Dark Skies (1996) – Hostile Convergence, and We Shall Overcome

Series creators Bryce Zabel and Brent V. Friedman developed the story for Hostile Convergence which Javier Grillo-Marxauch wrote the teleplay for. It debuted on 7 December, 1996, John Loengard (Eric Close) ends up in Socorro, New Mexico in April 1964 as he investigates the infamous Lonnie Zamora (Robert Carradine) UFO sighting. The original sighting is…

Starman (1987) – Starscape: Part 2, and The Test

The television series is on its last two episodes. In one sequence we learn that the events of the movie, in this version, were supposed to take place in 1972, explaining how Scott (Christopher Daniel Barnes) can be fourteen a couple of years after the events in the movies (which were definitely set in the…

Starman (1987) – Fathers and Sons, and Starscape: Part 1

Three stories to go? Somehow we’re rushing towards the end of the series, and it seems to be gearing up to go out on a high note. Fathers and Sons is a wonderful episode, even if it still subscribes to the formula that moves us from week to week. Written by Syrie James this episode…

Quantum Leap: Search and Rescue (1994) – Melissa Crandall

While I didn’t actively dislike this entry in the Quantum Leap novel series, it is arguably the weakest of the bunch so far, and the only thing that really makes it a Quantum Leap story is the fact that both Sam Beckett and Al Calavicci are in it. But there are a number of continuity…

Quantum Leap: Too Close For Comfort (1993) – Ashley McConnell

McConnell’s second Quantum Leap book, Too Close For Comfort, feels closer to the spirit of the show than the first one. The characters of time traveller Sam Beckett, and his holographic connection with the present, Al, seem more in line with their established selves, and gone is the suggestion of what happens to Sam between…

The Vast of Night (2019) – Andrew Patterson

The Vast of Night is very much my kind of film, part Twilight Zone, part early Spielberg, there’s a vibe to this film that I just totally dig. A lot of the film feels like an homage to old dramas, encouraging the theatre of the mind, but there is a nice payoff at the end…

The X-Files (1999) – The Unnatural, and Three of a Kind

David Duchovny wrote and director the first episode up this week, The Unnatural, which first aired on 25 April, 1999. This serves as his directorial review, and it’s a lot of fun, and may be poking fun at the mythology arc, or it may just be a story Mulder (Duchovny) is told by Arthur Dales…

Silverado (1985) – Lawrence Kasdan

Occasionally a film comes along and revitalises the genre. Eastwood would return to the western trough countless times before he revitalised it with his own take on it, Unforgiven, but in the mid-80s, that shake-up was left to Lawrence Kasdan and his brother Mark. Lawrence had his fingers in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and…

The X-Files (1995) – Anasazi, and The Blessing Way

Series creator Chris Carter (who makes a cameo in this episode) penned the teleplay from a story he and David Duchovny developed, and season two of The X-Files came to a conclusion on 19 May, 1995, with Anasazi. In a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, something that looks like an alien corpse is recovered from…

12 Strong (2018) – Blu-Ray Review

Releasing on blu-ray and DVD today from Warner Brothers is the film adaptation of the true story as retold in the novel Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton. The day after 11 September, 2001, a group of soldiers volunteered to be the first on the ground in Afghanistan. The film tells that story, and of the…