SciFi Stream

Brace yourself for this week’s super exciting edition of Science Friday! Learn how to prepare for impending volcanic eruptions, protect yourself from methane rain on Titan, harvest power out of thin air, take a look at MS Surface in action, pilot a triceracopter, and bring the moon home — literally. All this and more plus [...]

Twentieth Century Fox is negotiating with Emily Blunt and Jason Segel to join Jack Black in Gulliver's Travels, the Rob Letterman-directed re-imagining of the classic Jonathan Swift tale, Variety reported. John Davis and Ben Cooley are producing.

This is William Shatner’s world, we are just visiting. Today Bill dominates the web with a new Shatner Project YouTube vid about Ricardo Montalban (w/ re-enactment of "Khaaaan" scream). Last weekend the SAG Awards looked to Shatner to kick off the show with a special toast. Plus the travel biz is looking to Shatner to [...]

Maybe more than 60 days between new episodes is just a long time for a new series. Maybe coming on after “Lost” wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed when first proposed. Or maybe “Life On Mars” simply isn’t getting the attention it deserves. When I read through the audience numbers for the latest episode of what has become one of my favorite ABC series, I almost shuddered. More than 25 percent of the audience that joined Detective Sam Tyler as he fights crime in 1973 just before Thanksgiving didn’t show up to watch the new first episode. And I don’t know about you, but I want the audience to come back. There is just something about “Life On Mars” that makes me smile, and almost yearn to live in 1973. And it seems that many things in my life have come to revolve around some aspect of …

In a new interview with the LA Times Heroes Complex Blog, Star Trek director JJ Abrams talks in detail about how he approached the movie, what he thinks about hardcore ‘purists,’ why humor is important in Star Trek and more. Excerpts below.

In one of his first long interviews on his upcoming Star Trek movie, director J.J. Abrams reiterated to the Los Angeles Times that he's going to remain true to the spirit of the franchise, if not all of its details. And he promised a couple of surprises (minor spoilers ahead).

The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for “Take A Look At The Lawmen,” the seventh episode of ABC’s “Life on Mars.” I feared that a long layoff would do some damage to this series, which had finally hit its stride before the two month hiatus. My fears were unfounded — “Life on Mars” returned with a solid episode and a couple new complications. This was, by far, the lightest episode of the season. In fact, I’d say that at times, it was laugh out loud funny. The procedural elements were okay — not terribly complex. The main plotline involved a startup Russian mafia cell holding an immigrant’s family hostage. They force him to rob a bank. He fires his gun and an innocent bystander dies. But that is not the focus of the episode. Gene Hunt’s rivalry with an old friend turned longtime rival takes …

The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for “Jughead,” the third episode from the fifth season of ABC’s “Lost.” This may be one of the toughest episodes I’ll ever have to review. While I enjoy the complexity of “Lost” and am a huge time travel fan, this episode left me somewhat curious, mostly entertained, and quite honestly, very confused. The time shifting has left the remaining islanders stranded in the 1950s, where we ultimately see a young Charles Widmore. We also see a Richard Alpert who doesn’t recognize John Locke because it’s the 1950’s version of Alpert, who doesn’t age and looks exactly the same as he always has. In that regard, he’s the Dick Clark of the “Lost” universe. I was heartened to see that Desmond and Penny have found happiness, and have a child name Charlie. That was probably …

On paper, putting “Life On Mars” on after “Lost” seemed like a good idea. But if the first week is an indicator, it could be a killer for the cop time travel series. “Life On Mars” earned a 4.0 rating/7 share on ABC Wednesday night, according to Fast National Ratings from Nielsen Media Research. That was down more than 25 percent from the last time it aired a new episode just before Thanksgiving, when ABC was still airing it against “Eleventh Hour” on Thursday nights. But the new Wednesday slot was not so busy. In fact, “Mars” only had to compete with a rerun of “CSI: NY” as well as a new episode of “Law & Order” on NBC, both of which beat “Mars” handedly. “Law & Order” drew a 48 percent larger audience than “Life On Mars” despite having a rerun as a lead-in. “Mars” can’t …

I love “Star Trek.” I like Star Wars, “Battlestar Galactica” and all the Stargate shows. But I love “Star Trek.” Of course, this wasn’t always the case. My first exposure to “Star Trek” took place while the show was airing on NBC in the late 1960s, and my twin brother, Wayne, and I were growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania. One night, our family happened to turn on “By Any Other Name,” and that episode had a profound impact on Wayne and me: We were afraid to fall asleep that night for fear we’d be turned into cubes and crushed. (And yes, we know the crew of the Enterprise was really turned into dodecahedrons with 12 sides, but that wouldn’t have comforted us at the time.) When our mother found us still wide awake the next morning, she declared there’d be no more of that show for …

This week, the Library Computer journeys back to Organia to revisit the classic Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy" through the eyes of Kevin Ryan as he draws the Errand of Fury trilogy to a close with "Sacrifices of War. Plus we have the second of three signed Destiny Trilogy book give-away trivia contests.

Universal has hired Battlestar Galactica executive producer Ronald Moore to wite a prequel to John Carpenter's classic 1982 sci-fi horror movie The Thing, Variety reported, confirming an earlier scoop by Bloody-Disgusting.com.