Category: Sci-Fi Café


Swords, Starships, and Superheroes–Writer recounts 30 years writing for genre television

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, Superheroes, TV — 1 Comment
January 18, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

For most television viewers, the names after a show scroll by without much notice.  But if you pay attention, you may find the writer of one of your favorite episodes is the writer of many of your favorites, which may point you to other series and episodes you’ve not seen yet that you may like.  You might not have heard of Paul Robert Coyle, but it’s likely that anyone who is a fan of one or more genre shows has watched the results of his work.  Or maybe you haven’t heard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Superboy, The Dead Zone, Simon & Simon, or earlier detective and police series like The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, Crazy Like a Fox, Jake and the Fat Man, and CHiPs.  Coyle wrote for these series, and readers of his new book Swords, Starships, and Superheroes: A TV Writer’s Life Scripting the Stories of Heroes may find he wrote some of their favorite episodes.

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Preview–Blade Runner lives on in third chapter of award-winning sequel

Filed under: Comics & Books, Movies, Sci-Fi Café — Leave a comment
January 15, 2021

Some of the best dystopian futurism in years comes to a conclusion in the third volume of Blade Runner 2019, the official sequel to the cult classic 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott.  Co-written by Michael Green, the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Logan, Blade Runner 2049, and Murder on the Orient Express, and prolific comics writer Mike Johnson (Batman, Star Trek, Transformers) with artwork from Andres Guinaldo (Nightwing, Justice League Dark), Blade Runner 2019 Volume 3–Home Again, Home Again finds ex-Blade Runner Ash returning from the Off-World colonies to the rain-soaked future Los Angeles.

Take a look at a preview of this new chapter in the Blade Runner story below courtesy of Titan Comics.

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Smuggler’s Run–Star Wars Adventures offers a great jump-on point for the series

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café — Leave a comment
January 13, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s the nature of the new Star Wars brand to bounce back and forth in the galaxy stories–a lot.  Where the idea of looking back in 2021 to Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens may not sound like an obvious choice, once you realize the context, the characters, and the setting, anyone can get onboard the new two-part Star Wars Adventures tale Smuggler’s Run.  If you don’t know Star Wars Adventures, it’s the cartoonier side of Star Wars in the pages of Marvel Comics, targeted at kids.  So you can always rely on some good fun in an issue of the series.  This tale spins out of the monthly series with a story about Han Solo and Chewie after the destruction of the first Death Star, and their plan to spend their reward money.

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Seven’s Reckoning–A Star Trek Voyager story told like a lost episode of the TV series

Filed under: Comics & Books, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 12, 2021

   

Review by C.J. Bunce

Star Trek Voyager’s Seven of Nine takes center stage in a new limited series from IDW Publishing.  In Star Trek Voyager: Seven’s Reckoning, writer Dave Baker (Action Hospital, Star Trek: Waypoint) and artists Angel Hernandez  (Star Trek: Picard Countdown, Star Trek/Green Lantern) and Ronda Pattison have created one of those rare tie-in stories that is solidly believable as a missing episode of the TV series.  In Seven’s Reckoning, the Voyager crew encounters an alien vessel filled with a cryogenically frozen crew, which should evoke thoughts of Star Trek Into Darkness and its source story, the original series episode “Space Seed” (it also might conjure images from the Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence movie, Passengers).  As Captain Janeway and the crew attempt to assist the peoples, called the Ohrdi’Nadar, Seven lands in the middle of an uprising of the worker aliens–the Vesh–against Septa, their oppressor and leader, getting a close encounter with the Prime Directive.

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Chilling Adventures of Sabrina–Final season ends with a tour of the eldritch terrors

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 8, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

It had a promising first and third season, twists and turns, clever story arcs, and a contender for the most faithful adaptation of a comic book series from the past decade.  The creators of the fourth and final season of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gave 2020 a much-needed batch of two complete seasons, and we already gave the third season kudos in the 2020 Best of TV review here at borg.  Kiernan Shipka proved to be one of TV’s best young actors, embodying a character that is next in line after Buffy Summers, Veronica Mars, and Liv Moore as young genre heroines who led series you can count on the first time and after re-watches.  Already a contender for one of the best TV series of this century, and one of Netflix’s most creative efforts, how did the final season fare for our heroine Sabrina Spellman?

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Revolution of the Daleks–Whittaker and Chibnall hit their stride in holiday Doctor Who episode

Filed under: Fantasy Realms, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 6, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s always a big surprise when the holiday episode of Doctor Who is a critical not-to-be-missed episode.  When we last saw the Doctor, she was trapped millions of light years away in an alien prison.  The New Year’s Day 2021 special Revolution of the Daleks is not a filler, out-of-continuity holiday showpiece, instead continuing after ten months have lapsed for the Doctor’s companions back on Earth, and after the Doctor has been imprisoned for years in that same relative time span.  If you missed this episode you missed: the return of John Barrowman’s universal fan-favorite character Captain Jack Harkness, another Law & Order/Law & Order UK crossover/reunion, the last we’ll see of some major characters, a new Prime Minister, a preview of a new companion, and one of the best Dalek episodes in the 57 years of the series.  As the studio releases word that Jodie Whittaker will be soon leaving the series, Revolution of the Daleks reflects that both her performance as the 13th Doctor and Chris Chibnall’s running of the series has finally arrived.  It’s a timeless story full of important, lovely emotional beats, fantastic new sci-fi special and visual effects, and a return to the classic framework and themes of the show’s past.

Let’s take a look at why this episode was superb and offer up some candidates for the 14th Doctor…

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Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration–Excellent chronicle of the seven-year series arrives for 25th anniversary

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Retro Fix, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
January 4, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

For a fan like me, Star Trek: Voyager was the definitive Star Trek series, the crew that most fully embraced Gene Roddenberry’s vision beyond the television series he created in 1966.  It featured a crew on a ship that explored like no crew before it, with only their available technology and their wits to survive.  Helmed by Kate Mulgrew’s personable yet tough Captain Kathryn Janeway, the crew would travel 70,000 light years home after being stranded in the Delta Quadrant.  The 25th anniversary of the launch of the series was 2020, and worthy of the celebration, authors Ben Robinson and Mark Wright have created the definitive behind the scenes account of the 1995-2001 series, Star Trek: Voyager–A Celebration, available now here at Amazon.

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Preview–Disney Parks cookbook–100 recipes to re-create flavors from theme parks

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January 3, 2021

Even if you haven’t visited Disney World or Disneyland, odds are you heard someone rave about Dole Whip, a frozen dessert that seems to have made converts of millions across the country.  Now you can make your own Dole Whip at home, and 100 other recipes replicating the foods you can buy at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and other locations in The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook, available now here at Amazon.

Check out our look inside  The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook below, including the recipe for Dole Whip, courtesy of publisher Adams Media:

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The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book–Start 2021 with the fun of 40 new games in one volume

Filed under: Comics & Books, Con Culture, Fantasy Realms, Sci-Fi Café — Leave a comment
January 1, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

Everyone has had enough of 2020, maybe more so than any year in recent (or distant!) memory.  Isn’t it about time we have more fun?  Simon & Schuster imprint Adams Media has a quick way to get started.  Editor James D’Amato has enlisted forty game players and game makers to build 40 quick-to-learn roleplaying games in The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book.  The ideas are brilliant, the breadth of content, completely creative.  You can choose from several levels of complexity, different genres, game types, game tie-in props and tools, and a variety of tones and formats.  If you like to play roleplaying games (RPGs) or you’re a beginner, you’ll find a lot to propel you to create your own games and enjoy something new to play right now in this volume.

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The Art of Star Trek: Discovery goes where no one has gone before–behind the scenes of the first two seasons

Filed under: Backstage Pass, Comics & Books, Sci-Fi Café, TV — Leave a comment
December 28, 2020

Review by C.J. Bunce

After delivering a dozen Star Trek books, fiction and non-fiction, authors Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann are back in the franchise, this time covering the entire first two seasons of CBS All Access’s Star Trek: Discovery in their new book The Art of Star Trek: Discovery.  This is the latest concept art and film production book in a franchise of some of the best printed TV and film retrospectives.  Star Trek: Discovery, which led the newest chapter in the television Star Trek Universe (followed by Short Treks, Picard and Lower Decks), follows the exploits of Vulcan-raised science officer Michael Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery as they boldly go where no one has gone before.  This book covers every corner of the series in an attractive hardcover full of great photographs.

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