This week I watched the Netflix documentary, Challenger: The Final Flight regarding the 1986 Space Shuttle disaster. There are a few things that struck me much more forcefully than they had at the time, but perhaps that’s just simply that I am older and more willing to look at some of the details, or more […]

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Or perhaps if we were going for pitching a “high concept” related to the Netflix original series, Away, we could call it “No Exit” meets “Lost in Space.” Maybe the astronauts on their way to Mars think space is hell, or that Mars is hell, or that even Earth is or will be hell. But […]

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In a recent episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks, Ensign Mariner is approached by a hostile being that appears to be pure energy (she tricks it into using up nearly all of its energy to produce a fancy tricorder). In classic Star Trek: The Original Series, there are at least two episodes that feature such […]

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It looks like Netflix is going to have its go at a series dealing with both a first astronaut mission to Mars and family drama (“Away”). This sounds much like Hulu’s “The First,” which came out about 2 years ago but was cancelled around the same time that its star, Sean Penn, was cancelled due […]

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If you are really hurting for some new Star Trek (and in my opinion, there’s actually been a little bit too much. Maybe try extending for re-visiting something besides Star Trek or Star Wars), CBS All Access has a third addition to the Star Trek universe, the animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks. This marks […]

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Since I spoke a bit about the Crew Dragon launch in May I thought I’d follow up by announcing that the crew is now back, having successfully splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, and now being released from the capsule onto a medical facility on the ship that retrieved them (they are ok, its […]

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OK, so now that we’ve seen the Kanamits in two different Twilight Zone episodes over about 60 years, lets see if we can figure out where they are from. I think some clues are given in the recent “You Might Also Like..” episode. The Kanamit leader says to Mrs. Warren, “We’ve seen the trails of […]

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I’ve often wondered how we’d ever really communicate with an extraterrestrial civilization. Sure, we might try to look for some sort of pattern to a radio signal or a flash of light. But how do we really have a conversation and even understand each other even if we supposedly decode such a signal? I last […]

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Have you noticed that all sorts of mayhem breaks out in Star Trek: OS because Scotty or whomever just decided to leave the transporter room (and by the way, that very fact is occasionally thrown into the script, as in “Hey, Lt. Kyle, you had better not leave the transporter room!”). Just some examples: In […]

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The last time I watched “The Menagerie” recently, I was wondering whether this episode still represents greatness. Don’t get me wrong. There were strong performances from the regular cast (particularly Nimoy) and the guest cast (Malachi Throne, Susan Oliver, Jeffrey Hunter and Meg Wylie). It made great use of effects that were common at the […]

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