Northern Exposure (1994) – Mr. Sandman, and Mite Makes Right

Everyone is having very strange dreams in Cicely. Or at least strange to them. As it seems that everyone is having dreams that belong to everyone else. Written by Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider from a story they developed with David Chase, Mr. Sandman was first broadcast on 10 January, 1994. Chris (John Corbett) is…

Farscape (2001) – Season of Death, and Suns and Lovers

Season three opens up immediately after the conclusion of the previous episode. Written by Richard Manning, the episode launched a new opening credits title sequence on 16 March, 2001. Aeryn (Claudia Black) is still (mostly) dead. Crichton (Ben Browder) is still strapped to the surgery table, unable to speak. Scorpius (Wayne Pygram) has the neural…

Pirate Radio (2009) – Richard Curtis

Based loosely on a true story, Richard Curtis brings his talent for blending comedy and drama to a classic tale of rock and roll! In the early 60s when British Rock was at its height, England only played rock’n’roll for perhaps an hour all day on air. But just off the coast in the North…

The Venom Business (1969) – Michael Crichton

I dove into Michael Crichton’s next book, The Venom Business, as I work through his bibliography. This one took me a while to actually get into. There’s a bit of a convoluted plot for the first half of the book inundated with the parties and happenings of a swinging London where everyone, apparently, is over-sexed,…

Zero Cool (1969) – Micheal Crichton

Zero Cool is a a rapid-fire thriller from Micheal Crichton written under his pen-name of John Lange while he was in med-school. A riff on the ordinary man caught up in extraordinary circumstances that seems to have shades of North by Northwest to it, the tale follows Dr. Pete Ross, a radiologist on his first…

Live at Five (1999) – Raymond Benson

007 is back. Raymond Benson wrote a short story, just in time for the premiere of The World is Not Enough. It was published in TV Guide and gives a brief glimpse of a Cold War defection that James Bond was involved in. Set in the United States following a botched attempt in London, Bond…

The Final Girls (2015) – Todd Strauss-Schulson

The Final Girls is a delightfully meta-horror comedy with an emotional heart thanks to the performances of Taissa Farmiga and Malin Akerman. Farmiga is Max Cartwright, the daughter of Alexandra (Akerman) who has always wanted to be a movie star, but keeps getting recalled for her one big role, in an 80s cult classic slasher…

Scratch One (1967) – Micheal Crichton

Michael Crichton’s second novel, which he wrote under his pseudonym of John Lange, is a fast-paced thriller that plays on the familiar trope of mistaken identity. This time out an American lawyer, Roger Carr, finds himself mistaken for a high-profile hitman and finds himself stuck between opposing sides in an arms deal which has its…

Odds On (1966) – Michael Crichton

While Michael Crichton was in med school he wrote a series of novels under the pseudonym John Lange, and that seemed like a good place to start if I was going to explore Crichton’s writing, revisit some I knew (like Sphere the other week) and discover some new favorites. Odds On is a crime thriller…

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) – Sam Liu

I remember, not that it was that long ago now when the DC animated movie adaption of the iconic graphic novel The Killing Joke was released. Fans were in an uproar about the addition of a plot frontloaded to the beginning of the film which reveals Batman (wonderfully voiced by Kevin Conroy) had sexual relations…