments may seem like an oven-ready route to taking control. But unless you have a clear, easy-to-define plan, your followers will get bored long before your Machiavellian schemes come to fruition.

DO… turn Earth into a pre-industrial society

Case study: "The Tripods"

Applying mind-controlling "Caps" to 14-year-old Earthers is a smart move that can ensure they'll spend their lives worshipping you as gods.

But arguably the Master's smartest move was rendering all Earth technology obsolete, making all the advances of the Industrial Revolution null and void – nobody's going to fight off your giant three-legged war machines with pitchforks and rotten cabbages.

DON'T… telegraph your arrival

Case study: "3 Body Problem"

There's a lot to be said for surprise attacks.

So if you're confined to sub-light speed travel (damn you, Einstein!), it's probably best not to give humanity a few centuries' head start — even if you're not confident their tech won't surpass yours in the meantime.

DO… go back to an earlier point in history

Case study: "Star Trek: First Contact"

It's said that the definition of madness is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. Cybernetic terrors, the Borg were quick to realize this, and — after one too many defeats at the hands of the technologically inferior Federation – changed the rules of engagement by travelling back in time to assimilate humanity before they had the wherewithal to fight back.

Employ this method, and resistance really will be futile.

DON'T… limit your aspirations to a small town

Case study: "The World's End"

We get it. You find a small suburban town you like – with more than its fair share of charming bars – and putting down roots seems the only logical thing to do. Being top dog on the local council, however, is not the same as world domination.

DO… develop the ability to loop time

Case study: "Edge of Tomorrow"

We all make mistakes, but that really doesn't matter if you can channel your inner Punxsutawney Phil and turn back time. By trapping everyone else in your own personal Groundhog Day, you can learn from your battlefield errors, fix the things that once went wrong, and ensure you come out on top. Every. Single. Time.

DON'T… skimp on your disguises

Case study: "The Invaders"

It's the small details that count. If your tech is sufficiently advanced to craft convincing human facsimiles, why not push the boat out a little further and give them a pulse and a pinky finger that doesn't stick out at a telltale weird angle?

DO… have humans raise your offspring

Case study: "Village of the Damned"

Even if their offspring are evil little ****s, humans tend to love their kids. Take advantage of this evolutionary flaw (sorry, trait) by impregnating Earth women and having them raise your progeny for you.

It's unlikely your children will be able to hide their inherited desire for world domination for long, but they'll do what they can to pave the way for your arrival.

DON'T… forget your jabs

Case study: "War of the Worlds"

Even humans know that it's often a good idea to get vaccinated when they visit a new country. So heading to Earth without boosting your immunity to local diseases means risking colossal embarrassment. And lots of excess phlegm.

DO… spread your spores

Case study: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"

Spaceships are hard to do. Not only do you need to build them and develop a form of propulsion capable of traversing the immense distances between stars, but you also have to keep the creatures inside them alive in the vacuum of space. In other words, too much effort.

If, however, you spread your spores via stellar winds, all the painful work is done for you. Once your seeds have made Earthfall, it's just a small matter of infecting unwitting Earth folk and replacing them with pliant pod people. Job done.

DON'T… forget to update your anti-virus software

Case study: "Independence Day"

Maybe you forgot to renew your anti-virus subscription. Maybe you think your operating system won't be susceptible to malware designed for 'inferior' Earth computers. But come on, losing your fleet to a virus sent by a mid-90s Mac is a system error you'll never live down.

DO… hide in plain sight

Case study: "Bugonia"

Most humans choose not to believe that there are aliens among them. So if you sent a spy to Earth, made sure they looked entirely human and they got themselves, say, a respectable job as the CEO of a major company, nobody would ever suspect they came from another planet.

In fact, anyone who suggested they were born on a different world would be so thoroughly discredited that keeping their identity secret would be a doddle.

DON'T… rely on a hive mind

Case study: "The Avengers"

Sure, there are certain efficiencies that come from networking your computers, but you'll have egg on your face the next time Earth's Mightiest Heroes (their words, not ours) join forces and take out your command ship.

DO… absorb everything in your path

Case study: "The Thing"

If you're the sort of alien species who can absorb and replicate any species you come into contact with, then Earth really is yours for the taking. The only thing you need to avoid is crash-landing in an uninhabited area.

Find your way into more populated parts of the world, however, and projections suggest the entire planet could be yours in just three years.

DON'T… be dandruff

Case study: "Evolution"

Arsenic is poisonous to carbon-based lifeforms, so — the logic goes — selenium must be toxic to anyone whose DNA runs on nitrogen.

The science may be questionable, but would you want to take the risk? Especially when you know Earth has vast supplies of selenium-filled Head & Shoulders waiting to take you out.

DO… have fun

Case study: "Mars Attacks!"

Taking over your nearest neighbor in the Solar System is a serious business, but that doesn't mean you can't have a good laugh while you're doing it.

Want to know what would happen if you attached the head of a "Sex and the City" star to a dog's body? You'll never know unless you try. Playing skittles with ancient landmarks? Why not give it a go? And surely it would be rude not to reimagine Mount Rushmore with your own visage.

DON'T… bother

Case study: "Doctor Who"

For a small blue dot described as "Mostly Harmless" by "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (other reference works are available), Earth has a lot of supporters across the cosmos. Indeed, so many previous invasions have been thwarted by Time Lords, superheroes, and other unlikely protectors that it may be best to stay at home.

Steven Spielberg's latest sci-fi movie, Disclosure Day, has finally hit cinemas worldwide. It's been eight years since the iconic director released a movie in this genre, re-entering his UFO era with a twisted alien thriller. To mark his momentous return to sci-fi cinema, we've taken time to gaze across his entire sci-fi slate, ranking them from worst to best.

We use the term 'worst' lightly, though. Spielberg is a movie legend after all. To date, he's directed over 30 films during his illustrious career, crafting spectacular titles with a deep understanding of what it takes to truly tell a story. Frankly, if you don't recognize the nine movies listed here, well, where the devil have you been?

So, hold onto your butts and please enjoy our ranking of Steven Spielberg's sci-fi movies, worst to best.

Honorable mention: Firelight

A short film called Firelight is arguably his inaugural entry into sci-fi cinema, with only a few minutes ever having been publicly released. While we can't place it in the rankings, it must be mentioned as Spielberg was only a teenager at the time, demonstrating his early genius and determination to bring his ideas to life.

9. The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Release date: May 23, 1997 | Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn | Rotten Tomatoes score: 57% critics, 52% audience

Spielberg was riding a real high from the first critically-acclaimed Jurassic Park, so of course there had to be a sequel. Unfortunately, those were some mighty big dinosaur-shaped boots to fill, and The Lost World didn't quite live up to the overwhelming success of its predecessor. Somewhat understandable given how iconic the first movie was. That being said, it's still one of the best Jurassic Park movies ever made. Just not the best.

With Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) leading the sequel, he leads a team to a second island where dinosaurs roam freely, though a threat jeopardizes their peace. Trying to carve out its own path in the wake of Jurassic Park was a tall order.

It leans more into the horror genre this time around, which gives it a fresh feeling, but The Lost World doesn't quite have the same glimmer and spectacle of the first movie's cast (although Goldblum was certainly a standout character).

8. Disclosure Day

Release date: June 12, 2026 | Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth | Rotten Tomatoes score: 79% critics, 70% audience

After an 8-year hiatus away from the genre, Spielberg finally returned to sci-fi with 2026's Disclosure Day. Was it worth the wait? Eh.

Disclosure Day centers on a conspiracy to cover up the existence of aliens, and it gets a lot of things right. The cast plays their roles to perfection, the dialogue is snappy and witty, and it hits all the right marks aesthetically, but something about it just feels… off.

The central story — following an unlikely duo (Blunt & Connor) on a journey to uncover and reveal the truth to the world — asks you to think, but often falls apart when you do, as you start to notice the string of McGuffins, contrivances, and vapid action scenes stringing it together.

It's an entertaining watch, but nothing more, which is a real shame from a filmmaker of Spielberg's caliber.

7. War of the Worlds

Release date: June 29, 2005 | Cast: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins | Rotten Tomatoes score: 76% critics, 42% audience

H.G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds practically begged for a movie director with abundant talent to tackle it. Fortunately, Spielberg stepped up to the plate, transforming the short novel into a big-screen masterpiece.

War of the Worlds follows Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), a divorced crane operator, who must protect his children from an alien invasion – not your usual setup for a weekend of parental custody! It's epic in proportion and relentless in action, with the narrative underscore of Morgan Freeman's liquid caramel voice setting the tone.

This movie was another return to aliens for Spielberg, although here he opts for their arrival to be even more devastating and unpredictable than in his previous visitations. He finds a great balance between big action and moments of reflection, weaving an ever-building tension throughout the movie that has captivated audiences for over 20 years.

6. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Release date: June 29, 2001 | Cast: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Brendan Gleeson | Rotten Tomatoes score: 76% critics, 64% audience

Before ChatGPT and Grok, there was David (Haley Joel Osment), an A.I. android child programmed to love.

Initially, Stanley Kubrick was spearheading the movie, but let it go as he felt CGI wouldn't do David's role justice, nor could any child actor. Instead, he handed it over to Spielberg, who believed that a child could.

Taking place in a futuristic world, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" is a loosely based adaptation of Brian Aldiss' sci-fi short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long." Young David is adopted into a family who are going through their own parental torture, but he never quite feels at home.

To understand who he truly is, David embarks on a journey that's unbelievably lonely and incredibly daring. It's equal parts moving as it is disturbing, and you'll be left questioning what's morally right and wrong.

5. Ready Player One

Release date: March 29, 2018 | Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Simon Pegg | Rotten Tomatoes score: 71% critics, 77% audience

Ready Player One is another book adaptation for Spielberg, this time of Ernest Cline's novel of the same name. Welcome to the 2040s, where the virtual reality world OASIS is the place to be… especially if you're someone like orphan Wade Watts, desperately searching for a better life outside of the dystopian hellscape that Earth has become.

When OASIS creator and billionaire James Halliday passes away, his OASIS avatar announces a competition for the ultimate prize – ownership of the digital society itself (and a staggering amount of money, of course). This sends the world into a frenzy, with players, including Wade, determined to win. Including some rather nasty, big corpo bullies who enlist specialist teams to hunt down clues, and other players, too.

With nostalgic odes to musical history and memories of video games woven within, Spielberg works hard to bring Cline's love letter to the 80s to life in a visually captivating and action-packed way. Cline's sequel, Ready Player Two, is reportedly in development, though this time Spielberg is only attached as a producer.

4. Minority Report

Release date: June 21, 2002 | Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton | Rotten Tomatoes score: 89% critics, 80% audience

Though Cruise and Spielberg later worked on War of the Worlds, Minority Report came first and is arguably the better of their collaborations. A crime department in not-so-far-away 2054 predicts crimes before they happen. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) heads up the PreCrime unit and is helped largely by three psychics called Precognitives (Precogs) that they have hooked up in strange spa-like tubs.

It quickly twists into a nightmare for John as his name comes up as a soon-to-be criminal, which prompts him to go on the run to prove his innocence before it's too late. Minority Report is a crime thriller with all kinds of twisted, sci-fi futurism tech from sick sticks to eye-digging robots.

Spielberg adds heart-pounding, sensational chases to craft this true epic, and ironically, it made several predictions about future life that ring eerily true today.

3. Jurassic Park

Release date: June 11, 1993 | Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum | Rotten Tomatoes score: 91% critics, 91% audience

When Spielberg took on the movie adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel "Jurassic Park," he transformed the way we see dinosaurs forever.

With a mix of CGI and animatronics, it found an impressive balance that leapt the genre forward, and it's certainly far more captivating than the Jurassic movie sequels that have come since.

Experts are invited to experience an amusement park built around cloned dinosaurs. What could go wrong? Well, plenty. The stage is set for unbelievable tension and suspense-building, and it's executed perfectly through Spielberg's directorial prowess with memorable scenes from raptors in the kitchen to a T-Rex in the toilet.

It's not only these iconic dinosaur moments that make the movie captivating, but in true Spielberg fashion, it's the conversations and intricate web of personalities, too. And John Williams' legendary film score, too, of course. With dinosaurs, you can fall prey to doing a bit too much. Jurassic Park does just enough.

2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Release date: November 16, 1977 | Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon | Rotten Tomatoes score: 91% critics, 85% audience

As we mentioned in the intro, Firelight was a movie that Spielberg made in his teens, shown only within the walls of the Phoenix Little Theatre. Then, in 1977, he took his initial Firelight ideas so much further by crafting Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It's Spielberg's first proper foray into UFOs and what many have dreamed would eventually lead to a spiritual successor in Disclosure Day.

Here we have Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who has a close encounter of the Third Kind, finding a UFO when working as an electrical lineman. Weirdly, the government won't admit that 'they' exist. Unlike his later work with Disclosure Day, this prompts a journey of discovery rather than one of fear. With budget and belief, Spielberg turned his small-town dreams into a huge production that had a significant impact on the sci-fi cinema landscape.

1. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Release date: June 11, 1982 | Cast: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote | Rotten Tomatoes score: 99% critics, 72% audience

There's just something so utterly delightful about a child's naivety to dress up an alien they've encountered in a closet in a bid to hide its true identity. And that's not the only whimsy of Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as it's a beautiful adventure, unravelling the innocence of childhood alongside the curiosity about what's really 'out there.'

Aliens, for the most part, have been portrayed as devastating lifeforms that are a threat to Earth. Even Spielberg is guilty of using this narrative. However, E.T. is the antithesis of this with his Grogu-level of cuteness and gentle nature. Elliott (Henry Thomas) forms an unbreakable bond with E.T that'll make you wonder whether your ingrained fear of aliens is really worth all the worry.

E.T. is one of the best examples of Spielberg's ability to combine emotion with adventure, readjusting our thoughts about life as we know it. Plus, it's got a fantastic musical score to boot. It is, after all, one of the best sci-fi movies of all time.

On the occasion of its 25th anniversary today, it’s worth noting a certain sense of irony that Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" seems oddly prescient into today’s AI-obsessed environment, especially when compared to the master director’s recently released "Disclosure Day," which sadly feels three decades late to the whole governmental cover-up UFO/UAP party.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence's" path to the silver screen is a strange odyssey, one that includes two of the world's greatest filmmakers, a '60s short story about global warming and advanced robots, a child star hot off a horror hit, multiple production starts and stops, and even a crazy sudden death conspiracy theory.

This $75 million futuristic fairy tale was filmed in a dreamy, desaturated preternatural haze that draws audiences into its emotional depths, making "A.I." one of Spielberg’s finest films made during what can be considered his darker, more serious period of moviemaking.

Released by Warner Brothers on June 29, 2001, the mature sci-fi film attracted a diverse audience that was mesmerized by the depiction of a climate-changed world and the advancement of artificial humans called mechas. It tells the story of a couple whose child is stricken with a fatal disease, causing them to purchase David, a new model of android child programmed to love.

When their son recovers, conflict between the human and mecha becomes hazardous, and David is disposed of, where he meets up with a band of stray robots. Attuned to the fairy tale of "Pinocchio" and yearning to become a real boy, David and his A.I. toy bear Teddy embark on a strange road trip to a flooded Manhattan to find the Blue Fairy, who might grant him his wish.

Spielberg naturally brought along his faithful A-list team of Oscar-winning collaborators that included cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn, and composer John Williams for this PG-13 sci-fi adventure whose eventual global box office take was a respectable $236 million.

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Frances O’Connor, Jude Law, Sam Robards, Brendan Gleeson, and William Hurt, "A.I." was a brilliant storm of spectacular visual effects, especially observed in the Flesh Fair set pieces where robots were forced into gladiatorial battles to entertain post-apocalyptic crowds.

Law has a lot of ribald fun with his pleasure model android called Gigolo Joe, who rescues David and brings him into his fold as they travel to meet their 'maker' in a sort of twisted "Wizard of Oz"-like journey. Robin Williams also voices an amusing interactive search engine conceived in the likeness of Albert Einstein and aptly called Dr. Know.

Fresh from his role as Cole Sear, aka the "I see dead people" kid in M. Night Shyamalan’s "The Sixth Sense," Osment gives a shattering performance here as an innocent machine hoping to fulfill its programming and be loved as a real boy. It's been noted that Osment doesn't blink once in the film, and he displays an incredible depth of feeling on screen for such a young actor.

"A.I.'s" narrative also returns to one of the major themes seen in Spielberg’s catalog, that of the dissolving family unit. It’s been well documented and discussed over the years that his parents’ divorce when he was 19 had a devastating effect on Spielberg.

That trauma of fractured families has been well played out in numerous Spielberg movies, including "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Empire of the Sun," "War of the Worlds," and is even revealed in detail in "The Fabelmans."

Here in "A.I.", the broken home that Haley Joel Osment’s android character, David, experiences feels even more raw. His adoring mother, Monica, sensing David's emotional instability and fearing for her family’s life, drives her robo-child out to the woods and abandons him as he desperately begs her to stop. It’s a tearful, heart-wrenching moment few viewers forget.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence" began life as a 1969 short story by author Brian Aldiss titled "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." It’s a brief read with a twist ending that we won’t spoil here.

Adapting the futuristic tale of a flooded New York City, a Cybertronics engineer, his family, a next-generation synthetic child, and a robotic teddy bear was a passion project of the great Stanley Kubrick. The meticulous filmmaker made several attempts to crack the plot with numerous writers, including Sara Maitland, Ian Watson, and Brian Aldiss himself, but it never quite coalesced into a finished script.

Spielberg was then brought in as a potential director in 1995, and the two cinematic geniuses collaborated for years to map out the story. Upon Kubrick's surprising death in 1999 (some believing foul play for revealing industry secrets), four days following the release of "Eyes Wide Shut," Spielberg agreed to complete the project for his friend and mentor and eventually drafted the finished screenplay.

It's naturally a bit of a cobbled-together effort with so many ideas cooked in, but it all works as a type of existential exploration of the role of artificial beings in future society, our responsibility to our intelligent creations, and their emotional potential.

Trying to stay true to Kubrick’s ideals, Spielberg was intimately involved in the writing, producing, and directing of "A.I.," which represents one of only two films in his entire career where that creative trifecta occurred, the other film project being 2022’s "The Fabelmans."

Coming off of 1998's triumphant "Saving Private Ryan," 2001's "A.I." continued the pattern of Spielberg’s serious segment of his career in a run that included four science fiction movies dropped over a seven-year period. Besides "A.I.," those additional releases were 2002’s "Minority Report," 2005’s "War of the Worlds," and 2008’s "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The master wouldn’t revisit the genre again for ten years until 2018’s "Ready Player One."

Advancements in digital visual effects in the decade of the 2000s benefited from the millions of dollars poured into franchises like "Star Wars," "Harry Potter," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Transformers." "A.I." was one of the first to benefit from that infusion of innovation that kicked off with the first "Star Wars" prequel, 1999's "The Phantom Menace."

Technology not being up to depicting a life-like robot was one of the sticking points for Kubrick, but a combo of practical effects from Stan Winston Studio and CGI did the trick.

Another creative synthesis between Kubrick and Spielberg regarding "A.I.'s" story involves their shared love of Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s story, "The Adventures of Pinocchio," with Kubrick's vision of the film as a sort of Pinocchio with robots. Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" contains several references to the Disney animated "Pinocchio" as well.

The fusion of Kubrick's bleak, unflattering view of human nature paired with Spielberg's wondrous warmth and sentimentality makes for a unique cinematic cocktail that keeps "A.I." fresh and relevant.

One controversial element of "A.I." is the ending with the humanoid aliens using the guise of the Blue Fairy to grant David’s wish of one last day with his mother and the recurring motif of his wanting to become a real boy and simply be loved.

It’s a bittersweet finale that’s not without its detractors, but the simple fact that it's still fertile territory for spirited debate points to the movie's lasting importance in Spielberg’s oeuvre, and one that remains even more topical and timely today on "A.I.'s" milestone 25th birthday.

It's a contested field, but John Williams' majestic "Superman" theme is up there with the best the composer's ever written. Almost five decades on, that stirring orchestral march remains synonymous with Krypton's most famous son, still more than capable of making grown men want to run out of telephone boxes (remember those?) while ripping their shirts open.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that Bryan Singer couldn't imagine using any other music when signed up to direct "Superman Returns", which celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend.

"From day one, Bryan said he wouldn't even greenlight the movie if he couldn't use the John Williams music," composer John Ottman told IGN at the time of release. "That's how important it was to Bryan. I had moments of wanting to evolve the theme a little bit and alter it slightly, but Bryan was against any modifications at all, even down to the last flute flourish."

But the filmmaker's devotion to Richard Donner's classic 1978 "Superman: The Movie" (still undoubtedly the best "Superman" movie) stretched way beyond replicating that famous score — a homage James Gunn repeated in his own Man of Steel reboot last year. Because, for better and worse, "Superman Returns" is an unashamed love letter to the film that made us believe a man could fly all those years ago.

"Smallville" may have been flying high on TV, but the early '00s had hardly soared for DC on the big screen. The success of "Blade", "X-Men" (also directed by Singer), and "Spider-Man" had turned Marvel into Hollywood's pre-eminent source of comic-book blockbusters, and the Distinguished Competition was playing catch-up.

They were also licking their wounds following infamous stinkers "Batman & Robin" (1997) and "Catwoman" (2004), and the DC renaissance wouldn't truly begin until Christopher Nolan's critically acclaimed "Batman Begins" in 2005.

There had been attempts to bring Supes back to theaters for the first time since 1987's disastrous "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace". Tim Burton, who'd directed the ridiculously successful 1989 "Batman" reboot, was attached to "Superman Lives" in the '90s, while "Das Boot"/"Air Force One" helmer Wolfgang Petersen spent several years developing a standalone "Batman v Superman" movie, working from a screenplay by "Seven" writer Andrew Kevin Walker.

Then Brett Ratner was all set to direct "Superman: Flyby", scripted by a certain JJ Abrams, until he left the project in March 2003, citing difficulties casting the lead role — not to mention his desire to make "Rush Hour 3" — as reasons for his departure. "Charlie's Angels" director McG briefly picked up the cape, but by July 2024, Warner Bros had handed the Fortress of Solitude keys to Singer. Singer subsequently departed the X-Men threequel, which was ultimately directed — after a bizarre game of Hollywood musical chairs — by Ratner, before he made "Rush Hour 3".

Working with "X2" writers Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, Singer jettisoned those previous treatments to craft an all-new — albeit nostalgic — take on Superman. Conveniently, the trio pretended that the disappointing "Superman III" and "Superman IV" never happened, instead picking up the story five years after the events of "Superman II" — aka the one where Clark and Lois Lane fall in love, Superman renounces his powers, inexplicably gets them back, and makes Lois forget the whole affair.

It turns out that Superman (and, naturally, Clark Kent) has been away ever since, exploring the remains of Krypton in the hope of finding survivors of his race. In the meantime, Lois has moved in with the nephew of "Daily Planet" editor Perry White, had a kid called Jason, and written a Pulitzer Prize-winning article entitled "Why the world doesn't need Superman". She, and planet Earth, have apparently moved on.

The world's greatest criminal mastermind has not, however, so Lex Luthor comes out of retirement to defeat the Man of Steel once and for all. His dastardly scheme involves using Kryptonian tech to build an all-new continent off the coast of Metropolis — even after all these years, he's still obsessed with real estate.

"Superman Returns" is a movie of contradictions. While it's technically a continuation of the Christopher Reeve series, it's also a reboot. So even though, in Superman and Lois's timeline, only five years have passed, the film is set in 2006 rather than 1985. There's also an entirely new cast.

Although established names like Nicolas Cage, Brendan Fraser, Josh Hartnett, and Jude Law had been linked with previous incarnations of Superman, Singer opted to cast an unknown, just as Donner had done with the peerless Reeve. Brandon Routh actually makes a decent Superman — heroic, yet understated and touchingly melancholic — but never gets a chance to do much as Clark Kent.

As Lois, meanwhile, Kate Bosworth certainly didn't deserve the excessive criticism she received at the time, yet is miscast in an underwritten role that lacks the screwball energy of Margot Kidder's performance. But it's Kevin Spacey (who'd won an Oscar for his performance in Singer's "The Usual Suspects) who feels most out of place as an overly vicious Lex Luthor, no match for the timeless, ridiculously charming Gene Hackman version.

Even in the pre-social media world of 2006, "Superman Returns" was attracting negative hype long before it flew into theaters. The darker red of Superman's cape and reduced size of the House of El logo proved particularly controversial, as Singer eschewed the primary colored hues of the Reeve outfit for something more muted and more in keeping with the "realistic" superhero uniforms of the era.

And when it landed, it turned out to be very different from what many fans had wanted. Indeed, anyone expecting all-out action — or the giant robot spiders that would, infamously, have featured in Burton's "Superman Lives" project — was left massively disappointed by this reflective character piece. "Superman Returns" was less a film for kids and teens than adults who'd grown up on the Donner movie. As such, saving the day often takes a backseat to themes of lost love and paths not taken.

"I think that 'Superman Returns' was a bit nostalgic and romantic, and I don't think that was what people were expecting, especially in the summer," Singer told Empire in 2016. "What I had noticed is that there weren't a lot of women lining up to see a comic book movie, but they were lining up to see 'The Devil Wears Prada', which may have been something I wanted to address."

In the film's big reveal, Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu) is revealed to be Clark's son, and he throws a piano at a bad guy to prove it. But the more interesting storyline is actually the love triangle between Superman, Lois, and Richard White ("X-Men"'s James Marsden). It would have been so easy to make Richard a bad guy, but here he's thoroughly decent and — while he needs a seaplane to fly — just as heroic as his Spandex-clad love rival. By the end of the film, it's clear that he — not Clark/Superman — is the right man for Lois.

Continuing a long tradition of "Superman" movies with ropey endings, it isn't plain sailing getting to that point. Because Lex had the evil foresight to lace his island with kryptonite, Superman finds himself on the verge of death (requiring a human rescue), yet still finds the strength to fly the entire landmass into orbit — another exertion he recovers from remarkably quickly. It's also worth mentioning that, at one point, Lois and Jason are saved by a fax — how very 2006.

"Superman Returns"' $391 million box office take made it the ninth highest grossing film of the year, coming in behind "The Da Vinci Code", "Casino Royale", "Cars" and — in an intriguing twist of fate — "X-Men: The Last Stand". It was a respectable return, yet not enough for Warner Bros, who opted not to make a sequel.

It remains, however, a memorable experiment in nostalgia, making some brave creative decisions without ever standing on its own two feet. Besides, whatever else anyone says about it, it's still bookended by the greatest superhero theme tune ever written.

"Superman Returns" is available to stream on HBO Max in the US, and Netflix and Prime Video in the UK.

The 1970s were truly when science fiction cinema made astronomical leaps into the public's consciousness and catapulted out of the B-movie bin to become a respected entertainment genre.

Aside from a few serious science fiction standouts like "The Andromeda Strain," "Silent Running," "Soylent Green," "Westworld," and "Rollerball," the pre-"Star Wars" era of Hollywood sci-fi was mostly forgettable fare.

But before we all travelled to a galaxy far, far away, experienced close encounters of the third kind, or set down on LV-426, MGM Studios gifted us with "Logan's Run," a lavish futuristic spectacle that offered a colorful peek into a dystopian future. It delivered with provocative themes about the suppression of truth, the inevitability of aging and death, violence as sport, and the complicated nature of freedom.

First released on June 23, 1976 — right before the United States was about to celebrate its big 200th birthday — "Logan's Run" featured an exceptional cast led by Michael York, Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov, Roscoe Lee Brown, and British sensation Jenny Agutter, who would later go on to co-star in director John Landis' "An American Werewolf in London." It even placed a spotlight on popular supermodel Farrah Fawcett-Majors as the sexy New You Shop worker, Holly 13.

On the occasion of "Logan's Run's" 50th anniversary this week, let's look back at this forgotten gem that inspired filmmakers and artists to leap into the genre, absorbed in its sanitized vision of the future and the unsettling truth behind the sunny facade of paradise's perfection.

Those of a certain age might recall the first spectacular trailers opening with images of a 23rd-century domed city sparkling with water features and bright white buildings connected by transparent transportation tubes filled with bullet-like people pods.

This beautiful exterior disguises a fragile utopian society with a dark secret that humanity is only too happy to ignore, operating in fake hedonistic tranquility as state-sponsored death events are delivered in amphitheaters to cheering crowds.

York stars as Logan 5, a young buck employed as a Sandman, a sort of futuristic cop whose job is to uphold the law and terminate anyone who attempts to escape from the mandated Carousel ceremony, where citizens reaching the age of 30 are supposedly reincarnated. He and his elite Sandman partner, Francis 7 (Jordan), enjoy blasting away at daring fugitives who reject the forced expiration bit and attempt to flee when their palm-implanted life-clocks turn red.

When the city’s AI overlord forces Logan to infiltrate a secret runner’s sect to find a mythical place called Sanctuary outside of civilization’s domed clusters, he joins forces with Jessica 6 (Agutter) to find the truth behind a symbolic ankh, pursued by a relentless Francis 7.

Adapted from distinguished sci-fi author William F. Nolan’s 1967 novel and directed by British filmmaker Michael Anderson, this big budget treat is a beautiful film to watch, with its vibrant Metrocolor palette shot by legendary cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, Jerry Goldsmith’s penetrating orchestral score accented with synthesizer tones, and thrilling set pieces filmed in actual locations like Houston’s Hyatt Regency Hotel and the Fort Worth Water Gardens in Texas.

"Logan's Run" was a solid summer hit for MGM, pulling in a domestic total of $25 million off a $9 million budget. When the 1977 Academy Awards arrived, the sci-fi blockbuster was nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction and won an Oscar for Special Achievement in Visual Effects.

It also holds the distinction of being the first movie presented in Dolby Stereo when matched with 70mm prints. And who can forget the frightening ice cave robot named Box, perfectly portrayed by Roscoe Lee Brown inside a shiny android suit?

For three decades, it’s been rumored that "Logan's Run" would be getting a remake, bouncing around in a series of stalled projects, one that supposedly attracted Ryan Gosling, but at this point, no progress has been made.

A short-lived "Logan's Run" TV series aired in '77, but a "Star Wars" tsunami swept in that year and washed it away.

So, if you're looking for a nostalgic trip back to '70s sci-fi, then why not check out the original "Logan's Run" this weekend to help celebrate its landmark 50th anniversary and revel in all its disco-era dystopian pleasures?

On Episode 216 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with physicist Dr. Daniel Whiteson about other intelligences is beyond our scope.

Whiteson, particle physicist at CERN's Large Hadron Collider and professor at UC Irvine, joins us to explore less conventional thoughts on first contact. We look at the challenges of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligences, potential difficulties of communicating via non-terrestrial mathematics and physics, and the possibility that extraterrestrials might actually be terrestrial... but existing as denizens of the dark energy universe. One might be sitting in your lap right now! Join us for the far-ranging discussion.

Download or subscribe to this show at: https://twit.tv/shows/this-week-in-space.

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Space news of the week

• NASA and Boeing still uncertain about when Starliner will return to flight
• Did NASA just find evidence of ancient life on Mars? Perseverance rover spots complex carbon in Red Planet rocks
• NASA is paying $30 million for a 1st-of-its-kind rescue mission to the aging Swift telescope before it falls from space. Is it worth it?
• Space.com App
• Daniel Whiteson
• Daniel & Kelly's Extraordinary Universe

Model Falcon 9!

Finally, did you know you can launch your own SpaceX rocket? Model rocket maker Estes' stunning scale model of a Falcon 9 rocket that you can pick up now. The launchable model is a detailed recreation of the Falcon 9 and retails for $149.99. You can save 10% by using the code IN-COLLECTSPACE at checkout, courtesy of our partners collectSPACE.com.

About This Week In Space

This Week in Space covers the new space age. Every Friday we take a deep dive into a fascinating topic. What's happening with the new race to the moon and other planets? When will SpaceX really send people to Mars?

Join Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik from Space.com as they tackle those questions and more each week on Friday afternoons. You can subscribe today on your favorite podcatcher.

When "SpaceCamp" landed in theaters in June 1986, it should have been the ultimate wish-fulfillment movie, as if "The Goonies" had cashed in their hard-earned pirate treasure in return for a spin in an actual Space Shuttle.

It boasted a bigger budget than "Top Gun", a cast of up-and-coming young stars — including a future Oscar-winner — and a score by Hollywood's most famous composer. Twentieth Century Fox had bet big on a blockbuster hit, but a real-life tragedy four months earlier ensured the film was doomed to be an also-ran at the box office.

The real-life Space Camp at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was a dream destination for any kid with an interest in science, math, and space exploration — the ultimate trip for tweens and teens with a passion for science and technology.

The brainchild of original Space & Rocket Center director Edward O Buckbee and Apollo rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, the facility opened in 1982. It has since welcomed over a million wannabes through its doors, including Elon Musk, Chelsea Clinton, and several attendees who went on to become actual astronauts.

Patrick Bailey, who wrote the original "SpaceCamp" story, got the idea from his wife, who'd spotted a news story about the camp while working as a researcher on American variety show "That's Incredible!"

He developed the idea alongside Buckbee, and the duo successfully pitched the project to producer Leonard Goldberg, who'd had a major hit with "WarGames" a few years earlier. (It's easy to see why Goldberg saw the potential in SpaceCamp, seeing as WarGames was based on a similar scenario of ordinary kids being thrown into a dangerous and improbable situation.)

NASA also approved the script, and — rather surprisingly — wasn’t put off by the fact that the whole plot revolved around a colossal screw-up on the launchpad.

The film focuses on a quintet of bickering camp attendees as they try out various training simulators, and learn — repeatedly and exhaustingly — the value of teamwork. It's all set to be a standard, barely postcard-worthy week away from home, until a totally implausible sequence of events sees them blasting off into orbit (with a single instructor to look after them) on the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

First, 12-year-old Max persuades management that he should be allowed into Big Kid camp, even though he's too young. Then he befriends a sentient, but worryingly glitchy, robot janitor named Jinx, who wants to make "Star Wars"-obsessed Max's dream of going into space a reality.

Jinx's scheme gets a convenient helping hand when NASA — for the benefit of the plot — allows the kids to sit in an actual shuttle during an actual engine test. That questionable decision gives Jinx all the window he needs to initiate a "thermal curtain failure" in one of the solid rocket boosters, leaving mission control no choice but to blast the kids into space.

Once the initial excitement of weightlessness has worn off, the kids realize the true extent of their predicament. While instructor Andie is a qualified astronaut who'd been patiently waiting for her first mission, it turns out that the unprepared Shuttle wasn't rigged for long-range radio communications. And — shock horror! — there isn't enough oxygen to get them to their re-entry window for landing at Edwards Air Force Base.

Suddenly, these rookie kids are forced into roles real-life astronauts spend years training for, going on spacewalks and landing state-of-the-art spacecraft as if it's as straightforward as playing a video game.

But as ridiculous as the premise is, it's kept grounded by an extremely likable ensemble, one of Hollywood's most impressive examples of pre-fame casting. While Lea Thompson (Kathryn) and Larry B Scott (Rudy) were familiar from "Back to the Future" and "Revenge of the Nerds", respectively, Tate Donovan (Kevin), Kelly Preston (Tish), and — perhaps, most notably — future Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (then known as Leaf) were all playing their first major movie roles.

And even though they broadly correspond to the jock/brain/princess archetypes you'd find in a John Hughes movie, the movie makes an effort to defy expectations of the era. Tish, for example, is — despite her valley girl persona — super-smart and has an eidetic memory.

More experienced heads were provided by Kate Capshaw (fresh off "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom") as astronaut Andie Bergstrom, and Tom Skerritt ("Alien", "Top Gun") as her moonwalking husband, Zach. "Lost" fans should also look out for a young Terry O'Quinn (John Locke) in mission control.

Both the cast and director Harry Winer have spoken of the camaraderie on set, which was probably a good thing given the unexpected length of the production.

"After the first day of filming, we were already 10 days behind schedule," Thompson recalled in a 2012 interview with AV Club. "And it kind of kept on that way. It was supposed to be a three-month shoot, and it ended up taking six. We had t-shirts printed up that said, '"SpaceCamp": It’s Not Just a Movie, It’s a Career'. Oh, actually, instead of 'SpaceCamp', it actually said 'SpaceCramp!'"

The biggest name in the production, however, went unseen, as the legendary John Williams (who's always had a soft spot for kids' films; see also "Home Alone" and "Harry Potter") composed the soundtrack. While he resisted the temptation to add in a few bars from a galaxy far, far away during "SpaceCamp"'s many nods to "Star Wars", the score is unmistakably one of his.

"There's a reason why anyone who's a legend is a legend," Winer said in an interview with AL.com back in 2022.

"John Williams is the most gratifying and rewarding creative collaboration I've had in my entire career. He would analyze a story and consider when there was a need for silence. He understood your creative intentions and found a way in a very poetic medium of music to interpret and enhance your vision. It was literally remarkable."

"SpaceCamp" was all set for a prime summer release slot when disaster struck in January 1986. After the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded during take off, killing all seven crewmembers on board, a lighthearted movie about five kids accidentally heading into orbit suddenly seemed rather less appealing.

Many questioned whether it should have been released at all, but Fox decided to press ahead. Winer even wondered if the public might even find the film cathartic, "because after such a tragedy, people would need to cling to the hope the film represented. And needless to say, I was totally wrong," he said later. "They saw it as a source of jeopardy, of disappointment, of tragedy, rather than hope. No one went to see 'SpaceCamp', so then I felt like I had failed miserably."

Not helped by scathing reviews — "Would anyone like this movie?" asked legendary critic Roger Ebert. "Juvenile space nuts, maybe. But they'd be too sophisticated."

Forty years on, it remains a decent, if unspectacular, family movie, but "SpaceCamp" barely made back half of its production budget in theaters. It was the very definition of a Hollywood flop, but it still left its mark.

Interest in the film reportedly doubled attendance at the real-life Space Camp, and there’s anecdotal evidence that the movie encouraged kids to pursue careers in science. In more recent years, there's even been talk of a remake, though its current status is unknown.

"I've had a lot of people come up to me and say that they became physicists or inventors, because of how much they loved [Space Camp] and how much it inspired them," said Thompson. "That was really sweet and something I never really expected."

"SpaceCamp" is currently unavailable to stream and download from any major service (though there is a disappointingly low-res version on YouTube). There is also a Blu-ray release, but it's hard to find and expensive.