Captain’s log: stardate 41775.5 Conspiracy is a strange one, and one of my favourite episodes from the first season. It’s darker than Trek usually is, and begged for a sequel which we never got sadly. This episode first aired on 9 May, 1988. Written by Tracy Torme from a story by Robert Sabaroff, the Enterprise…
Tag: 20th century
October – Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) – Sergei M. Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov
DK Book’s The Movie Book allows me to dig a little further into the works of Sergei M. Eisenstein after my viewing of Battleship Potemkin, by offering up October in his Key Movies category. Shot in a documentary style, the film explores the events that led up to the Bolshevik revolution in October of 1917….
The Godfather Trilogy – Francis Ford Coppola
Paramount Pictures is celebrating the 45th anniversary with a re-release of the 1972 classic The Godfather, and its two sequels. I have a bit of a sordid history with these films. I’ve never been a fan of crime family stories, I can’t relate to them, and have never understood the hypocrisy that seems inherent in…
Star Trek: The Original Series (1968) – Assignment: Earth and Spock’s Brain
Captain’s log: stardate unknown. Originally written as its own pilot, Assignment: Earth was later rewritten to work it into a Star Trek story. The script was by Art Wallace, and came from a story developed by him and Gene Roddenberry. The episode first aired on 29 March, 1968. 1968. The very year the Enterprise travels…
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913) – L. Frank Baum
It’s been over a year since I travelled to the land of Oz. So I decided to buckle up for a quick jaunt back to that fairyland that shaped the lives of so many children at the beginning of the 20th century. Baum guides us back to his world as we go on another quest…
The Twilight Zone (1960) – People Are Alike All Over, Execution and The Big Tall Wish
There’s the signpost up ahead… Paramount takes me even further into The Twilight Zone as I explore the next three episodes of the series. First up is People are Alike All Over written by Rod Serling, based on a short story by Paul Fairman. It stars one of my favourite character actors of all time,…
Star Trek: The Original Series (1967) – The Alternative Factor and The City on the Edge of Forever
Captain’s log: stardate 3087.6 Well, it had to happen. In a season with twenty-nine episodes, at least one of them had to be iffy, and The Alternative Factor is definitely that one. Written by Don Ingalls, this lacklustre episode had it’s premiere on 30 March, 1967. But it did introduce me to one thing, even…
Doctor Who (Peter Davison) – Black Orchid
This week’s journey in the TARDIS is interesting for a couple of reasons, first, it’s the shortest story in a long time, only two episodes. They were written by Terence Dudley and aired on the first and second of March, 1982. The second is, that outside of our time travelers, it’s not really a…
The Navigator (1988) – Vincent Ward
The 101 Sci-Fi Movies list brings me this medieval plague tale, that interweaves dreams and reality, into an odyssey of hope. In the 14th century the Black Plague is sweeping across Europe, and young Griffin (Hamish McFarlane) fears for his tiny village, even while he longs for his brother Connor (Bruce Lyons) to return to…
Hot Docs: Teenage – Matt Wolf
Using Jon Savage’s Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture as a launching point, Wolf’s film, which screened at the Lightbox yesterday, serves as a perfect companion piece to Savage’s work. Through the use of varied voice overs from the UK, the U.S. and Germany, the film charts the growth of a new creation, that of adolescence at…
The Mind Reels 