The Hill Street Precinct deals with a lot of personal things this week in Personal Foul. First airing on 25 March, 1982, Personal Foul was written by Steven Bochco, Anthony Yerkovich, Jeffrey Lewis and Michael Wagner. With a basketball game with the local community (and its gangs) waiting in the wings, Renko (Charles Haid) deals…
Tag: dying
Brainstorm (1983) – Douglas Trumbull
Special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull delivered his last Hollywood movie in 1983. Problems with the production company, and the untimely death of one of the film’s leads, Natalie Wood, impacted his opinion of the Hollywood machine, and he left them behind. The film features a solid cast, Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher and Cliff Robertson join…
M*A*S*H (1980/1981) – Death Takes a Holiday, A War for All Seasons, and Your Retention Please
Mike Farrell directs this episode that he wrote alongside John Rappaport, and Dennis Koenig from a story by Thad Mumford, Dan Wilcox, and Burt Metcalfe. It aired on 15 December 1980 and was used as that year’s Christmas episode. Farrell knows how to pack his story with emotional impact without being super sappy about it….
Moonlighting (1989) – Perfetc, and When Girls Collide
This week brings us the penultimate instalment of my Moonlighting exploration. It all wraps up, somehow, next week. But first let’s get through these two episodes. Up first is Perfetc. Written by James Kramer, Chris Ruppenthal and Jerry Stahl from a story by Jeff Reno and Ron Osborn it debuted on 9 April, 1989. David…
Moonlighting (1986) – Every Daughter’s Father Is a Virgin, and Witness For The Execution
Eva Marie Saint guest stars in the first episode up this week, Every Daughter’s Father is a Virgin. It debuted on 17 February, 1986, and was written by Debra Frank and Bruce Franklin Singer. It has a cold open with David (Bruce Willis) and Maddie (Cybill Shepherd) answering mail about whether or not they were…
Star Trek: Voyager (1999) – The Disease, and Course: Oblivion
Captain’s log: stardate unknown Micheal Taylor pens this Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) episode from a story by Kenneth Biller. It first aired on 24 February, 1999. The Voyager comes across a race of aliens, the Varro, a group of space-faring nomads, that are more than a little xenophobic. They’ve been in space for four centuries,…
War of the Worlds (1990) – The True Believer, and The Obelisk
We come to the end of War of the Worlds this week with these final two episodes. While never as completely realized as it could have been, there was a solid idea at the heart of the show, and I would love to see something of its kind produced again… or if the BBC would…
War of the Worlds (1989) – Breeding Ground, and Seft of Emun
The morthren leader Mana (Catherine Disher) is proving to be a real threat as we dive into this week’s installment of War of the Worlds. Breeding Ground written by Alan Moskowitz first aired on 30 October, 1989 and sees Mana coercing a dying surgeon, Emil Gestaine (Gerard Parkes) into experimenting on his patients. In an…
The Terror (2007) – Dan Simmons
So I’ve perused a couple of lists of most terrifying and scary books and on almost all the lists I’ve checked, Dan Simmons appears on them for two books, Carrion Comfort and The Terror. I wasn’t quite ready for Carrion Comfort but the idea behind the story of The Terror is fascinating, as the basis…
Daybreakers (2009) – The Spierig Brothers
The next entry in the vampire section of DK Canada’s very entertaining Monsters in the Movies book is a but of a unique tale. Set in the far future of 2019, vampires are the dominant life form on the planet after a virus has swept the world. Humans are dying out, and those that aren’t…
The Mind Reels 