Alternative Future SCI-FI — imagines more than one “Possible FUTURE” for Humanity, flowing from Choices we make in the PRESENT.

Exploring these stories can help us to “see” the world as it might be — 10, 20, or more years from now — Warning us of Danger in the form of a “Cautionary Tale” or offering Hope that Disaster may be averted — if we change course TODAY.

In either case, we have a role to play in determining which Future unfolds before us.

“The City on the Edge of Forever” — Star Trek (TOS) — (1967)

“The City on the Edge of Forever” is an episode from season one of the American SCI-FI TV series Star Trek.

STORYLINE
While the USS Enterprise orbits a mysterious planet causing time distortions, Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is treating a near-death Lt. Sulu when the Enterprise is rocked by another time wave and McCoy accidentally injects himself with a huge dose of cordrazine, a dangerous drug. Driven into a mad frenzy, he flees from the bridge and beams himself down to the planet.

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) follows with a search party that includes first officer Spock, (Leonard Nimoy) chief engineer Scott, (James Doohan) and communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). On the planet’s surface, they come across an ancient glowing ring (the “Guardian of Forever”), a portal capable of sending them to any time and place. The Guardian shows them images of Earth’s historical past, which Spock records on his tricorder. Suddenly, the still-frenzied McCoy bursts out from his hiding place and jumps through the portal.

The landing party instantly loses contact with the Enterprise, and the Guardian explains that McCoy has altered the past to such an extent that the Enterprise and the reality they knew no longer exists. The Guardian says that it’s possible to fix the damage, so Kirk requests that it replay the historical period it was showing when McCoy passed through.

He and Spock attempt to jump through at a point in time just before McCoy’s arrival and find themselves in New York City in 1930 during the Great Depression. They steal clothes from a fire escape to blend in, and while fleeing from a policeman, hide in the basement of the 21st Street Mission. There they meet the soup kitchen’s operator, Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). She senses something odd about the intruders but nevertheless offers to pay them to clean up the basement and finds them a place to stay.

Later, Spock attempts to discover how McCoy changed history by accessing the recordings on his tricorder. This is a difficult task using the available technology of 1930, which Spock likens to “stone knives and bear skins”. While Spock works on the engineering problem, Kirk pays their expenses by doing odd jobs at the mission, where he falls in love with Keeler. (Unknown to Kirk and Spock, McCoy arrives in a highly agitated state and stumbles into the mission, where Keeler nurses him back to health.)

Spock completes his work and discovers that Keeler was supposed to die in a traffic collision but was somehow saved by the arrival of McCoy, creating an altered timeline in which she founded a pacifist movement on the eve of World War II. It grew powerful enough to cause the United States to delay its entrance into the war, allowing Nazi Germany time to develop the first atomic bomb and use it to win the war instead of the Allies and conquer the world. Kirk is shaken by this revelation and admits his love for Keeler, to which Spock responds that she must die to prevent millions of deaths and restore the future.

SPOCK: Captain, Edith Keeler
is the focal point in time we’ve
been looking for, the point that
both we and Doctor McCoy
have been drawn to.

KIRK: She has two possible
futures then, and depending
on whether she lives or dies,
all of History will be changed.

While walking to a movie with Kirk the following evening, Keeler casually mentions McCoy’s name. Shocked, Kirk tells Keeler to stay right there while he crosses the street back to the mission to inform Spock. McCoy emerges from the mission at the same time, and the trio reunite on the sidewalk. Observing this, Keeler begins to cross the street to join them and does not notice an oncoming truck. Kirk instinctively turns to save her, but a shout from Spock freezes him in his tracks, and Kirk reluctantly grabs McCoy so he can’t save her either. Keeler is struck and killed. A stunned McCoy asks Kirk if he knows what he just did, but it is Spock who replies, “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy return through the Guardian and rejoin the landing party, where they find contact with the Enterprise is restored. A grim-looking Kirk ignores questions about what happened, says “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and the landing party beams up to the Enterprise.

“The Road Not Taken” — Fringe — (2009)

Fringe is an American SCI-FI TV series that premiered on September 9, 2008, and concluded on January 18, 2013, after five seasons comprising 100 episodes. The series has been described as a hybrid of fantasy, procedural dramas, and serials, influenced by TV shows such as Lost, The X-Files, and The Twilight Zone.

STORYLINE
A key plot element of Fringe is the parallel universe that exists next to ours, and the concept that there’s “more than one of everything”.

There were hints of the parallel universe idea scattered through Season 1, but things really didn’t hit hard until “The Road Not Taken” episode, where Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) starts having visions of the alternate universe. At first, the visions were fairly simple, like Olivia seeing two charred bodies instead of one, and seeing Broyles’ office in a different configuration, but then things started to get really weird.

In “Road”, Walter Bishop (John Noble) theorizes that Olivia is experiencing a form of extended deja vu, which he believes is just a brief glimpse of an alternative reality. Olivia’s mind is somehow breaching the fragile walls of space-time. Walter postulates that although we experience time as a linear progression, in reality, every choice we make creates parallel universes, so time is actually like a continuously branching tree of alternative realities. He explains that “deja vu” comes with a feeling of being somewhere before because you actually have been there, in another reality. Also, as we first learned in “Momentum Deferred” that some people, like Olivia, can be “tuned” to see a “shimmer” around objects and people, like Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) — from the alternate universe.

“Deja vu
is simply a
momentary
glimpse to the
other side. Almost
everyone experiences
it. We feel that we’ve
been somewhere before
because actually we have
in another reality.
It’s another path.
The road not
taken.”

— DR. WALTER BISHOP

The final scene of the Season 1 finale is still the pivotal moment when everything changed, and we were “through the looking glass”, so to speak. The images of the World Trade Center towers, still standing, brings the point home. A New York Post newspaper from Universe 2 features stories about former president John F. Kennedy (still alive) addressing the United Nations.

Fringe teaches us that every choice we make creates an Alternative Future or Reality.

Cloud Atlas — (2012)

STORYLINE
The story of Cloud Atlas follows six main characters during six time periods, all taking place at various places on Earth. As each story progresses, connections between the actions of the characters become clear, each one making a significant impact on the following stories. A quick breakdown:

1849, Pacific Islands: The setting of the first plot is in the South Pacific, where attorney Adam Ewing arranges a business meeting with plantation owner Gilles Horrox. After they set sail, Ewing finds a stowaway slave, Autua, and begins to help keep him hidden. Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Goose slowly poisons Ewing with the intent of killing him for his gold, under the pretense of treating him for a parasite. Just before Ewing is about to die, Autua saves him from the doctor. After returning to San Francisco, Ewing and his wife Tilda join the abolitionist movement.

1936, Cambridge: Robert Frobisher is a bisexual/homosexual (we aren’t really sure) English composer who takes an apprenticeship under the famous composer Vyvyan Ayrs. He is inspired by the journal kept by Adam Ewing, and sends a series of letters to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher eventually composes his original piece, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, which Vyvyan attempts to steal and claim as his own, leading Frobisher to shoot and injure the old man. After finishing his composition, Frobisher commits suicide.

1973, San Francisco: Luisa Rey is a journalist who has been tipped off by a now older Rufus Sixsmith about foul play in the new nearby nuclear reactor, built by Lloyd Hooks. Hooks plans to have the reactor fail, causing a disaster and a subsequent boost in the oil business. Sixsmith and Isaac Sachs, another employee who helps Rey, are killed by Hooks’s assassin. A friend of Rey’s father eventually helps her gather the evidence and kill the hitman. Rey also finds and reads Frobisher’s letters to Sixsmith.

2012, Great Britain: Publisher Timothy Cavendish becomes involved with the wrong crowd after one of his writers commits a murder. Pressed for a share of the profits by the author’s brother, Cavendish turns to his own brother for money, who then locks him up in a nursing home as a “practical joke.” While there, he reads a mystery novel written by Luisa Rey about her ordeal with Hooks. He plans an escape with the other residents of the nursing home, and eventually writes a movie about his adventures.

2144, Neo Seoul: Jumping ahead a century, the next story takes place in a dystopian future, following the clone workers at a popular restaurant. One of the clones, Sonmi-451, is inspired by Cavendish’s film and escapes the restaurant with the help of rebel soldier Hae Joo. She discovers that after a clone completes its contract, it is recycled into food for the other clones. Determined to stop this wrongdoing, she becomes the voice of the rebel forces and is martyred.

“Our lives
are not our own.
From womb to tomb,
We are bound to others.
Past and present. And by
each crime and every
kindness, we birth
our future.”

— SONMI-451

2346, Hawaii: Far into the future, a group of tribesmen live as some of the last among the human race after some apocalyptic event. This tribe worships Sonmi (Sonmi-451) as a goddess, and the main character Zachry is tormented by “Old Georgie,” a devilish figure of his imagination. A Prescient, a race more advanced than the Valleymen, named Meronym visits the village. She and Zachry travel to a rundown communication station to activate a beacon, with the hope that someone will rescue them from the planet. While they are gone, a war tribe kills everyone in their village except for Zachry’s daughter. They eventually escape Earth on a spaceship and end up on a distant planet, where Zachry and Meronym start a family.

Cloud Atlas, both as an entirety and in its separate parts, primarily focuses on the metaphysical aspect of humanity and the interconnectivity of all things. (Metaphysics, which itself is the title of a book by Aristotle literally meaning “after physics,” is the branch of philosophy that attempts to gain an understanding of reality as a whole—basically a total explanation for all things.)

Theology is also quite prevalent in Cloud Atlas, mostly in the story told from the far future in which the Valleymen worship Sonmi as a goddess—the same Sonmi who was a Fabricant in 2144 Neo Seoul. Theology means “the study of God,” and it has been the subject of intense thought throughout time.

One of the most prevalent aspects of Eastern philosophy that is prominent in Cloud Atlas is the concept of rebirth and karma. Karma is defined in most Eastern worldviews as the influence of a person’s actions on his or her future, including future lives. According to an interview with Tom Hanks on his role in the film, the actors playing the characters represents the soul of the individual and its continuity through death and rebirth. Each of the characters’ souls takes a different journey through each of the time periods, eventually bringing about that soul’s fate.

Through karmic law and the immortal soul, Cloud Atlas presents a metaphysical “big picture” of reality, with different times and spaces being inherently connected to each other. This demonstrates how our own human lives are integrally connected to those of others in ways we cannot imagine.

The question of what we can and cannot know is also addressed when the Archivist is interviewing Sonmi-451. He asks her for her perspective, her “version” of the Truth. Sonmi replies to this statement, saying, “Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths.” Following the Pre-Modernist view of Truth, which is one that is ultimately objective but not truly knowable, Sonmi’s definition of Truth contrasts that of the Archivist’s, presenting the wide range of beliefs that have been held throughout the history of philosophy.

Ultimately, the characters of Cloud Atlas grow to discover for themselves some level of the Truth in that they make choices they cannot, not make. And every choice shapes the Future that unfolds … for generations to come.

In other words, everything is connected.

Tomorrowland — (2015)

Tomorrowland is an American SCI-FI film — inspired by the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney’s optimistic philosophy of the future.

STORYLINE
In 1964, a young boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) attends the New York World’s Fair to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. Frank is approached by a young girl, Athena, (Raffey 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 and sneaks onto the ride, where 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 (Britt Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father, Eddie, is a NASA engineer, but faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. While 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. Athena drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York.

The now reclusive, cynical Frank (George Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside Frank’s 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 Frank’s house. Frank resents Athena for lying to him about her true nature, but reluctantly agrees to help them get to Tomorrowland.

“Find the ones
who haven’t given up.
They’re the future.“

— FRANK WALKER

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, (Hugh 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. While Frank attempts to convince David to listen, he 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 David, 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, David has also given up and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so that 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 David. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning David’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by David, 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 David, 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.

Tomorrowland reminds us that the Future is what we make it.

The Handmaid’s Tale — (2017)

The Handmaid’s Tale is an American Dystopian TV series, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.

STORYLINE
The story takes place in the Republic of Gliead, a city in what used to be in the United States. In this alternative future state, the democratic government has been overthrown and replaced by a totalitarian one. What makes Gilead so scary is that it still looks pretty much the same … but its government and society are totally alien from our own. Gilead seems to be without freedom or choice. By law, women are forced to work in very limited roles, including some as natal slaves, and they are not allowed to own property, have careers, handle money, or read.

Worldwide infertility has led to the enslavement of fertile women in Gilead determined by the new régime to be fallen women, citing an extremist interpretation of the Biblical account of Bilhah. These women often include those who have entered marriages following divorce (termed “adulteresses”, as divorce is not recognized under Gileadian law), single or unmarried mothers, lesbians (homosexuals being termed “gender traitors”), non-Christians, adherents of Christian denominations other than the “Sons of Jacob”, political dissidents, and academics.

These women, called Handmaids, are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape (referred to as “the ceremony”) by their male masters (“Commanders”) in the presence of their wives with the intent of being impregnated and bearing children for them. Handmaids are given names created by the addition of the prefix Of- to the first name of the man who has them. When they are transferred, their names are changed.

Along with the Handmaids, much of society is now grouped into classes that dictate their freedoms and duties. Women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a plain dress in a specific color. A Handmaid’s outfit consists of a long red dress, a red cloak, heavy brown boots, and a white coif, with a larger white bonnet (known as “wings”) to be worn outside, which conceals her from the public view and restricts her vision.

June Osborne, (Elisabeth Moss) renamed Offred, is the Handmaid assigned to the home of the Gileadan Commander Fred Waterford and his wife Serena Joy, key players in the formation and rise of Gilead, who struggle with the realities of the society they helped create. During “the time before”, June was married to Luke and had a daughter, Hannah.

“Now
I’m awake
to the world.
I was asleep
before. That’s
how we let it happen.
When they slaughtered
Congress, we didn’t wake
up. When they blamed
terrorists and suspended
the Constitution, we
didn’t wake up then
either. They said
it would be
temporary.”

— JUNE OSBORNE

At the beginning of the story, while attempting to flee Gilead with her husband and daughter, June was captured and forced to become a Handmaid because of the adultery she and her husband committed. June’s daughter was taken and given to an upper-class family to raise, and her husband escaped into Canada. Much of the plot revolves around June’s desire to be reunited with her husband and daughter and the internal evolution of her strength to its somewhat darker version.

The Handmaid’s Tale warns us that allowing discrimination based on gender and sexuality — with power concentrated in the hands of a few — can result in a horrific slide from Democracy to Authoritarianism.

Alternative Future SCI-FI imagines more than one Possible FUTURE for Humanity — flowing from Choices we make in the PRESENT. It may Warn us of Danger, leading to Disaster — or offer Hope for a Brighter Tomorrow, if we change course TODAY.

So which path will it be? To War or Peace … Enslavement or Freedom … Extinction or Survival?

The Choice is up to YOU.

***

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Hypnotic Leader SCI-FI explores the potential dangers — when Followers are so captivated by an Authoritarian Leader — that they lose their ability to Think or Judge for themselves. Worst case scenario: they give up their Will (similar to hypnosis) and Obey Commands without question, abandoning all principles of Morality.

Real-life Worst case example: Adolf Hitler. During a time of economic hardship and political instability, Hitler tapped into the fears, frustrations, and hopes of the German people, presenting himself as a Savior who could restore Germany to its former glory (“Make It Great Again”). Bound together by a sense of unity and purpose, his followers succumbed to HATE, committing atrocities against Humanity — in the belief they were destined to rule the world.

Charismatic, Hypnotic Leaders (eccentric, misguided or just plain Evil) often appear in Science Fiction, driving the plot with their Manipulative and Magnetic personalities. Like any toxic relationship, the one between an Authoritarian and their submissive Followers is based on Pathology — leading inevitably to Conflict, Chaos, and Self-Destruction.

“And the Children Shall Lead” — Star Trek (TOS) — (1968)

“And the Children Shall Lead” is the fourth episode of the third season of the American SCI-FI TV series Star Trek.

In the story, federation starship Enterprise arrives at the planet Triacus. Captain Kirk, (William Shatner) Dr. McCoy, (DeForest Kelley) and First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) beam down in time to witness the death of Professor Starnes, the leader of a scientific expedition team. The other members of the expedition, apart from their five seemingly unconcerned children who play and chant, seem to have died at their own hands, dominated by a mysterious fear.

The crew bring the children back to the Enterprise, where McCoy evaluates them and determines that they are suffering from lacunar amnesia, unaware of what happened to their parents and unable to grieve. However, when left unattended in one of the ship’s rooms, the children chant an evocation (“Hail hail, fire and snow. Call the angel, we will go. Far away, for to see, friendly Angel, come to me“) and summon a glowing humanoid named Gorgan (Melvin Belli). He tells them to take control of the crew in order to get to Marcus XII, where he will dominate millions more followers and conquer the galaxy. The eldest child, Tommy, uses mental powers Gorgan has bestowed on the children to trick the crew into steering the ship while presenting illusions that make them think they are still in orbit above Triacus.

Upon reviewing a troubling expedition film recorded by Starnes, Spock, McCoy, and Kirk return to the bridge to find the children and Gorgan fully in control of the crew through illusion and fear. Unable to break their hold on the crew, Spock observes that the children are actually possessed by Gorgan, who must be the evil embodiment of an ancient group of space-warring marauders released by Starnes’s archaeological survey.

SPOCK : Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth.

MCCOY : Or by misleading the innocent.

SPOCK : Humans do have an amazing capacity for believing what they
choose, and excluding that which is painful.

KIRK : Spock, they’re not the Alien beings, they’re children being misled.

SPOCK : They are followers. Without followers, evil cannot spread.

Mesmerized by their “Friendly Angel”, the children blindly follow orders. They cannot see the Truth. Believing they can break the hold Gorgan has on the children, Spock plays back footage showing the children happy with their parents, who are then shown to be dead. As the children realize what has happened, they break down emotionally and Gorgan’s appearance begins to deteriorate as he shouts at them but fails to retain their loyalty. The children begin to cry and Dr. McCoy says, “It’s all right. We can help them now.” The crew regains control and Kirk orders a course for Starbase 4.

Richard Keller of TV Squad listed Gorgan as the “tenth scariest” television character. In 2020, Den of Geek ranked “And the Children Shall Lead” as the 11th most scary of all Star Trek TV episodes.

The Empire Strikes Back — Original Star Wars Trilogy — (1980)

Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) first appears in The Empire Strikes Back as Emperor of the Galactic Empire and the master of Darth Vader. Also known as Darth Sidious, Palpatine is a master manipulator who rises to power through deceit and cunning. His charisma and dark influence are pivotal in turning Anakin Skywalker to the dark side.

“There is only one plan
— one great design which shall govern the universe
— mine.”
EMPEROR PALPATINE

Many of Palpatine’s most devious plans stem from him planting an idea or emotion in someone’s head and letting them do the rest of their own volition, watching as they deliver the result he hoped (and planned) for. Another basic strategy: he helps create a crisis, then “generously” offers to end it with a scenario dependent on giving him more political power.

Palpatine’s story — as an ambitious and ruthless politician dismantling a democratic republic to achieve Supreme power — was in part inspired by examples from real-world politics. Star Wars creator George Lucas has said that Nixon’s presidency “got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships. Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.” He also said “It’s the same thing with Germany and Hitler … You sort of see these recurring themes, where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way.”

In the prequel trilogy, Palpatine becomes a symbol of sinister deception and the subversion of democracy. His career begins as a senator from the planet Naboo who plots to become Supreme Chancellor. He then masterminds the Clone Wars to turn the Republic into the Empire, destroys the Jedi Order, and manipulates Anakin Skywalker into becoming his apprentice, Darth Vader.

In the end, it takes the combined efforts of the second and third most powerful Force users alive — Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (aka Anakin Skywalker, aka Dad) — to defeat him.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier — (1989)

In Star Trek V, Sybok (Laurance Luckinbill) is a charismatic Vulcan holy man who possesses the ability to telepathically make others face their greatest pain. He converts them into his followers after he heals them.

SYBOK: Your pain runs deep.

J’ONN: What do you know of my pain?

SYBOK: Let us explore it … together. Each man hides a secret pain.
It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the
darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain … Share your pain
with me and gain strength from it.

J’ONN: Where did you get this power?

SYBOK: The power was within you.

J’ONN: It is as if a weight has been lifted from my heart.
How can I repay you for this miracle?

SYBOK: Join my quest.

J’ONN: What is it you seek?

SYBOK: What you seek. What all men have sought since time began, …
the ultimate knowledge. To find it, we’ll need a starship.

As the film’s director, William Shatner conceived the story and based the character of Sybok on 1980s televangelists like Jim and Tammy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert, who made their fortunes conning people into believing they were God’s true messenger.

In the story, Sybok is also revealed to be Spock’s long lost half-brother, which creates a powerful connection between them and a quandary — as Sybok challenges Spock to betray Captain Kirk.

Sybok has became a dangerous Vulcan who has rejected logic and embraced emotion. Worse, Sybok is a madman who believes that “God” speaks to him and wants him to steal a starship and find the mythical holy world of Sha-Ka-Ree located beyond the Great Barrier.

Sybok hijacks the USS Enterprise-A and forces the starship to find Sha-Ka-Ree. There, Sybok, Spock, Kirk, and McCoy find “God” — who turns out to be a malevolent ALIEN trapped in the Great Barrier.

Upon realizing his folly, Sybok sacrifices himself and is killed by “God” so that Spock and his friends can escape. Spock finally destroys the Alien imposter and mourns the loss of Sybok … even though he also reaffirms that Kirk, Bones, and the Enterprise crew are his ‘family.’

Star Trek: First Contact — (1996)

Star Trek: First Contact is the eighth movie of the Star Trek franchise, and the second starring the cast of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, directed by Jonathan Frakes in his feature film debut.

The film introduces a controversial new villain to the Star Trek universe: the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) — an ancient being that has existed within and served the Borg Collective for many centuries. As the lone individual within it, the Queen provides direction and purpose for the hive mind.

“I am the beginning, the end,
the one who is many.
I am the Borg.”
— THE BORG QUEEN, 2063

Where her drones showed no emotions, the Queen herself did. She was ruthless, vindictive, petty, and selfish. She would do anything to expand the Borg Collective, employing psychological tactics like extortion, manipulation, plain intimidation or even seduction to further her goals.

STORYLINE : In the 24th century, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) awakens from a nightmare in which he relives his assimilation by the cybernetic Borg six years earlier. He is contacted by Starfleet, who inform him of a new Borg threat against Earth. Picard’s orders are for his ship, USS Enterprise, to patrol the Neutral Zone in case of Romulan aggression; Starfleet is worried that Picard is too emotionally involved with the Borg to join the fight.

Learning the fleet is losing the battle, the Enterprise crew disobeys orders and heads for Earth, where a single Borg Cube ship holds its own against a group of Starfleet vessels. Enterprise arrives in time to assist the crew of USS Defiant and its commander, the Klingon Worf (Michael Dorn). Picard takes control of the fleet and directs the surviving ships to concentrate their firepower on a seemingly unimportant point on the Borg ship. The Cube launches a smaller spherical ship towards Earth before being destroyed. Enterprise pursues the sphere into a temporal vortex. As the sphere disappears, Enterprise discovers Earth has been altered — it is now populated by Borg. Realizing the Borg have used time travel to change the past, Enterprise follows the sphere through the vortex.

Enterprise arrives hundreds of years in the past on April 4, 2063, the day before the historic warp drive flight that leads to humanity’s first encounter with Alien life. The crew realizes the Borg are trying to prevent “first contact” and assimilate humanity while the planet is recovering from a devastating war. After destroying the Borg sphere, an away team transports down to Zefram Cochrane’s warp ship, Phoenix, in Bozeman, Montana. Picard has Cochrane’s assistant Lily Sloane (Alfre Woodard) sent back to Enterprise for medical attention. The captain returns to the ship and leaves Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) on Earth to make sure Phoenix’s flight proceeds as planned. While in the future Cochrane (James Cromwell) is seen as a hero, in reality he built the Phoenix for financial gain and is reluctant to be the historic figure the crew describes.

A group of Borg invade Enterprise’s lower decks, assimilating some of the crew and modifying the ship. Picard and a team attempt to reach engineering to disable the Borg with a corrosive gas, but are forced back; the android Data (Brent Spiner) is captured in the melee. A frightened Lily corners Picard with a weapon, but he gains her trust. The two escape the Borg-infested area of the ship by creating a diversion in the holodeck. Picard, Worf, and the ship’s navigator, Lieutenant Hawk, travel outside the ship in space suits to stop the Borg from using the navigational deflector to call for reinforcements, but Hawk is assimilated in the process. As the Borg assimilate more decks, Worf suggests destroying the ship, but Picard angrily calls him a coward. Lily confronts the captain and makes him realize he is acting irrationally because of his own past with the Borg. Picard apologises to Worf and orders the activation of the ship’s self-destruct and evacuation of the crew to escape pods, while he stays behind to rescue Data.

As Cochrane, Riker, and engineer Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) prepare to activate the warp drive on Phoenix, Picard discovers that the Borg Queen has grafted human skin onto Data, giving him the sensation of touch he has long desired so that she can obtain the android’s encryption codes to the Enterprise computer. Although Picard offers himself to the Borg in exchange for Data’s freedom, Data refuses to leave, deactivates the self-destruct, and fires torpedoes at Phoenix. At the last moment the torpedoes miss, and the Queen realizes Data deceived her. The android ruptures a coolant tank, and the corrosive vapor eats away the biological components of the Borg as well as Data’s new skin.

With the Borg threat neutralized, Cochrane completes his warp flight. Later that night, the crew watches from a distance as an Alien Vulcan ship, attracted by the Phoenix warp test, lands on Earth. Cochrane greets the Aliens. Having ensured the correction of the timeline, Picard bids Lily farewell and the Enterprise crew slip away and return to the 24th century.

In 2002, the Borg Queen was placed second in TV Zone’s list of the top twenty SCI-FI TV villains.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (Parts 1 & 2) — (2014, 2015)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is the third installment in The Hunger Games film series. In the story, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) joins President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), the renegade leader of the underground District 13, in a mass rebellion against the Capitol. In Part 2, the final installment in the original film series, Katniss (Lawrence) leads a team of rebels to Panem to liberate it from the tyrannical leadership of President Snow (Donald Sutherland).

President Coin uses manipulative tactics to take power, while presenting herself as Panem’s salvation. For Katniss, stuck between the manipulation of Panem and her own need to survive, it becomes impossible to tell who is trustworthy. Coin is never someone to whom Katniss devotes her allegiance. She slowly comes to realize that the woman who has taken up the District 13 revolution is more dangerous than she seems.

A significant lesson that Katniss must learn: how dangerous the perspective of “us vs. them” is within a nation. One purpose of the brutal Games is to pit the Districts against one another and therefore keep them from uniting. By keeping the Capitol citizens separate from those of the Districts, they cause isolation there as well. Even though District 13 seeks to deconstruct Panem’s rule, it still falls into this mindset. President Coin’s black-and-white way of thinking (about her allies and enemies) leads her to condemn anyone associated with the Capitol, including Peeta.

When President Coin decides to put Peeta on Katniss’ squad (as District 13 takes the Capitol) it is clear to everyone involved — even those loyal to her — that Coin’s only motivation for this would be to eliminate the Mockingjay entirely. She has determined that the only use Katniss could be at that point is as a martyr.

“Dead or alive, Katniss Everdeen
will remain the face of this rebellion.”
— PRESIDENT COIN

Once President Coin takes the Panem Capitol, she wastes no time further demonstrating her “us vs. them” mentality. Coin calls together all the remaining Hunger Games victors and asks them to vote on her idea to reinstate the Games — this time using Capitol children. It becamc clear then that Coin has the same mentality as Snow. To her, children are a tool to be used against those that love them. They are chess pieces to be maneuvered and sacrificed. If Coin is willing to kill Capitol children in the Hunger Games, she would undoubtedly be willing to in a war.

On the surface, Coin appears to have a calm and collected demeanor, but towards the end of the war, Katniss Everdeen realizes how ruthless she can be in her pursuit of power. She is a Charismatic Leader and a remarkably subtle Manipulator, having positioned Katniss and every powerful player in Panem into the proper place on her chessboard in order to seize political victory, even outmaneuvering President Snow.

Her surname (“Coin”) might be related to the saying “two sides of the same coin”, since she is superficially different from Snow, but the two presidents are fundamentally similar in their ruthless pursuit of power.

Hypnotic Leader SCI-FI often draws inspiration from real-world examples, where captivated Followers, manipulated by a Charismatic, Authoritative Leader, lose their ability to Think or Judge for themselves — succumbing to HATE. Worst case scenario: they Obey Commands without question, abandoning all principles of Morality. That danger is very present in our world today.

Like any toxic relationship, it can lead inevitably to Conflict, Chaos, and Self-Destruction.

Don’t let this happen … to YOU.

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“Through a Child’s Eyes” SCI-FI can open our minds to TRUTH in a remarkable way — because it enables us to see a World full of Possibilities, where Everything is New, with No Limits to our Imagination.

It’s the ideal way to be — if we want to experience enlightenment — about Who we are as Human Beings … and our Place in the Universe. Hollywood has opened the door for us through great SCI-FI storytelling — from a Child’s Point of View.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial — (1982)

One night, as small Alien visitors secretly gather plants in a California forest, one of them is separated from the group, fascinated by city lights. Government vehicles arrive, a chase ensues, and the other Aliens are forced into a hasty departure, leaving him behind. In a nearby San Fernando Valley neighborhood, lonely ten-year-old Elliott (Henry Thomas) pitches a baseball into a tool shed, and is astonished when the ball rolls back. Later he returns with a flashlight and discovers the Alien hiding among cornstalks. It shrieks and flees the scene.

Despite his family’s disbelief, (his brother Michael jokes that it must be a “goblin”) Elliott leaves a trail of candy to lure the Alien into his house. Before bed, he realizes the Alien is imitating his movements. The next morning, Elliott feigns sickness to stay home from school. He can “feel” the Alien’s thoughts and emotions, shown when the Alien accidentally opens an umbrella, startling him and simultaneously Elliott several rooms away.

Later, Elliott introduces his older brother Michael and seven-year-old sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) to the Alien (saying, “remember the goblin?”), deciding to keep him hidden from their mother, Mary (Dee Wallace). When the children ask about his origins, the Alien shows them, levitating balls to represent his planetary system, and shows his ability to revive dead chrysanthemums. Through his glowing fingertip, he also heals a minor cut on Elliott’s finger.

At school the next day, Elliott experiences a much stronger empathic connection with the Alien, exhibiting signs of intoxication (because the Alien is at Elliott’s home, drinking beer) and freeing the frogs about to be dissected in biology class. As the Alien watches John Wayne kiss Maureen O’Hara on TV, Elliott kisses a girl he likes and is sent to the principal’s office.

The Alien dubs himself “E.T.”, reading a comic strip where Buck Rogers, stranded, calls for help by building a makeshift communication device, and is inspired to try it himself. E.T. gets Elliott’s help to build a device to “phone home” by using parts from a Speak & Spell, a record player, circular-saw blade, wooden coat-hanger, foil-lined umbrella, and other items from Elliott’s house. Michael notes that E.T.’s health is declining and that Elliott is referring to himself as “we”. The children are unaware that E.T. is being tracked by government agents and they are being spied on.

On Halloween night, Michael and Elliott dress E.T. as a ghost to sneak him out. Elliott and E.T. head through the forest, where E.T. attempts to “phone home” with his device. The next day, Elliott wakes up in the field, finding E.T. gone. Elliott returns home to his worried family. Michael discovers E.T. dying next to a culvert and takes him home to an also-dying Elliott. Mary is horrified upon discovery of her son’s illness and the dying Alien, just as a group of government agents dressed in biohazard suits led by Keys (Peter Coyote) invades the house.

Elliott: “He needs to go home; he’s calling his people. And I
don’t know where they are, but he needs to go home.”

Keys: “I don’t think he was left here intentionally, but his being
here is a miracle, Elliott. It’s a miracle and you did the best
that anybody could do. I’m glad he met you first.”

While scientists attempt to treat E.T. in a lab set up inside their house, the mental connection between him and Elliott is lost. E.T. appears to die while Elliott recovers. As he is carried away, Elliott screams that doctors are killing E.T. as they try to revive him. When they pronounce E.T. dead, Michael discovers that the chrysanthemums that E.T. previously revived are dying again. As Elliott recovers, the scientists first return him to his family, but then Keys leaves him alone with E.T. Elliott says a tearful goodbye, telling E.T. that he loves him before closing the case. E.T.’s heart light begins to glow, Elliott sees the chrysanthemum coming back to life, and opens the case. E.T. awakes and says that his people are returning.

Elliott and Michael steal the van that E.T. had been loaded into and flee the scene, with Michael’s friends joining them on bicycles, evading authorities. Suddenly facing a police roadblock, E.T. helps them escape by using his telekinesis to lift them into the air just in time and towards the forest like he had done for Elliott before.

Standing near the spaceship, E.T.’s heart glows as he prepares to return home, while Mary, Gertie, and Keys show up. E.T. says goodbye to Michael and Gertie, as she presents him with the flower he had revived. Before boarding the spaceship, he embraces Elliott and tells him “I’ll be right here”, pointing his glowing finger to Elliott’s forehead. He picks up the chrysanthemum and boards the spaceship. As the others watch it take off, the spaceship leaves a rainbow in the sky.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial successfully merges Science Fiction with childlike wonder. E.T. wants to return to his world rather than conquer ours. It’s easy for children he encounters on Earth to understand his peaceful intentions. This movie remains a beloved favorite among children and adults for its powerful themes of love, friendship, and the universality of the human experience.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence — (2001)

In the future, polar ice caps have melted and submerged coastal cities. When one company creates the first Mecha child, an employee brings home a prototype, David (Haley Joel Osment) to his wife, Monica (Frances O’Connor), hoping to ease her grief over their comatose son in cryo-stasis. His love is real. But he is not. At first, David lives happily as part of the family.

But when their natural child suddenly recovers, David is abandoned and sets out to become “a real boy” worthy of his mother’s affection. Like Pinocchio, he goes on a long journey hoping to find his “Blue Fairy,” who can make his dreams come true.

Along the way, David is mentored by a pleasure-providing Mecha named Gigolo Joe (Jude Law) and a talking “super toy” bear named Teddy. His adventures take him to the Roman Circus-style “Flesh Fair,” where Mechas are destroyed for human amusement; Rouge City, where Gigolo Joe narrowly avoids capture by police; and finally a submerged New York City, where David’s creator, Professor Hobby (William Hurt) reveals secrets of the boy’s creation.

David finds copies of himself, is disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, and attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, David notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy. Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft before being captured by authorities with an electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. Trapped by a fallen Wonder Wheel, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted.

Two thousand years later, humanity is extinct and Manhattan is buried under glacial ice. Aliens, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David’s memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence had been in the works for decades under the stewardship of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who kept his friend Steven Spielberg in the loop about the project’s development and creative evolution, then turned it over to Spielberg before his death in 1999.

The Last Mimzy — (2007)

In the distant future, a scientist sets out to avert catastrophic ecological disaster, sending a small number of high tech devices that resemble toys back in time to modern day Seattle. Discovered by two children: Noah Wilder (Chris O’Neil) and his younger sister, Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn). The “toys” are initially incomprehensible to them, other than one which appears to be a stuffed rabbit. The children keep their discovery secret from their parents

Emma becomes telepathically connected to the rabbit, namedt “Mimzy”, which imparts knowledge to her. The children gain genius-level intellects and psionic powers: Noah can teleport objects using a card-sized rectangle of green lines of light and a conch shell to control spiders. Thanks to her link, Emma develops more advanced abilities, becoming the only one who can use the “spinners”, stones which can float and produce a force field. Emma describes herself as “the chosen one” but names Noah as “the engineer” without which she cannot “build the bridge to the future”.

The children’s parents and Larry White (Rainn Wilson), Noah’s science teacher, discover the devices and the children’s powers. By mistake, Noah causes a power black-out over half the state of Washington, alerting the FBI to their activities. The family is held for questioning by Special Agent Broadman. Mimzy is revealed as artificial life form, utilizing nanotechnology created by Intel.

Emma relates a dire message from Mimzy: many others were sent into the past before her, but none of the others were able to return to their home time, because they lacked an “engineer” like Noah. Now Mimzy, the last one the scientist was able to send back, is beginning to disintegrate. To save the future, Mimzy must acquire a sample of uncorrupted human DNA to correct the damage done to DNA by ecological catastrophes.

The FBI do not believe them, so Noah and Emma use their powers to escape. Mimzy absorbs a tear from Emma, which contains her DNA. Via the time portal which Noah constructs using the toys, Mimzy returns to her point of origin. There, Mimzy provides the genetic information required to restore humanity, both physically and mentally, with Emma dubbed “Our Mother” by the people of the future.

The Last Mimzy was loosely based upon the 1943 Science Fiction short story “Mimsy Were the Borogoves” by Lewis Padgett (a pseudonym of husband-and-wife team Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore). The film’s creators take a very personal story about one family and a box of toys from the future … and turn it into an epic story in which childlike innocence saves the human race.

Tomorrowland — (2015)

In 1964, young inventor Frank Walker attends the New York World’s Fair to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. Frank is approached by a young girl, Athena (Raffey 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. Frank obeys and sneaks onto the ride, where 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 present day, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father, Eddie (Tim McGraw), is a NASA engineer, but faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. While 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. Athena drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York.

The now reclusive, cynical Frank (George Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside Frank’s 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 Frank’s 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.

They find Tomorrowland in a state of decay. David Nix (Hugh Laurie), its 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. While Frank attempts to convince David to listen, he refuses and intends to make them leave Tomorrowland.

Casey realizes the tachyon machine is telling humanity that the world will end, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They confront David, 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, David has also given up and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so that 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 David. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning David’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by David, 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 David, 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.

Tomorrowland offers positive messages that we should all take to heart: Dreamers have to stick together, ideas are worth fighting for, knowing how things work is important, and inventors must never give up on their innovations — because they can literally change the future.

Midnight Special — (2016)

In a motel, Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) and his friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton) watch an AMBER Alert for 8-year-old Alton Meyer (Jaedon Martell) and his reported abductor, Roy, while the boy reads comic books on the floor.

At “The Ranch”, a religious cult in rural Texas, Pastor Calvin Meyer (Sam Shephard) dispatches two parishioners to retrieve Alton. He then faces his congregation as the FBI storms their church. NSA communications analyst Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) asks Calvin how numbers sent via encoded satellite transmissions made their way into his sermons. Calvin explains that Alton speaks in tongues and gave the numbers to Calvin. As Alton’s powers grew, his mother Sarah (Kirsten Dunst) abandoned him, and members of the Ranch have been raising him, with Pastor Meyer as his adoptive father. Roy, the boy’s biological father, is protective of Alton, doing everything in his power to avert danger.

After a violent confrontation with a state trooper, Roy and Lucas seek cover at the home of Elden, a former Ranch member. During the night, an earthquake seems to wake Roy and Lucas. When they break down the door to Alton’s room, they find him linked to Elden by blinding beams of light directly from his eyes into Elden’s. Roy knocks out Elden and covers up Alton, who is extremely photosensitive. They take Elden’s van and continue on toward a location that Alton specified. Members of the Ranch seem to know this location, but the FBI is desperately trying to figure out where the trio are headed.

When they stop at a gas station, Alton seems to destroy a satellite, creating a rain of debris crashing down on them. They drive to Sarah Tomlin’s house, and she is overjoyed to be reunited with her son. After they watch the news together, Alton explains that he caused the satellite to crash because the police were using it to track him.

As the fugitives (now including Sarah) continue on their trek, Alton appears to be growing sick and weak. He convinces Roy to let him see the daylight, while Lucas and Sarah go ahead to a motel. After witnessing his first ever sunrise, Alton’s eyes begin to glow, and an enormous dome of light surrounds the duo. They reunite with Lucas and Sarah, and Alton is healthy. He explains that seeing the sun helped him realize his true identity. There is a world “built on top of” this one, and he belongs to it. Roy confirms that he briefly saw this hidden world inside the dome of light.

When they exit the hotel room, they are ambushed by Calvin’s trackers from the ranch, who abduct Alton but are soon captured by the police. The boy is taken to a government facility where, although he had no normal way of knowing who the man was, he insists that he will talk only to Paul Sevier. After Sevier experiences Alton’s powers, he helps reunite him with his parents. Having deduced their destination from Calvin’s sermons, Sevier warns the fugitives that there is a 5-mile security perimeter around the location on the Florida panhandle.

Roy barrels through a roadblock, driving inside the perimeter as the Army scrambles to give chase. As they speed away, Alton lets them know just where to stop. Alton and Sarah speedily exit the car and run into the woods. Roy and Lucas lead the Army on a wild goose chase while Alton and Sarah reach the edge of a swamp. There, a great dome of light appears, engulfing much of Florida and surrounding states. Everyone inside the dome of light can see the futuristic structures of a parallel world. Eventually, other beings of this world gather around Alton, and the entire dome disappears, taking Alton with it.

Roy and Lucas are arrested. Lucas is interviewed by the FBI. He tells them the story, but they are dissatisfied. Sevier then enters to interview him, with Lucas the only one aware of Sevier’s previous involvement. Sarah, apparently walking away from her past life forever, cuts off her cult-traditionalist hair braid in a local gas station. Roy is incarcerated, but can watch the sunrise, his eyes briefly and faintly glowing in a similar manner to Alton’s.

Midnight Special has been praised by reviewers as a “Spielberg-esque” SCI-FI chase film with an “engrossing sense of mystery”. Its story points to a parallel reality overlapping the world as we know it, hidden from us — until a child’s need to crossover reveals its otherworldly inhabitants.

“Through a Child’s Eyes” SCI-FI can help us realize that childlike innocence is the key to understanding great Mysteries — like Who we are and our Place in the Universe.

It may open a World of Possibilities … for YOU.

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Science Fiction can be “eye-opening” when it sounds the Alarm about THREATS to our Safety or our Freedom — especially when we do not even know they exist.

For over seventy years, Hollywood has stoked our fears of ALIEN INVASION with films like The War of Worlds (1953), Independence Day (1996) and Arrival (2016). Fans of SCI-FI are well acquainted with terror-filled scenarios … where Aliens invade Earth and make themselves known to mankind.

But once in a while, intuitive filmmakers take a different approach and come much closer to the mark — closer to reality, that is — when they tell a story in which the Aliens are not “coming”… because THEY ARE ALREADY HERE.

Invasion has already happened — without any war — in a quiet, secret sort of way.

This is exactly the way “invasive species” operate in the natural world — infiltrating a particular habitat, multiplying in number, competing for resources like food and water — until the original inhabitants find themselves struggling to survive … in danger of being completely wiped out.

In this kind of story, often only a small minority know the Truth about the Alien presence on Earth and try desperately to warn others — who do not even realize that anything has happened at all.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers — (1956)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an American SCI-FI horror film.

The storyline concerns an Alien Invasion that begins in the fictional town of Santa Mira, California. A local doctor (Kevin McCarthy) receives reports from the townspeople of “strange behavior” in friends and family members — who look the same, but seem to be “imposters” somehow. No one believes them at first.

Extraterrestrial plant spores have fallen from space and grown into large seed pods, each one capable of producing a visually identical copy of a human. As each pod reaches full development, it assimilates the physical traits, memories, and personalities of a sleeping person placed near it — until only the replacement is left. These duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion.

Little by little, the doctor uncovers this “quiet” invasion — and tries to stop it.

The Invaders — (1967)

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

In the story, 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.

They Live — (1988)

They Live is an American SCI-FI action horror film written and directed by John Carpenter.

In the story, a homeless drifter, Nada (Roddy Piper) comes to Los Angeles in search of a job, where he sees a preacher warning that “they” have recruited the rich and powerful to control humanity. He finds employment at a construction site and befriends a coworker Frank (Keith David), who invites him to live in a shantytown near a church. A hacker takes over TV broadcasts, warning that humanity is “their cattle” and that the only way to see is to shut off the signal at its source.

Through special sunglasses Nada discovers that the ruling class are Aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media. He joins a group of rebels who fight to expose the Aliens and free humanity from their control — by shutting down the signal that prevents us from seeing them and their hidden messages.

In the end, humans all over the world discover the Aliens hiding among them.

The X-Files — (1993-2018)

“Deep Throat” is the second episode of the first season of the American SCI-FI TV series The X-Files. FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigate cases linked to the paranormal. Mulder is a believer, while Scully, a skeptic, tries to discredit him.

Mulder and Scully investigate a possible conspiracy in the United States Air Force — to hide the truth about erratic behavior from test pilots and eyewitness reports of mysterious aircraft performing seemingly impossible maneuvers in the sky. Mulder meets a mysterious informant, Deep Throat, (Jerry Hardin) who warns him to stay away from the case.

Undeterred, Mulder sneaks onto the base at night, sees a triangular craft fly overhead and is then captured by soldiers who tamper with his memory. He comes closer to the truth about Extraterrestrial life than ever before, only to have his progress stalled and findings taken from him, yet again. Having been denied the truth about the base, Mulder and Scully return to Washington.

Days later, Mulder encounters Deep Throat while jogging at a local track. Mulder asks if “they” really are present on Earth; Deep Throat responds: “They have been here for a long, long time”.

WALKING AMONG US

David M. Jacobs, an American historian and retired professor from Temple University, is well known in the field of UFOlogy for his research (more than 50 years) and books on the subject of Alien abduction, including:

Secret Life (1993) — Based on interviews with sixty individuals and more than 300 independently corroborated accounts, takes the reader on a minute-by-minute journey through a typical abduction experience and describes in detail the bizarre physical, mental and reproductive procedures that abductees claim have been administered by small Alien beings.

The Threat (1998) — Based on more than 700 hypnotic-regression interviews with Alien abductees, reveals why the Aliens are here and what they want, explains why their agenda has been kept secret, and exposes their frightening plans for Earth and its inhabitants.

Walking Among Us (2015) — Jacobs examines a disturbing phenomenon that he began noticing in 2003 : the incidents of Alien abductions have accelerated with Alien integration into human society. A silent and insidious invasion has begun. Alien hybrids have moved into your neighborhood and into your workplace. They have been trained by human abductees to “pass,” to blend in to society, to appear as normal as your next door neighbor.

Why are they here? The chilling answer:

“Abduction evidence points to a single goal:
global integration resulting in takeover.”

This is NOT Science Fiction. This is Reality. From a respected researcher who has investigated more than 1150 abduction events experienced by more than 150 abductees.

We will never see an Alien Invasion like The War of the Worlds or Independence Day — BECAUSE THEY ARE ALREADY HERE. Jacobs reports that a “change” is coming; a future when very human-like hybrids will intermingle with humans in everyday life. Their message: “Soon we will all be together. Soon everyone will be happy and everyone will know his place.”

This is a difficult Truth to accept. How can we?

Dr. Jacobs puts it this way: “I have struggled with this problem for many years. It is a close call, but my sense is that it is better to know than not to know. Without knowledge, we are completely at the Aliens’ mercy. With proper knowledge, we may think of options to delay or impede their program. I think this is worthwhile. And helping abductees struggle with what is happening to them is the human thing to do. If enough intelligent, knowledgable people put their minds to the problem, there may be a remote possibility that they can stop the Aliens, or at least slow them down.”

Let us hope it is not too late.

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The “First Peoples” of North America (its earliest known inhabitants) have cultures and oral traditions spanning thousands of years. Their storytelling traditions often have SCI-FI elements, like tales about Visitors from Outer Space.

“Indigenous people have always been writing and telling Science-Fiction stories, but it hasn’t been labeled as such,” said Blaire Topash-Caldwell, a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians who has written about the rise of Indigenous SCI-FI. “We’ve always been interested in prophecy, alternate realities and different spheres of existence.”

In recent years, Native-American inspired novels, comics, and films have entered the mainstream.

Legends from the Sky — NAVAJO — (2015)
The Navajo Nation, also known as Navajoland, is a Native American reservation that occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. With more than 400,000 tribal members, it is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States.

In Legends from the Sky, a flying saucer crashes in the Navajo Nation, prompting a cover-up and the disappearance of an old man. His grandson, a recently-returned US Army veteran (burdened by survivor’s guilt after a disastrous military tour) must search for his missing grandfather after their ancestral land is mysteriously taken over by an unknown federal organization — and discover the secret of the saucer.

Night Raiders — CREE — (2021)
The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where more than 350,000 people are Cree or have Cree ancestry — north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories. In the United States, Cree people historically lived from Lake Superior westward. Today, they live mostly in Montana.

Night Raiders is a Canadian-New Zealand SCI-FI dystopian film. In the war-torn world of 2043, an oppressive military government locates children — with unending drone surveillance — and brings them into a state-run institution called the Academy. Militant teachers brainwash children to become soldiers, forcing them to leave behind their families’ customs, religion, language, and names. Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), a Cree woman, joins a resistance movement to save her daughter.

Slash/Back — INUIT — (2022)
Nunavut is a Canadian territory that encompasses the traditional lands of the Inuit, the indigenous peoples of Arctic Canada. The Inuit are descended from the Thule, one of the earliest hunting societies that travelled across the Bering Strait into Northern Canada. The name Nunavut means “Our Land” in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.

Slash/Back is a Canadian Inuit SCI-FI film directed by Nyla Innuksuk in her feature debut.

Set in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, a remote community, the story follows four teenage girls who encounter a strange polar bear, shoot it and return home. Going back to investigate, one of them discovers an Alien Artifact, and sees the bear and an elk dragging a body to the Artifact that begins to drain its blood. A police officer and fisherman attacked by the ‘bear’ become Alien Skins — and the girls must fight them off alone (their parents are at a Social Dance). Using her knowledge of hunting, one girl, Maika, kills a Skin, causing light to shoot from the Artifact into the sky, where a spacecraft departs. When interviewed by a reporter after life returns to normal, she simply replies, “I am a hunter!”

Prey — COMANCHE — (2022)
The Comanche are a Native American tribe from the Southern Plains who belong to the federally recognized Comanche Nation, headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. They speak a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family. The Comanche were once part of the Shoshone people of the Great Basin.

Prey is an American SCI-FI horror film in the Predator franchise, a prequel to the first four films, set in the Northern Great Plains in 1719. The story revolves around a young Comanche woman, Naru (Amber Midthunder), who is striving to prove herself as a hunter. She finds herself having to protect her people from a vicious, humanoid Alien that hunts humans for sport, as well as from French fur traders who are destroying the buffalo they rely on for survival. (Filmed in English, with some sequences shot in Comanche, a full Comanche dub was also created, the first feature film to do so.)

THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY

A Gleam of Light — HOPI — Book 1 (2016)

The Hopi are Native Americans who live primarily in northeastern Arizona on a reservation near the Black Mesa. They belong to the Pueblo people of the southwestern US, known for their terrace farms and deep spirituality. Their name means “people of peace” in the Hopi language. They have lived in the same region for over 1,000 years and claim to be the most rooted of all peoples in North America. Hopi spirituality weaves together stories, songs, dances and festivals. They worship their gods in shrines and ceremonies and draw insights from the movements of the stars.

A Gleam of Light begins in 1995, when 8-year-old half-Hopi Una Waters survives a terrifying UFO encounter at 30,000 feet on Flight 564 from Dallas to Las Vegas. 21 years later, now a D.C. bureaucrat, Una is summoned back to Hopiland by a desperate plea from an old friend. The U.S. Army’s sudden invasion of the Sacred Peaks threatens their peaceful way of life. Somehow, she must confront her painful past and find proof to protect an ancient discovery. Her connection to the white man’s world makes Una uniquely qualified to help solve the mystery, as she tries to reconnect with her cultural identity.

Inspired by Hopi mythology, each volume of THE SURVIVAL TRILOGY (Book 2 The Dragon’s Glare and Book 3 Beyond the World) explores native beliefs pertaining to Alien Life from a unique cultural point of view — book one: Native American, book two: Asian American, and book three: African American. All are connected … through Hopi prophecy.

First Peoples SCI-FI — from tribes like the NAVAJO, CREE, INUIT, COMANCHE and HOPI –offers us storytelling traditions from Native American cultures spanning thousands of years … about Visitors from Outer Space, Alternate Realities and so much more.

Exploring them could open up a new world of discovery … for YOU.

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(click image link to view YouTube video)

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Reading Between the Lines: to perceive or detect a Hidden Meaning that is not directly expressed — behind something written or said.

Sometimes extraordinary events in SCI-FI are not explicitly spelled out for the viewer — they are “subtle” or implied; when the story at first appears to be about one thing — but is actually about something else.

In storytelling, when a person’s life seems to ‘jump’ — inexplicably from one place to another, with no memories of what happened in between — possible explanations may include: alcohol-induced Amnesia, head Trauma, Dissociative Identity Disorder, spiritual Possession or … Alien Abduction.

“Stopover in a Quiet Town” — The Twilight Zone — (1964)

After drinking too much at a party, Bob and Millie Frazier awaken in a strange bed, in a strange house in a strange town. They’re still dressed in the clothes they wore to the party but their memories are fuzzy. Bob was too drunk to drive so Millie was behind the wheel and she vaguely remembers a shadow falling over them. They soon realize that everything in the town is fake: the telephone in the house isn’t wired; the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen are only a façade; even the trees are fake. The town is deserted and Millie begins to wonder if they’re dead. They keep hearing a child laughing and begin a search. They’re not prepared for what they encounter.

Interestingly, this episode aired three years after Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by Aliens from their car one night driving home in rural New Hampshire (September, 1961) but before their story came out in the best-selling book The Interrupted Journey (1966). It was later adapted into a TV movie: The UFO Incident (1975).

MISSING TIME

In 1981, Missing Time by Budd Hopkins was the first focused study of an enigma that would come to captivate the world and challenge our understanding of the universe. The influence of this pioneering book was such that its title is now deeply embedded into the lexicon of UFO study — synonymous with that most controversial and troubling of topics: Alien Abduction.

At the time of its writing, Hopkins could not have predicted the impact of Missing Time, not only within UFOlogy, but in popular culture worldwide. The facts, stories, and theories presented herein laid the foundation for the first mainstream debates surrounding reports of human encounters with small, grey-skinned entities-non-human beings with hypnotic black eyes who came silently in the night for their own mysterious purposes. These vivid descriptions as documented by Hopkins would trigger buried memories worldwide in people from all walks of life-to the extent that the so-called “Greys” now represent the dominant cultural imagining of an Alien lifeform.

The Mothman Prophecies — (2002)

The Mothman Prophecies is an American supernatural horror-mystery film starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, based on the 1975 book by journalist and influential UFOlogist John Keel.

The story follows John Klein (Gere), a reporter who researches the legend of the “Mothman”. Still shaken by the death of his wife two years earlier from a glioblastoma, Klein is sent to cover a news piece and inexplicably finds himself in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where there have been sightings of an unusual creature and other unexplained phenomena. As he becomes increasingly drawn into mysterious forces at work, he hopes they can reconnect him to his wife, while the local sheriff (Linney) becomes concerned about his obsessions. (Will Patton also gives a stellar performance as Gordon Smallwood.)

In the story, Klein experiences an episode of “Missing Time” (inexplicably traveling 400 miles in less than two hours with no memory of it) and all indications are — to the astute observer familiar with this phenomenon — that he has been abducted.

In his writing, Keel used the term “ultraterrestrials” to describe UFO occupants he believed to be non-human entities capable of assuming whatever form they desire. He did not state any hypothesis about the ultimate purpose of the phenomenon other than that the UFO intelligence seems to have a long-standing interest with interacting with the human race

The film claims to be based on actual events that occurred between November 1966 and December 1967 in Point Pleasant, as described by Keel — and has since gained a cult following.

HIDDEN MEANING

The Forgotten — (2004)

In New York, Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) has been under the psychiatric care of a doctor for months, the therapy to help her deal with the grief associated with losing her nine year old son, Sam, one of 6 children in a plane which disappeared. Slowly, incidents make it seem like Telly is losing her grip on the past, until one day all physical evidence of Sam ever existing disappears. Her husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards) and Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise) try to explain to her that her therapy is to help her get over the delusion that she had a son. As Telly alone goes on a search for evidence to prove the existence of Sam, the only person she is eventually able to convince is Ash Correll (Dominic West) an ex-Hockey player whose daughter was also one of the missing children.

Telly: “Do you ever feel like somebody–?
Something’s watching you?”

Ash: “Like surveillance?”

Telly: “No, l mean that sometimes people are … taken.
We hear that.”

Ash: “What are you talking about?”

Telly: “Abduction.”

One other person they’re able to convince of there ever having been a Sam and Lauren is NYC cop, Ann Pope (Alfre Woodard). Pope believes that 2 people having the same delusion is not a coincidence, and must decide who she can or cannot trust in the matter … to uncover the Truth.

Outer Range — (2022)

Outer Range is an American SCI-FI neo-Western TV series created by Brian Watkins and starring Josh Brolin, Imogen Poots and Will Patton.

In Episode 1 (“The Void”) Royal Abbot (Brolin) awakens on his Wyoming family ranch, unaware that his life is about to change forever. He does the rounds on horseback, heading out into the pasture — where he hears strange noises; ominous rumbles, then returns home — surprised to discover that it’s later than he thought. Royal has inexplicably lost two hours of “Missing Time”. That night, another ominous groan echoes across the pasture, and the Abbots receive a mysterious phone call from neighboring rancher Wayne Tillerson (Patton) who warns “Something is coming.”

The next morning, as Royal and son Rhett try to account for missing cows, they are caught off-guard by the arrival of a woman named Autumn (Poots), who wants to camp on their land (and can pay handsomely for it). Later, searching alone in the West pasture, Royal encounters a bizarre giant hole in the ground, with strange particles swirling around. When he inserts his hand, flashes to the future cause him to race back home.

The whole family are gathered, and together they learn from acting Sherriff Joy that the FBI are going to stop looking for Rebecca (son Perry’s missing wife), who disappeared more than nine months ago. Concerned about the strange hole, Royal heads out to warn Autumn, who broaches the subject of selling the ranch, offering upwards of 6 million to take it off his hands. “Do you have any secrets you want to share?” She says, with a mischievous smile that has layers of deception to it.

Already at odds with the Tillersons over a land dispute (Wayne wants the West pasture) things only get worse that night, when Tillerson brother Trevor gets into a fight with Perry outside the local bar — and dies.

Rhett and Perry drive back to the ranch, Trevor’s body in the back of the truck. Royal decides to protect his family by covering it up — so he rides off with Trevor on horseback, headed for the West pasture. The Tillersons search for Royal, but he drops Trevor’s body deep into the bowels of this mysterious hole before they can find him.

A blinding light from behind reveals Autumn’s arrival with a flashlight. She wants to know what’s going on, having witnessed the act — and talks about the Greek God Kronos. Apparently this hole is the manifestation of a tear between Heaven and Earth. Autumn promises to keep it a secret … before pushing Royal into the hole.

And that’s only the beginning! You may have to watch the entire series more than once to grasp its many SCI-FI layers — but it’s totally worth it.

[Interesting TRIVIA: Viewers have drawn parallels between Outer Range and “The Phantom Tollbooth” — a movie title that appears on the town theater marquee in episode 3. While the show is set in present day, this live-action/animated fantasy film came out in 1970 (produced by Chuck Jones with many voice talents, including Mel Blanc) — based on a classic 1961 children’s book by Norton Juster. In the story, Milo, a bored young boy, unexpectedly encounters a magic tollbooth — that transports him to the once prosperous, but now troubled, Kingdom of Wisdom. Both stories explore the fantastical and unexplainable!]

So … be on the lookout for “Between the Lines” SCI-FI — when extraordinary events point to Hidden Meaning that’s implied but not directly spelled out.

It may be your best clue to what the story’s really all about!

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Outer Range | Official Trailer — (click on image)