Watch This! Space! – Details, episodes & analysis

It’s a five-person entomology seminar! Alan, Jim, PJ, Drü, and Drew dissect 1997’s Starship Troopers.

Alan is joined by Brent from the future to cannonball into a discussion of 1997’s Gattaca…or is it a belly-flop?

Alan and Paul talk about 1980's Flash Gordon. One of them loved it the other less so. Somehow it devolves into an argument about Zach Snyder's DC films (one of them hates them, the other MUCH less so), before coming back to say not everything is perfect, but there's fun to be found everywhere!

Derek Binns joins Alan and PJ from the future as the three of them talk about Rian Johnson's Looper

Alan and PJ take a look at Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.

Alan and Paul look at 2010: The Year We Make Contact. It's the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Alan and Paul are joined by Derek from Tasmania to discuss Stanley Kubrick's seminal film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Summary:

Audience meets ape man. Ape man meets big black slab. Big black slab apparently teaches ape man to hit with a bone. Bone turns into spaceship. Spaceship docks to bicycle wheel while slow old music plays.

Nondescript American man walks on, calls very British-sounding daughter, walks to a bunch of other nondescript people, and finally goes to a briefing where there may be evidence that this movie has a plot. Nondescript man goes with yet more nondescript people to Tycho Crater and sees another big black slab. Black slab makes nasty noise.

Cut to spaceship. Much yadda yadda. AI misbehaves and three extras go bye-bye. Captain Kirk’s buddy dies…again. Last actor standing goes through acid trip and ends up in room where he watches himself get older and older until he turns into a very strange baby. The end.

Alan and Paul are joined by Jim Purcell of the Savage FinCast and Legion of Substitute Podcasters to discuss the 1968 film Planet of the Apes.

One reason Planet of the Apes is significant today is that it spawned a sci-fi franchise before either Star Trek or Star Wars (despite Star Trek having premiered on television in 1966). Planet of the Apes begat four sequels (Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes) and two TV series (the live-action Planet of the Apes and the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes).

Forbidden Planet was not the first sci-fi film of the 1950s, but its influence cannot be denied:

Filmsite lists a number of firsts that Forbidden Planet achieved:

• the first film to be set entirely on a foreign planet in interstellar space, arrived at via hyperspeed travel on a flying saucer moving at more than 16 times the speed of light

• the first Hollywood film to have an all-electronic music score

• the first film in which a robot had a personality (and sense of humor), was more than just a boxy 'tin-can', and was given his own onscreen credit

• the first high-budget sci-fi film from MGM studios, with first-class special effects

• the first sci-fi film with a widescreen scope aspect ratio

• the film that initiated many genre ingredients for future sci-fi films (and TV shows)

Staying on the HG Wells theme, we look at Time After Time, in which Wells is the main character, and he's got a time machine!

This film is Nicholas Meyer’s directing debut. Meyer had already started to make a name for himself as the writer (both novel and screenplay) of The Seven Per-Cent Solution (1978), which was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1982, Meyer became part of Star Trek “royalty” when he wrote and directed Star Trek II, the movie considered to have “saved” the Star Trek franchise.