Aliens: Special Edition

Written by:

James Cameron

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Directed by:

James Cameron

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Release Date:

1986

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to go through James Cameron's legendary sci-fi action thriller sequel Aliens! Because 20th Century Fox have decided that the 26th of April is now 'Alien Day', and that's enough of an excuse for me to give it a rewatch. I suppose it would've made more sense to watch Alien today and save Aliens for its 30th anniversary in July, but that idea occurred to me a little too late unfortunately. Maybe I'll watch Alien later and sneakily swap the post dates around... no one will ever notice.

I already watched the movie last April as research for my 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' review on Super Adventures, so I was thinking I'd put the theatrical cut on instead this time and save myself some work. But that doesn't seem right when the Special Edition is considered the definitive version by basically everyone, especially James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver who weren't that happy when 14 minutes of their movie got sliced out. Sometimes a 'director's cut' is just a re-edit purely for the sake of selling the same movie twice, but Fox had the theatrical version of Aliens cut down so that cinemas could fit more screening in each day, so this is a restoration of its true form. All two and a half hours of it.

Like always I'll be going through the whole damn movie, writing my thoughts underneath DVD screencaps and throwing out massive SPOILERS all over the place, for this film and the original Alien. I won't spoil a thing about Alien³ onwards though, no matter how tempted I am to go into a rant.

Babylon 5: The Gathering - Special Edition

Written by:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Original Version Air Date:

22-Feb-1993

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'll be going through the feature length pilot episode for J. Michael Straczynski's science fiction TV epic Babylon 5! Though I'm going to be calling him JMS, because it's easier to type and I don't think he'll mind.

In fact I've decided to commit to finishing the entire first season and maybe more after that if watching 22 episodes of first season Babylon 5 doesn't utterly break my spirit. I've done the maths, and if I get through an episode every two weeks I'll be able to hit Severed Dreams in time for the 25th anniversary! I'll also be writing about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine simultaneously as it doesn't seem right to watch one without the other. The two arch-rival space station shows actually aired their pilots just a month apart, though this had spent so long getting off the ground it was actually written before Star Trek: The Next Generation began in 1987. Then there was another gap before the series proper began airing, giving DS9 a year's head start.

I had to buy the 1998 TNT special edition of the movie on DVD, because it seems that someone's taped over my VHS version with a snow storm. It's probably for the best though, as the special edition has extra scenes, a tighter editing job, and a new soundtrack (plus it's way easier to get screencaps from). Also I'm hoping that if I spend enough money on B5 DVDs the gods of irony will torment me with a sudden announcement that high-definition Blu-Rays are finally being produced and I have to buy them all again. The horror.

Okay I'm going to pretty much go through the whole movie scene by scene, so if 50 images with SPOILERS under each holds no appeal to you, you're not going to want to click "Read on". I'll only be ruining the pilot though; there'll be zero discussion of anything revealed in episodes aired afterwards.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition

Written by:

Harold Livingston

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Directed by:

Robert Wise

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Release Date:

1979

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Good news everyone! Today on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm going to improve the internet by posting a few thousand extra words about Star Trek: The Motion Picture, padded out with pictures of people in beige staring at a cloud.

I love that this is called 'The Motion Picture' by the way. It's not a film or a movie, it's a motion picture, it's about something, it cost money. A feature film based on a TV series starring the same cast isn't unheard of, but they're rarely set up to be the next 2001: A Space Odyssey. They even got Robert Wise, the guy who made The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Andromeda Strain, to direct it. Which kind of explains why it looks like The Andromeda Strain now that I think about it.

There were a few attempts during the 70s to bring Trek back in some form, but this particular project started life as Star Trek: Phase II, a television series starring most of the same cast (minus Leonard Nimoy) intended to launch a new fourth US TV network. But someone decided the pilot script had movie potential and there were soon bigger plans in play. From what I've heard the series was actually cancelled within a month of being announced, but they had to let pre-production roll along for almost a year while they got the movie deals in place. Of course the film was expected to pay for all the work done on the false starts along the way, which made it seem even more wildly over-budget than it actually was. The most expensive movie ever made at the time in fact, aside from maybe Superman. But you couldn't call it flop; if you adjust for ticket price inflation it's actually right up there with the J.J. Abrams movies.

You'd think this leap to cinemas was inspired by the success of Star Wars, but it was apparently much the opposite. I read that Paramount believed they'd missed their chance because everyone had already spent their money on one big sci-fi movie and wouldn't want to see two of them in just a few years! That's why they were making Phase II instead. But the massive success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind that same year made it clear that science fiction had a future.

Anyway this is going to be 50 images separated by SPOILERS for the entire motion picture, so either mentally prepare yourself for that ordeal, or bail now. You can tell me what a huge mistake this was in the comments box underneath.