Childhood’s End SCI-FI: when the TRUTH about Alien Life is revealed, causing an Evolution of Consciousness that affects all Humanity — and Reality is forever Changed. Accepting this Truth brings about new Awareness, enhancing perception of our Connectedness to all living things.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL — (1951)

The Day the Earth Stood Still is an American SCI-FI film directed by Robert Wise, starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray, Frances Bavier and Lock Martin.

Storyline
When a flying saucer lands in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Army quickly surrounds it. A humanoid Alien, Klaatu (Rennie) emerges in a spacesuit, announcing that he comes “in peace and with good will”. While opening a small metallic device, he is shot and wounded by a nervous soldier. A large robot emerges from the saucer and quickly disintegrates the soldiers’ weapons, including tanks. Klaatu orders the robot, Gort, to desist, explaining that the now-broken device was a gift for the U.S. President “to study life on the other planets”. Klaatu is taken to Walter Reed Army Hospital for surgery, after which he uses a salve to heal his wound quickly. The Army is unable to open or blast its way into the saucer. Gort stands outside, silent and unmoving.

The President’s secretary, Mr. Harley, visits Klaatu, who relates that his message must be delivered to all world leaders simultaneously. Harley says this is impossible in the current world situation. When Klaatu proposes spending time among ordinary humans to understand better their “unreasoning suspicions and attitudes”, Harley rejects the proposal, and Klaatu remains locked in his hospital room.

Klaatu escapes and acquires a suit and a valise from Walter Reed Hospital; the laundry ticket on the jacket sleeve says “Maj. Carpenter”. He rents a room at a boarding house under the name Carpenter. Among the residents are a young widow named Helen Benson (Neal) and her son Bobby. Helen’s boyfriend Tom Stevens becomes jealous of the stranger.

Bobby takes Klaatu on a tour of the city, including the Lincoln Memorial and a visit to his father’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery; Klaatu learns that most of the dead are soldiers killed in wars. When Klaatu asks Bobby “Who is the greatest living person?”, Bobby suggests Professor Barnhardt (Jaffe). Trying to visit the scientist at his home, they find him away. Peering through a window, Klaatu sees Barnhardt’s blackboard is covered with equations (an attempt to solve the three-body problem). To “leave a calling card”, Klaatu enters the room and solves the equation, giving his contact information to the housekeeper.

That evening, a government agent escorts Klaatu to Barnhardt. Klaatu tells Barnhardt the people of other planets are concerned about Earth’s aggressiveness now that humanity has developed rudimentary atomic power and that if Klaatu’s message is ignored, Earth could be “eliminated”. Barnhardt agrees to gather scientists from around the world at the saucer; he suggests Klaatu provide a demonstration of his power beforehand. Unaware that Bobby is following, Klaatu returns to his spaceship. Bobby watches as Gort knocks out two soldiers so Klaatu can reenter the saucer. After running home, Bobby tells Helen, who does not believe him, but Tom is suspicious. The next day, starting at noon East Coast time, all electrical equipment on Earth ceases to function for 30 minutes, except for essential services such as hospitals and aircraft in flight.

Learning that Bobby followed him the previous night, Klaatu visits Helen at work, reveals his mission, and asks that she not betray him. Helen asks Tom to keep Klaatu’s secret, but he refuses to listen and alerts the military. Hoping that Barnhardt can hide Klaatu until that evening, Helen and Klaatu rush to Barnhardt in a taxi. Klaatu instructs Helen that if anything should happen to him, she must say to Gort “Klaatu barada nikto.” The Army tracks them in their taxi. Klaatu is shot and killed; his body is placed in a jail cell. Rushing to the saucer, Helen recites the phrase to Gort. Gort then carries her into the saucer. Gort retrieves Klaatu’s body and revives him inside the saucer, though Klaatu tells Helen in some cases those who have been killed can be brought back to life for a limited period but no one knows how long he may live.

Exiting the spaceship with Klaatu and Gort, Helen joins Barnhardt among the gathered scientists. Klaatu tells the scientists that an interplanetary organization has created a police force of invincible robots like Gort. “In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us.” Klaatu concludes, “Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration.” With a final wave to Helen, Klaatu and Gort then depart in the saucer.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND — (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is an American SCI-FI drama 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 (Truffaut), 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 (Dillon), catches him. Widespread power outages occur throughout the area, forcing electric utility lineman Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) 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 (Garr) 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.

THE ABYSS — (1989)

The Abyss is an American SCI-FI film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn.

Storyline
In January 1994, the U.S. Ohio-class submarine USS Montana has an encounter with an unidentified submerged object, and sinks near the Cayman Trough. With Soviet ships moving in to try to salvage the sub, and a hurricane moving over the area, the U.S. government sends a SEAL team to Deep Core, a privately owned, experimental underwater drilling platform near the Cayman Trough, to use it as a base of operations. The platform’s designer, Dr. Lindsey Brigman (Mastrantonio), insists on going along with the SEAL team, even though her estranged husband, Virgil “Bud” Brigman (Harris), is the current foreman.

During the initial investigation of Montana, a power cut in the team’s submersibles leads to Lindsey seeing a strange light circling the sub, which she later calls a “non-terrestrial intelligence“, or “NTI”. Lt. Hiram Coffey (Biehn), the SEAL team leader, is ordered to accelerate their mission, and takes one of the mini-subs, without Deep Core’s permission, to recover a Trident missile warhead from Montana, just as the storm hits above, leaving the crew unable to disconnect from their surface support ship in time. The cable crane is torn from the ship and falls into the trench, dragging Deep Core to the edge before it stops. The rig is partially flooded, killing several crew members, and damaging its power systems.

The crew waits out the storm so they can restore communications and be rescued. As they struggle against the cold, they find the NTIs have formed an animated column of water to explore the rig, which they equate to an alien version of a remotely operated vehicle. Though they treat it with curiosity, Coffey is agitated and cuts it in half by closing a pressure bulkhead on it, causing it to retreat. Realizing that Coffey is experiencing paranoia as a result of suffering from high-pressure nervous syndrome, the crew spies on him through an ROV, finding him, along with another SEAL, arming the warhead to attack the NTIs. To try to stop him, Bud fights Coffey, but Coffey escapes in a mini-sub with the primed warhead. Bud and Lindsey give chase in the other sub, damaging both. Coffey is able to launch the warhead into the trench, but his sub drifts over the edge and implodes from the pressure, killing him. Bud’s mini-sub is inoperable and taking on water. With only one functional diving suit, Lindsey opts to drown and hopefully enter deep hypothermia when the ocean’s cold water engulfs her, with hopes of being able to be resuscitated. Bud swims back to the platform with her body; there, he and the crew use a defibrillator and administer CPR, and they revive her.

It is decided that they need to disarm the warhead, which is more than 2 miles (3.2 km) below them. One SEAL, Ensign Monk, helps Bud use an experimental diving suit equipped with a liquid breathing apparatus to survive to that depth, though he will only be able to communicate through a keypad on the suit. Bud begins his dive, assisted by Lindsey’s voice to keep him coherent against the effects of the mounting pressure, and he reaches the warhead. Monk guides him in successfully disarming it. With little oxygen left in the system, Bud explains that he knew it was a one-way trip, and he tells Lindsey he loves her. As he waits for death, an NTI approaches Bud, takes his hand, and guides him to a massive Alien city deep in the trench. Inside, the NTIs create an atmospheric pocket for Bud, allowing him to breathe normally. The NTIs then play back Bud’s message to his wife and look at each other with understanding.

On Deep Core, the crew is waiting for rescue when they see a message from Bud that he met some friends and warns them to hold on. The base shakes, and lights from the trench herald the arrival of the Alien ship. It rises to the ocean’s surface, with Deep Core and several of the surface ships run aground on its hull. The crew of Deep Core exits the platform, surprised they are not dead from the sudden decompression. They see Bud walking out of the Alien ship, and Lindsey races to hug him.

CHILDHOOD’S END — (2015)

Childhood’s End is an American-Australian TV Miniseries based on the 1953 novel by Arthur C. Clarke, and developed by Matthew Graham. On December 14, 2015, it premiered on SYFY for three two-hour episodes.

Storyline

1 — “The Overlords”
Milo Rodericks, claiming to be the last living human, records a message from the ruin of a post-apocalyptic Earth. In 2016, a fleet of massive Alien space ships appear in the skies of Earth. Dubbed ‘the Overlords‘, the Alien ‘Supervisor for Earth’ Karellen speaks to humanity claiming they have come to usher in an age of utopia. Karellen speaks to a farmer named Ricky Stormgren in the form of his deceased wife Annabelle, and chooses Ricky to serve as humanity’s representative. Despite initial resistance and distrust from governments, the Overlords systematically eliminate disease, war, hunger, and pollution, setting the stage for the ‘Golden Age of Humanity’. When Milo, currently using a wheelchair, is shot and killed by a drug dealer, the Overlords kill the attacker and resurrect Milo, as well as giving him the ability to walk. Media mogul Hugo Wainwright secretly organizes a counter-group dubbed the Freedom League, which uses social media to spread distrust about the Overlords. When their years-long campaign fails to slow the Aliens’ changes, the Freedom League kidnaps Ricky to force Karellen’s hand. Karellen intervenes, saving Ricky’s life while simultaneously projecting Wainwright’s entire conspiracy to the world. Shortly afterwards, Wainwright is found hanged and Karellen dismisses Ricky, saying his work is now finished. Ricky asks Karellen to show his true self to humanity, but the Alien retorts that humans are not yet ready to ‘accept’ his true form. Fifteen years later, Milo has become an astrophysicist, and watches along with Ricky and the rest of the world as Karellen reveals himself for the first time. With Earth now a near-Utopia, humanity has dubbed the Overlords their ‘guardian angels’, but are shocked and alarmed when Karellen emerges, his appearance resembling that of Devils and Demons.

2 — “The Deceivers”
In 2035, life on Earth resembles a pastoral idyll. Dr. Boyce leads a research institute for Karellen, at which Milo and his friend Rachel work, until the space program is ended and Milo has to leave. Boyce delivers samples of Earth’s species for a zoo on the Overlords’ planet. Ricky falls ill, allegedly from exposure to poisons on the Overlord ship. An Overlord pod visits the Greggsons, after which the mother Amy is pregnant, and son Tommy is changed as he attacks his father. The faithful Peretta Jones is called as counsellor, because Tommy is haunted by night terrors of a dark and hot place, but he refuses to reveal more as not to frighten the adults. During their encounter, Peretta’s cross necklace is destroyed, a deeply frightening spiritual experience for her, so she seeks out her old pastor and visits the Stormgren farm for answers. After the Overlords build a room with a Ouija board, Boyce invites the Greggsons to South Africa under false pretenses. When they arrive, Karellen makes Amy operate the communication device through her unborn child. Milo finds out that the message was directed at the constellation Carina. Karellen returns to Ricky, and Ellie and Peretta interrupt them. Peretta confronts Karellen about his lies, and he confesses he sterilized Ricky because the upcoming change will be more painful for parents. Peretta shoots Karellen, but Ricky uses a cure that was meant for him to save Karellen. Peretta is later killed for shooting Karellen. Finally, Amy gives birth to her daughter Jennifer.

3 — “The Children”
Four years later, the children of Earth begin to demonstrate advanced psychic abilities and form a mental link with Jennifer. The Greggson family is wary of what is happening to her and they move to the free city of New Athens, hoping to escape Karellen’s influence. Ricky finally succumbs to his illness. Karellen announces to the world that all of the children will be gathered together, that no more children will be born, and that the adults are free to live out their lives as they wish. The children begin to float off through the sky. The mayor of New Athens decides that hope is lost and sets off a nuclear bomb, destroying the city. Milo smuggles himself aboard one of the ships transporting zoo animals, and upon arrival at the Overlords’ home world he is shown a glimpse of the Overmind, a vast cosmic intelligence which they serve. Milo returns to Earth some 80 years later (due to time dilation), just before the moment when the children join the Overmind. He goes to the surface and begins transmitting a report to Karellen (the first part of which was shown in Episode 1). He asks Karellen to leave behind some memento of Earth’s culture, and Karellen obliges, choosing a recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “The Lark Ascending” heard in Milo’s childhood. The Earth is destroyed as the children join the Overmind.

DISCLOSURE DAY — (2026)

Disclosure Day is an upcoming American SCI-FI film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a screenplay by David Koepp (based on a story by Spielberg), starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo — scheduled for release in the United States by Universal Pictures on June 12, 2026.

“If you found out we weren’t alone,
if someone showed you, proved it to you,
would that frighten you?”

Storyline (what we know so far)

Explores the unsettling premise of Humanity discovering undeniable Proof of ALIEN LIFE, focusing on the psychological and societal impact rather than the Aliens themselves.

The story centers on the global reaction to confirmed Extraterrestrial Contact. Rather than emphasizing spectacle, the film examines how ordinary people and society respond when the truth about non-human intelligence becomes impossible to ignore.

The film emphasizes dread, belief, and the fear of knowing too much, exploring how humanity copes with a sudden, undeniable revelation of ALIEN LIFE.

The TRAILER introduces Emily Blunt as a Kansas City meteorologist who experiences a fugue state mid-broadcast, speaking in a clicking, sine-wave-like Alien language, suggesting direct Extraterrestrial influence or possession. Josh O’Connor plays Daniel Kellner, a whistleblower with incriminating data about Alien activity, aiming for full Disclosure to the world. Colin Firth appears as a shadowy antagonist using remote-control technology to manipulate humans, hinting at a clandestine government Conspiracy. Colman Domingo’s character references the 1947 Roswell incident, implying a decades-long cover-up.

Spielberg uses animals as narrative devices, including deer and cardinals, which appear repeatedly and may be controlled by Aliens or part of a hive-mind network. The trailer also features white neuro-style cables, suggesting consciousness sharing or remote influence, and glowing UFOs that escalate from subtle hints to a full-scale reveal. Visual cues like blinding shafts of light and negative space emphasize humanity’s smallness and awe in the face of the unknown.

Themes and Connections
The trailer explores first contact, collective consciousness, and the ethics of Disclosure, echoing Spielberg’s earlier works like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It raises questions about human readiness for the truth, the role of government secrecy, and the psychological impact of Extraterrestrial revelation. The narrative also hints at a spiritual or religious undertone, with crucifixes and symbolic imagery reinforcing the mysterious and otherworldly atmosphere.

Fan Theories and Speculation
1 — The film may revisit Roswell and UFO lore, connecting historical events to the present-day narrative.
2 — Domingo’s character could be creating hoax footage for the government, paralleling conspiracy theories about media manipulation.
3 — The animals might serve as intermediaries for Alien communication, allowing Extraterrestrials to interact with humans indirectly.
4 — The Trailer’s fragmented timeline and surreal imagery suggest a psychological thriller element, blending reality and perception.

Cinematic Techniques
Spielberg’s visual storytelling emphasizes human reactions against overwhelming phenomena, making the Alien encounter both personal and universal. He promises to deliver a SCI-FI thriller exploring UFO Disclosure, Government Secrecy, and Human-Alien interaction — suggesting a story that will challenge perceptions of Reality, Truth, and Humanity’s Place in the Universe.

This summer, the Truth belongs to seven billion people.
We are coming close to … DISCLOSURE DAY.

Childhood’s End SCI-FI: when the TRUTH about Alien Life is revealed, causing an Evolution of Consciousness that affects all Humanity — and Reality is forever Changed.

People are starved for the Truth. The Time may soon be at hand.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

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“Trust No One” SCI-FI often features high-stakes Paranoia, Government Conspiracies, and hidden Dangers where characters cannot rely on anyone — because they do NOT know who to Trust. It feeds on our deepest Anxieties: that our neighbors are Imposters, our government is distorting the Truth to manipulate us (and make us doubt our own Sanity), or our own Memories have somehow been hacked.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an American SCI-FI horror film starring Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter.

Storyline
In the fictional town of Santa Mira, California, Dr. Miles Bennell (McCarthy) receives reports from a number of 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. Psychiatrist Dr. Kauffman assures Miles that these cases are merely a mass hysteria. Miles’s ex-girlfriend Becky Driscoll has recently come back to town after settling a divorce, and they rekindle their relationship.

The couple are called to the home of Miles’s friend Jack Belicec, who has found a body in his basement. It has no features or fingerprints, but under their observation it takes on the features of Jack. Remembering that Becky’s father was uncharacteristically emerging from his basement, Miles searches there and finds a duplicate of Becky. When Miles calls Dan to the scene, the bodies have disappeared, and Dan tells Miles that he is falling for the same hysteria.

Why is this happening? ALIEN 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 each sleeping person placed near it until only the replacement is left; these duplicates, however, are devoid of all human emotion.

Little by little, Miles uncovers more details about this “quiet” Invasion — and attempts to stop it.

The Invaders (1967)

The Invaders is an American SCI-FI TV series that aired on ABC for two seasons (1967-1968) starring Roy Thinnes stars as David Vincent, who discovers evidence of an Invasion of Aliens from outer space and tries to stop them.

Storyline
One night, driving alone on a dark road, architect David Vincent (Thinnes) stumbles upon a secret Invasion of Aliens from outer space already underway — disguised 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 — making Vincent a “quasi-famous object of public ridicule”.

In many episodes, at least one individual, often a key figure such as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer, a police officer, a U.S. Army major, or a NASA official becomes aware of the Alien threat and survives. Later the military gets involved, as Vincent’s claims are clearly being taken more seriously. After one Alien encounter, he manages to retain a piece of Alien technology both as evidence and for examination by both his group and the authorities.

There is constant tension over whether the individuals Vincent comes across are Humans or Aliens. (They appear Human except for a few telltale characteristics — they lack a pulse, the ability to bleed, or show emotion, and many have a deformed fourth finger).

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

The Thing (1982)

The Thing is an American SCI-FI horror film directed by John Carpenter, starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T. K. Carter, David Clennon, and Keith David — about an an Extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates, other organisms. The group is overcome by paranoia and conflict as they learn that they can no longer trust each other and that any of them could be the Thing.

Storyline
In Antarctica, a Norwegian helicopter pursues a sled dog to an American research station, where the passenger accidentally blows up the helicopter and himself. The pilot fires a rifle and shouts at the Americans, but they cannot understand him and he is shot dead in self-defense by station commander Garry. The American helicopter pilot, Macready (Russell) and Dr. Copper leave to investigate the Norwegian base. Among the charred ruins and frozen corpses, they find the burnt corpse of a malformed humanoid, which they transfer to the American station. Their biologist, Blair, autopsies the remains and finds a normal set of human organs.

The kenneled sled dog soon morphs into a Creature that absorbs other dogs — alerting the team, and Childs incinerates the creature with a flamethrower. An autopsy of the Dog-Thing reveals it is an organism that can perfectly imitate other life forms. Data recovered from the Norwegian base leads the Americans to a large excavation site containing a partially buried Alien spacecraft, which Norris estimates has been buried for over a hundred thousand years and a smaller, human-sized dig site. Blair grows paranoid after running a computer simulation that indicates the creature could assimilate all life on Earth. Controls are implemented to reduce the risk of assimilation.

The creature next assimilates an isolated Bennings, but Windows interrupts the process and MacReady burns the Bennings-Thing. The team also imprisons Blair in a tool shed after he sabotages all the vehicles, kills the remaining sled dogs, and destroys the radio to prevent escape. Copper suggests testing for infection by comparing the crew’s blood against uncontaminated blood held in storage, but after learning the blood stores have been destroyed, the men lose faith in Garry’s leadership, and MacReady takes command. He, Windows, and Nauls find Fuchs’ burnt corpse and speculate that he committed suicide to avoid assimilation. Windows returns to base while MacReady and Nauls investigate MacReady’s shack. During their return, Nauls abandons MacReady in a snowstorm, believing he has been assimilated after finding his torn clothes in the shack.

The team debates whether to allow MacReady inside, but he breaks in and holds the group at bay with dynamite. During the encounter, Norris appears to suffer a heart attack. As Copper attempts to defibrillate Norris, his chest transforms into a large mouth and bites off Copper’s arms, killing him. MacReady incinerates the Norris-Thing, but its head detaches and attempts to escape before also being burnt. MacReady thinks that the Norris-Thing demonstrated that every part of the Thing is an individual life-form with its own survival instinct. He proposes testing blood samples from each survivor with a heated piece of wire and has each man restrained, but is forced to kill Clark after he lunges at MacReady with a scalpel. Everyone passes the test except Palmer, whose blood recoils from the heat. Exposed, the Palmer-Thing transforms, breaks free of its bonds, and infects Windows, forcing MacReady to incinerate them both.

Childs is left on guard in the main building while MacReady, Garry and Nauls go to test Blair. They find that he has escaped and has been using vehicle components to assemble a small flying saucer, which they destroy. Upon their return, Childs is missing, and the power generator has been destroyed, leaving the men without heat. MacReady surmises that, with no escape left, the Thing intends to return to hibernation until a rescue team arrives.

The three men agree that the Thing cannot be allowed to escape and set explosives to destroy the station but the Blair-Thing kills Garry, and Nauls disappears. The Blair-Thing transforms into an enormous creature and breaks the detonator but MacReady triggers the explosives with a stick of dynamite, destroying the station.

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 — about a group of bio-engineered humanoids who escape a space colony reaching Earth, and the cop who reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.

Storyline
In a futuristic Los Angeles, former police officer Rick Deckard (Ford) 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 (Hauer), Zhora, and Pris.

Bryant has Deckard meet with the CEO of the Tyrell Corporation that creates the replicants, Eldon Tyrell, so he can administer the V-K test on a Nexus-6 to see if it works on them. 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.

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.

Deckard finds Zhora in a strip club, and kills her after a chase. When ordered to retire Rachael, who has disappeared from the Tyrell Corporation. Deckard spots her 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 where 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 to search for the remaining replicants.

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.

The X-Files (1993)

The X-Files is an American SCI-FI Drama TV series created by Chris Carter, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI Special Agents who investigate the eponymous “X-Files”: marginalized, unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena.

Storyline
Fox Mulder (Duchovny) is a skilled criminal profiler, an ardent supernaturalist, and a conspiracy theorist who believes in the existence of the paranormal. (He is also adamant about the existence of intelligent Extraterrestrial life and its presence on Earth. These beliefs earn him the nickname “Spooky Mulder” and an assignment to a little-known department that deals with unsolved cases, the “X-Files”. His belief in the paranormal springs from the claimed Alien abduction of his sister Samantha when Mulder was 12).

As a medical doctor and natural skeptic, Special Agent Scully (Anderson) approaches cases with detachment, even when Mulder, (despite his considerable training), loses his objectivity. She is partnered with him initially to debunk his nonconforming theories, often supplying logical, scientific explanations for the cases’ apparently unexplainable phenomena. Although she is frequently able to offer scientific alternatives to Mulder’s deductions, she is rarely able to refute them completely.

Early on, both agents apparently become pawns in a much larger conflict and come to trust only each other and select others. The agents discover what appears to be a governmental agenda to hide evidence of Extraterrestrial life. Mulder and Scully’s shared adventures initially lead them to develop a close platonic bond, which develops into a complex romantic relationship. Roughly one third of the series’ episodes follow a myth-driven story arc about a planned Alien invasion, whereas the other two-thirds may be described as “monster of the week” episodes that focus on a single villain, mutant, or monster.

Over time, Mulder and Scully learn about evidence of the 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.

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.

“Trust No One” SCI-FI — with its high-stakes Paranoia, Government Conspiracies, and hidden Dangers — feeds on our deepest Anxieties: that our neighbors are not Human, our government is hiding the Truth to manipulate us, and we do not know where to turn.

Who can we trust? It’s an important question — that may become even more relevant in the weeks and months ahead — as we near the release of “DISCLOSURE DAY” (June 12, 2026) from iconic Director Steven Spielberg.

The time for TRUTH will soon be at hand.

***

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Turning Point SCI-FI: when the Hero’s realization of a Hidden Truth or Failed Strategy triggers a Pivotal Moment of Transformation –forcing them to adopt a different approach and take Action that shapes their personal Destiny … and the course of the Story.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is an American SCI-FI film directed by J. Lee Thompson and written by Paul Dehn. The film is the sequel to Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) and the fourth installment in the original Planet of the Apes film series. It stars Roddy McDowall, Don Murray, Ricardo Montalbán, Natalie Trundy, and Hari Rhodes.

Storyline
After a North American pandemic from a space-borne disease in 1983 wipes out all dogs and cats, the Police State government takes chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans as pets, establishing a culture based on ape slave labor (Events foretold in 1973 testimony by Cornelius and Zira, chimpanzee scientists from the future, before they were killed.) Believed to be dead, their baby is secretly raised by circus owner Armando (Montalban). In 1991, fully grown and named Caesar (McDowall), the ape is brought to a city to distribute flyers for Armando’s circus. During their trip, Armando advises him not to speak in public for fear of his life.

After seeing a gorilla being beaten and drugged, Caesar shouts “Lousy human bastards!”. Armando attempts to defuse the ensuing commotion by taking responsibility for the exclamation. He plans to turn himself in to the authorities and bluff his way out while instructing Caesar to hide among the apes for safety. Caesar obeys and hides in a cage of orangutans, finding himself being trained for slavery through violent conditioning. He is then sold at auction to Governor Breck (Murray) and put to work by Breck’s chief aide MacDonald, (Rhodes) whose African American heritage allows him to sympathize with the apes.

Meanwhile, Armando is interrogated by Inspector Kolp, who suspects his “circus ape” is the child of Cornelius and Zira. Kolp’s assistant puts Armando under a machine that psychologically forces people to be truthful. Realizing he cannot fight the machine, Armando jumps through a window and dies. When Caesar learns of Armando’s death, it is a Turning Point: he loses faith in human kindness. In secret, he begins teaching the apes combat and has them gather weapons.

Breck eventually learns that Caesar is the ape the police are hunting. Meanwhile, Caesar realizes MacDonald is an ally to the apes’ cause and reveals himself to him. MacDonald understands Caesar’s intent to depose Breck, but expresses his doubts about the revolution’s effectiveness. Caesar is later captured by Breck’s men and is electrically tortured into speaking. Hearing him speak, Breck orders Caesar to be killed. With MacDonald’s help, they trick Breck into believing Caesar has died. Once Breck leaves, Caesar kills his torturer and escapes.

Caesar takes over Ape Management. While setting the city on fire, Caesar and the rest of the apes proceed to the Command Center, killing most of the Riot Police that attempt to stop them in the process — and have Breck marched out to be executed. MacDonald pleads with Caesar not to succumb to brutality and be merciful to the former masters.

As the apes raise their rifles to beat Breck to death, Caesar’s girlfriend Lisa (Trundy) voices her objection, saying “No!”. She is the first ape to speak other than Caesar, but the other apes are concerned about Caesar’s bloodlust as well. Caesar reconsiders and orders the apes to lower their weapons, deciding that they can afford to be humane, since the fight is already won and they “have seen the birth of the planet of the apes”.

Star Wars (1977)

Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is an American epic SCI-FI film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm Ltd. and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, and James Earl Jones.

Storyline
In a period of galactic civil war, Rebel Alliance spies have stolen blueprints to the Death Star, a colossal space station built by the Galactic Empire that is capable of destroying entire planets. Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan (Fisher), secretly a rebel leader, has obtained the schematics, but her ship is intercepted and boarded by Imperial forces under the command of Darth Vader. Leia is taken prisoner, but the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO escape with the plans, crashing on the nearby desert planet of Tatooine. Darth Vader orders his troops to pursue the droids.

The droids are captured by Jawa traders, who sell them to the moisture farmers Owen and Beru Lars and their nephew, Luke Skywalker (Hamill). While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he discovers a recording of Leia requesting help from a former ally named Obi-Wan Kenobi. R2-D2 goes missing, and while searching for him, Luke is attacked by Sand People. He is rescued by the elderly hermit Ben Kenobi, who soon reveals himself as Obi-Wan (Guiness). He tells Luke about his past as one of the Jedi Knights, peacekeepers of the former Galactic Republic, who drew mystical abilities from the Force and were all but exterminated by the Empire. Luke learns that his father, also a Jedi, fought alongside Obi-Wan during the Clone Wars until Vader, Obi-Wan’s former pupil, turned to the dark side of the Force and murdered him. Obi-Wan gives Luke his father’s lightsaber, the signature weapon of the Jedi.

R2-D2 plays Leia’s full message, in which she begs Obi-Wan to take the Death Star plans to Alderaan and give them to her father, a fellow veteran, for analysis. Luke initially declines Obi-Wan’s offer to accompany him to Alderaan and learn the ways of the Force. However, he quickly changes his mind after Imperial stormtroopers murder his family and destroy his home while searching for the droids. Luke Skywalker’s Turning Point is deciding to leave Tatooine with Obi-Wan Kenobi after finding his home destroyed and his family killed, transforming from a farm boy into a Jedi apprentice. Seeking a way off the planet, Luke and Obi-Wan travel with the droids to the city of Mos Eisley and hire the smuggler Han Solo (Ford) and his Wookiee partner Chewbacca, pilots of the starship Millennium Falcon.

On the way to Alderaan, Obi-Wan begins Luke’s training in the use of the Force. Meanwhile, the Death Star commander Grand Moff Tarkin (Cushing) has Alderaan obliterated by the station’s superlaser. The Death Star’s tractor beam captures the Falcon, but Luke and his companions manage to avoid detection and infiltrate the station. Vader, however, senses Obi-Wan’s presence, and begins searching for him. As Obi-Wan deactivates the tractor beam, Luke persuades Han and Chewbacca to help him rescue Leia, who is scheduled for execution after refusing to reveal the location of the rebel base. After disabling the tractor beam, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in a lightsaber duel against Vader, which allows the rest of the group to escape. Using a tracking device placed on the Falcon, the Empire locates the rebel base on the moon Yavin 4.

Analysis of the Death Star schematics reveals a weakness in a small exhaust port leading directly to the station’s reactor. Luke joins the Rebellion’s X-wing squadron in a desperate attack against the Death Star, while Han and Chewbacca leave to pay off a debt to the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. In the ensuing battle, Vader leads a squadron of TIE fighters and destroys several rebel ships, while Tarkin prepares to destroy Yavin 4 with the Death Star. Han and Chewbacca unexpectedly return in the Falcon, knocking Vader’s ship off course before he can shoot Luke down. Guided by the voice of Obi-Wan’s spirit, Luke uses the Force to aim his torpedoes into the exhaust port, causing the Death Star to explode moments before it can fire on the rebel base. In a triumphant ceremony, Leia awards Luke and Han medals for their heroism.

Back to the Future (1985)

Back to the Future is an American SCI-FI film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale. It stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, and Thomas F. Wilson.

Storyline
In 1985, teenager Marty McFly (Fox) lives in Hill Valley, California, with his depressed alcoholic mother, Lorraine; (Thompson) his older siblings, who are professional and social failures; and his meek father, George ,(Glover) who is bullied by his supervisor, Biff Tannen (Wilson). After Marty’s band fails a music audition, he confides in his girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, that he fears becoming like his parents despite his ambitions.

That night, Marty meets his eccentric scientist friend, Emmett “Doc” Brown, (Lloyd) in the Twin Pines mall parking lot. Doc unveils a time machine built from a modified DeLorean, powered by plutonium he swindled from Libyan terrorists. After Doc inputs a destination time of November 5, 1955 (the day he conceived his time travel invention), the terrorists arrive unexpectedly and gun him down. Marty flees in the DeLorean, inadvertently activating time travel when reaching 88 miles per hour (142 kilometers per hour).

Arriving in 1955, Marty discovers he has no plutonium, so he cannot return to 1985. While exploring a burgeoning Hill Valley, Marty encounters his teenage father, discovering Biff was bullying George even then. George falls into the path of an oncoming car while spying on the teenage Lorraine changing clothes, and Marty is knocked unconscious while saving him. He wakes to find himself tended to by Lorraine, who becomes infatuated with him. Marty tracks down and convinces a younger Doc that he is from the future. Doc explains the only source available in 1955 capable of generating the 1.21 gigawatts of power required for time travel is a lightning bolt. Marty shows Doc a flyer from the future that documents an upcoming lightning strike at the town’s courthouse. As Marty’s siblings begin to fade from a photo he carries with him, Doc realizes Marty’s actions are altering the future and jeopardizing his existence: Lorraine was supposed to tend to George instead of Marty after the car accident. Early attempts to get his parents acquainted fail, and Lorraine’s infatuation with Marty deepens.

Lorraine asks Marty to the school dance, and he plots to feign inappropriate advances on her, allowing George to intervene and rescue her, but the plan goes awry when Biff’s gang locks Marty in the trunk of the performing band’s car, while Biff forces himself onto Lorraine. George arrives expecting to find Marty but is assaulted by Biff — his major Turning Point occurs when he gains the confidence to stand up to Biff by knocking him out to save Lorraine. (This pivotal, self-assertive act transforms George from a timid, bullied pushover into a confident, successful writer by 1985.) He escorts the grateful Lorraine to the dance. The band frees Marty from their car, but the lead guitarist injures his hand in the process, so Marty takes his place, performing while George and Lorraine share their first kiss. With his future no longer in jeopardy, Marty hurries to the courthouse to meet Doc.

Doc discovers a letter from Marty warning him about his future and rips it up, worried about the consequences. To save Doc, Marty recalibrates the DeLorean to return ten minutes before he had left the future. The lightning strikes, sending Marty back to 1985, but the DeLorean breaks down, forcing Marty to run back to the mall. He arrives as Doc is being shot. While Marty grieves at his side, Doc sits up, revealing he had pieced Marty’s note back together and is wearing a bulletproof vest. He takes Marty home and departs to 2015 in the DeLorean. Marty wakes the next morning, discovering his father is now a confident and successful science fiction author, his mother is fit and happy, his siblings are successful, and Biff is a servile valet in George’s employ. As Marty reunites with Jennifer, Doc suddenly reappears in the DeLorean, insisting they return with him to the future to save their children from terrible fates.[a]

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an American SCI-FI action film directed by James Cameron. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong, it is the sequel to The Terminator (1984) and is the second installment in the Terminator franchise.

Storyline
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000—an advanced, shape-shifting prototype Terminator made of virtually indestructible liquid metal—back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor when he is a child. To protect John, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less advanced metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue.

In 1995 Los Angeles, John’s mother Sarah (Hamilton) is incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent “Judgment Day”—the prophesied events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will gain sentience and, in response to its creators’ attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. John, (Furlong) living with foster parents, also considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 (Patrick) locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 (Schwarzenegger) intervenes, coming to John’s aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-800 deduces that the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it to kill people and orders it to help him rescue Sarah from the T-1000.

The T-800 and John intercept Sarah as she attempts to escape the hospital. Initially horrified that the T-800 resembles the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984, she joins them and escapes the pursuing T-1000. Sarah uses the T-800’s knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor, being developed by Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, will be crucial to Skynet’s creation. (Sarah’s Turning Point: when she moves from being a victim to a proactive warrior, choosing to fight for the future after realizing the T-800 can be an ally.) Over the course of their journey, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs while encouraging it to become more human-like.

Sarah plans to escape to Mexico with John, but a nightmare about Judgment Day prompts her to decide to kill Dyson. She attacks him in his home but cannot bring herself to go through with it and relents. John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 explains to Dyson the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals that his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and severed arm of the 1984 Terminator. Believing that his work must be destroyed, Dyson helps Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, cornering them in a steel mill.

Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 and briefly deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah’s appearance and voice to lure out John, but Sarah intervenes and, along with the reactivated T-800, pushes it into a vat of molten steel, where it disintegrates. John also throws the 1984 Terminator’s arm and CPU into the vat. The T-800 explains that it must also be destroyed to prevent it from serving as a foundation for Skynet. Despite John’s tearful protests, the T-800 persuades him that its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah, having come to respect the T-800, shakes its hand and lowers it into the vat. The T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it is incinerated.

As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing that if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.

The Matrix (1999)

The Matrix is a SCI-FI action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. The first installment in the Matrix film series, it stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.

Storyline
In 1999, 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 was a nightmare until Trinity and her companions 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. Neo’s Turning Point is choosing to wake up from the Artificial Reality — by choosing the Red Pill — leaving his life as a hacker — and he 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 he is ejected from the building 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 inside 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 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, (Pantoliano) 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, he is killed by Tank, a wounded crew member, who 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 Morpheus, Neo re-enters 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 where anything is possible”, before flying away

Turning Point SCI-FI often involves a Crisis that triggers an “Epiphany” or sudden profound Moment of Clarity — that forces the Hero to take Action. In the iconic film Network (1976) news anchor Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) during a rant about the state of the world, put it this way:

“I’m as mad as hell,
and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Is such a Moment in history fast approaching us now? Only Time will tell.

***

(click image link to view YouTube video)

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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.

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(click image link to view YouTube video)

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“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.

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(click image link to view YouTube video)

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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)

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.

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.

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