Am I the only one feeling underwhelmed by the new fall shows? I know we haven't seen any of them yet, but most of them seem pretty terrible.

Speaking of which, two questions: what the hell has happened to Tim Thomerson? And why the hell isn't there a decent Trancers dvd on the market? Hell, I'd even take a bare bones version just as long as it had a decent anamorphic transfer (the current version, if you can find it, is fullscreen non anamorphic, and glitchy as hell, with one of the worst transfers I've ever had the misfortune to witness).

However "Them" sounds interesting and so does "New Amsterdam". I still think The Sarah Conner Chronicles will be a train wreck.

Peeps! Don't get too attached to any of these. FOX will brisk all these bitches!

Hour Long Dramas : - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Josh Friedman's “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (set between “T2” and “T3.” Wait, they gave this franchise to the writer of that War Of The Worlds PieceOfCrap?)

Jonathan Lisco's “K-Ville,” (cops patrolling post-Katrina New Orleans. A slightly less post-apocalyptic Jericho. What, Still too soon?) * * * * * * * *

Sitcoms for Fall: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From “Gilmore Girls” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino: “The Return of Jezebel James” (a book editor recruits her estranged sister to have her baby. A minor Phoebe "Friends" sub-plot turned into a series?) From Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd: “Back To You,” (Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton are local news anchors in Buffalo. "The Mary Tyler Moore show" meets "Buffalo Bill" from the creator of my all-time favorite sit-com, "Just Shoot Me") * * * * * * * * Didn't make the cut: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"24" creators Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran's “NSA Innocent” (a defense contractor spies on his bosses for the National Security Agency. A nice fantasy - who doesn't want to have power over their employers?)

A quarter - one fourth, 25% - of a century is a long time. If you're like me and you're in your fifties, it's nearly half a lifetime. So far. Knock on wood. If the last time you were really head over heels in love was 1979, 25 years is a very long time. If a huge, imprtant chunk of your youth ended on that night in December of 1980 when a man took out a hand gun, assumed a combat stance and shouted "Mr. Lennon!", a quarter of a century is a very long time.

If a woman you used to live with 35 years ago has children, if one of you best pals has children, and those children grow up, get married and have children, and suddenly you're hanging out with people whose new nicknames are Grandma and Grampa, a quarter of a century is a very long time. But as Einstein didn't exactly say, time is relative. If you're those daughters, and you find yourself with children of your own and you're not yet twenty-five... a quarter of a century is a very, very long time. And imagine those children: the toddler who still has his first steps and words marked on the calendar, who sees going off to kindergarten in the distant future... or that baby who measures time in the periods between naps and suckles at the teat... A quarter of a century is unimaginable. But I digress.

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Entertainment Weekly published a digest sized insert entitled "The Sci-Fi 25 - the Best (science fiction) Movies and TV From the Past 25 Years." (The issue with five variant "Heroes' covers.) So I had to preface this with the brief ruminations on the nature of a quarter century. Otherwise people will glance at this list and demand "Where's Star Wars? Where's Mr. Spock? Lost In Space? Forbidden Planet? Metropolis? 2001? Alien?" Twenty Five Years, people. A quarter of a century is a very, very long time. I am going to alphabetize their list. Not because I'm anal or obsessive compulsive, just because their rankings and orderings might not agree with mine, or yours. But I'm not interested in that. if this inspires you to respond, I'm not concerned with "This one should have been number one, this one is better than that one." I'm more interested in what you think of the list as a whole... and what you think they missed.

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Entertainment Weekly's "The Sci-Fi 25 - the Best (science fiction) Movies and TV From the Past 25 Years." (alphabetized)

Aliens ("Alien" was 28 years ago! And the subsequent sequels not included. A rare case of a sequel as good at the original - took a horror movie and made an action/war movie sequel, and it worked!) *** Back To The Future (The movie, not the 'trilogy' - a comedy that played itself straight and respected the conventions of time travel fiction) *** (the new) Battlestar Galactica (took a laughable, disposable source material and created what's been labeled TV's best dramatic SF series; some just say "best dramatic series" without the genre qualifier) *** Blade Runner (Directors cut specified as preferred.- This scruffy, rainy, retrofitted vision of the future was Star Wars gone bleak and gloomy with a film noir detective plot from a Philip K. Dick novel) *** Brazil (Terry Gilliam's variant on "1984" done with style, flair and a bit of comedy.) *** Children of Men (an ET pick for Future Classic, this gloomy dystopian future flick bombed when it open Christmas day, 2006) *** Doctor Who (begun in 1963 (!) but the current ongoing series is part of the same continuity. A regenerating hero in a time and space traveling call box. with aliens, invaders and a robot dog. Oh, and cool British accents and sexy companions. What else could you need?) *** E.T. (Because "Closest Encounters of the Third Kind" is too old to make the list and Spielberg has to be represented? Gave us catch phrases, tons of merchandise, and li'l Drew Barrymore. Avoid the remastered version where the FBI guns are digitally replace with flashlights. Han shot first.) *** Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (surreal love story about thought-control with Jim Carrey in actor mode. Reportedly better than Carrey-haters could imagine.) *** Firefly/Serenity (the TV series and the film sequel - A prematurely canceled Space-western with a cult following that demanded - and got - a sequel that left them wanting more.) *** Futurama (cryogenic pizza boy defrosts 1000 years into the future filled with robots, aliens and mutants. hilarious, sometimes surprisingly touching, and for one episode they got the entire Star Trek cast together one last time!) *** Galaxy Quest (a Trek parody that homages rather than mocks its source, with an excellent cast.) *** Heroes (the series started slow but once it introduced it's "ordinary people with extraordinary abilities" and began moving its "save the world" plot along, it really picked up steam. Now if only season two gets a bigger special effects budget...) *** Lost (not excluding the second season. Nanotech smoke-monster security system? An island that heals the sick? Characters who don't age? The Hatch, the button, the numbers, the purple sky effect, magnetic anomalies, the Dharma Initiative? This may look like a desert island melodrama, but it is SO science-fiction...) *** The Matrix (and NOT the sequels. Revolutionary CGI SFX mixed with Asian cinema martial arts wire stunts + all out action with a hard (and not easy to understand) science fiction shell, and cool sunglasses) *** Quantum Leap (Like Star Trek before it, social commentary disguised as a sci-fi series, in this case time travel instead of space, with the possession like leaps into other peoples bodies an added twist.) *** Starship Troopers (Lambasted by Heinlein purists, Verhoeven's movie is a political satire cloaked as a space opera - with space-military action that makes Aliens look like a pacifist message film.) *** Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (The benchmark all Star Trek movies and most other space opera flicks are compared to - and Spock dies, until next movie) *** Star Trek: The Next Generation (The TV series as a whole, not excluding certain weak 7th season episodes, not including the movies. Great cast, costumes, effects and stories revived a classic franchise and made Patrick Stewart a superstar and Klingon a language.) *** Star Wars: Clone Wars (Star Wars and Empire Strikes back miss the 25 year cut off date, the prequel trilogy just misses, but this stylish underrated 2 season animated series, which is part of the canon, makes the cut nicely.) *** The Terminator and Terminator II (The first stands alone perfectly, the second was a blockbuster hit and introduced that 'morphing' effect. Plus Arnold and classic catch phrases like "I'll Be Back." ) *** (John Carpenter's) The Thing (Kurt Russell in the ultimate sci-fi slasher film - since "Alien" can't be on this list. One of the only cases where a sequel is better than the original - see the Planet of the Apes and King Kong remakes for proof.) *** Total Recall (Philip K. Dick story as a violent Governor Schwarzenegger action film, excellent cast and effects, mind bending story, great sets, props and costumes) *** V: The Miniseries. (Prefered to the ongoing sequel series of the novels if only for it's freshness: lizard-like alien invaders (Vistitors) as a metaphor for fascism) *** The X-Files (final seasons not specifically excluded, but I'm sure they're refering to the Mulder/Scully years. Remained loosely rooted in reality while searching for a 'truth' about the unseen and unknown worlds around us.)

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Star Trek had six TV series, ten movies, and uncountable novels, comic books and fan fiction. Star Wars also lives on in the comics, and as an often rumored tv series "in the works". Marvel published a one shot adaptation of Blade Runner. Heroes is inspired by superhero comic books, particularly the ones with various titles set in the same 'universe", and it's spawn a series of online graphic novels at NBC.com. Doctor Who was a long running comic series in England, with some of the Moore and Gibbons issues reprinted in America (without Moore's permission - should have read the fine print in that work made for hire contract, Al). Even after a cancelation (which ios now regarded as a lenghty hiatus, with four direct to DVD features 9whiich can be cut up into a dozen stand alone episodes in the works) Bongo Comics continued to turn out a bi-monthly Futurama title that was completely true to the series and it's characters (although without addressing the Leela and Fry developments of the series 'final" episode).

But of all of these, none was truly a comic book property more than "Aliens". And yet it was not actually a comic book property. The original "Alien" was actually a big budget remake of one of the minor sub-pots from Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenters sci-fi spoof "Dark Star". A film so low budget the alien life form they brought abourd the ship was a large beach ball - an even cheaper version of "The Prisoner" weather balloon Rover.) And yet when creating "Alien" they clearly knew they needed a comics dynamic. The creature, of course, wwas designed by the horrific bio-mechanical surrealist H.R. Giger. The space suits and some interiors were sketched out by the legendary French comics artist Moebius (of Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal magazine fame.) The space craft and many of the interiors and props were from the sketchbook of LA Free Press editorial cartoonist Ron Cobb. At the same time the film was showing in theaters, the graphic novel adaptation drawn by Walt Simonson became the first comic book to hit the NY Times Best Sellings Books list. The sequel took the original slasher movie in space premise and turned it into an military action space marines war-movie (with a giant robotic cargo mover suit in the showdown fight scene) that tapped into the then mega-popularity of the animated and comic book G.I Joe and Transformers properties. After that things took time, but after the release of "Aliens" the creators of the Canadian comic "Warlock 5" illustrated the first "Aliens" comic book mini-series for Dark Horse Comics and spawned a lucrative franchise. Many artists and writers have worked on the various mini-series and one-shot Aliens titles over the decades. The concept for the semi-canon sequel "Aliens Vs. Predators" began as a Dark Horse comic series. Dark Horse collaborated with DC comics to co-publish a "Superman/Aliens" mini-series. And the property has been a merchandising goldmine, spawning plastic models, metal figurines, action figures, apparel, video games, props, toys, dolls... (One urban legend is that many of the toy line contracts were in place before they knew the original film would be rated-R for violence) I don't know who buys their child a "plush chestburster" but isn't it nice to know such things are available (if only to terrify the offspring of people you don't like?) Alien/Aliens was not based on a comic book originally. Oddly enough, none of the films on this list were. But thanks to the design work of Giger, Moebius and Cobb, The aliens franchise is, visually, the closest to a comic book series on the list.

= Napoleon,Park =

Heroes, of course, is the closest thematically, and does what it can with it's limited SFX budget, but it's a superhero series without a costume, mask or cape in sight. Unless you count Claire's cheerleader uniform as a 'costume' and hair dye or a soul patch to be a secret identity 'disguise'.

i've just started watching this series, not having causght it when it was actually aired oon the bbc, it was an interesting concept, but i never managed to catch it.

anyhow, just managed to find the first series and it's brilliant, really amazing. I suppose because being a londoner i can easily identify with it

yanks, go check it out, hope david e kellys version manages to make it the the screens, but the uk verion is still top notch