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Betwixt & Between SCI-FI

December 30, 2025 by tjwolf5_wp

Betwixt & Between SCI-FI: explores states and places of transition, uncertainty — like generation ships, virtual realities, or Alien dimensions — focusing on psychological shifts and Blurred Boundaries (between Past & Future or Known & Unknown worlds). It is defined by Portals and Thresholds — “crossing over” from one Reality to another (like one Year to the next).

Stargate (1994)

Stargate is a SCI-FI action-adventure film directed by Roland Emmerich, and stars Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson, Alexis Cruz, Mili Avital, and Viveca Lindfors. The plot centers on the “Stargate”, an ancient ring-shaped device that creates a wormhole, enabling travel to a similar device elsewhere in the universe. The central plot explores the theory of extraterrestrial beings having an influence upon human civilization.

Storyline
In 1928 at Giza, Egypt, archaeologist Professor Paul Langford, accompanied by his daughter Catherine, unearths cover stones engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphs and other markings. Beneath he discovers a large metallic ring of unknown purpose.

In 1994, the now-elderly Catherine (Lindfors) invites Egyptologist and linguist Daniel Jackson, Ph.D. (Spader) to translate the hieroglyphs. The stones, located underground at a military installation in Colorado, are now part of a classified U.S. Air Force project overseen by Special Operations Colonel Jack O’Neil (Russell). Jackson determines that the hieroglyphs refer to a “stargate” which uses star constellations as spatial coordinates. He is then shown the Stargate, the ring device from Giza. They use his coordinates to align the Stargate’s rotating inner track with V-shaped markings (or “chevrons”) along its outside. When all seven chevrons are locked in, a wormhole opens, connecting the Stargate with a distant planet. Jackson joins O’Neil and his team (Reilly, Porro, Freeman, Brown, Ferretti, and Kawalsky) as they pass through the wormhole.

They emerge inside a pyramid on the arid desert planet of Abydos. Jackson attempts to locate the symbols required for the return journey through the Stargate but fails. O’Neil orders Kawalsky to set up camp. Jackson sees a mastadge, a large animal with a harness, which drags him off when he approaches it to investigate. O’Neil, Kawalsky and Brown follow and they discover a tribe of humans working to mine a strange mineral, which Brown identifies as the same material the Stargate is made of. O’Neil radios the others to secure basecamp. Following them back to their city, Jackson realizes that the people speak a variant of Ancient Egyptian and is able to communicate with them. He learns that the tribe sees him and his comrades as emissaries of their god Ra due to an amulet given to him by Catherine. The tribe’s chieftain Kasuf presents Jackson with his daughter Sha’uri (Avital) as a gift, and although Jackson initially refuses her, he later becomes romantically attached to her. O’Neil befriends Kasuf’s teenaged son Skaara and his friends. That night, Ra’s ship lands atop the pyramid structure, and his soldiers capture Ferretti and Freeman while killing Porro and Reilly.

Through hidden markings and discussions with the tribe, Jackson learns that Ra (Davidson) is an Alien being who came to Earth during the Ancient Egyptian period to possess human bodies to extend his own life. Ra enslaved these humans and used the Stargate to bring some of them to Abydos to mine the mineral that is used in the alien technology. Humans on Earth revolted, overthrew Ra’s overseers, and buried the Stargate to prevent its use. During this investigation, Jackson comes across a cartouche containing six of the seven symbols needed to configure the Stargate for the return to Earth, but the seventh has been broken off and has worn away.

When Jackson, O’Neil, Brown, and Kawalsky return to the pyramid, there is a firefight against Ra’s soldiers. Brown is killed and Kawalsky is injured. Jackson and O’Neil are captured and brought before Ra and his guards, who are revealed to be humanoids when they retract their armored head-pieces. A firefight ensues and Jackson is killed; O’Neil is incapacitated and is incarcerated with the others. Ra places Jackson’s body in a sarcophagus-like device that regenerates him. Ra then shows Jackson a nuclear bomb which O’Neil had secretly brought with him. Perceiving their arrival as an act of war, Ra declares his intentions to send the bomb back through the Stargate to Earth, along with a shipment of the mineral, which will increase its explosive power a hundred fold—essentially creating a civilization-ending event. Ra then orders the human tribe to watch as he prepares to force Jackson to execute the others to demonstrate his power, but Skaara and his friends create a diversion that allows Jackson, O’Neil, Kawalsky, and Ferretti to escape, while Freeman is killed. They flee to nearby caves to hide from Ra. Skaara and his friends celebrate, and Skaara draws a sign of victory on a wall, which Jackson recognizes as the final Stargate symbol needed for the return to Earth.

O’Neil and his remaining men aid Skaara in overthrowing the remaining overseers and then launch an attack on Ra, who sends out fighter ships to strafe the humans while he orders his ship to depart. The humans outside run out of ammunition and are forced to surrender to the fighter ships’ pilots, but the rest of the tribe, seeing that their false gods are really humanoid, rebel against the guards and overthrow them. Sha’uri is killed, but Jackson takes her body and sneaks aboard Ra’s ship using a teleportation system, leaving O’Neil to fight Ra’s guard captain, Anubis. Jackson places Sha’uri in the regeneration device, and she recovers, but Ra discovers them and attempts to kill Jackson. O’Neil activates the teleportation system, killing Anubis and allowing Jackson and Sha’uri to escape the ship. O’Neil and Jackson teleport the bomb to Ra’s ship, destroying the ship and killing Ra. With the humans freed, the remaining team—O’Neil, Kawalsky, and Ferretti—return to Earth while Jackson chooses to stay behind with Sha’uri and the others.

The Matrix (1999)

The Matrix is a SCI-FI action film written and directed by the Wachowskis, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano. It depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality created by intelligent machines. Believing computer hacker Neo to be “the One” prophesied to defeat them, Morpheus recruits him into a rebellion against the machines.

Storyline
In 1999, in an unnamed city, Thomas Anderson (Reeves), a computer programmer known as “Neo” in hacking circles, delves into the mystery of the “Matrix”, bringing him to the attention of hacker Trinity (Moss). She tells him that the enigmatic Morpheus can answer Neo’s questions. At his workplace, Neo is pursued by Agents led by Agent Smith (Weaving), while Morpheus, able to somehow observe their movements, guides him by phone, but Neo ultimately surrenders.

The Agents interrogate Neo about Morpheus, but he refuses to cooperate. In response, they seal his mouth shut and implant a robotic tracking device in his abdomen. Neo awakens at home, believing the encounter to have been a nightmare until Trinity and her allies remove the device and take him to Morpheus. Morpheus (Fishburne) offers Neo a choice: a red pill to uncover the truth about the Matrix or a blue pill to return to his normal life. Taking the red pill, Neo awakens in the real world, submerged in a mechanical pod and connected to invasive cables. He sees countless humans similarly encased and tended by machines before being ejected from the structure and rescued by Morpheus aboard the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar.

Morpheus reveals that the year is approximately 2199. In the 21st century, humanity lost a war against its artificially intelligent creations, leaving Earth a devastated ruin. Humans blackened the sky to deprive the machines of solar power, but the machines retaliated by creating vast fields of artificially grown humans, harvesting their bioelectric energy. To keep their captives pacified, they built the Matrix, a simulated reality modeled on human civilization at its peak. The remaining free humans founded an underground refuge called Zion, surviving on scarce resources. Morpheus and his crew hack into the Matrix to liberate others, exploiting its rules to gain superhuman abilities within it. Even so, they remain outmatched by the Agents—sentient programs that protect the system—and death in the Matrix means death in the real world. Morpheus freed Neo because he believes him to be “the One”, a prophesied figure destined to free humanity.

The crew enter the Matrix to seek guidance from the Oracle, who foretold the coming of the One. She implies that Neo is not the One and warns him of an imminent choice between his life and Morpheus’s. The crew are ambushed by Agents after being betrayed by Cypher, a disillusioned crew member who longs to return to the virtual comforts of the Matrix. Convinced of Neo’s importance, Morpheus sacrifices himself to confront Smith and is captured. Meanwhile, Cypher exits the Matrix and begins disconnecting the others, killing them. Before he can kill Neo and Trinity, Tank, a wounded crew member, regains consciousness, kills Cypher, and safely extracts the survivors.

Smith interrogates Morpheus to obtain access codes for Zion’s mainframe, which would enable the machines to destroy the human resistance. Determined to rescue him, Neo reenters the Matrix with Trinity. They free Morpheus, who escapes the Matrix with Trinity, but Smith intercepts Neo. Realizing his potential, Neo fights Smith as an equal and kills him. However, Smith resurrects in a new body and kills Neo.

In the real world, machines called Sentinels attack the Nebuchadnezzar. Standing by Neo’s body, Trinity confesses her love for him and reveals that the Oracle prophesied she would fall in love with the One. In the Matrix, Neo revives with the ability to perceive and manipulate its code. He effortlessly destroys Smith and escapes the Matrix just as the Nebuchadnezzar’s electromagnetic pulse disables the Sentinels. Later, within the Matrix, Neo communicates with the system, vowing to show humanity a world of limitless possibilities, before flying away.

Moon (2009)

Moon is a SCI-FI film starring Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell, a man who experiences a personal crisis as he nears the end of a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the Moon. Dominique McElligott, Kaya Scodelario, Benedict Wong, Matt Berry, Malcolm Stewart, Kevin Spacey appear in supporting roles.

Storyline
After an oil crisis, Lunar Industries makes a fortune by building Sarang Station, a facility on the far side of the Moon to mine the alternative fuel helium-3. The facility requires only one human to maintain operations and launch canisters bound for Earth containing helium-3. Samuel Bell has two weeks before ending his three-year work contract there. Chronic communication problems have disabled all live communications with Earth and limit him to occasional recorded messages from his wife Tess, who was pregnant with their daughter Eve when he left.

Sam begins to suffer from hallucinations of a teenage girl and a disheveled man. One such image distracts him while he is out recovering a canister, causing him to crash his rover and fall unconscious.

Sam awakes in the base infirmary with no memory of the accident. He overhears GERTY, an artificial intelligence which assists him, having a live chat with Lunar Industries management, despite the apparent communications failure. Lunar Industries orders Sam to remain on base and says that a rescue team will arrive for repairs. Suspicious, Sam fakes an emergency to persuade GERTY to let him outside. He travels to the crashed rover and finds his unconscious doppelganger. He takes the double back to the base and tends to his injuries. The two Sams start to wonder if one of them is a clone of the other. After an argument and physical altercation, GERTY reveals that they are both clones of the original Sam Bell. GERTY activated the newest clone after the crash and convinced him that he was at the beginning of his three-year contract. His memories of his wife and daughter are implanted.

The two Sams search the area, finding a communications substation beyond the facility’s perimeter which has been interfering with the live feed from Earth. GERTY helps the older Sam access the recorded logs of past clones, who all fell ill as their contract expired. Later, the older Sam discovers a secret vault containing hundreds of hibernating clones. Lunar Industries is using clones of the original Sam Bell to avoid the cost of training and transporting new astronauts, as well as deliberately jamming the live feed to prevent the clones from contacting Earth; clones, who believe they are entering hibernation at the end of their contract before their final return to Earth, are actually incinerated. The older Sam drives past the interference radius in another rover and tries to call Tess on Earth. He instead makes contact with Eve, now 15 years old, who says that Tess died years before. He hangs up when Eve tells her father on Earth that someone is calling regarding Tess. Returning, the older Sam begins displaying the same symptoms as previous deteriorating clones.

The two Sams realize that the incoming rescue team will kill them both if they are found together. The newer Sam convinces GERTY to wake another clone, planning to leave the awakened clone in the crashed rover and send the older Sam to Earth in one of the helium-3 transports. However, the older Sam, having learned that the clones break down at the end of the 3-year contract, knows that he will not live much longer. With his health declining, the older Sam suggests that he be placed back into the crashed rover to die so that Lunar Industries will not suspect anything, while the newer Sam escapes.

Following GERTY’s advice, the newer Sam reboots GERTY to wipe its records of the events. Before leaving, the newer clone reprograms a harvester to crash and wreck the jamming antenna, thereby enabling live communications with Earth; he also takes a helium-3 canister with him to Earth. The older Sam, back in the crippled rover, remains conscious long enough to watch the launch of the transport carrying the newer Sam. The rescue team is fooled after finding both a newly-awakened clone in the medical bay and the corpse of the older Sam inside the crashed rover. Later, Sam’s testimony on Lunar Industries’ activities stirs up a major controversy, and the company’s shares begin to plummet.

Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar is an epic SCI-FI film directed by Christopher Nolan with an ensemble cast led by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine. Set in a dystopian future where Earth is suffering from catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for mankind.

Storyline
In the mid-21st century, humanity faces extinction due to dust storms and widespread crop blights. Joseph Cooper (McConaughey), a widowed former NASA test pilot, works as a farmer and raises his children, Murph and Tom, alongside his father-in-law Donald. Cooper is reprimanded by Murph’s teachers for telling her that the Apollo missions were not fabricated. During a dust storm, the two discover that dust patterns in Murph’s room, which she first attributes to a ghost, result from a gravitational anomaly, and translate them into geographic coordinates. These lead them to a secret NASA facility headed by Professor John Brand (Caine), who explains that 48 years earlier, a wormhole appeared near Saturn, leading to a system in another galaxy with 12 potentially habitable planets located near a black hole named Gargantua. Volunteers of the Lazarus expedition had previously traveled through the wormhole to evaluate the planets, with three — Miller, Edmunds, and Mann — reporting back desirable results.

Cooper is enlisted to pilot the Endurance spacecraft through the wormhole as part of a mission to colonize a habitable planet with 5000 frozen embryos and ensure humanity’s survival. Meanwhile, Professor Brand would continue his work on solving a gravity equation whose solution would supposedly enable construction of a spacecraft for an exodus from Earth. Cooper accepts against Murph’s wishes and promises to return. When she refuses to see him off, he leaves her his wristwatch to compare their relative time when he returns.

The crew, consisting of Cooper, robots TARS and CASE, and scientists Dr. Amelia Brand (Professor Brand’s daughter), Romilly, and Doyle, traverse the wormhole after a two-year voyage to Saturn. Cooper, Doyle, and Brand use a lander to investigate Miller’s planet, where time is severely dilated. After landing in knee-high water and finding only wreckage from Miller’s expedition, a gigantic tidal wave kills Doyle and waterlogs the lander’s engines.

By the time they leave the planet, Cooper and Brand discover that 23 years have elapsed on the Endurance. Having enough fuel left for only one of the other two planets, Cooper and Romilly decide to go to Mann’s planet, despite Brand’s protests, as he is still broadcasting. En route, they receive messages from Earth and Cooper watches Tom grow up, marry, and lose his first son. An adult Murph is now a scientist working on the gravity equation with Professor Brand. On his deathbed, Professor Brand confesses that the Endurance crew was never supposed to return, knowing that a complete solution to the equation was not feasible without observations of gravitational singularities from inside a black hole.

On Mann’s planet, they awaken him from cryostasis, and he assures them that colonization is possible, despite the extreme environment. During a scouting mission, Mann attempts to kill Cooper and reveals that he falsified his data in the hope of being rescued. He steals Cooper’s lander and heads for the Endurance. While a booby trap set by Mann kills Romilly, Brand rescues Cooper with the other lander and they race back to the Endurance. Mann is killed in a failed manual docking operation, severely damaging the Endurance, but Cooper is able to regain control of the station through his own docking maneuver.

With insufficient fuel, Cooper and Brand resort to a slingshot around Gargantua, which costs them 51 years due to time dilation. In the process, Cooper and TARS jettison their landers to lighten the Endurance so that Brand and CASE may reach Edmunds’ planet. Falling into Gargantua’s event horizon, they eject from their craft and find themselves in a tesseract made up of infinite copies of Murph’s bedroom across moments in time. Cooper deduces that the tesseract was constructed by advanced humans in the far future, and realizes that he had always been Murph’s “ghost”. He uses Morse code to manipulate the second hand of the wristwatch he gave her before he left, giving Murph the data that TARS collected, which enables her to complete Professor Brand’s solution.

The tesseract, its purpose fulfilled, collapses before ejecting Cooper and TARS. Cooper wakes up on a station orbiting Saturn. He reunites with Murph, now elderly and on her deathbed, who tells him to seek out Brand. Cooper and TARS take a spacecraft to rejoin Brand and CASE, who are setting up the human colony on Edmunds’ habitable planet.

Annihilation (2018)

Annihilation is a SCI-FI cosmic horror film, loosely based on the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer. It stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac. The story follows a group of scientists who enter the Shimmer, a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals caused by an alien presence.

Storyline
Cellular biology professor and former United States Army soldier Lena is under interrogation. She is the only survivor of the latest expedition to an anomalous zone known as the Shimmer.

The Shimmer emerged three years prior from a meteor that landed at the St. Marks Light lighthouse in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, and has been gradually expanding. Many exploratory expeditions were organized, but only Lena’s husband, Kane, returns home after a year of lost contact. Kane cannot explain where he was and how he came back, and his condition quickly deteriorates. Lena calls an ambulance, but she and Kane are intercepted by security forces and taken to a secret facility. As Kane is put in intensive care, psychologist Dr. Ventress prepares a new scientific expedition into the Shimmer, and Lena joins her.

Three other women participate in the expedition: Cassie, a geomorphologist; Anya, a paramedic; and Josie, a physicist. Communication equipment does not function within the Shimmer’s territory, and the expedition encounters unusually mutated plants and animals. Josie is attacked by an albino alligator with several concentric rows of teeth. At an abandoned military base, the group finds a video message from Kane’s expedition, in which Kane cuts open another soldier’s abdomen with a knife to reveal slithering intestines. The group finds the soldier’s corpse, which has turned into an overgrown colony of lichens.

At night, Lena and Ventress share a watch and reflect on humanity’s strange instinct to destabilize and destroy itself. They’re joined later by Cassie, and the base is attacked by a mutant bear that drags Cassie away. Lena later finds her mutilated corpse. Within an abandoned village, Josie studies plants that have taken on a humanoid form, and theorizes that the Shimmer functions as a prism, distorting and transforming everything that falls within its boundaries—including the expedition members’ own DNA. Anya, overcome with paranoia after watching her fingerprints change, disarms the other members and ties them to chairs, and accuses Lena of murdering Cassie. The mutant bear returns and lures Anya away by emitting a cry for help in Cassie’s voice. The bear kills Anya, while Josie frees herself and shoots the bear.

Ventress leaves the group and heads for the lighthouse, the center of the Shimmer. Josie believes Cassie’s dying mind was “refracted” into the bear, and laments that the only piece left of Cassie was the pain and fear she experienced while being killed. She allows herself to succumb to the shimmer and “refract” into a humanoid plant, hoping to avoid a similar fate. Lena follows Ventress to the lighthouse, where she discovers Kane’s remains and a videotape. In the footage, Kane leaves an instruction to find Lena before killing himself with a phosphorus grenade. After the explosion, a doppelgänger of Kane steps into frame.

Within the hole created by the meteor, Lena finds Ventress, who explains that the Shimmer will eventually swallow everything. Ventress then disintegrates into a shimmering cloud that absorbs a drop of blood from Lena’s face and changes into a faceless, shimmering, humanoid being that mimics Lena’s movements. Unable to escape the creature, Lena tricks it into igniting one of Kane’s leftover grenades as it transforms into her doppelgänger. Lena flees the burning lighthouse, and the Shimmer dissipates, destroying itself as it mindlessly mimics the explosion.

Back in the present, Lena’s interrogation concludes, and she learns that after the Shimmer fell, Kane’s condition began to stabilize. Lena visits the Kane doppelgänger and asks if he is really Kane, which she doubts. He asks if she is Lena, but she does not answer. They embrace and their irises shimmer.

Betwixt & Between SCI-FI: explores states and places of transition and uncertainty, from what is Known … to the Unknown.

As we prepare to “cross over” from 2025 into 2026, already Director Steven Spielberg has announced that “DISCLOSURE DAY” will arrive in theaters June 12, 2026. For anyone who has followed the history of this idea (revealing the Truth to Humanity about Extraterrestrial Life) from Roswell (1947) … to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) … to present day, the feeling cannot be denied: This is the ONE we’ve been waiting for.

It could change EVERYTHING.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

“Lost Future” SCI-FI

November 30, 2025 by tjwolf5_wp

“Lost Future” SCI-FI: imagined visions of Future Life on Earth (with cultural or technological advancements) that have not yet come to pass — often shaped by Speculation about “the way things might have been” if tragic events had not occurred (like untimely Deaths). These visions change over time. American Baseball player Yogi Berra once put it this way:

“The Future’s not what it used to be.”

Things to Come (1936)

Things to Come is a British SCI-FI film written by H. G. Wells (loosely adapted from his book “The Shape of Things to Come”) The film stars Raymond Massey, Edward Chapman, Ralph Richardson, Margaretta Scott, Cedric Hardwicke, Maurice Braddell, Sophie Stewart, Derrick De Marney, and Ann Todd.

Storyline
In 1940, businessman John Cabal, living in the city of Everytown in Southern England, cannot enjoy Christmas Day as the news speaks of possible war. On the eve of World War II, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler. His guest, Harding, shares his worries, while another friend, the over-optimistic Pippa Passworthy, believes that it will not come to pass, and if it does, it will accelerate technological progress. An aerial bombing raid on the city that night results in general mobilisation and then global war with the unnamed enemy. Cabal becomes a Royal Air Force pilot and serves bravely, even attempting to rescue an enemy pilot he has shot down.

The war continues into the 1960s, long enough for the people of the world to have forgotten why they are fighting. Humanity enters a new dark age. Every city in the world is in ruins, the economy has been devastated by hyperinflation, and there is little technology left other than greatly depleted air forces. A pestilence known as “wandering sickness” is inflicted by aerial bombing and causes its victims to walk around aimlessly in a zombie-like state before dying. The plague kills half of humanity and extinguishes the last vestiges of government.

By 1970, the warlord Rudolf, known as the “Boss”, has become the chieftain of what is left of Everytown and eradicated the pestilence by shooting the infected. He has started yet another war, this time against the “hill people” of the Floss Valley to obtain coal and shale to render into oil for his ragtag collection of prewar biplanes.

On May Day that year, a sleek new monoplane lands in Everytown, startling the residents, who have not seen a new aircraft in many years. The pilot, a now elderly John Cabal, emerges and proclaims that the last surviving band of engineers and mechanics have formed an organisation called “Wings Over the World”. They are based in Basra, Iraq, and have outlawed war and are rebuilding civilisation throughout the Near East and the Mediterranean. Cabal offers the Boss the opportunity to join Wings, but he immediately rejects the offer and takes Cabal prisoner, forcing him to repair the obsolete biplanes.

With the assistance of Cabal, the Boss’s disillusioned mechanic Gordon contacts Wings Over the World. Gigantic flying wing aircraft arrive over Everytown and saturate its population with a “Gas of Peace” that temporarily renders them unconscious. The people awaken to find themselves under the control of Wings Over the World and the Boss dead from a fatal allergic reaction to the gas. Cabal promises them that Wings Over the World will usher in a new age of progress and peace.

Under Cabal’s guidance, Wings Over the World quickly rebuilds civilisation to even greater heights. By 2036, a stable mankind is now living in modern underground cities, including the new Everytown, and civilisation is at last devoted to peace and scientific progress. All is not well, however. The sculptor Theotocopulos incites the populace to demand a “rest” from all the rush of progress, symbolised by the coming first crewed flight around the Moon. When the mob threatens to destroy the space gun that will launch the ship to the Moon, Oswald Cabal, the grandson of John Cabal and current head of government, is forced to move the launch ahead of schedule.

Oswald Cabal’s daughter Catherine and fellow scientist Maurice Passworthy are the passengers. After the projectile is launched and just a tiny light in the night sky, Cabal debates the desirability of human progress with Passworthy’s anxious father. To Passworthy’s concern that humanity shall never be able to rest, Cabal retorts that humans have no choice but to conquer the universe and its mysteries:

“All the universe or nothingness … Which shall it be?“

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001: A Space Odyssey is an epic SCI-FI film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke. Its plot was inspired by several short stories optioned from Clarke, primarily “The Sentinel” (1951) and “Encounter in the Dawn” (1953).[3] The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain, and follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists, and the sentient supercomputer HAL 9000 to Jupiter to investigate an Alien monolith.

Storyline
In a prehistoric veld, a tribe of hominins is driven away from a water hole by a rival tribe, and the next day finds an alien monolith. The tribe learns how to use the bones of dead animals as weapons and, after a successful first hunt, uses them to drive away the rival tribe.

Millions of years later, Dr Heywood Floyd, Chairman of the United States National Council of Astronautics, travels to Clavius Base, an American lunar outpost. During a stopover at Space Station Five, he meets Russian scientists who are concerned that Clavius seems to be unresponsive. He refuses to discuss rumours of an epidemic at the base. At Clavius, Floyd addresses a meeting of personnel, stressing the need for secrecy regarding their newest discovery. His mission is to investigate a recently found artefact, a monolith buried four million years earlier near the lunar crater Tycho. As Floyd and others examine and photograph the object, it emits a high-powered radio signal.

Eighteen months later, the American spacecraft Discovery One is bound for Jupiter, with mission pilots and scientists Dr Dave Bowman and Dr Frank Poole on board, along with three other scientists in suspended animation. Most of Discovery’s operations are controlled by HAL, a HAL 9000 computer with a human-like personality. When HAL reports the imminent failure of an antenna control device, Bowman retrieves it in an extravehicular activity (EVA) pod, but finds nothing wrong. HAL suggests reinstalling the device and letting it fail so the problem can be verified. Mission Control advises the astronauts that results from their backup 9000 computer indicate that HAL has made an error, but HAL blames it on human error. Concerned about HAL’s behaviour, Bowman and Poole enter an EVA pod so they can talk in private without HAL overhearing. They agree to disconnect HAL if he is proven wrong. HAL follows their conversation by lip reading.

While Poole is floating away from his pod to replace the antenna unit, HAL takes control of the pod and attacks him, sending Poole tumbling away from the ship with a severed air line. Bowman takes another pod to rescue Poole. While he is outside, HAL turns off the life support functions of the crewmen in suspended animation, killing them. When Bowman returns to the ship with Poole’s body, HAL refuses to let him back in, stating that their plan to deactivate him jeopardises the mission. Bowman releases Poole’s body and opens the ship’s emergency airlock with his remote manipulators. Lacking a helmet for his spacesuit, he positions his pod carefully so that when he jettisons the pod’s door, he is propelled by the escaping air across the vacuum into Discovery’s airlock. He enters HAL’s processor core and begins disconnecting most of HAL’s circuits, ignoring HAL’s pleas to stop. When he is finished, a prerecorded video by Heywood Floyd plays, revealing that the mission’s actual objective is to investigate the radio signal sent from the monolith to Jupiter.

At Jupiter, Bowman finds a third, much larger monolith orbiting the planet. He leaves Discovery in an EVA pod to investigate. He is pulled into a vortex of coloured light and observes bizarre astronomical phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colours as he passes by. Finally, he finds himself in a large neoclassical bedroom where he sees, then becomes, older versions of himself: first standing in the bedroom, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, then dressed in leisure attire and eating dinner, and finally as an old man lying in bed. A monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a foetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light, which afterwards floats in space above the Earth.

(A sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, was released in 1984, based on the novel “2010: Odyssey Two”. Considerably better in many respects, directed by Peter Hyams with American production values and a stellar cast, including Roy Scheider, Hellen Mirren, and John Lithgow.)

Space: 1999 (1975)

Space: 1999 is a British SCI-FI TV programme that ran for two series from 1975 to 1977. The programme, set in the year 1999, follows the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, which is hurtling uncontrollably into space due to an explosion of nuclear waste stored on the Moon’s far side.

Storyline
The premise of Space: 1999 centres on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, a scientific research centre located within the crater Plato in the Moon’s northern hemisphere. Humanity had been storing its nuclear waste in vast disposal sites on the far side of the Moon, but when an unknown form of “magnetic radiation” is detected, the accumulated waste reaches critical mass and causes a massive thermonuclear explosion on 13 September 1999. The force of the blast propels the Moon like an enormous booster rocket, hurling it out of Earth orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, thus stranding the 311 personnel stationed on Alpha.

The runaway Moon, in effect, becomes the “spacecraft” on which the protagonists travel, searching for a new home. Not long after leaving Earth’s Solar System, the wandering Moon passes through a black hole and later through a couple of “space warps” which push it even further out into the universe.

During their interstellar journey, the Alphans encounter an array of Alien civilisations, dystopian societies, and mind-bending phenomena previously unseen by humanity. Several episodes of the first series hinted that the Moon’s journey was influenced (and perhaps initiated) by a “mysterious unknown force”, which was guiding the Alphans toward an ultimate destiny. The second series used simpler action-oriented plots.

Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner is a SCI-FI film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, former cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.

Storyline
In 2019 Los Angeles, former police officer Rick Deckard is detained by Officer Gaff, who likes to make origami figures, and is brought to his former supervisor, Bryant. Deckard, whose job as a “blade runner” was to track down bioengineered humanoids known as replicants and terminally “retire” them, is informed that four replicants are on Earth illegally. Deckard begins to leave, but Bryant makes veiled threats and Deckard stays. The two watch a video of a blade runner named Holden administering the Voight-Kampff test, which is designed to distinguish replicants from humans based on their emotional responses to questions. The test subject, Leon, shoots Holden on the second question. Bryant wants Deckard to retire Leon and three other Nexus-6 replicants: Roy Batty, Zhora, and Pris.

Bryant has Deckard meet with the CEO of the company that creates the replicants, Eldon Tyrell, so he can administer the V-K test on a Nexus-6 to see if it works. Tyrell expresses his interest in seeing the test fail first and asks him to administer it on his assistant Rachael. After a much longer than standard test, Deckard concludes privately to Tyrell that Rachael is a replicant who believes she is human. Tyrell explains that she is an experiment who has been given false memories to provide an “emotional cushion”, and that she has no knowledge of her true nature.

In searching Leon’s hotel room, Deckard finds photos and a scale from the skin of an animal, which is later identified as a synthetic snake scale. Deckard returns to his apartment, where Rachael is waiting. She tries to prove her humanity by showing him a family photo, but Deckard reveals that her memories are implants from Tyrell’s niece, and she leaves in tears.

Replicants Roy and Leon meanwhile investigate a replicant eye-manufacturing laboratory and learn of J. F. Sebastian, a gifted genetic designer who works closely with Tyrell. Pris locates Sebastian and manipulates him to gain his trust.

A photograph from Leon’s apartment and the snake scale lead Deckard to a strip club, where Zhora works. After a confrontation and chase, Deckard kills Zhora. Bryant also orders him to retire Rachael, who has disappeared from the Tyrell Corporation. Deckard spots Rachael in a crowd, but he is ambushed by Leon, who knocks the gun out of Deckard’s hand and beats him. As Leon is about to kill Deckard, Rachael saves him by using Deckard’s gun to kill Leon. They return to Deckard’s apartment and, during a discussion, he promises not to track her down. As Rachael abruptly tries to leave, Deckard restrains her and forces her to kiss him, and she ultimately relents. Deckard leaves Rachael at his apartment and departs to search for the remaining replicants.

Roy arrives at Sebastian’s apartment and tells Pris that the other replicants are dead. Sebastian reveals that because of a genetic premature aging disorder, his life will be cut short, like the replicants that were built with a four-year lifespan. Roy uses Sebastian to gain entrance to Tyrell’s penthouse. He demands more life from his maker, which Tyrell says is impossible. Roy confesses that he has done “questionable things” but Tyrell dismisses this, praising Roy’s advanced design and accomplishments in his short life. Roy kisses Tyrell and then kills him by crushing his eyes and skull. Sebastian tries to flee and is later reported dead.

At Sebastian’s apartment, Deckard is ambushed by Pris, but he kills her as Roy returns. Roy’s body begins to fail as the end of his lifespan nears. He chases Deckard through the building and onto the roof. Deckard tries to jump onto another roof but is left hanging from the edge. Roy makes the jump with ease and, as Deckard’s grip loosens, Roy hoists him onto the roof to save him. Before Roy dies, he laments that his memories “will be lost in time, like tears in rain”. Gaff arrives to congratulate Deckard, also reminding him that Rachael will not live, but “then again, who does?” Deckard returns to his apartment to retrieve Rachael. While escorting her to the elevator, he notices a small origami unicorn on the floor. He recalls Gaff’s words and departs with Rachael.

Tomorrowland (2015)

Tomorrowland is an American SCI-FI film directed by Brad Bird with a screenplay by Bird and Damon Lindelof. The film is based on the themed land Tomorrowland from the Disney Parks and a story by Bird, Lindelof, and Jeff Jensen. It stars George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, and Keegan-Michael Key. In the film, a disillusioned genius inventor and a teenage science enthusiast embark to an intriguing alternate dimension known as “Tomorrowland”, where their actions directly affect their own world.

In drafting their story, Bird and Lindelof took inspiration from the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney’s optimistic philosophy of the future, notably his conceptual vision for the planned community known as EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).

Storyline
Young boy Frank Walker attends the New York World’s Fair (1964) to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. He is approached by the young girl Athena (Cassidy), who hands him an orange lapel pin with a blue “T” embossed on it, telling him to follow her onto Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction at the Fair’s Pepsi-Cola Pavilion. Frank obeys, sneaking onto the ride. There, the pin is scanned by a laser, and he is transported to Tomorrowland, a futuristic cityscape, where advanced robots fix his jetpack, allowing him to fly and join the secretive world.

In the present day, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father Eddie (McGraw), a NASA engineer, faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. Touching it, the pin transports her to Tomorrowland. Her adventure is cut short when the pin’s battery runs out, leaving Casey stranded in a lake.

With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. She then drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York. The now reclusive, cynical Frank (Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside his house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability.

Animatronic assassins arrive to kill Casey, but she and Frank escape, meeting Athena in the woods outside his house. Frank resents Athena for lying to him about her true nature, but reluctantly agrees to help them get to Tomorrowland. Using a teleportation device, the trio travel to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison co-founded “Plus Ultra,” a secret society of futurists, creating Tomorrowland in another dimension, free to make scientific breakthroughs without obstruction. The trio use an antique rocket, called the Spectacle, hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower to travel to Tomorrowland.

There, they find Tomorrowland in a state of decay. David Nix (Laurie), Tomorrowland’s governor, greets them. They travel to a tachyon machine, invented by Frank, which accurately predicted the worldwide catastrophe. Casey refuses to accept the world will end, causing the future to temporarily alter. Frank attempts to convince Nix to listen, who refuses and intends to have the group leave Tomorrowland. Casey realizes the tachyon machine is telling humanity that the world will end, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They confront Nix, who admits he tried to prevent the future by projecting such images to humanity as a warning. Instead, they embraced the apocalypse, refusing to act to make a better future for their world.

Believing that humanity simply gave up, Nix has too and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so he can rebuild the world to his liking. Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to use a bomb to destroy the machine, leading to a fight with Nix. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning Nix’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by Nix, and she jumps in the way of his attack, mortally wounding herself beyond repair. Making peace with Frank, Athena activates her self-destruct sequence, destroying the machine, which falls on Nix, killing him.

In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new dreamers and thinkers for Tomorrowland.

“Lost Future” SCI-FI represents Dreams for a Better World that appear to be Lost — but may not be forever. It all depends on our willingness to keep them Alive. When a Dream comes true — often the Dreamer will speak of how they nurtured and protected their dream for years, to shield it from naysayers who labelled it as “impractical” or “impossible” or “foolish” and said it couldn’t be done.

DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM!

Instead … Hear the beat of your own heart … and march on.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

Dare to Dream SCI-FI

October 30, 2025 by tjwolf5_wp

Dare to Dream SCI-FI: imagines a better or different reality, pushing beyond current limitations to explore possibilities for the future — building New Worlds to inspire Hope, and present Solutions to present-day problems, (rather than just escaping them). Science Fiction imagines what should be — or could be — serving as a first step toward making it a Reality.

“Things are only impossible until they are not.” — Jean-Luc Picard

Star Trek (1966-present)

Star Trek is an American SCI-FI TV series created by Gene Roddenberry that follows the adventures of the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) and its crew. It acquired the retronym of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) to distinguish the show within the media franchise that it began.

Storyline
The show is set in the Milky Way galaxy, c. 2266–2269. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), First Officer and Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Chief Medical Officer Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley). Each episode starts with the “Where no man has gone before” intro.

The second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” introduced other main characters (besides Spock): Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Chief Engineer Lt. Commander Scott (James Doohan) and Lt. Sulu (George Takei), who served as a physicist in the pilot, but then became a helmsman for the rest of the series. Ship’s doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) joined the cast for the first season, and remained, achieving billing as the third star of the series. Also joining the ship’s permanent crew during the first season were the communications officer, Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), the first African-American woman to hold such an important role in an American TV series; the captain’s yeoman, Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney), who departed midway through the first season; and Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett), the ship’s nurse and assistant to McCoy. Walter Koenig joined the cast as Ensign Pavel Chekov in the second season.

Star Trek envisions an optimistic future where humanity has overcome poverty, war, and prejudice, thanks to technological advancements and collective wisdom, leading to a post-scarcity society focused on exploration, self-improvement, and unity within the United Federation of Planets. The franchise’s foundational humanist philosophy, promoted by creator Gene Roddenberry, emphasizes human potential and the rational, ethical application of technology for the betterment of all, creating an inclusive and hopeful vision of humanity’s future.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an American SCI-FI film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut.

Storyline
In 1977, French scientist Claude Lacombe, along with interpreter and cartographer David Laughlin, examine Flight 19—a group of United States Navy aircraft that vanished over the Bermuda Triangle in 1945—now found immaculate and abandoned in the Sonoran Desert. They later learn that the SS Cotopaxi has similarly been found abandoned in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Meanwhile, near Indianapolis, two airplanes narrowly avoid a mid-air collision with an unidentified flying object (UFO).

At a rural home outside Muncie, Indiana, three-year-old Barry Guiler wakes to find his toys operating on their own and the fridge ransacked. He follows a trail outside before his mother, Jillian, catches him. Widespread power outages occur throughout the area, forcing electric utility lineman Roy Neary to investigate. En route, Roy experiences a close encounter with a UFO, and when it flies over his truck, it lightly burns the side of his face with its lights. The UFO takes off with three others in the sky, as Roy and police officers unsuccessfully pursue them by road.

Roy becomes fascinated with the UFOs and obsessed with a subliminal image of a mountainous shape, repeatedly making models of it. His increasingly erratic and eccentric behavior worries his wife Ronnie and their three children, and his friends and neighbors ostracize him. Ronnie eventually leaves with the children after Roy brings dirt, bricks, and other debris into their home to sculpt a large scale replica of the mountain. Jillian also begins compulsively sketching the same mountain. Soon after, she is terrorized in her home by a UFO which descends from the clouds. She fights off aggressive attempts by unseen beings to enter the home, but in the chaos, Barry is abducted.

Lacombe, Laughlin, and a group of United Nations experts continue to investigate increasing UFO activity and strange, related occurrences. Witnesses in Dharamsala, Northern India report that the UFOs make distinctive sounds: a five-tone musical phrase. Scientists broadcast the phrase to outer space, but receive only a seemingly meaningless repeating series of numbers in response. Laughlin eventually recognizes it as a set of geographical coordinates, which point to Devils Tower near Moorcroft, Wyoming.

The US Army evacuates the area around Devils Tower, planting false reports in the media that a train wreck has spilled a toxic nerve gas, while actually preparing a secret landing site for the UFOs. Seeing the mountain on the news, Roy and Jillian recognize it as the one they have been visualizing. Despite the evacuation order, they, along with others who have been experiencing the visions, set out for Devils Tower, but are intercepted by the Army. Lacombe interviews Roy, who is unable to explain his compulsion to reach the mountain beyond seeking answers. While the others are escorted away, Roy and Jillian escape and eventually reach the mountain site just as UFOs appear in the night sky.

The specialists there begin to communicate with the UFOs—which gradually appear by the dozens—by using light and sound on a large electrical billboard. An enormous mothership eventually arrives and seemingly conveys to the researchers a tonal means of communication before landing. A hatch opens, from which various humans and animals are released, having not aged since they were taken, including World War II pilots, Cotopaxi sailors, and Barry, who reunites with Jillian. Seeing Roy, Lacombe suggests preparing him for inclusion in the government’s select group of potential visitors to the mothership.

The Extraterrestrials finally emerge from the mothership and select Roy to join their travels. As Roy enters the mothership, one of the Extraterrestrials pauses for a few moments with the humans. Lacombe uses Curwen hand signs that correspond to the five-note tonal phrase. The Extraterrestrial responds in kind, smiles, and returns to its ship, which takes to the sky.

Equal parts saucer-age fairytale and character study, Close Encounters views “first contact” with Alien life from the perspective of ordinary people as opposed to scientists or the military. Roy Neary evolves throughout the story — from ordinary guy … to a pilgrim tormented by his search for Truth … to eventual Enlightenment.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

2010: The Year We Make Contact an American SCI-FI film written, produced, shot, and directed by Peter Hyams. The film is a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and adapts Arthur C. Clarke’s 1982 novel 2010: Odyssey Two. It stars Roy Scheider, Hellen Mirren and John Lithgow.

Storyline
Nine years have passed since the failure of the Discovery mission to Jupiter in 2001, in which commander David Bowman and his crew were lost. Amid international tensions, the United States and Soviet Union each prepare separate missions to Jupiter. The Soviet spacecraft Leonov will be ready a year before the American Discovery Two, but only the Americans can reactivate the ship’s sentient computer, HAL 9000, thought to be responsible for the disaster. Because Discovery will crash into Jupiter’s moon Io before the Americans can reach it, the Soviets agree to bring along former NCA Director Heywood Floyd (Scheider), Discovery engineer Walter Curnow (Lithgow), and HAL 9000 creator Dr. Chandra.

Arriving at Jupiter, Leonov detects chlorophyll on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. A probe sent to investigate is destroyed by an energy burst upon reaching the source of the chlorophyll. Floyd suggests that this is a warning to stay away from Europa.

After aerobraking in Jupiter’s atmosphere, Leonov enters orbit around Io and encounters Discovery. Curnow and Cosmonaut Max Brailovsky spacewalk to and enter the derelict vessel. Both men suffer panic attacks for different reasons, bonding over the shared experience and becoming friends.

Curnow restores Discovery’s power and propulsion, and Chandra reactivates HAL. The ships move to investigate the giant monolith located at the Lagrange point between Jupiter and Io. Brailovsky approaches it in an EVA pod, but is killed when the pod is destroyed by an energy burst.

On Earth, Bowman, now a noncorporeal being, appears through his former wife’s television to say goodbye, telling her that “something wonderful” is going to happen. He then visits his comatose mother in a hospital, and she awakens, seemingly aware of her son’s presence. The unseen Bowman brushes her hair, and after he departs, she dies peacefully.

Chandra discovers the reasons for HAL’s malfunction: the National Security Council ordered HAL to conceal information about the monolith from Discovery’s crew. This conflicted with HAL’s basic programming, causing the computer equivalent of a paranoid breakdown. When Bowman and co-pilot Frank Poole discussed deactivating the malfunctioning computer, HAL concluded that the human crew was endangering the mission, and terminated them. Chandra blames Floyd, who denies any knowledge of the order, although it bears his signature.

A political crisis on Earth brings the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of war. The Americans are thus ordered to leave Leonov for Discovery. Both ships plan to leave Jupiter in the coming weeks, but Bowman appears to Floyd to warn him that everyone must leave within two days.

Floyd returns to Leonov to convince Soviet captain Tanya Kirbuk (Mirren) to leave early. Neither ship has the fuel to reach Earth if they leave ahead of schedule, but Floyd proposes using Discovery as a booster rocket, then leaving it behind while both crews escape on Leonov. As they argue, the monolith suddenly disappears. Alarmed, Kirbuk agrees to Floyd’s plan.

An ominous black spot appears in Jupiter’s atmosphere. HAL determines that the spot is a vast group of monoliths, multiplying exponentially and altering Jupiter’s mass and chemical composition. He recommends halting the countdown to study the phenomenon. Floyd worries that HAL will prioritize his mission over the safety of the human crews, but Chandra reveals to HAL that the crew is in danger and that both ships could be destroyed. HAL thanks Chandra for telling him the truth, and proceeds with the escape plan. Once Discovery’s fuel is exhausted, Leonov separates and fires its own engines.

Bowman asks HAL to transmit a message to Earth. The monoliths engulf Jupiter, causing it to undergo nuclear fusion, and become a star. Before Discovery is destroyed, HAL sends this message:

ALL THESE WORLDS
ARE YOURS EXCEPT
EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO
LANDING THERE
USE THEM TOGETHER
USE THEM IN PEACE

Leonov survives the shockwave from Jupiter’s ignition, and returns home. Floyd narrates how the new star’s miraculous appearance, and the message from a mysterious alien power, inspire the American and Soviet leaders to seek peace. Under its infant sun, icy Europa transforms into a humid jungle, covered with life, and watched over by a monolith.

Contact (1997)

Contact is an American SCI-FI film co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel by Carl Sagan. It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse co-star.

Storyline
Dr. Ellie Arroway (Foster) works for the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She was inspired to pursue a career in science, starting with amateur radio, by her father, who died in her youth. Her work involves listening to radio emissions from space in the hopes of finding signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The program loses funding after David Drumlin (Skerritt), the President’s science advisor, deems it futile. However, Arroway receives financial support from S. R. Hadden (Hurt), the secretive billionaire industrialist who runs Hadden Industries, which enables her to keep working at the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico.

Four years later, when Drumlin is about to terminate the SETI program at the VLA, Arroway discovers a signal containing a sequence of prime numbers originating from the star Vega. Drumlin and the National Security Council, headed by Michael Kitz (Woods), attempt to seize control of the facility. Arroway’s team discovers a video hidden within the signal: Adolf Hitler’s opening address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The Hitler transmission was the first to penetrate the Earth’s ionosphere and reach Vega.

The project is put under security and its progress is monitored around the world. Arroway discovers the signal contains over 63,000 pages of encoded data, and Hadden provides her with the means to decode it. The decoded data reveals schematics for a machine that may be a form of transportation for a single person. Multiple nations provide funding for the construction of the machine, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

An international panel will select a candidate to travel in the machine. Arroway is a leading candidate until the Christian philosopher Palmer Joss (McConaughey), a member of the panel with whom she briefly had a romantic relationship in Puerto Rico, draws attention to her atheism. The panel selects Drumlin. During the first tests, a religious terrorist destroys the machine with a suicide bomb, killing himself, Drumlin, and several others. Hadden, now residing on the Mir space station and dying of cancer, reveals to Arroway the U.S. government and his company have used a secret contract to build a second machine in Hokkaido, Japan. Arroway, the only American remaining among the candidate pool, will use it.

Equipped with multiple recording devices, Arroway enters a pod which is dropped into the machine, and seemingly travels through wormholes. She observes a radio array-like structure at Vega, signs of civilization on an alien planet, and a celestial event that makes her ecstatic. Arroway finds herself on a beach similar to a childhood drawing she made of Pensacola, Florida. An Alien approaches, taking on the appearance of her deceased father. He explains that the Aliens detected humanity’s radio emissions and judged them worthy of being shown a first step into the cosmos.

Arroway regains consciousness in the pod. The mission control team tell her that the pod fell through the machine into a safety net and that the experiment achieved nothing. Arroway insists she was gone for about 18 hours, but her recording devices show only static. A Congressional Committee headed by Kitz speculates the signal and machine were a hoax designed by Hadden, who has since died. Arroway requests the committee accept the truth of her testimony on faith, saying that, while her testimony cannot be proven scientifically, it has affected her humanity.

Arroway reunites with Joss, who says he believes her. Kitz and the White House official Rachel Constantine discuss the confidential information, and observe that Arroway’s device recorded 18 hours of static. Arroway receives ongoing financial support for the SETI program at the VLA.

Tomorrowland (2015)

In drafting their story, Bird and Lindelof took inspiration from the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney’s optimistic philosophy of the future, notably his conceptual vision for the planned community known as EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).

With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. She then drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York. The now reclusive, cynical Frank (Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside his house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability.

In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new dreamers and thinkers for Tomorrowland.

Dare to Dream SCI-FI imagines what should be — or could be — a better or different Reality, building New Worlds to inspire Hope.

NEVER STOP DREAMING.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

A Better World SCI-FI

September 29, 2025 by tjwolf5_wp

A Better World SCI-FI envisions a more Hopeful, Progressive, and Positive Future — achieved through Advanced Technology or Social Progress, leading to a more fair and just, prosperous, or peaceful World for humanity.

Star Trek (1966-present)

E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982)

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is an American SCI-FI film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott, a boy who befriends an Extraterrestrial he names E.T. who has been stranded on Earth. Along with his friends and family, Elliott must find a way to help E.T. find his way home. The film stars Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, and Drew Barrymore.

Storyline
A race of diminutive Aliens visit Earth at night to gather plant specimens in a California forest. One of them, fascinated by the distant lights of a neighborhood, separates from the group, before U.S. government agents arrive and chase the startled creature. The Aliens are forced to depart before the agents can find them, leaving their lone member behind. While the agents search the forest, the creature takes shelter in a shed belonging to the family of ten-year-old Elliott Taylor (Thomas). Initially scared by the creature, who runs away, Elliott spends the following day leaving a trail of Reese’s Pieces to lure the Alien back to the Taylor’s home, where he hides the creature in his room. The following morning, Elliott feigns illness to stay off school and play with the creature, whom he dubs E.T. Elliott eventually introduces E.T. to his older brother, Michael (MacNaughton), and five-year-old sister Gertie (Barrymore), who agree to keep E.T. hidden from their hardworking single mother, Mary.

When the children ask about his origins, E.T. displays telekinetic abilities by levitating several balls to represent his planetary system, and later demonstrates other extraordinary abilities by reviving a dead chrysanthemum and instantly healing a cut on Elliott’s finger. As Elliott and the creature begin to bond, they start to share thoughts and emotions, the two being simultaneously startled when E.T. accidentally opens an umbrella in a different room. At school, Elliott becomes intoxicated because, at home, E.T. is drinking beer and watching television. Sensing E.T.’s desire to be rescued, Elliott impulsively frees the frogs about to be vivisected in his biology class, inspiring the other children to follow his lead, and romantically kisses a girl he likes because E.T. is watching John Wayne kiss Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man (1952); Elliott is sent to the principal’s office for his disruptive behavior.

Inspired by a Buck Rogers comic strip, depicting the character calling for help with a communication device, E.T. builds a makeshift device to “phone home”, using various parts around the Taylor home. E.T. also learns to speak English, and requests the children’s help to build the device. They agree to help find the missing components, unaware that agents are covertly searching for the Alien. On Halloween, the children disguise E.T. as a ghost and Elliott sneaks E.T. into the forest, where they set up the device to call E.T.’s people. Elliott begs E.T. to stay on Earth with him, before falling asleep and waking alone in the forest the next day. Elliott returns home to his worried family, while Michael searches for E.T., finding him pale and weakened in a culvert. He takes him home, where Elliott is also growing weaker, and reveals the creature to Mary (Wallace) just before government agents invade and quarantine the house.

The lead agent, Keys (Coyote), asks for Elliott’s help to save E.T., stating that meeting Aliens was his childhood dream and he considers E.T’s arrival a genuine miracle. However, E.T. dies while Elliott rapidly recovers. Left alone to say goodbye, Elliott tells E.T. that he loves him, so E.T.’s heart begins to glow and he is revived and restored to health. E.T. tells Elliott that his people are returning for him. Elliott and Michael flee with E.T. on their bikes, flanked by Michael’s friends who help them evade the pursuing authorities. Heading towards a roadblock, E.T. levitates the boys to safety and lands them in the forest. E.T.’s ship arrives, and he says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, who gifts him the chrysanthemum he previously revived. Elliott tearfully asks E.T. to stay, but E.T. places his glowing finger on Elliott’s head and tells him that he will always be there. The children, Mary, and Keys watch the ship blast off into space, leaving a rainbow in the sky.

Avatar (2009)

Avatar is an epic SCI-FI film co-produced, co-edited, written, and directed by James Cameron. It features an ensemble cast including Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. (Distributed by 20th Century Fox, it is the first installment in the Avatar film series.)

Storyline
In 2154, Earth suffers from resource exhaustion and ecological collapse. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a lush habitable moon orbiting a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system. Pandora, whose atmosphere is inhospitable to humans, is inhabited by the Na’vi, 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), blue-skinned, sapient humanoids that live in harmony with nature.

To explore Pandora, genetically matched human scientists control Na’vi-human hybrids called “avatars”. Paraplegic former Marine Jake Sully (Worthington) is recruited by the RDA to replace his deceased identical twin, who had signed up to be an operator. Avatar Program head Dr. Grace Augustine (Weaver) considers Jake inadequate, but accepts him as an operator.

While escorting the avatars of Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman, Jake’s avatar is attacked by Pandoran wildlife and flees into the forest, where he is rescued by the Na’vi princess Neytiri (Saldana). Suspicious of Jake, she takes him to her clan. Neytiri’s mother, Mo’at, the clan’s spiritual leader, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society.

Colonel Miles Quaritch (Lang), head of RDA’s security force, promises Jake that the company will restore the use of his legs if he provides information about the Na’vi and their gathering place, the giant Hometree, under which is a rich deposit of unobtanium. Learning of this, Grace transfers herself, Jake, and Norm to an outpost. Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake is initiated into the tribe, and they choose each other as mates. When Jake attempts to disable a bulldozer threatening a sacred Na’vi site, Administrator Parker Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed.

Despite Grace’s argument that destroying Hometree would damage the biological neural network that encompasses all Pandoran life, Selfridge gives Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na’vi to evacuate. Jake confesses that he was a spy and the Na’vi take him and Grace captive. Quaritch’s soldiers destroy Hometree, killing many, including Neytiri’s father, the clan chief. Mo’at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch’s forces. Pilot Trudy Chacón, disgusted by Quaritch’s brutality, airlifts Jake, Grace, and Norm to Grace’s outpost, but during the escape Grace is shot and fatally wounded.

Jake regains the Na’vi’s trust by connecting his mind to that of the Toruk, a dragon-like creature feared and revered by the Na’vi. Supported by Neytiri and the new chief Tsu’tey, Jake unites the clan, telling them to gather all the clans to battle the RDA. Quaritch organizes a strike against the Tree of Souls to demoralize the Na’vi. Before the battle, Jake prays to the Na’vi deity Eywa via a neural connection with the Tree of Souls.

Tsu’tey and Trudy are among the battle’s heavy casualties. The Na’vi are rescued when Pandoran wildlife unexpectedly join the attack and overwhelm the humans, which Neytiri interprets as Eywa answering Jake’s prayer. Quaritch, in an AMP suit, escapes his crashed aircraft and breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake’s human body, exposing it to Pandora’s poisonous atmosphere. As Quaritch prepares to kill Jake’s avatar, he is killed by Neytiri, who saves Jake from suffocation, seeing his human form for the first time.

In the aftermath of the war, the RDA are expelled from Pandora; only some humans are chosen to stay, including Max and Norm. Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar with the aid of the Tree of Souls, Neytiri, and Mo’at.

Tomorrowland (2015)

With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. She then drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York. The now reclusive, cynical Frank (Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside his house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability.

In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new dreamers and thinkers for Tomorrowland.

Black Panther (2018)

Black Panther is an American SCI-FI film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The film stars Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa / Black Panther alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis. In Black Panther, T’Challa is crowned king of Wakanda following his father’s death, but he is challenged by Killmonger (Jordan), who plans to abandon the country’s isolationist policies and begin a global revolution.

Storyline
Thousands of years ago, five African tribes warred over a meteorite containing the metal vibranium. One warrior ingests a “heart-shaped herb” affected by the metal and gains superhuman abilities, becoming the first “Black Panther”. He unites all but the Jabari Tribe to form the nation of Wakanda. Over centuries, the Wakandans use vibranium to develop advanced technologies and isolate themselves from the world by posing as an underdeveloped country. In 1992, Wakanda king T’Chaka visits his brother N’Jobu, who is working undercover in Oakland, California. T’Chaka accuses N’Jobu of assisting black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue with stealing vibranium from Wakanda. N’Jobu’s partner reveals he is Zuri, another undercover Wakandan, and confirms T’Chaka’s suspicions.

In the present day, following T’Chaka’s death, his son T’Challa returns to Wakanda to assume the throne. He and Okoye, leader of the Dora Milaje, extract T’Challa’s ex-lover Nakia from an undercover assignment so she can attend his coronation ceremony with his mother Ramonda and younger sister Shuri. At the ceremony, the Jabari Tribe’s leader M’Baku challenges T’Challa for the crown in ritual combat without the benefit of the heart-shaped herb. T’Challa defeats M’Baku when he persuades him to yield rather than die.

When Klaue and his accomplice Erik Stevens steal a Wakandan artifact from a London museum, T’Challa’s friend and Okoye’s husband W’Kabi urges him to bring Klaue back alive. T’Challa, Okoye, and Nakia travel to Busan, South Korea, where Klaue plans to sell the artifact to CIA agent Everett K. Ross. A firefight erupts, and Klaue attempts to flee but is caught by T’Challa, who reluctantly releases him to Ross’s custody. Klaue tells Ross that Wakanda’s international image is a front for a technologically advanced civilization. When Erik attacks to extract Klaue, Ross is gravely injured protecting Nakia. Rather than pursue Klaue, T’Challa takes Ross to Wakanda, where their technology can save him.

While Shuri tends to Ross, T’Challa confronts Zuri about N’Jobu, since Erik wore a necklace that belonged to him. Zuri explains that N’Jobu had become disillusioned with Wakanda’s isolationism and planned to share Wakanda’s technology with people of African descent to help them overcome their oppressors, with Klaue’s assistance. Before T’Chaka could apprehend N’Jobu, N’Jobu attacked Zuri, forcing T’Chaka to kill him. T’Chaka instructed Zuri to claim that N’Jobu had vanished and to leave behind N’Jobu’s American son, N’Jadaka, to uphold the story. This boy grew up to become Erik, a U.S. black ops Navy SEAL who took on the nickname “Killmonger.” Meanwhile, Killmonger kills Klaue and brings his body to Wakanda. He is presented before the tribal elders, revealing himself as N’Jadaka and asserting his claim to the throne. Killmonger challenges T’Challa to ritual combat and kills Zuri; without the powers of the heart-shaped herb, T’Challa is severely injured and presumed dead after Killmonger throws him over a waterfall. Killmonger ingests the heart-shaped herb and orders the rest to be incinerated, but Nakia manages to extract one. Killmonger, backed by W’Kabi and his army, prepares to distribute shipments of Wakandan weapons to operatives worldwide.

Nakia, Shuri, Ramonda, and Ross flee to the Jabari Tribe for aid. They find a comatose T’Challa, rescued by the Jabari as repayment for sparing M’Baku’s life. Healed by Nakia’s herb, T’Challa returns to fight Killmonger, who also dons a nanotech suit similar to T’Challa’s. W’Kabi and his army fight Shuri, Nakia, and the Dora Milaje while Ross remotely pilots a jet and shoots down the planes carrying vibranium weapons before they can leave Wakanda. M’Baku and the Jabari arrive to reinforce T’Challa. Confronted by Okoye, W’Kabi and his army stand down. Fighting in Wakanda’s vibranium mine, T’Challa disrupts Killmonger’s suit and stabs him. Killmonger refuses to be healed, choosing to die as a free man rather than be incarcerated; T’Challa shows him the Wakanda sunset, and Killmonger dies peacefully.

T’Challa establishes an outreach center at the building where N’Jobu died, to be run by Nakia and Shuri. (In a mid-credits scene, T’Challa appears before the United Nations to reveal Wakanda’s true nature to the world.)

A Better World SCI-FI encourages us to embrace a Hopeful and Optimistic view of the Future — where people live in a more fair and just, prosperous, and peaceful World — usually achieved through technological advancement or social progress. So, what’s the hitch to all this?

We have to Believe it’s Possible … before we can make it a Reality.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

Alien Influence SCI-FI

August 30, 2025 by tjwolf5_wp

Alien Influence SCI-FI explores the idea that an Outside Force — like Extraterrestrial Intelligence — may be secretly controlling or influencing life on Earth from behind the scenes, by manipulation of Events or Human behavior … highlighting our Fears related to Power, Control and the Unknown.

They Live (1988)

They Live is an American SCI-FI action horror film written and directed by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 short story “Eight O’Clock in the Morning” by Ray Nelson. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster.

Storyline
A homeless drifter in Los Angeles, John Nada (Piper) meets fellow laborer Frank Armitage (David), who brings him to a soup kitchen and ad-hoc squatters’ community on the edge of the city. Early on, the local TV is occasionally interrupted by a pirated signal carrying the warnings of a bearded conspiracy theorist, who declares that the human race is being controlled by an unseen Force.

Nada learns that this signal is coming from a nearby church, home to an underground movement, whose mission is to awaken the world to this Force’s sinister plans. There he discovers a box of “Truth-Revealing” sunglasses. When Nada puts on a pair, he realizes that the richest, most powerful people in the world also happen to be … skeleton-faced ALIENS — concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via Subliminal Messages in mass media.

Will Nada be able to convince others to join his fight against the Aliens controlling humanity? Will he succeed in destroying their transmitter that disguises their True appearance and hidden propaganda? The eerie parallels between this story and modern attempts through Social Media to sway the masses are truly frightening — to say the least.

The most memorable parts of They Live are the scenes in which seemingly innocuous advertisements and pop-culture entertainments are exposed as nefarious means of Mind Control, delivering blunt subliminal messages like “OBEY,” “MARRY AND REPRODUCE,” and “NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT.”

The X-Files (1993-2018)

The X-Files is an American SCI-FI drama TV series created by Chris Carter, starring David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Mitch Pileggi and William B. Davis.

Storyline
The story follows FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson), who investigate the “X-Files”: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena. Mulder is a skilled criminal profiler, an ardent supernaturalist, and a conspiracy theorist who believes in the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life and its presence on Earth (springing from the claimed Alien abduction of his sister Samantha when he was 12) whereas Scully is a medical doctor and skeptic who has been assigned to scientifically analyze Mulder’s case files and debunk his nonconforming theories, often supplying logical, scientific explanations for apparently ‘unexplainable’ phenomena.

The main story arc involves the agents’ efforts to uncover a government conspiracy that covers up the existence of extraterrestrials and their sinister collaboration with said government. They come to trust only one another. Early on, Agent Skinner (Pileggi) is dismissive toward Mulder’s belief in Extraterrestrials, but later is moved to respect and agree with him. Mysterious men constituting a shadow element within the U.S. government, known as the Syndicate, are the major villains in the series; late in the series it is revealed that The Syndicate acts as the only liaison between mankind and a group of extraterrestrials that intends to destroy humanity. They are usually represented by the Cigarette Smoking Man (Davis), a ruthless killer, masterful politician, negotiator, failed novelist, and the series’ principal antagonist.

Mulder and Scully learn about evidence of a planned Alien Invasion piece by piece. It is revealed that the extraterrestrials plan on using a sentient virus, known as the black oil (also known as “Purity”), to infect mankind and turn the population of the world into a slave race. The Syndicate—having made a deal to be spared by the Aliens—have been working to develop an Alien-Human Hybrid that will be able to withstand the effects of the black oil. The group has also been secretly working on a vaccine to overcome the black oil; this vaccine is revealed in the latter parts of season five, as well as the 1998 film. (The X-Files: Fight the Future)

Counter to the Alien colonization effort, another faction of Aliens, the faceless Rebels, are working to stop Alien colonization. Eventually, in the season six episodes “Two Fathers” and “One Son”, the rebels manage to destroy the Syndicate. The colonists, now without human liaisons, dispatch the “Super Soldiers”: beings that resemble humans, but are biologically Alien. In the latter parts of season eight, and the whole of season nine, the Super Soldiers manage to replace key individuals in the government, forcing Mulder and Scully to go into hiding.

The Puppet Masters (1994)

The Puppet Masters is an American SCI-FI horror film, adapted from Robert A. Heinlein’s 1951 novel of the same title — starring Donald Sutherland, Eric Thal, Julie Warner, Richard Belzer and Keith David.

Storyline
When a flying saucer reportedly lands in rural Iowa, Andrew Nivens (Sutherland), who runs a secret branch of the CIA, sends two agents to investigate the crash site — who disappear shortly after their arrival. He then goes in person, accompanied by agents Sam Nivens, his son (Thal), and Jarvis (Belzer), as well as Dr. Mary Sefton (Warner), a NASA specialist.

At the crash site, now staged as a phony tourist attraction, they encounter people who appear to display no emotions. To test this theory when meeting with a local television station manager, Mary partially opens her blouse but gets no reaction from the manager who ignores her attempts to seduce him. Suspecting that the man is not who he seems, Sam attempts to take him into custody; however, a brutal fight takes place in the man’s office, killing the manager. The team then locates an Alien that looks like a slug attached to the man’s back. The team manages to capture the Alien and, after a chase during which multiple infected town citizens attempt to stop them, they return to their plane.

The slugs soon spread steadily from the infected town and during a staff meeting where the team discusses the situation, Sam notices that Jarvis has stopped chain-smoking. Suspecting that he may have been infected, Sam and the team attempt to restrain Jarvis and, after a brief chase, they locate the unconscious Jarvis who no longer has an Alien on his back.

After a search of the office building, unable to locate the Alien, Andrew orders all of his staff (at gunpoint) including Sam to remove their shirts. At this time, Andrew’s personal secretary refuses to remove her shirt and attempts to flee the building. Agents, including Sam, pursue her, and after a brutal one-on-one fight, Andrew and Alex Holland (David), Sam’s best friend and leader of the agency SWAT team, locate Sam and the now-dead secretary in the office’s kitchen. Sam tells his father that the Alien got away (but unbeknownst to them, Sam is infected.)

Andrew, Mary, Holland, and Dr. Graves (the lead medical researcher for the team) interrogate the infected Sam. They learn that the Aliens have complete control over their hosts, including killing them and bringing them back to life. (The race is on for the team to stop the invaders before they turn all of humanity into zombie slaves.) Andrew threatens the Alien by subjecting Sam to electric shocks, through which they then learn that electric shocks briefly break the Alien’s control, at the expense of injuring the host. The Alien tells Andrew that it will kill Sam to prove its power and when it stops his heart, Mary conducts massive electrical shocks to Sam, causing the Alien to leave his body after believing that Sam is no longer a viable host. After suffering significant withdrawal, Mary comforts Sam and they begin a personal relationship.

Later, Sam and Mary are back at Sam’s apartment discussing the events of the day and after Sam changes clothes, Mary attempts to seduce him. Sam then discovers that Mary had been infected by an Alien. After informing Sam that the Aliens now know everything that they know, and any attempts to harm the Alien would harm Mary, Mary makes a seemingly impossible jump from Sam’s third-floor apartment and flees in a car driven by Greenberg.

Sam finds Mary and, after nearly killing her to remove the Alien from her back, she informs him that they need to retrieve a child that had been kept in isolation from the infected townspeople. The child once suffered from encephalitis, which was apparently the reason a slug couldn’t possess him. The team tests the theory by infecting an Alien with the encephalitis virus, which causes the alien to explode and die. Biological warfare is adopted and seemingly all parasites die, freeing their victims.

During a later inspection of a hive, debris falls on Andrew. Sam realizes that his father is infected upon seeing him walk normally when he had previously needed to use a cane due to a leg injury. Sam pursues him when he tries to escape. After a brutal fight on a commandeered helicopter, Sam shoots his father, causing the Alien to flee — but is killed by the helicopter’s tail rotor. Now back on the ground, Andrew confirms that that was the last Alien and that he is aware of how much Sam loves him and how Sam and Mary feel about each other. While Andrew is treated for his injuries, Sam remarks to Mary that now she knows everything about him but he has to learn about her. Mary tells him that he has a lifetime to get to know her.

Dark Skies (1996)

Dark Skies is an American UFO conspiracy theory–based SCI-FI TV series that explores a hidden Alien invasion in 1960s America. Starring Eric Close, Megan Ward, J.T. Walsh and Jeri Ryan. The series tagline: “History as we know it is a lie.”

Storyline
John Loengard (Close) and Kim Sayers (Ward) are a young couple newly arrived in Washington, D.C. who become embroiled in a conspiracy involving an Alien race known as the Hive. This parasitic species has been covertly invading Earth since the late 1940s, manipulating historical events to facilitate their plans for domination. The couple’s journey takes them through various historical contexts, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which is depicted as part of the Hive’s strategy to maintain control over humanity.

As they uncover the truth, John and Kim must navigate the dangers posed by the Majestic 12, a secret government organization under Captain Frank Bach (Walsh) tasked with managing the Alien threat while simultaneously covering up their existence. When John and Kim become separated, he is later joined by extraterrestrial investigator Juliet Stuart (Ryan). The series intricately weaves real-life personalities from the 1960s, such as The Beatles and Robert F. Kennedy, into its narrative, enhancing the blend of fact and fiction.

Dark Skies explores themes of government conspiracy, Alien abduction, and the manipulation of history. The series is noted for its ambitious storytelling, attempting to connect various conspiracy theories and historical events into a cohesive narrative. (Despite its intriguing premise and production quality, the show was canceled after one season, leaving many plot threads unresolved.) Though short-lived, it remains a notable entry, particularly for its unique approach to blending historical events with SCI-FI elements.

Although the last episode produced provides some form of closure for the series, with John Loengard meeting his son and the head of Majestic 12 being apparently assassinated, the show’s creators had originally hoped to create five seasons, as indicated by the show’s Bible. According to Zabel and Friedman’s original plan, the pilot and first season (given the overall title “Official Denial”) would cover the period from 1961 to 1969, the second season (“Progenitor”) 1970 to 1976, the third season (“Cloak of Fear”) 1977 to 1986, the fourth season (“New World Order”) would cover 1987 to 1999, and the fifth and final season (“Stroke of Midnight”) would break from the decade-spanning format to encompass the apocalyptic final conflict against the invaders, taking place from 2000 to 2001.

Men in Black (1997)

Men in Black is an American SCI-FI action comedy starring Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as “men in black”, secret agents who monitor and police undercover Aliens who have integrated into human society, with some holding positions of power. Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Rip Torn also appear in supporting roles.

Storyline
In 1961, the Men in Black (MIB) organization is founded after secretly making first contact with extraterrestrials. The MIB designates Earth as a neutral zone for Alien refugees who live in secret among humans. Agents monitor Alien activity and use memory-erasing neuralyzer devices to maintain secrecy.

In 1997, MIB Agents K and D disrupt a border patrol operation at the Mexico–United States border to capture an alien named Mikey. When Mikey becomes violent, K kills him and neuralyzes the patrol officers. D, feeling too old to continue, asks K to neuralyze him so he can retire.

Soon after, NYPD officer James Edwards apprehends a suspect, unaware they are an Alien –who warns of a coming threat before committing suicide. K, impressed by James’s performance, recruits him into the MIB. After completing a series of tests, James becomes Agent J, and his previous identity is erased from public records.

Meanwhile, a hostile Alien known as a “Bug” crash-lands in upstate New York. The Bug kills a farmer named Edgar and uses his skin as a disguise. K and J, tipped off by a tabloid news article, question Edgar’s wife. They learn that the Bug has killed two aliens who were living on Earth in disguise. Their bodies, along with their pet cat, are sent to a morgue overseen by coroner Laurel Weaver.

At the morgue, the Alien tells J and Laurel that “the galaxy is on Orion’s Belt” before dying. After neuralyzing Laurel, K identifies the alien as Rosenberg, a prince from the Arquillian Empire. K and J visit Frank the Pug, an alien informant, who explains that Rosenberg was protecting a miniature galaxy. The galaxy is a powerful energy source which the Bug wants to use to destroy the Arquillians. An Arquillian warship soon arrives in Earth’s orbit and demands the MIB return the galaxy or they will destroy the Earth.

J and the Bug both realize the galaxy is on the collar of Rosenberg’s cat, Orion, which is now with Laurel. The Bug captures her and swallows the galaxy. As the Arquillians prepare to destroy Earth to stop the Bug, the MIB locks down all transportation. J guesses the Bug will head to the New York State Pavilion, where the MIB hid flying saucers during the 1964 World’s Fair.

At the site, the Bug tries to escape with Laurel. She briefly breaks free, and the agents shoot down the ship. The Bug sheds its human skin and reveals its true form, swallowing the agents’ weapons. K allows himself to be eaten so he can retrieve his weapon from inside. J distracts the Bug until K shoots the Bug apart from within. Laurel uses J’s gun to finish the bug off.

After returning the galaxy to the Arquillians, K reveals that he was training J to take his place. J neuralyzes him so he can retire. Later, J continues his work with Laurel, who has joined the MIB as Agent L.

Alien Influence SCI-FI explores important themes like Paranoia, Conspiracy, Hidden Agendas, and Humanity’s vulnerability to Unknown Forces. It plays on our anxieties about Control and the possibility that Unseen Powers are shaping the world.

In this case, Reality goes beyond Fiction — according to UFO Abduction researchers like David M. Jacobs (Walking Among Us: The Alien Plan to Control Humanity).

Consider yourself warned.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

Aliens Incognito SCI-FI

July 30, 2025 by tjwolf5_wp

Aliens Incognito SCI-FI: stories about ALIENS living on Earth — concealing their True Identity to appear Human (by disguise or adapting themselves through genetic breeding to create Alien-Human Hybrids). Motivations may include: Observation and Study, Guiding Humanity, or Infiltration and Takeover.

The Invaders — (1967)

The Invaders is an American SCI-FI TV series that aired on ABC for two seasons.

Storyline
Architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) accidentally learns of a secret invasion of Aliens from outer space already underway– disguising themselves as humans and gradually infiltrating our world. He travels from place to place, trying to thwart the invasion despite the disbelief of officials and the general public. Vincent’s grim and lonely determination to find “tangible proof of the invaders’ existence” is undermined by the Aliens — who kill anyone who discovers them in ways disguised as a natural death.

Over time, Vincent is able to convince a small number of people to help him in his never ending fight.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers — (1978)

Storyline
Invasion of the Body Snatchers begins with a dying, Alien race that stumbles upon Earth, and lands quietly in San Francisco where they transform themselves into small pods. Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) a laboratory scientist at the San Francisco Health Department, stumbles upon some in a park, and picks off a pink flower growing out of one of them. Oblivious to the danger, she takes it home.

The next morning she finds her boyfriend, Dr. Geoffrey Howell (Art Hindle), acting odd. She tells, Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), about it. He recommends she talk to his shrink/friend Dr. Kibner (Leonard Nemoy). Kibner logically says that Elizabeth is trying to sabotage her relationship with Geoffery so she can dump him.

In another part of town, where Matthew’s friends, Jack (Jeff Goldblum) and Nancy Bellicec (Veronica Cartwright), find a deformed body on a bed. They call Matthew to investigate. Matthew thinks the body looks similar to Jack. He then runs off to Elizabeth where he finds her clone growing in the bedroom garden. He whisks her away, and returns with police, but by then, Elizabeth’s double is long gone. Matthew assumes what he is seeing is out of this world and calls the government for help. Unfortunately, they push him to keep quiet so the public doesn’t panic.

Later, Matthew, Elizabeth, Jack, and Nicole doze off, and the Aliens nearly duplicate Matthew. Nicole wakes him and the group flees the house they are in. During their escape, the couples separate from one another. Matthew and Elizabeth end up at the office they work at. In time, the clones of Jack and Dr. Kibner arrive. They tell Matthew that what they are doing is the only way for their species to survive.

He sedates Matthew and Elizabeth so they will sleep, but they took speed beforehand to counteract its effects. Once again, the two escape. They reunite with Nancy, who tells them to hide their emotions to trick the Aliens. With that in mind, they go outside with the Aliens. Matthew and Elizabeth end up at the docks where they find a cargo ship.

Matthew runs off to get a closer look. When he returns, he finds that Elizabeth has fallen asleep, and her Alien clone has risen. He then sets fire to the warehouse; destroying many pods. As this happens, Elizabeth’s clone rats out Matthew and he flees.

In the morning, Matthew watches some children shuffle into a theater for conversion. Nancy, who has been successful hiding among the aliens, sees him and tries to talk to him. He turns and points at her with the Alien scream. She too lets out a shriek of terror.

“V” Miniseries — (1983)

Inspired by It Can’t Happen Here (a 1935 dystopian novel by Sinclair Lewis about a fictional politician who quickly rises to power, becoming America’s first dictator) director–producer Kenneth Johnson in 1982 scripted a miniseries entitled Storm Warnings. NBC executives rejected the original idea, which they considered too cerebral for the average viewer. To make the story more marketable, it was revised into an “Alien invasion” story. It premiered as V on American TV May 3, 1983.

Storyline
Aliens arrive on Earth in huge, saucer-shaped motherships and reveal themselves, appearing human (in red, Nazi-like uniforms) but requiring special glasses to protect their eyes. They initially pose as humanity’s friends, promising to share advanced technology. When strange events begin to occur, a TV journalist (Marc Singer) discovers that beneath their human-like façade, the Visitors are carnivorous reptilian humanoids. They interrupt his broadcast, taking control of the media.

Key humans are subjected to mind-control which turns them into Alien pawns, while others are subjected to horrifying biological experiments. A Resistance movement (symbolized by a blood-red letter V for Victory) means to expose the Visitors’ true purpose: to conquer planet Earth, steal its water and harvest the human race as food. Humans strike their first blow against the Aliens, obtaining weapons from National Guard armories to carry on the fight … but the war is not over.

The original miniseries ends with Visitors virtually controlling the Earth. Humans send a transmission into space to ask other Alien races for help. (Followed by V: The Final Battle and V: The Series.)

Roswell — (1999)

Roswell is an American SCI-FI TV series that presents a timeline where the Roswell UFO exists, and Aliens are hiding in plain sight as a trio of high school-aged teenagers. The show is built on their relationships with humans.

Storyline
Living among the citizens of the infamous New Mexico city of Roswell are some (three young Alien/human hybrids with extraordinary gifts — gifts that are “not-of-this-earth”) who are not there by choice. They are there to follow a destiny given to them by the members of their dying race, a race that they are someday destined to save.

For the past 10 years, Max Evans (Jason Behr) his sister Isabel (Katherine Heigl) and his best friend Michael Guerin (Brendan Fehr) have been living a somewhat normal existence, with their hybrid biology of human and Alien DNA helping them to fit in. Surviving descendants from beings on board the fiery crash of an Alien spacecraft that popular legend says plummeted to the desert in 1947, the three teenagers have grown up quietly among the Roswell residents since emerging from incubation. Their peaceful existence was shattered the day Max forged an otherworldly connection with fellow classmate Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) by using his mysterious powers to heal her gunshot wound, putting aside a pact of secrecy and ultimately risking his own life.

With this simple twist of fate, their secret is sacrificed and their identity exposed, forced to trust Liz and her best friends Maria DeLuca and Alex Whitman in order to stay one step ahead of forces from this world and beyond that would do anything to destroy them. They are also aided by Sheriff Valenti (Michael Trevino) who is driven by a very personal need to learn the truth about what happened on that fateful night in 1947.

Resident Alien — (2021)

Resident Alien is an American SCI-FI mystery comedy-drama TV series about an ALIEN sent to destroy Humanity but starts to understand human emotions and helps solve local crimes while posing as a doctor. (Based on the comic book of the same title by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse.)

Storyline
After crash-landing on Earth in a small Colorado town, an Extraterrestrial (Alan Tudyk) sent to wipe out humanity kills a vacationing physician and takes on his identity. He is asked to do an autopsy on the town’s doctor, who has died in unknown circumstances, and eventually takes over for the doctor at the town’s clinic. He wrestles with the moral dilemma of his secret mission, while also dealing with the mayor’s young son, who can see his true Alien appearance. He develops compassion for humanity and ends up defending them from other Extraterrestrial threats.

The series explores themes of identity, morality, and the challenges of fitting in.

Aliens Incognito SCI-FI presents a view of Life on Earth from an ALIEN perspective — appearing Human to conceal their True Identity (by disguise or adaptive breeding to create Alien-Human Hybrids). According to UFO Abduction researcher David M. Jacobs, (Walking Among Us, 2015) this process has already been underway for decades — Hybrids adapting to blend in with the help of human Abductees (who really have no choice).

An invisible CHANGE is happening … with Aliens adapting to life on Earth.

Hopefully, it will make the world a better place.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)