Category: Direct Beam Comms

Direct Beam Comms #98

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Loudermilk & Hit the Road

Hit the Road
Hit the Road

Two new series premiered on DirecTV last week — Loudermilk and Hit the Road. Both of these shows are decent, but I don’t think I’ll be watching any more than the first episode of each. Loudermilk stars Ron Livingston as the title character who’s an ex-alcoholic moonlighting as a counselor and “tells it like it is.” Hit the Road stars Jason Alexander as the head of a family band who tours the country. The band plays the loving family who has it all together onstage but are completely dysfunctional off.

Each of these shows are mostly regular sitcom series but with a bit of moderate nudity and cursing thrown in. Loudermilk is that sitcom character popular these days who has no filter while the family of Hit the Road have problems from lying to drugs — but in a sitcom family kind’a way.

In many ways Loudermilk and Hit the Road reminded me of British comedies that have a bit of an edge to them where neither nudity nor swearing is frowned upon. Except many of those comedies, especially the ones that air here in the US, have somewhat of an edge to them. Of which is totally lacking in these two shows.

Harsh Realm (1999) – Gone too soon

A few weeks ago I read an interesting post where writer Ken Levine talked about some TV series he liked that were cancelled too soon. Never afraid to steal a good idea I decided to pick up that mantle and write about some of my favorite series that I thought were cancelled too quickly.

The cast of Harsh Realm
The cast of Harsh Realm

Harsh Realm was the second series created by Chris Carter to follow his extremely popular show The X-Files. Sort’a a cross between that series and The Matrix, Harsh Realm takes place in a military computer simulation that’s “one mistake away” from our reality. This simulation is an exact duplicate to our reality except for one thing — here, New York was nuked throwing it into a lawless chaos.

A lawless chaos where real soldiers can plug in and go on realistic training missions without the possibility of being hurt. Except one of those soldiers, General Santiago (Terry O’Quinn) went in, took over and formed a dictatorship and now rules the realm. Enter Tom Hobbes (Scott Bairstow) who’s sent in to kill Santiago and end his rule. Inside this simulation Hobbes meets other people like Mike Pinocchio (D. B. Sweeney) who prefers life inside the game to outside where he’s disabled and simulated people like Florence (Rachel Hayward) who can manipulate the code of the system for her benefit.

I remember when Harsh Realm premiered in 1999 it was hyped like crazy by FOX. They already had a massive hit on their hands with The X-Files and while Carter’s follow-up series Millennium wasn’t as big of a hit as that series was, it was solid enough to last three seasons. And at the time I was a mega-fan of The X-Files with that series being my favorite show on TV so I couldn’t have been more excited about Harsh Realm.

Terry O'Quinn
Terry O’Quinn

The first episode was … interesting. It’s got a lot going for it from the post-apocalyptic look and feel to the idea that everything’s taking place inside a computer. Well, most everything. Part of the first episode of Harsh Realm also dealt with Hobbes’ wife played by Samantha Mathis trying to find out what the military did with her husband while dealing with a shadowy governmental agency trying to cover things up. I always thought this part of the show seemed tacked-on in order to have some element of The X-Files DNA in Harsh Realm.

Regardless, I liked the series enough and was excited to see where the first season lead when Harsh Realm was abruptly cancelled after just three episodes. The series premiered in October and didn’t make it to November. In fact, it wasn’t until years later when the show aired again on FX that I was able to watch the remaining six episodes. But even then there wasn’t much resolution as the series ended with just nine episodes of what I’m assuming was meant to be a 24 episode season.

Now, Harsh Realm is an oddity. Since there wasn’t a whole season the streaming services won’t touch it. And since there’s no resolution means that only dedicated fans of the genera or people who saw the series when it originally aired in 1999 are going to seek it out, making this one a series few have heard about and fewer still have watched.

Harsh Realm is available on DVD and episodes can also be streamed on YouTube as well.

Godless TV spot

Comics

Marvel Horror: The Magazine Collection Paperback

From Marvel:

Marvel’s supernatural superstars star in lavishly illustrated tales of horror! And many of these bizarre adventures from the age of the black-and-white magazine are collected here for the very first time! Blade hunts, Dracula stalks and the Zombie shambles! Meanwhile, night brings the daughter of the diabolical Satana! You’ll meet Gabriel, Devil Hunter! Discover the magic of Lady Daemon! Fear the Death-Dealing Mannikin! And brave the Haunt of Horror and the Vault of Evil! They’re rarely seen creepy classics filled with werewolves, vampires and monsters unleashed – read them if you dare!

Movies

Black Panther trailer

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1943: Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, Twister and the TV series ER is born
  • 1959: Sam Raimi, director of The Evil Dead and Spider-Man franchises is born
  • 1984: The TV series V premiers
  • 1984: Terminator opens in theaters
  • 1994: Stargate opens in theaters
  • 1996: The TV series Millennium premiers
  • 1997: Gattaca premiers
  • 1998: Soldier opens

Direct Beam Comms #97

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Mindhunter

If David Fincher wasn’t such an all-around great director, one of the best working in the business, I’d be a bit worried that the guy would be type… err – …cast as only a director of movies featuring serial killers. His first film of note Seven featured a serial killer who murdered people based on the “seven deadly sins,” Zodiac was all about the Zodiac killer who terrorized California in the 1960s and 1970s and even the underrated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was about a Swedish serial killer alternating between the 1960s and present day.

But Fincher has done more than just serial killer fare, he’s also directed things like Alien 3, Panic Room, Fight Club and The Social Network too all featuring characters who might be somewhat mildly psychotic, but not a single serial killer in the bunch!

Still, I had to wonder a bit about Fincher when his latest Netflix project was announced last year — a series about FBI agents who in the 1970s began interviewing serial killers in jail to try and see what made them do what they did in the series Mindhunter.

In Mindhunter, Jonathan Groff plays Holden Ford. An FBI hostage negotiator who’s trying to work within the confines of an agency built and setup to run in the 1930s but operating in a very different America of 1977. Ford wants to understand why criminals are the way they are, like why do people like Charles Manson do the things they’ve done? Whereas the average agent knows why criminals are the way they are — they were born that way. Period. End of argument. Ford and veteran agent Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) set out on a training tour of small towns across the country where they can bring a little light of more modern police work to them and these cops can teach these FBI agents about some of the realities of life on the street as it were.

In many ways, Mindhunter acts as a sort of prequel Thomas Harris novels like Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs of which were built around the work of people like John E. Douglas of whom the book Mindhunter was based on. In the works of Harris, the FBI agents are actively using the techniques that would have been developed in the time of Ford and Trench. But for those two living in 1977 anything that’s not related to kicking down doors and shooting the bad guys are looked down on. Even if the world was changing and murders like those committed by the Son of Sam were happening that didn’t have any logical reason behind them that could only be solved by psychological means.

Mindhunter is slow moving, but deliberately so. It’s not like the pace is slow just that the first episode isn’t so much an “episode” as the first part of a much longer story. I suppose that’s the ideal model for binge viewers where one episode leads directly to the next with only a smattering of credits before the start of the next show. But it does make it a bit harder for someone like me to watch and keep track of the story who might not watch all ten episode of the series in one sitting.

Stranger Things season 2 TV spot

Comics

Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection Vol. 1

Another of the Marvel horror comics out in a collected edition this month is Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection Vol. 1.

From Marvel:

Jack Russell stars in tales to make you howl, as Marvel’s very own Werewolf! Learn how Jack became one of the grooviest ghoulies of the seventies in this classic collection of his earliest adventures! Afflicted with his family’s curse, Jack’s sets out in search for answers. Could they lie in the terrible tome known as the Darkhold? But Jack’s quest is fraught with danger – from mad monks to big-game hunters to a traveling freak show! Then there’s the terror of Tatterdemalion, the horror of Hangman and the torment of Taboo! But few encounters can compare with Krogg, the lurker from beyond – except, maybe, a Marvel Team-Up with Spider-Man – and a supernatural showdown with Dracula himself!

Movies

Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer

The New Mutants trailer

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1948: Margot Kidder, Lois Lane of Superman is born
  • 1977: Damnation Alley premiers
  • 1986: The Quiet Earth opens
  • 2004: The TV series Battlestar Galactica premiers

Direct Beam Comms #96

CategoriesComic Books, Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

The Gifted

The Gifted is the second live-action Marvel superhero series to take place in the X-Men universe on TV now. While the other series Legion is a trippy, existential journey into the mind, The Gifted is more a straight-up comic book show where lots of things explode.

The Gifted follows the Strucker family; mom Kate (Amy Acker), dad Reed (Stephen Moyer), and siblings Lauren (Natalie Alyn Lind) and Andy (Percy Hynes White). Dad is a full-time hunter of superpowered mutants, a sort of modern day Gestapo agent who tracks them down and locks them away. Except what Reed doesn’t know is that his kids are actually mutants. Daughter Lauren has known for some time about her powers but hide them and bother Andy discovers his when he’s attacked by bullies at a school dance and brings down the school gym ala Carrie only less deadly. Enter the Sentinel Services who makes mutants like Andy and Lauren disappear, so the family goes on the run discovering that there’s a whole mutant underground group operating on the fringes of society fighting for mutants everywhere and waiting for the day the X-Men return.

I thought The Gifted was a good show, if a bit too on the nose. The story here is pretty much the same story that’s been told in comics and the movies for decades now. Mutants who are being oppressed by society/the government must run/fight for their rights.

Not that this is a bad thing, just that The Gifted doesn’t really elevate the material but instead continues the same themes that have been explored over and over again in the comics. It’s essentially the prequel to the movie X-Men: Days of Future Past where regular humans are starting to drive the mutants towards extinction. But maybe because TV is a totally medium from the comics and movies this doesn’t matter to anyone but the most ardent fans?

One thing I also noticed was how much the structure of The Gifted was like older series akin to The Incredible Hulk or Otherworld from the 1970s and 1980s. Where someone like David Banner in The Incredible Hulk or the Sterling family in Otherworld have to go on the run from government agents out to get them. Now I’m not saying that the stories of those shows will be similar to The Gifted — those early “on the run” series always had the protagonists one step ahead of the bad guys while helping the locals overcome some obstacle be it rebels stealing their food or government agents their land. It’s just that from all outward appearances with a few tweaks The Gifted could be plopped down in 1986 network TV and viewers then would recognize it.

Ghosted

I think the new FOX series Ghosted has a lot of potential, even if the pilot episode seemed overstuffed, overdone and was’t that interesting.

Craig Robinson and Adam Scott star as Leroy and Max, an ex-LAPD detective and ex-scientist who are pulled into the mysterious governmental organization investigating all things mysterious from ghosts to UFOs. One of their agents has gone missing and left a message that Leroy and Max are the only ones capable of finding him. We go from Leroy and Adam in their day jobs, being kidnapped and bribed to investigate the disappearance, agreeing to do so, having to sneak into a nuclear facility, being attacked by a something, more investigating, the duo fighting an alien presence then finally agreeing to join the mysterious agency.

All of which happens in the 19 or so minutes in the first episode. It’s so crammed full of story that things stopped making a lot of sense to me at about the halfway mark.

That being said, I think Ghosted has a lot of potential. The general premise has a lot of promise and Scott and Robinson act well together. I just hope that future episodes have a bit less story than the pilot did.

Comics

Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Vol. 1

I was always into horror comics as a kid, but never the ones from Marvel. I wasn’t against them, they just weren’t around and available when I was collecting comics. It wasn’t until the 1990s with the resurgence of horror characters like Blade and Ghost Rider that I began picking up early horror titles at flea markets. Now, Marvel is set to release a few collected editions of these classic horror comics, one of which is Tomb of Dracula: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 out this week.

From Marvel:

Sink your teeth into a vampiric volume that chronicles some of the greatest supernatural comics ever printed! The all-time classic Tomb of Dracula ushered in Marvel’s glorious age of horror, while the black-and-white magazine Dracula Lives! delivered stories with real bite – and both featured legendary creators, including Gene Colan in his prime illustrating the Lord of Vampires! The tomb has opened, and Dracula lives again! But his descendant, Frank Drake, joins vampire hunters including Rachel Van Helsing and Quincy Harker in a bid to return him to his grave! Will they drive a stake through Dracula’s heart – or will that honor fall to Blade? Plus tales of terror from across Dracula’s 500-year existence, featuring Hell-Crawlers, the Monster of the Moors, wizards, gargoyles, voodoo queens and more!

The Terminator: The Original Comics Series–Tempest and One Shot

Some of my favorite comics series are the early Dark Horse Aliens, Predator and Terminator titles that all acted as sequels to those films before those films had sequels. With each of those tiles I own the original comics series as well as several collected editions of each title. They were highly influential to me and I still judge comics today based on them.

The first Dark Horse Terminator comic, now known as Terminator: Tempest, dealt with a whole group of soldiers from the future sent to their past, our present, in order to destroy Cyberdyne and end the Terminator threat before it begins. And instead of sending back just one Terminator to handle them, Skynet sent back a whole pack of them to do battle on the posh streets of Los Angeles.

From Dark Horse:

Heartless, mechanical cruelty meets dogged human courage and perseverance in Dark Horse’s very first Terminator story! John Connor sends a strike team into the past to destroy Cyberdyne. But the machines counter by sending a team of Terminators to block the attempt–turning Los Angeles into a war zone!

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1949: Sigourney Weaver, Ripley in Alien, Galaxy Quest and Avatar is born
  • 1956: Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, Millennium and The Lone Gunman is born
  • 1979: Brandon Routh, Superman of Superman Returns and Ray Palmer of Legends of Tomorrow is born
  • 1993: Demolition Man premiers
  • 1995: Strange Days opens in theaters
  • 1999: The TV series Harsh Realm premiers

Direct Beam Comms #95

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Star Trek: Discovery

The ironic thing about Star Trek was that after the series Star Trek: Enterprise ended in 2005 I really got the feeling that Paramount had no confidence in the property whatsoever. At that time, before the launch of the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie, things were so bleak that there were reports that Paramount was getting ready to shut down the official Star Trek website.

Luckily that never transpired and while I didn’t care for them, the Abrams films resuscitated the property for a little while longer. Now, 12 years after the last new TV episode of Star Trek comes a new series, this time not shown in syndication, or on cable outposts like UPN or The CW but instead for the first episode at least on CBS; Star Trek: Discovery.

This seventh Star Trek TV series takes place after the events of Star Trek: Enterprise but before those in the original Star Trek. Starring Sonequa Martin Rainford as Commander Michael Burnham and Michelle Yeoh as Captain Han Bo, the promise of Star Trek: Discovery was to take turn an aging franchise into a modern TV series.

I hate to report that while Star Trek: Discovery might be a modern series, not much happened in the first episode that debuted on CBS. We’re introduced to the crew of the ship the USS Shenzhou that, on a mission to repair a Federation relay thingy uncovers Klingons hiding nearby. And as things go from bad to worse and one Klingon ship is joined by many and when Burnham tries to fire on the Klingons without orders to do so … the series goes to commercial with the message, “If you want more Star Trek subscribe to CBS All Access.”

So we’re left on quite a cliffhanger. And while I’d argue that this first episode of Star Trek: Discovery is probably better in terms of story than something like the first episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Voyager were, since the Star Trek: Discovery episode ends on a cliffhanger there isn’t much story present to hold things together and it ends feeling half done.

Star Trek: Discovery

And because this is the first half of what’s obviously supposed to be a single, two-hour long episode/movie. It means that in this first episode we never get to meet the crew of the USS Discovery nor most of the cast of the show who’s been pitching the series the last few weeks other than Martin-Green. There’s no Jason Isaacs, Anthony Rapp or Mary Wiseman who’ve been everywhere in marketing materials and in fact inexplicably the USS Discovery ship is totally absent as well. 100% of the episode here focuses in on the Shenzhou and its crew who, as far as I can tell, aren’t in the show after the second episode.

Which leaves me scratching my head a bit? If this first episode is supposed to sell the viewers on Star Trek: Discovery in order to get them to signup and get CBS All Access accounts, then why show only the first episode with a mostly different cast on a totally different ship where nothing much happens other than a tense standoff?

I liked Star Trek: Discovery and would be watching it every week if it were on CBS. But I don’t think the first episode of the show sold me enough on it to shell out $84 a year on the service just for Star Trek.

Inhumans

So far, Marvel hasn’t been able to match the quality of the movies in their TV series yet. Some of that has to do with the nature of films having much bigger budgets than a comparable episode of TV. For example, while a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy 2 might have a budget of something like $200 million, if reports are to be believed a comparable first feature-length episode of Inhumans might have a budget of $20 million. Now $20 million isn’t a minuscule amount, but it’s not nearly enough to deliver the spectacle that audiences have come to expect from the Marvel movies that are generally built around a few big action scenes with bits of story holding things together. The TV series with their smaller budgets simply can’t do that. Instead they have to rely on things like characters and story over big action scenes.

I think what hurts Inhumans the most is that it doesn’t have much action or story. There’s a lot of palace intrigue and when there are fight scenes they’re standard TV fare. But to the story of Inhumans was so over the top and heavy handed it was unintentionally silly at times.

In the Inhumans, inhumans who have all sorts of varying superpowers live and work in a secret city on the Moon hidden from the regular humans on the Earth. Inhumans started off as regular people, but after being exposed to the “Terrigen Mist” at some point fled to the Moon to escape persecution. There, during a ritual all teens are exposed to the mist to develop their powers.

On the Moon there are the haves like Black Bolt (Anson Mount), Medussa, (Serinda Swan) and Karnak (Ken Leung) who have powers like a super-voice, super-hair and the ability to win any fight and those who were exposed to the mist like Maximus (Iwan Rheon) but didn’t develop any powers. The have-nots are forced to work in the mines for some reason that’s never really explained. The haves live a life of luxury in a city that’s slowly running out of resources so Maximus hatches a plot to leave the Moon and take over the Earth but his planning is so shoddy he allows most of the main characters to escape his clutches and flee to the very planet he wishes to conquer.

Inhumans isn’t bad, it’s just boring. For a show that’s about a population of super beings living on the Moon and doing battle the first movie-length episode seemed to crawl at times where it seemed like nothing much happened. The special effects of the show aren’t movie-quality, but neither are they of lesser quality for other similar shows.

Honestly, Inhumans is pretty much what I expected from a modern-day ABC Marvel series where there are good guys and bad, and there’s never any doubt as to who is who.

Movies

Annihilation movie trailer

1922 movie trailer

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1923: Charlton Heston of Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man is born
  • 1948: Avery Brooks, Captain Sisko of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
  • 1959: The TV series The Twilight Zone premiers
  • 1968: Night of the Living Dead opens in theaters
  • 1987: Near Dark opens in theaters
  • 1988: The movie Alien Nation premiers in theaters
  • 1999: The TV series Roswell premiers
  • 2000: The TV series Dark Angel premiers

Direct Beam Comms #94

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Star Trek: The Next Generation

It literally took me years after it had ended to see all the episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) when I decided to watch the series in the early 1990s. I remember what a big deal TNG was when it premiered this week 30 years ago in 1987 with there being news stories about the show and the first episode “Encounter at Farpoint” airing in primetime. I even remember that my dad who wasn’t at all into sci-fi was excited about TNG because of some nostalgia factor and we watched that first episode when it aired.

Some of the cast of TNG

And I think to a certain extent that’s why it took me so long to checkout TNG. If my dad was into TNG, then surly it was uncool.

It wasn’t easy when TNG was first running episodes to see it in my area. Much like with Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future where I lived TNG aired early Sunday mornings well into the 1990s. And since there was no way I was ever going to get up early on a Sunday morning unless I had to I missed a lot of years of TNG.

What finally got me interested in TNG was the debut of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in 1993 which I liked and got me interested in Star Trek in general as well. And when I started watching TNG which was still in its first run syndication then I really dug it.

However, watching older episodes of TNG that I had already missed then wasn’t an easy task. One good thing was that right when I started watching TNG was the time that Star Trek in general was undergoing a surge or popularity so older episodes of TNG would air at different times during the week alongside the new ones. So slowly, but surly I began catching older episodes of TNG that I had missed.

Here’s a drawing I did in 1997 celebrating the 10th anniversary of TNG

At some point I’d bought a Star Trek book that listed all the episodes each Star Trek series that had aired to that point. I still have it. In the guide I’d mark off each episode of TNG that I’d seen and would be on the lookout in the TV listings for any that I had missed. And because TNG was airing in syndication everyday and because I started taping these episodes off of TV while I was at school I quickly began marking off more and more episodes as I’d see them. For some reason 25 years later I still have all these VHS tapes of TNG episodes I’d recorded off of TV and watched once. I figured I was building a personal TNG episode collection — of course now with TNG being easily available via many streaming services and VHS being a relatively dead medium these tapes do little more than take up closet space these days.

Still, tapes and syndicated TNG or no there was still episodes of TNG that I never seemed to be able to catch. These episode always seemed to be from the first or second season, one of which I remember wanting to see badly was “Q Who” that featured the first appearance of the villainous Borg. In that case I ended up buying a copy of the episode on VHS — they used to do that, sell single episodes of popular TV series on VHS — just to be able to see that episode. Even later I joined the TNG Columbia House tape club where every month I’d receive one tape in the mail that contained two episodes of the series for something like $20 a month.

($4.95 is for the first tape — every tape after that was $19.95.)

Because of the expense and because more of the older episodes of TNG started turning up in syndication I didn’t do this long. But still, I have a drawer full of these tapes along side the ones I recorded off of TV too.

Some of the cast of TNG

I’d guess that sometime in the later 1990s I finally fulfilled my quest of seeing each and every episode of TNG and having marked off all those episodes in my book. At least I don’t think there’s any TNG out there that I haven’t seen, or at least I’ve never turned over to a random episode of TNG on TV and thought, “What’s this one!?”

Now that I think of it, even if I have seen all of TNG I certainly never saw the episodes in order. When I started watching the show in the early 1990s I would have seen any new ones in order. But as for the old ones I’d have seen them as they happened to air in syndication. And they didn’t always air in order. So my experience with TNG is a bit of a hodgepodge, with me seeing brand new episodes along older ones on TV along with whatever tape I’d get from Columbia House that month whenever I started doing that.

Now of course it couldn’t be easier to see every episode of TNG. The entire series can be bought on Blu-ray for something like $80 which is about 30% of what Columbia House was charging for a single season of the series on VHS and the series is also available via a few streaming services and aires in regular rotation on BBC America too.

The Good Place

The sitcom The Good Place returned to NBC for a second season last week and is as good as ever. This show about Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) who was supposed to go to the bad place after she died but accidentally was sent to the good was one of the bright spots on the networks last year that was filled with mostly ick.

Spoilers about the first season follow, so if you haven’t seen it you might want to skip the rest of this review. But trust me, if you’re not watching The Good Place you’re missing out.

At the end of the first season Eleanor came to the realization that she wasn’t mistakenly sent to the good place, she’s been in the bad place all along. And everything that’s been happening in what she thought was the good place was really a ploy by this bad place manager Michael (Ted Danson) to find new and unique ways to torture people there.

The second season starts right back where the first ended, with Eleanor and her group of fellow people who think they’re in the good place coming to the realization they’re in the bad, but Michael having reset everything to run his plan again with Eleanor and her group starting from scratch with them having no memory of what had come before.

Whereas the first season mostly followed Eleanor tying to become a better person to stay in what she thought was the good place, so far the second has followed Michael and his minions behind the scenes as it were trying to get his plan back on track but finding that even though Eleanor doesn’t know what’s going on, she’s still a formidable opponent.

The Punisher TV spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIY6zFL95hE

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1952: Christopher Reeve, Superman, is born
  • 1954: Linda Hamilton of Terminator, Terminator 2 and the TV series Beauty and the Beast is born
  • 1985: The TV series Amazing Stories debuts
  • 1987: Star Trek: The Next Generation premiers
  • 1995: The TV series Space: Above and Beyond premiers
  • 2001: Star Trek: Enterprise premiers
  • 2004: Shaun of the Dead opens in theaters
  • 2005: Serenity opens in theaters
  • 2013: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premieres