Jim Smith takes to the stage of the Theatre Passé Muraille Backspace to pay homage and share his memories of science fiction writer Judy Merril. A writer, I’m ashamed to admit I had not heard of, especially when confronted by the list of titles she’d penned. Merril crafted tales during the heyday of pulp science fiction…
Tag: aliens
The Greatest American Hero (1981) – Operation: Spoilsport and Don’t Mess Around with Jim
Season 2 continues this week as Bill (Robert Culp) and Ralph (William Katt) deal with some new dangers!! Up first is Operation: Spoilsport, which aired 11 November, 1981, and was written by Frank Lupo. World War III is on the horizon, and within 24 hours will be well underway, when an automatic missile system…
The Greatest American Hero (1981) – Pilot
In 1981, I was living in Kingston, Ontario, I had fallen in love with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Return of the Jedi was still a long ways off!! Television, of course, still continued to entertain me, and Stephen j. Cannell was right there keeping an occasional evening occupied with his take on…
Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee) – The Curse of Peladon
The Curse of Peladon is a four-part story that aired from 29 January to 19 February, 1972. It was written by Brian Hayles, and sees the Doctor (Pertwee) and Jo (Jo Katy Manning) end up on the planet Peladon, suggesting that the Time Lord has gotten the TARDIS back in somewhat working order. On…
Extraterrestrial (2014) – The Vicious Brothers
I quite enjoyed the Vicious Brothers previous efforts – Grave Encounters and Grave Encounters 2, and were curious how they took on subject matter that really unnerved me, so I dug into Extraterrestrial, which is currently available on VOD and iTunes, and had a look. Whereas with Grave Encounters I felt they took on…
Mirage Men (2013) – John Lundberg, Roland Denning & Kypros Kyprianou
This was an interesting documentary, based on the book by Mark Pilkington, no matter where you come down on the subject of UFOs. I like to stride the middle of the road, I really want to believe that they are out there, and they may very well have been here before. But there is…
Trailer Tracks: *Batteries Not Included (1987) – Matthew Robbins
This Spielberg produced family/sci-fi/drama didn’t really make much of an impact when it came out, and honestly, I haven’t seen it since I rented it from Vision Video one weekend. Still, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and little aliens!
Trailer Tracks: Aliens (1986) – James Cameron
Yet another sequel that holds its own with the original, and could be argued exceeds it… this trailer is fantastic, and doesn’t contain a single line of dialogue, but conveys all the tension, horror and action that we can expect when the film chestburts its way onto the screen…
Trailer Tracks: Enemy Mine (1986) – Wolfgang Petersen
This one was a joy to discover when I was young, it had sci-fi, it had aliens, monsters, a war and distant planets, but then it was also something more. It became about friendship, letting go of prejudices, survival, and what it is to be human… Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. really impressed me…
Doctor Who (William Hartnell) – The Keys of Marinus
This week’s temporal travels with The Doctor (Hartnell) was written by Terry Nation and was a 6 part story that ran from 11 April to May 16, 1964. It’s the first kind of quest story that sees each episode taking place in an another location as our heroes around the planet of Marinus to…
The Mind Reels 