The Burn may have decimated the Federation and caused major, potentially devastating problems on worlds like Book’s planet, but it was The Emerald Chain that used the power vacuum and the desperation that followed to get a stranglehold on vulnerable worlds and populations. “The Chain has turned prime directive violations into an art form,” Vance explains in the clip above. “They make reckless contact with pre-warp civilizations that have something they want....

There have been whispered rumors that the ghost of Roddenberry, who died in 1991, haunts the old Star Trek sets, leaving a whiff of aftershave in his wake. Brannon Braga got his start on Star Trek: The Next Generation and wrote more scripts, over a hundred, for the franchise than any other writer on the series. While Braga admitted he wasn’t a Trekkie growing up, he has become a renowned authority through his years of close association at the comm....

It’s a fascinating time-suck of a website which brings some real revelations about the history of everyday science fiction phrases such as ray gun, transmat, flying saucer, and droid (not Star Wars as it happens). One factoid a number of people have flagged in the dictionary is the revelation that the phrase “Warp Drive” didn’t actually originate with Star Trek, but was first used in a story called ‘The Flight of the Starling’ in Amazing Stories in 1948....

Speaking to attendees at DragonCon in Atlanta, Peck revealed that he had been among “a smaller few” Kevin Feige considered for Captain America. Given that the role went to established actor Chris Evans, and that the most well-known almost-Cap was The Office romantic lead John Krasinski, it might come as a surprise that Marvel would look at Peck. After all, before becoming Spock, Peck’s most prominent role was in the TV series based on the movie 10 Things I Hate About You....

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Episode 1 and 2 Ewan McGregor’s return as Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Prequel kid dream. With the sort of cast reunion the Sequel Trilogy provided for the children of the ’80s, McGregor and Hayden Christensen are poised to stoke the same fervor for fans who grew up in the early 2000s. Luckily, Deborah Chow brings her directorial confidence from The Mandalorian to a strong start for the six-episode Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries....

Despite the desert planet’s reputation as the middle of nowhere of the galaxy, a lot of things happen on Tatooine. In the second episode of The Book of Boba Fett, the bounty hunter turned crime lord digs further into Mos Espa’s underworld and learns from the Tusken desert-dwellers. Along with the Tusken culture we detailed last week, there are quite a few Star Wars deep cuts to see in “The Tribes of Tatooine....

Stranger Things season 4 is over! Well…almost. The first seven episodes that constitute Stranger Things season 4 volume 1 have now arrived on Netflix but there is still one more volume to go. Volume 2, which will contain episodes 8 and 9, is set to premiere on Friday, July 1. For now though, the ending of episode 7 “The Massacre at Hawkins Lab” has given us much to chew on and mull over....

If you’re one of those many gamers that never got the chance to experience Super Mario 3D World the first time around, you may be wondering what it’s all about. Well, while the recently added Bowser’s Fury expansion adds a new ingredient to the formula, Super Mario 3D World is essentially what it presents itself to be: a 3D version of Super Mario World for SNES. That means that most of the game is broken down into classic Super Mario platforming courses spread across various worlds that feature classic themes such as desert, ice, fire, and…ok, just take our word for it that these courses and worlds are far more clever than they may appear....

Superman & Lois episode 2 gave us a lot more information on our potential bad guy, and it’s quite a doozy. Superman’s Iron Man-esque foe isn’t Lex Luthor, he’s a Luthor from a parallel Earth, by implication stranded on this one by the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And while Superman & Lois draws a lot from the comics, is this Captain Luthor like another big multiversal Luthor we know from DC Comics as well?...

But the idea of current hotshot Italian filmmaker, Luca Guadagnino taking on the challenge (after David Gordon Green, director of the new Halloween, spent years trying to get it off the ground) was an interesting one. Guadagnino’s films, including I Am Love, A Bigger Splash and last year’s acclaimed Call Me by Your Name, all have a sensual, fleshy, almost luscious quality that could in theory bring a new dimension to the horror genre, especially in a story set in a ballet academy that is actually a coven of witches....

The Protagonist might be one of the most unimaginatively named main characters of all time, but it’s worth pointing out that he is referred to as “the Protagonist,” which is notably different from being called “the Hero.” Of course it’s not hard to argue he’s a good guy who does good guy things. He is fighting against a gangster who regularly kills people and has trapped his wife in an abusive marriage....

The 100 Season 5 Episode 2 Faster paced than the season opener, “Red Queen” is a great vehicle for Octavia as well as showing how she sets the new world order. This is its own form of world-building: making a new Kru, new rules, a new home. It also pays huge dividends on O’s history and the history of the people of the ark. This is why they had the harsh laws....

The 100 Season 5 Episode 4 After three episodes of much-awaited preamble, tonight’s episode sets in motion this season’s paradigm. Pandora’s Box gets a boost of energy from showing Wankru, Spacekru, and Clarke all in the same episode, for the first time this season. The mechanics are out of the way: most everyone is back on earth and out of the bunker. Clarke is reunited with her people. The prison ship people have some mysterious other motives, and they’ve shown that, like the 100 before them, they’re more than willing to rachet up the violence to get whatever they feel entitled to....

The Americans Season 5 Episode 13 I’ve been thinking a lot about Shakespeare lately. Party because of This American Life recently reran its excellent episode in which inmates perform the bloody final act of Hamlet and partly because I’m probably never not thinking about Shakespeare on some barely conscious level. This thought process has unlocked a memory from middle school that has ended up being far more transformative than I realized....

It’s obviously an early take, none of the nuances which will come to define the sound of it are yet in play. Paul McCartney is still shouting out chords, ad-libbing and scatting lyrics, most prominently the refrain which holds the piece together. A deadpan George Harrison asks if the song is called “I’ve Got a Feeling?” During the song, John Lennon backtalks and improvises melodic possibilities to fill in the as-yet-unfinished piece....

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (2010) Just because you’re a redneck, it doesn’t make you a psycho, in this deceptively adorable anti-slasher where a bunch of vacationing college kids keep accidentally getting themselves killed trying to escape from the harmless Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and his lovely friend Dale (Tyler Labine). Eli Craig’s directorial debut is gruesome, gory, and very funny, but the movie is more than just a gimmick: there are some top horror twists here, too....

This is by no means a complete list. Almost every Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation has a spectral presence; Charles Dickens’ nighttime visitors in A Christmas Carol are only ghosts of presents we wrap for seasonal coverage; director Lew Allen’s 1944 horror feature The Uninvited isn’t here because I haven’t read Dorothy Macardle’s Uneasy Freehold (1941), which it was based on yet; The Amityville Horror comes from a novel, but is allegedly “a true story” (which you can read about here)....

Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld), Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George (Jason Alexander), and Kramer (Michael Richards), have soiled baptisms, weddings, anniversaries, Thanksgiving dinners, Puerto Rican Day marches, and even Super Bowl parties, which gave birth to the very phrase “re-gifting.” They’ve mugged old ladies for chocolate babkas, punctured the Woody Woodpecker balloon in the Macy’s Day Parade, and even convinced a tenant association to pass on upgrading an apartment to a survivor of the Andrea Doria shipwreck during the holiday season....

That didn’t stop him from feeling a touch of the Christmas spirit when filming the Ghosts special in February this year. “That actually felt very festive. It really had that Christmas feel. As well as the decorations, they added in some scents that made the set smell really Christmassy.” Even the most tinsel-averse can be turned by a cinnamon and gingerbread candle. It won’t have just been about the fragrance....

If you had to place a bet on the more likely murderer between a) a wealthy perfectionist who’s creepily obsessed with controlling women who look exactly like his dead wife, or b) some sadsack everyman who got dumped for being too needy, your money would clearly be on the rich weirdo. In BBC thriller The Girl Before, architect Edward Monkford played by David Oyelowo is the one who sets off the danger siren....