Author: Nigel G Mitchell

So a few weeks ago, we saw an alien species arrived on Earth in giant flying saucers that hover menacingly over the major cities of the world…again. Of course, this happened in the original V mini-series. Then there was when Independence Day ripped off V. And now the premiere of the V series remake. It made me think about how aliens would introduce themselves. Would aliens really think, “Hey, here’s what we’ll do to announce our presence. We’ll come screaming out of the atmosphere with no warning in our enormous ships, and hover menacingly for hours over all the major…

Well, it looks like our earlier plea to put Dollhouse out of its misery was heard. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Fox has officially cancelled the show. It’ll air its remaining episodes, so at least Joss Whedon will get a chance to put an ending on the series. And for those who want to argue, “It was cancelled too soon! Give it time! It was a great show!” My response would be, “Then why weren’t you watching it?” The show had horrendous ratings this year, bottoming out at 0.8 two weeks ago. Of course, Whedon will blame the cancellation on…

I’m glad that Morena Baccarin has gotten more publicity as the sinister alien Anna in the V series remake. She’s a very good actress and stunningly beautiful, although I miss the long, curly tresses she had as the intergalactic hooker in Firefly. The great thing about her is that she has an eerie beauty that makes her a perfect alien. It’s easy to imagine that aliens would deliberately take on an appearance with an ambiguous ethnicity to appeal to the most people (for the record, she’s Brazilian). Plus, she’s got some acting chops behind her with a calm but sinister…

Okay, so let’s review. Battlestar Galactica was a re-interpretation of the Mormons’ journey to Utah, filtered through Star Wars. Then came the Sci-fi Channel’s…oops, I mean Syfy’s…re-interpretation/sequel to the original series, which won critical and popular acclaim. Now comes the Battlestar Galactica movie, which will be a re-interpretation of the original series. That’s right, Bryan Singer has signed on to direct a movie adaptation of Battlestar Galactica that will have nothing to do with the cable TV series. Instead, it will pretend the modern TV series never existed and do their own version of the original seventies’ version. Confused? Why…

When I heard they were making a movie out of the awesome Twilight Zone episode Button, Button, I was delighted and confused. The episode is great, a meditation on greed and selfishness, with a haunting twist ending. But, I asked myself, how do you stretch that into a movie? Well, it turns out that the movie The Box extends the story to answer the question the original never did: where the box came from. Personally, that seemed to me a mystery not to be solved, but I could see where you could get some traction with it. Anyway, turns out…

There are many debates that rage through the annals of geekdom. Star Wars vs. Star Trek. Picard vs. Kirk. Batman vs. Superman. But there’s one question that rises above them all: lightsaber vs. Superman. Specifically, can a lightsaber cut through Superman? The question first gained notoriety from a posting in Yahoo Answers that is hilarious in the answer’s sincerity. Gizmodo took a serious tackle at it as well, but it turns out this battle raged at the force.net six years earlier. Personally, I say no. Not because of some fanboy “Nothing-beats-Superman” logic or technical minutiae, but because of this point…

One of the most controversial (a.k.a. geeks hated it, nobody else thought twice about it) scenes in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was the scene where Indiana survives a nuclear blast at ground zero by hiding in a refrigerator. The scene was so infamous that it spawned the term “nuking the fridge.” Considering how much hatred the scene inspired, why would anyone want a collectible action figure of it that costs $175? One would assume the answer would be nobody. So what does it mean that all 600 of them sold out before it was even…

The good news is that it looks like a Swamp Thing movie is finally going to be made that respects the original character. Akiva Goldsman, the screenwriter, describes the movie in terms that would make any comic book fan smile and nod: “We want a film with real Southern, dark horror overtones, a little bit like a classic Universal horror film.” The only problem? He’s the same screenwriter who wrote Batman and Robin and Lost in Space. Just don’t put nipples on his costume, okay?

I consider FOX’s Dollhouse a rare moment in sci-fi television. It’s a highly intellectual and high-concept TV show with seemingly limitless potential that was set to be canceled, but was saved at the last minute by the fans. That’s not the rare part. Happens quite a bit in sci-fi TV. What’s rare is that, three episodes into the second season, it’s clear to me that the renewal was a mistake. This is a show that is fundamentally flawed and will never survive without significant changes. The producers and writers failed to make those changes, proving that they’ll never get it…

I recently read the classic science-fiction novel, Rendezvous with Rama. The plot revolves around a mysterious alien spacecraft (nicknamed “Rama”) that enters Earth’s Solar System, and the expedition sent to intercept and explore the ship. I must say that, from a technical standpoint, the novel is incredible. Rama is described in detail with a lot of interesting and intricate structures to explore and discover. If someone wanted to imagine what it would be like to stand on a generation ship (i.e. a spaceship designed to support generations of life during centuries-long travel from one solar system to another), this novel…

I saw Star Trek and thought it was really good, but was confused when I saw Winona Ryder listed in the credits. I figured maybe she played Ensign Number Ten in Scene 14, but then I discovered she played Spock’s mother. My first question was, “why?” First of all, why would they make such a big deal about hiring a nutjob like Winona Ryder? And then go to all the trouble of hiring her, and make her near-unrecognizable with old age make-up? And why would they hire a young woman and make her up an old woman when there are…

Having faithfully watched four seasons of Lost to find the answer to the reason behind the Numbers, imagine my surprise when it turns out it was revealed at a comic book con instead. There, Damon Lindelof said: “Here’s the story with [the] numbers. The Hanso Foundation that started the Dharma Initiative hired this guy Valenzetti to basically work on this equation to determine what was the probability of the world ending in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Valenzetti basically deduced that it was 100 percent within the next 27 years, so the Hanso Foundation started the Dharma Initiative…

If I were to summarize my review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it would be “good, not great.” The movie is not as epic as the trailers would claim to be. The opening shows a young Logan gaining his powers for the first time, and I won’t spoil what little power the scene has by revealing what goes on in it. Even still, the scene was almost completely ruined by the horrific child actors. They played a scene that should have been gut-wrenching as if it were a commercial for a videogame. Someone should have told the kids that putting in…

Now that the Wolverine movie is out, it’s time to visit one of my many sore spots over the current state of comic book characters. I haven’t followed comics regularly in over ten years, so I was unaware until recently that they had established that Wolverine’s claws weren’t added in the Weapon X procedure. He was born with bone claws. Weapon X just put adamantium over them. This, to me, makes absolutely no sense. A lot of my arguments were articulated on the very well-written post on Your Mom’s Basement, “I Hate Bone Claws.” I’ll just do a run-through. They’ve…

I recently showed the trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine to my wife, and was explaining the different characters that seemed to be shown in it. Most obvious to me (besides Gambit and Sabretooth) was the big fat guy, that I assume is the Blob. I described him as being the opposite of Juggernaut; once he sets himself down, he can’t be moved. He’s also super-strong and his fat makes him really soft so it absorbs bullets and punches, so you can’t hurt him. My wife pointed out that he has a bunch of powers, which is odd when you think…